40d:Bolt

Bolts are the ammunition fired by crossbows and crossbow traps. Making bolts from wood or metal gives a stack of 25. Making bolts from bone gives a stack of 5*number of bones. Any dwarf who is assigned a crossbow will also carry bolts, and use a quiver if one is available.

Metal bolts are the most damaging, and are considered too valuable to be wasted on practice. Dwarves will carry metal bolts in their quivers, but will not fire them at archery targets. Wood and bone bolts will be used in practice, as well as combat, doing half the damage of iron bolts.

Metal bolts are created at the metalsmith's forge and require weaponsmith skill. Wood and bone bolts are created at the craftsdwarf's workshop and require woodcrafting and bone carving skills, respectively.

If you decorate a stack of bolts, the same decoration will be applied to every bolt in the stack simultaneously. In other words, decorating a stack of 10 bolts will produce 10 times as much wealth as decorating a single sword, even though it takes the same amount of material. This can be considered as an exploit because doing so increases the value of a fortress by a ridiculous amount.

In adventure mode, bolts can also be thrown for about the same results as firing them, except that it uses the thrower skill.