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v0.34:Crossbowman
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Dwarfs or other creatures armed with crossbows pierce targets from a long distance. A Dwarf Crossbowman, or marksdwarf, will usually open fire at a distance of 20 tiles or so from their target, but a bolt may carry 30 or more*. While also doing decent general damage, a bolt does a fine job at piercing the internal organs of a creature, which can possibly cause organ failure and instant death, unconsciousness or crippling of any size target. This is of limited use against creatures without internal organs, such as magma men. Occasionally a bolt will get stuck in a target; the only known use for this is that a wrestling dwarf may grab the bolt and twist it in the wound.
- (* Note that increase in height (z-levels) hurts range, rather than helps it.)
A marksdwarf who is forced into melee will use the hammerdwarf skill to bash enemies with their crossbow. If you'd prefer your marksdwarves to reload instead of going into melee combat, you can go the military menu, view their squad, and then toggle c to tell them to stay close to their station. This will cause them to go and collect bolts, then start shooting again, instead of either standing in place because they don't have a path to the enemy, or running out to smack the enemy with their crossbow.
Immigrating marksdwarves bring their own crossbows and 30-40 bolts. Immigrating rangers often arrive with Novice Marksdwarf skill, though will only bring a crossbow and bolts if they also have ambusher skill. (See Ambusher for more details.)
Training
Increasing Crossbowman skill requires firing upon a target (hitting is not required), with "live targets" granting much more experience than an archery target. The difference is huge, on the order of ~67 bolts fired (~7.5 experience/shot) in practice vs 17 bolts fired (30 experience/shot) against live enemies to achieve novice rank (verified by Jim Groovester). Higher skill grants better accuracy and higher rate of fire.
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