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v0.34:Bolt
 | This feature has one or more outstanding bugs. Please view the Bugs section for details. |
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
Bolts are a type of ammunition used by crossbows. They can be made from either wood, bone, or weapons-grade metals. As with all non-siege ammo, hunting and military dwarves must be equipped with quivers to be able to carry bolts around for shooting.
Wooden and bone bolts are produced in a Craftsdwarf's workshop by a Wood Crafter or a Bone Carver, respectively. Each job will produce a stack of 25 wooden bolts from a single log, or a stack of 5 bone bolts taking a single bone from a stack. Metal bolts require Weaponsmithing (not Metalcrafting) and a Metalsmith's forge or Magma forge, creating a stack of 25 bolts from a single metal bar.
When fired, bolts have a chance of shattering on impact or bouncing off onto the ground as free-laying items. However, they are immediately forbidden after being fired (to prevent suicidal hauling dwarves from running into active battlefields), and have to be reclaimed by the player, either directly or from the stocks screen.
Given that bolts are a projectile weapon, their weight influences their effectiveness (higher weight means higher inertia, making them harder to deflect). Tests show that where even masterwork wooden bolts bounce harmlessly off copper armor, iron bolts pierce without any issue. Bone bolts are significantly better than wood, but metal bolts are still recommended for military use. However, this would make adamantine a very bad choice for bolt making due to its ridiculously low density (see weapon materials).
Masterwork Bolts
As with other items, high-skill dwarves can make masterwork-quality bolts. While they don't care if the bolts are fired and shatter on impact, they do get upset if a bolt gets carried off the map - say by a retreating enemy with the bolt stuck in him.
The simplest remedy for this is to simply make more bolts - a dwarf who has produced hundreds of masterwork bolts will be more annoyed by flies than the loss of a masterwork. This is because the happiness penalty for the loss of a masterwork is divided by the number of remaining masterwork items made by that dwarf (see List of Dwarven Thoughts for more information).
Bugs
Adamantine armor seems to be less effective than even copper against bolts in this release. Copper and steel armor both deflect 98% of pine bolts, while adamantine only deflects 58%. Metal bolts appear not to ever be deflected by any armor, but testing is ongoing. Bug:5516
Bone bolts are not advisable for weapon traps as only a stack of 5 will be stored per crossbow, making frequent restocking necessary.
It is largely unclear what of the above constitutes a bug and what is intended behaviour.
- If squad is assigned multiple ammo types, dwarves with "individual choice ranged" carry wrong ammoBug:1374.
- Masterwork bolts cause unhappy thoughts when they get carried off the map or melted downBug:3169.
Raws |
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[ITEM_AMMO:ITEM_AMMO_BOLTS]
[NAME:bolt:bolts]
[CLASS:BOLT]
[SIZE:150]
[ATTACK:EDGE:2:2000:stab:stabs:NO_SUB:1000]
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