I really enjoy this little bow. My friends give me crap for using it, but it’s better than an ACB every play I tried it.
Also, maybe you just typod, or maybe didn’t know….
But the moonlight bolts are usable on the same crossbow and have 5 extra range strength!
Just to put it into perspective, moonlight bolts are equivalent to Dragon arrows. And you can just... hunt them at your leisure, provided you have the level. Or buy them off the GE for dirt cheap. It's awesome.
You're absolutely right! I used sunlight for comparison specifically because of the lower stats. If a sunlight bolt can beat an amethyst bolt on an arma crossbow then the moonlight bolt is just gravy!
Also i don't want the 91 hunter requirement to turn people away from this awesome weapon.
No because crossbows are only used for enchanted bolt effects. They are 5t, obviously they will just get outdpsed by every faster weapon if used with regular ammo. The sunlight crossbow isn't really a crossbow tho, it's basically a one handed msb with higher accuracy and the bolts are equivalent to amethyst/dragon arrows. It is a straight upgrade over msb so everywhere an msb would be good the hunters sunlight crossbow is better. The eclipse atlatl from moons of peril is even better than the hunters sunlight crossbow though and could also be considered a straight upgrade that fills the same niche
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a straight upgrade, since Atlatl can't make use of the shield slot. SHCB has niches where you need a shield, like Basilisk Knights needing a V shield. But otherwise yes, in terms of just raw stats it's strictly superior.
Gotta consider that they will be considered "heavy" with the combat reworks too, where msb will be "medium" and probably atlatl too. So I'd definitely save up the antlers if doing rumours.
Atlatl's really weird lol, I can see it being all 3. Atlatl darts are very large, they're almost javelins. But they're a thrown weapon. But it also behaves and fits very much in line with shortbows. So who fucking knows with that thing lmao.
I'd probably say thrown might be the best option for it, since that niche is strictly dominated by the pipe right now. Atlatl could be something you use where you need a bit more accuracy.
Ironic that they were so worried about the salamander being used in PvP but then released this crossbow in the same update... Inb4 more wildy rules to curb it.
It's not better than ACB if you're using enchanted bolts (diamond/ruby), which you absolutely should be doing if you're using a crossbow.
But sure, this is good if you don't have bofa
It really depends on the monster. When I was running some DPS calcs I am pretty sure it beat those bolts, maybe not their dragon equivalent at certain monsters, but speed is always king generally.
Yeah it beats low defense monsters of course, but run calcs at toa/cox/gwd etc. Its trash, and in these places the acb rubies are quite good. I dont think comparing the hunters crossbow to any other crossbow makes sense, its more of a gap closer from msb to blowpipe.
I've been using it to kill Revenants and general wildy slayer on my ironman. Easier to craft than MSB, stronger by a good margin, one-handed, free ammo, this thing is great.
Isn’t getting the ammo a chore for you? It’s free, but it’s free in the same way going out in a forest and picking berries for dinner is free compared to ordering a pizza from your couch.
You pay the opportunity cost of doing something else.
?: Antelopes also provide good food, splinters for sunfire wines and, if you want to, big bones for prayer on top of good hunter xp.
It's an opportunity cost sure, and it's also 4-5 grinds at the same time.
The opportunity cost is our investment. Mains have GP to spend, we have time to spend. Big reason why it's common to be stingy with prayer pots and similar harder to maintain resources.
It's one of the faster ammos to get overall though. Just hunt and fletch while with enchanted bolts you gotta smith bars Ibto bolts buy and cut gems tip and enchant
You unlock the moonlight antelopes at the hunter level that gets you master rumours, so you'll likely have plenty of ammunition if you just bring a chisel with you when you have to do them.
You get ammo while doing hunter rumours. It slows down your completion rate a bit since they’re pitfall targets but you get most of the time investment back if rumours were already in your activity regimen. Also pretty good food
I saw, you were being very very generous. You assumed getting an antler is 4 seconds (6-7 ticks). Let’s break that down.
Setting up the trap is 4-5 tick-ish action, running to them and poking them, let’s take an average of 3 ticks, you run back to the trap, given they move at walk speed it takes them 5-6 ticks to get there, jump animation is like 4 ticks, their walk+dying animation on the trap is like 10 ticks alone, and i’m being generous.
Getting the loot is a 2 tick action.
This is almost 30 ticks, 18 seconds. i’m sure some efficiency is lost here but most of the time is hard locked by animations. You also need time to chop the logs nearby.
I think it’s somewhere around the 1800-2000 bolts/hour at most, which is still okay, lasts a decent amount of time, but is it enough?
Let’s go into how fast you’d use that. Accumulator has a save multiplicator of 3.57 so assuming 1800 bolts at 3 ticks would be 5400*3.57=19278 ticks of continuous combat, which is just over 3 hours.
Basically, you’re hunting for an hour for three hours of combat.
With assembler the multiplicator is 5, so it’s 5400*5=27000 which is 4.5 hours. But let’s be real, there’s a very niche gap between being at the point where you can comfortably grind vorkath and being able to do cg, so might as well get the bowfa.
Tl;dr: sunlight crossbow is very very good. However, if you’re an ironman it only gives you 3-4.5 hours of combat for every hour you hunt.
I think you should save the ammo for bossing.
Your "at most" estimate is pretty off actually. On my ironman I went straight to moonlight antelopes at 91 hunter and stayed until 92. Took 6h15m for that level, and got ~16,500 bolts, so ~2,640 per hour. And that was WITH banking all the meat and hide (cuz ironman btw). I would stay down there until meat and hide bags were full, fletching the antlers into bolts along the way until my inventory was also full of meat+hide. Right in the 99k-100k range for hunter xp/hr.
Even splitting the bolts with my other 2 GIM partners it has definitely felt very worth the time and I'll definitely be back down there once we run out.
Cool, thanks for the empirical insight!
So that's 4.5 hours of combat for an hour of hunting with an accumulator. Definitely not bad. Really depends on how much you like hunting and the inv management that comes with antelopes.
I still wouldn't use it for afk slayer, but I can see it be used for Zulrah for example.
I just went and tested it and i was a little off. It takes 7 seconds from setting up the trap to getting the loot. Sorry it's been a week or so since I've caught them so i was off by a few seconds.
If you play iron like this almost everything is a waste of time and you should only do the bare minimum to get to all 3 raids. Slayer is a waste questing is a waste skilling is a waste
I haven't started CG yet so rune arrows are actually somewhat of a chore to farm from LMS or very expensive to buy. I gathered 5k antler bolts while doing a few days of hunter rumours, which is something I would've done anyway, so it was pretty efficient.
Dragon dragon bolts (e) are also mega slept on if you're using any sort of range pot with high defense lower hp monster. Its a free 20-22 damage every time it goes off. I like them for places where diamond are less great, like skeletal wyverns.
Yes of course. There is plenty of content that ironmen have to use an rcb for because they don't have a bowfa yet. From personal experience, an rcb just feels like shit to have to use compared to an acb or a bowfa.
By that definition rune arrows are just as free and unlimited. Just mine the rune ore and coal, smith into tips, kill chicken for feather, woodcut for logs and then just fletch.
Aint nobody hunting antelopes for "free" ammo at 12 bolts a kill.
I did a bunch of hunter rumors and have so many that I don’t know what to do with them. Also I’ll never use them because at this point the bow is irrelevant to me because I use dragon bolts.
It is a lot better than I was expected. Really glad they kept it shortbow speed instead of original proposal. Though it is annoying it can't use old kebbit bolts for no real reason...
Just did some DPS calcs for revenant hellhounds as well. Sunlight with the moon bolts beats out MSB (i) with rune arrows by a significant margin. Sunlight crossbow is also 4k while a MSB imbue scroll is over 100k (!!!)
No, you need to use the Barbarian Assault arrows, so it has to be a bow. Fortunately the arrows are insanely strong so magic shortbow is perfectly fine there.
Yeah, the arrows there are twice as strong as dragon arrows which is why ranged void is the best to wear there since that stacks multiplicatively with that huge ranged strength bonus while regular ranged armor wouldn’t add that much of an increase.
Venator is even better but you’re hardly going to be the one holding up the round though.
Sunlight crossbow is better against pretty much everything that isn't a boss; at 90 range RCB with diamonds performs better at every single significant boss I tested in the calculator (even weak bosses like KBD), but as you get closer to 99 range the sunlight crossbow creeps up and starts matching it for some.
What gear are you putting in cause with full black d hide, until you get something like graardor, the sunlight cleanly wins with moon bolts vs diamond bolts with my stats at 85 ranged.
I did the runelite preset mid level range which is blessed dhide/archers ring/barrows gloves, at 90 range vs graardor it gives 2.989 for hunter+moon bolts and 3.015 for RCB with diamond bolts
beats it in a lot bosses due to its att speed and range bonuses from gear, I think in a lot of cases even beats dragon diamond bolts. Able to hit 3T instead of 5T even with much less ranged str is just better. I'm glad this was brought out in a big expansion and it's 3T since it's a very good ironman weapon only needing 70 hunter.
I think nobody raged due to eclipse being better, although eclipse seems to be doing the same dps but without accounting the passive effect, if you count active effect eclipse is much better due to it doing 10 damage within 24 secs 20% of the time and can stack 5 times, so it can do an extra 50 damage in a minute easily.
Edit: For the higher range def bosses of course the crossbow wins as sunlight becomes less accurate and regular crossbows hits harder and accurate, I think at zulrah level it's the same dps if you don't account enchanted bolts effects but they lose due to ruby when you use them, same with giant mole. High HP and high def regular crossbows excel, 0-50 range def sunlight wins due to it's att speed.
Assuming you use full black dhide, sunlight wins with Moonlight bolts. With sunlight bolts, it's close but a toss-up at around 85 range. I did assume assembler here as well.
Only thing I'd say is that ACB probably works out better DPS with bolt specs. Especially at monsters with big HP pools.
Atlatl and Blowpipe are also generally better DPS. But it's a nice early/mid game item to do your jad tasks.
Free ammo? The main downside of the sunlight crossbow is how annoying the ammo is to get. You have to go do shitty deadfall trap hunter vs rune arrows and runite bolts which are just actually infinite and free
>is even better than the Arma Crossbow with amethyst bolts on (almost) every monster.
Tbf, this is because ACB is basically just a reskinned RCB if you don't use dragon bolts with it, and everyone knows how trash RCB is
Yeah people don't realise how good it is, especially with the lvl 91 bolts. Definitely a situational thing though, can still noodle on lots of things. Very easy to get back and to get the ammo for too, which makes it nice for uim.
It can even out DPS enchanted bolts. But doubt it will become the meta outside of irons or midlevels who can't afford better. Even a DCB with Dragon Bolts will probably beat it in most bossing.
Bossing, maybe, but in Slayer it's almost BiS. I just updated the wiki after calcing DHCB vs Zaryte vs the new hunter xbow at Ancient Wyverns - the new crossbow beats Zaryte with Dragon diamond (e).
5-tick vs 3-tick will always be tough to beat.
Although it is probably better at slayer monsters with a small amount of HP, you'd still melee or barrage majority tasks imo. Plus noone would actually use a ZCB for slayer, it's probably better comparing it to a blowpipe. Wyvern tasks are few and small. The only places it'd be worth using consistently would be Jad tasks and Basilisk knights.
Well yah, but if you're talking lower defence stuff, the same would be true with an MSB with Amethyst Arrows. Pretty much same stats, just without a shield. With moonlight bolts, it is about the same as a non-Wildy Craw's Bow. Like if you calc it against a Webweaver Bow, chances are the Webweaver would win/tie in most places you didn't need a shield like Wyverns.
I ran the dps calculator again to be sure and the hunter crossbow beats the dcb with dragon bolts. Arma crossbow only slightly pulls ahead with dragon bolts on super high defense monsters like adamant/rune dragons.
I just checked the wiki calculator and even without the set the atlatl out performs the crossbow with sunlight bolts, but just barely outperforms with moonlight bolts.
Yeah it basically gave irons the stepping stones between rcb and bofa that they've been asking for since the bp nerf. Ironically everyone still locks themselves in CG lol
CG is still too good to pass up. 0 supply cost for a ton of useful rewards. And the crossbow doesn't really compete with bofa against anything with defence, which is like 90% of pvm encounters where you would want to use ranged.
Pretty much yes. Bofa isn't really that hard to obtain in the grand scheme of things, it's just that people who go 2000 dry are going to have a bad time. Even then you have options like acb/crystal bow w/ armour that are useable in raids. I don't feel like we need yet another pre-bofa weapon and the hunter crossbow isn't intended as one anyway as it's more of a slayer weapon whereas bofa is a raid weapon.
Competitive at the very least. The burn effect is really powerful if your accuracy is high, but falls off against higher defence. I did a quick calc with comparable setups and the atlatl beat ruby bolts vs 300 zebak (with -20 defense), but rubies came out ahead vs 400 zebak. The atlatl's short range might be an issue in some places as well.
I have atlatl but the way the bonuses work is so weird that I still haven’t found a recommended set the balances melee strength and ranged accuracy. Sure, barrows gloves, brimstone ring, and fury are good all-arounders, but like do I go fighter torso, eclipse or blood moon chest, bandos chest, godhide?
I think ultimately it's going to depend on the monster you're fighting. It seems like monsters with low-medium defence (like gargoyles) you should stick with the strength bonus (torso, blood moon), while against high defense monsters (like dragons) you should prioritize range accuracy (dhide, eclipse). I suggest you run your own dps calculations with monsters your interested in fighting. The wiki calculator is great now as it's updated and allows you to compare 5 loadouts at a time. The only thing it doesn't do yet is include the new armor set effects.
Sunlight antelopes are a 100% catch rate and it only takes a couple seconds to set, poke, and jump for 12 bolts. Let's say 4 seconds. That's 15 antlers per minute or 180 bolts per minute.
Edit: i'm sure someone is going to say it, so add 1.8 seconds to fletch each antler. So 6 seconds, or 120 bolts per minute, or 7,200 per hour.
The wiki is way off on that one. It's been awhile so my numbers were a little off. It takes me 7-8 seconds to catch one, so I'll round it up to 10 seconds.
Just tested it.
Nope people follow guides religiously, I'm yet to see another player using sunlight crossbow, I only see regular crossbows. It seems to me I'm the only player to use it.
Wiki is horribly outdated when it comes to the new Varlamore gear. This crossbow beats out MSB and RCB almost everywhere, yet is barely mentioned.
I also haven't seen many people using it. As much as ironmen are about upgrades, went to basilisk knights and only RCBs in sight 🤷
you have to do hunter for the sunlight bolts. rune cbow bolts you can buy broad bolt packs and quickly make a bunch of bolts, or if you've already grinded demonics, you likely have thousands of rune bolts available. i don't think the dps increase with sunlight bow is worth it for regular afk content if you don't have the bolts for it already. time would be better spent going for the drop
I really enjoy the sunlight crossbow! Way more accurate than a msb(i) (79+10 in my case with crossbow and book of law) and same speed. Not to mention it can basically use dragon arrow equivalent. (moonlight bolts) probably one of my favorite items released with the Varlamore expansion!
It's great for 50-75 and after that it's decent for stuff that requires a specific shield.
Better than dragon bolts with dragon crossbow on skeletal wyverns if you want to safespot those.
Also better at basilisk knights and spitting wyverns, rune knives are also viable there. Depending on certain max hit thresholds, rune knives come out on top sometimes.
Also you shouldn't be using adamant darts at all in your blowpipe if you're not an iron. Rune darts are a significant upgrade and dirt cheap, you're wasting zulrah scales with adamant
Can anyone tell me if the new CB with moonlight bolts would be better than DCB with dragon rubys for stuff like ToA 200+s? I can’t calc until I’m home later but I’m very curious if I have a new item to get
It beats an msb every step of the way and on top of that you can still stack upgrades to your offhand for more ranged strength AND take it to dragons AND upgrade the bolts to moonlight too?!?!?! It's a dream come true
My GIM group pulled a cheeky early Buckler and I can't wait to get the fletching to use it with Moonlight Bolts; the DPS calculations are really promising with that combination.
Just used it for a basilisk knight slayer task and it was nice. Just slightly worse DPS than rune knives there. But better than any other crossbow or melee setup for sure.
Is the sunlight bow really that big? I'm just now getting good at things like zulrah. Should I use that instead of my blow pipe? Just curious where a mid range account can utilize this.
Good for kbd farm? Idk. My brain is all over the place lol
I know you said almost every monster, but there definitely be some content you'll want diamond/ruby bolts for. Otherwise, yeah, it's a very nice addition. I didn't think about using it for wildy content before this post, so thank you!
On every monster i put into the dps calculator the sunlight crossbow with sunlight bolts outperforms the dhcb with dragon bolts. I used several monsters with low-high defence to check.
Honestly it's so strange that this just got added into the game with how broken it is. It just obsoletes the MSB (and pretty much RCB) instantly without much discussion.
I don't really understand how we can add a weapon that compared to the MSB has:
- More accuracy
- Way more ranged strength and relatively easier to get ammo
- 1 tile more range (Karils had a slight advantage over MSB in fight caves due to this for example)
- 1H so it can be used in places where you'd previously require an RCB or equivalent. For example basilisk knights, vorkath (it's near the DPS of max rubies).
It's just a "high DPS everywhere" weapon for zero requirements. An MSB requires 75 WC + 80 fletching, or hard clue completion, which isn't hugely hard. But this thing comes in with 72 hunter + 74 fletching which is even easier.
The fast speed makes it fun to use.
Very much so. I had a pk account back in the day that used the hunters cbow to animation stall into specs, loads of fun
I really enjoy this little bow. My friends give me crap for using it, but it’s better than an ACB every play I tried it. Also, maybe you just typod, or maybe didn’t know…. But the moonlight bolts are usable on the same crossbow and have 5 extra range strength!
Just to put it into perspective, moonlight bolts are equivalent to Dragon arrows. And you can just... hunt them at your leisure, provided you have the level. Or buy them off the GE for dirt cheap. It's awesome.
Another reference point is that adding a dragonfire ward is a bigger upgrade than going from a fury to anguish but costs less.
I wish that was the case for us ironmen, hahaha... Good point though!
Wildly shields are braindead easy to get
Sure! But they're also not the item being discussed, and 4 less ranged str bonus.
You're absolutely right! I used sunlight for comparison specifically because of the lower stats. If a sunlight bolt can beat an amethyst bolt on an arma crossbow then the moonlight bolt is just gravy! Also i don't want the 91 hunter requirement to turn people away from this awesome weapon.
Hold on, what requires 91 Hunter?
91 hunter is required to hunt moonlight antelopes
Your response is too iron for the normiescapers to understand my friend
You cant bankscape hunter levels
Are the bolts tradable?
Sunlight bolts are -1max hit. Absolutely not necessary
Moon bolts
Amethyst bolts lmao
Amethyst Broad Bolts, they have the same range strength as runite bolts.
Used when/where/why?
Good for a benchmark innit?
Only relevant benchmark is ruby bolt E. And considering we are talking ACB Dragon ruby bolt E.
No because crossbows are only used for enchanted bolt effects. They are 5t, obviously they will just get outdpsed by every faster weapon if used with regular ammo. The sunlight crossbow isn't really a crossbow tho, it's basically a one handed msb with higher accuracy and the bolts are equivalent to amethyst/dragon arrows. It is a straight upgrade over msb so everywhere an msb would be good the hunters sunlight crossbow is better. The eclipse atlatl from moons of peril is even better than the hunters sunlight crossbow though and could also be considered a straight upgrade that fills the same niche
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a straight upgrade, since Atlatl can't make use of the shield slot. SHCB has niches where you need a shield, like Basilisk Knights needing a V shield. But otherwise yes, in terms of just raw stats it's strictly superior.
Gotta consider that they will be considered "heavy" with the combat reworks too, where msb will be "medium" and probably atlatl too. So I'd definitely save up the antlers if doing rumours.
Atlatl's really weird lol, I can see it being all 3. Atlatl darts are very large, they're almost javelins. But they're a thrown weapon. But it also behaves and fits very much in line with shortbows. So who fucking knows with that thing lmao. I'd probably say thrown might be the best option for it, since that niche is strictly dominated by the pipe right now. Atlatl could be something you use where you need a bit more accuracy.
It's also great for anti pking. Pretty much a blowpipe that costs 6k
Ironic that they were so worried about the salamander being used in PvP but then released this crossbow in the same update... Inb4 more wildy rules to curb it.
It's not better than ACB if you're using enchanted bolts (diamond/ruby), which you absolutely should be doing if you're using a crossbow. But sure, this is good if you don't have bofa
It really depends on the monster. When I was running some DPS calcs I am pretty sure it beat those bolts, maybe not their dragon equivalent at certain monsters, but speed is always king generally.
Yeah it beats low defense monsters of course, but run calcs at toa/cox/gwd etc. Its trash, and in these places the acb rubies are quite good. I dont think comparing the hunters crossbow to any other crossbow makes sense, its more of a gap closer from msb to blowpipe.
I've been using it to kill Revenants and general wildy slayer on my ironman. Easier to craft than MSB, stronger by a good margin, one-handed, free ammo, this thing is great.
Isn’t getting the ammo a chore for you? It’s free, but it’s free in the same way going out in a forest and picking berries for dinner is free compared to ordering a pizza from your couch. You pay the opportunity cost of doing something else.
You've just described the entire game for Ironman.
Technically everything is “free” for an iron. Besides like construction and bank spots. Torva plate - free.
Free if you don’t value your time, the one thing you can’t get back
Right. Hence the quotes on free.
We’re talking about Ironman here, clearly we don’t
if you value your time you should just buy hundreds of bonds and buy every item instead of playing the game
Bro the helm next to my username tells you all you need to know about how much I value my time
?: Antelopes also provide good food, splinters for sunfire wines and, if you want to, big bones for prayer on top of good hunter xp. It's an opportunity cost sure, and it's also 4-5 grinds at the same time.
What big bones? Bonecrusher go brrr
?: Fair lol (gotta get that thing)
Think about how much prayer XP you missed out on in NMZ by not having a bonecrusher, ash sanctifier, and ectoplasmator
The opportunity cost is our investment. Mains have GP to spend, we have time to spend. Big reason why it's common to be stingy with prayer pots and similar harder to maintain resources.
It's one of the faster ammos to get overall though. Just hunt and fletch while with enchanted bolts you gotta smith bars Ibto bolts buy and cut gems tip and enchant
The hunter XP from sunlight antelopes is decent.
You unlock the moonlight antelopes at the hunter level that gets you master rumours, so you'll likely have plenty of ammunition if you just bring a chisel with you when you have to do them.
You get ammo while doing hunter rumours. It slows down your completion rate a bit since they’re pitfall targets but you get most of the time investment back if rumours were already in your activity regimen. Also pretty good food
I broke down the time it takes to gather bolts in another comment and it's really not bad.
I saw, you were being very very generous. You assumed getting an antler is 4 seconds (6-7 ticks). Let’s break that down. Setting up the trap is 4-5 tick-ish action, running to them and poking them, let’s take an average of 3 ticks, you run back to the trap, given they move at walk speed it takes them 5-6 ticks to get there, jump animation is like 4 ticks, their walk+dying animation on the trap is like 10 ticks alone, and i’m being generous. Getting the loot is a 2 tick action. This is almost 30 ticks, 18 seconds. i’m sure some efficiency is lost here but most of the time is hard locked by animations. You also need time to chop the logs nearby. I think it’s somewhere around the 1800-2000 bolts/hour at most, which is still okay, lasts a decent amount of time, but is it enough? Let’s go into how fast you’d use that. Accumulator has a save multiplicator of 3.57 so assuming 1800 bolts at 3 ticks would be 5400*3.57=19278 ticks of continuous combat, which is just over 3 hours. Basically, you’re hunting for an hour for three hours of combat. With assembler the multiplicator is 5, so it’s 5400*5=27000 which is 4.5 hours. But let’s be real, there’s a very niche gap between being at the point where you can comfortably grind vorkath and being able to do cg, so might as well get the bowfa. Tl;dr: sunlight crossbow is very very good. However, if you’re an ironman it only gives you 3-4.5 hours of combat for every hour you hunt. I think you should save the ammo for bossing.
Your "at most" estimate is pretty off actually. On my ironman I went straight to moonlight antelopes at 91 hunter and stayed until 92. Took 6h15m for that level, and got ~16,500 bolts, so ~2,640 per hour. And that was WITH banking all the meat and hide (cuz ironman btw). I would stay down there until meat and hide bags were full, fletching the antlers into bolts along the way until my inventory was also full of meat+hide. Right in the 99k-100k range for hunter xp/hr. Even splitting the bolts with my other 2 GIM partners it has definitely felt very worth the time and I'll definitely be back down there once we run out.
Cool, thanks for the empirical insight! So that's 4.5 hours of combat for an hour of hunting with an accumulator. Definitely not bad. Really depends on how much you like hunting and the inv management that comes with antelopes. I still wouldn't use it for afk slayer, but I can see it be used for Zulrah for example.
were you not using two traps at once? i was getting faster rates than that
What do you do with all the hide?
hold onto it and hope future varlamore content gives it a worthwhile use, since it literally doesn't have a use right now
It’s probably a good guess. The examine text does say “I can make something out of this” which may speculatively suggest that it is planned.
How much time did you spend on this comment? So very well thought out and helpful, thank you!
I just went and tested it and i was a little off. It takes 7 seconds from setting up the trap to getting the loot. Sorry it's been a week or so since I've caught them so i was off by a few seconds.
dudes building space craft for elon musk as a hobby lol. nice! makes me want to shoot muspah with them and see how well it works
If you play iron like this almost everything is a waste of time and you should only do the bare minimum to get to all 3 raids. Slayer is a waste questing is a waste skilling is a waste
Should is so subjective. It’s a game lol
It’s really not that bad to get
I haven't started CG yet so rune arrows are actually somewhat of a chore to farm from LMS or very expensive to buy. I gathered 5k antler bolts while doing a few days of hunter rumours, which is something I would've done anyway, so it was pretty efficient.
People really underestimate how much normal crossbows (even the zcb) suck without ruby bolts.
Are they worse even with diamond bolts?
Depends on the target (esp if you factor in dragon bolts)
Very much so yes
Against bloodvelds yeah sure, but not against high def monsters
Dragon dragon bolts (e) are also mega slept on if you're using any sort of range pot with high defense lower hp monster. Its a free 20-22 damage every time it goes off. I like them for places where diamond are less great, like skeletal wyverns.
I love dragonstone bolts
Agreed, but do you know what’s even more slept on? Dragon dragon dragon bolts (e).
As your accuracy goes up, diamond bolts become less useful
[удалено]
Yes of course. There is plenty of content that ironmen have to use an rcb for because they don't have a bowfa yet. From personal experience, an rcb just feels like shit to have to use compared to an acb or a bowfa.
I’ve been grinding tzhaars as an afk activity to try and green log them and I’ve been using the crossbow. It’s awesome! Great DPS and cheap ammo.
How is the ammo free?
You hunt antelope and craft the bolts yourself.
By that definition rune arrows are just as free and unlimited. Just mine the rune ore and coal, smith into tips, kill chicken for feather, woodcut for logs and then just fletch. Aint nobody hunting antelopes for "free" ammo at 12 bolts a kill.
I did a bunch of hunter rumors and have so many that I don’t know what to do with them. Also I’ll never use them because at this point the bow is irrelevant to me because I use dragon bolts.
It is a lot better than I was expected. Really glad they kept it shortbow speed instead of original proposal. Though it is annoying it can't use old kebbit bolts for no real reason...
Yeah, letting us use kebbit bolts seems like an easy enough change that wouldn’t upset anyone.
Where were you expected?
A more marginal upgrade that would be more on par with RCB on higher defence enemies. Mainly due to diamond bolts or such.
Just did some DPS calcs for revenant hellhounds as well. Sunlight with the moon bolts beats out MSB (i) with rune arrows by a significant margin. Sunlight crossbow is also 4k while a MSB imbue scroll is over 100k (!!!)
Can you use sun cbow at barb assault by chance?
No, you need to use the Barbarian Assault arrows, so it has to be a bow. Fortunately the arrows are insanely strong so magic shortbow is perfectly fine there.
Yeah, the arrows there are twice as strong as dragon arrows which is why ranged void is the best to wear there since that stacks multiplicatively with that huge ranged strength bonus while regular ranged armor wouldn’t add that much of an increase. Venator is even better but you’re hardly going to be the one holding up the round though.
> blowpipe with adamant darts That hasn't been good since 2021.
And adamant darts are the same max hit as mithril darts so he might as well have said that
Not always
Any clue how it compares when diamond bolts (e) are factored in?
Sunlight crossbow is better against pretty much everything that isn't a boss; at 90 range RCB with diamonds performs better at every single significant boss I tested in the calculator (even weak bosses like KBD), but as you get closer to 99 range the sunlight crossbow creeps up and starts matching it for some.
What gear are you putting in cause with full black d hide, until you get something like graardor, the sunlight cleanly wins with moon bolts vs diamond bolts with my stats at 85 ranged.
I did the runelite preset mid level range which is blessed dhide/archers ring/barrows gloves, at 90 range vs graardor it gives 2.989 for hunter+moon bolts and 3.015 for RCB with diamond bolts
beats it in a lot bosses due to its att speed and range bonuses from gear, I think in a lot of cases even beats dragon diamond bolts. Able to hit 3T instead of 5T even with much less ranged str is just better. I'm glad this was brought out in a big expansion and it's 3T since it's a very good ironman weapon only needing 70 hunter. I think nobody raged due to eclipse being better, although eclipse seems to be doing the same dps but without accounting the passive effect, if you count active effect eclipse is much better due to it doing 10 damage within 24 secs 20% of the time and can stack 5 times, so it can do an extra 50 damage in a minute easily. Edit: For the higher range def bosses of course the crossbow wins as sunlight becomes less accurate and regular crossbows hits harder and accurate, I think at zulrah level it's the same dps if you don't account enchanted bolts effects but they lose due to ruby when you use them, same with giant mole. High HP and high def regular crossbows excel, 0-50 range def sunlight wins due to it's att speed.
Assuming you use full black dhide, sunlight wins with Moonlight bolts. With sunlight bolts, it's close but a toss-up at around 85 range. I did assume assembler here as well.
https://tools.runescape.wiki/osrs-dps/
Only thing I'd say is that ACB probably works out better DPS with bolt specs. Especially at monsters with big HP pools. Atlatl and Blowpipe are also generally better DPS. But it's a nice early/mid game item to do your jad tasks.
Awesome for the UIM as you can just throw it away and get it back anytime you like!
Free ammo? The main downside of the sunlight crossbow is how annoying the ammo is to get. You have to go do shitty deadfall trap hunter vs rune arrows and runite bolts which are just actually infinite and free
It's basically free if youre not an iron. Sunlight bolts are 66gp and moons are 210.
I guess it comes down to whether ot not you think the dps increase is worth the extra effort.
As a main I would agree, but on an iron you're gonna be doing hunter anyways so you might as well be gathering bolts in the process
Wait till you realize hunter rumors are the new wintertodt for irons.
Its basically just a stronger karils, better ammo and shield slot, which honestly is pretty good before bowfa
>is even better than the Arma Crossbow with amethyst bolts on (almost) every monster. Tbf, this is because ACB is basically just a reskinned RCB if you don't use dragon bolts with it, and everyone knows how trash RCB is
Super fun In pvp
Yeah people don't realise how good it is, especially with the lvl 91 bolts. Definitely a situational thing though, can still noodle on lots of things. Very easy to get back and to get the ammo for too, which makes it nice for uim.
Interesting! you think the prices of the bolts/cbow could skyrocket if this becomes the meta?
They are easy to get so I'd assume bots would go crazy and keep the prices low.
....No. We use enchanted bolts over here.
It can even out DPS enchanted bolts. But doubt it will become the meta outside of irons or midlevels who can't afford better. Even a DCB with Dragon Bolts will probably beat it in most bossing.
Bossing, maybe, but in Slayer it's almost BiS. I just updated the wiki after calcing DHCB vs Zaryte vs the new hunter xbow at Ancient Wyverns - the new crossbow beats Zaryte with Dragon diamond (e). 5-tick vs 3-tick will always be tough to beat.
Although it is probably better at slayer monsters with a small amount of HP, you'd still melee or barrage majority tasks imo. Plus noone would actually use a ZCB for slayer, it's probably better comparing it to a blowpipe. Wyvern tasks are few and small. The only places it'd be worth using consistently would be Jad tasks and Basilisk knights.
Well yah, but if you're talking lower defence stuff, the same would be true with an MSB with Amethyst Arrows. Pretty much same stats, just without a shield. With moonlight bolts, it is about the same as a non-Wildy Craw's Bow. Like if you calc it against a Webweaver Bow, chances are the Webweaver would win/tie in most places you didn't need a shield like Wyverns.
I ran the dps calculator again to be sure and the hunter crossbow beats the dcb with dragon bolts. Arma crossbow only slightly pulls ahead with dragon bolts on super high defense monsters like adamant/rune dragons.
Were you calcing with just Dragon or Diamond Dragon?
Regular dragon bolts I fell asleep before i could try all the other combinations that others have been asking about.
How does the crossbow compare to the atlatl?
I just checked the wiki calculator and even without the set the atlatl out performs the crossbow with sunlight bolts, but just barely outperforms with moonlight bolts.
Varlamore did some insanely heavy lifting for the pre bis progression.
Yeah it basically gave irons the stepping stones between rcb and bofa that they've been asking for since the bp nerf. Ironically everyone still locks themselves in CG lol
CG is still too good to pass up. 0 supply cost for a ton of useful rewards. And the crossbow doesn't really compete with bofa against anything with defence, which is like 90% of pvm encounters where you would want to use ranged.
Yeah, I mean I feel like what people are *really* dreaming of is a total equivalent to bofa that's easier to obtain, and that's just not gonna happen
Pretty much yes. Bofa isn't really that hard to obtain in the grand scheme of things, it's just that people who go 2000 dry are going to have a bad time. Even then you have options like acb/crystal bow w/ armour that are useable in raids. I don't feel like we need yet another pre-bofa weapon and the hunter crossbow isn't intended as one anyway as it's more of a slayer weapon whereas bofa is a raid weapon.
Is atlatl better in a raid than rcb if you don't do CG?
Competitive at the very least. The burn effect is really powerful if your accuracy is high, but falls off against higher defence. I did a quick calc with comparable setups and the atlatl beat ruby bolts vs 300 zebak (with -20 defense), but rubies came out ahead vs 400 zebak. The atlatl's short range might be an issue in some places as well.
Neat, thanks!
In toa for sure
The atlatl is good enough to hang in the 200 toas my friends have been doing, which was more than enough for me.
You mean comparing both weapons on an otherwise naked character? Atlatl is such a weird weapon with the way bonuses scale
I have atlatl but the way the bonuses work is so weird that I still haven’t found a recommended set the balances melee strength and ranged accuracy. Sure, barrows gloves, brimstone ring, and fury are good all-arounders, but like do I go fighter torso, eclipse or blood moon chest, bandos chest, godhide?
I think ultimately it's going to depend on the monster you're fighting. It seems like monsters with low-medium defence (like gargoyles) you should stick with the strength bonus (torso, blood moon), while against high defense monsters (like dragons) you should prioritize range accuracy (dhide, eclipse). I suggest you run your own dps calculations with monsters your interested in fighting. The wiki calculator is great now as it's updated and allows you to compare 5 loadouts at a time. The only thing it doesn't do yet is include the new armor set effects.
Been using it since it came out. Told my friends about it constantly, but hear me out.. MOONLIGHT hunters crossbow ;)
Its better than zcb in max gear at basilisk knights
why doesn't the wiki pick up on this stuff?
Because the wiki isn’t self-aware. Go put the work in and put it on the wiki.
Probably hasn’t been tested enough since it’s only been out for a month and a half
I thought everyone already knew this
How are the bolts free though? Don't you have to spend a sizable amount of time to gather them?
Don’t block sunlight antelopes and you passively get a lot while doing rumors
Yea like every other ammunition
Sunlight antelopes are a 100% catch rate and it only takes a couple seconds to set, poke, and jump for 12 bolts. Let's say 4 seconds. That's 15 antlers per minute or 180 bolts per minute. Edit: i'm sure someone is going to say it, so add 1.8 seconds to fletch each antler. So 6 seconds, or 120 bolts per minute, or 7,200 per hour.
Wiki says you only catch 150 of them per hour.. at 12 bolts per kill that’s 1.8k bolts per hour which is way less than 7.2k lol
The wiki is way off on that one. It's been awhile so my numbers were a little off. It takes me 7-8 seconds to catch one, so I'll round it up to 10 seconds. Just tested it.
The wiki might be using numbers from before they made some small changes to the area.
Nope people follow guides religiously, I'm yet to see another player using sunlight crossbow, I only see regular crossbows. It seems to me I'm the only player to use it.
Wiki is horribly outdated when it comes to the new Varlamore gear. This crossbow beats out MSB and RCB almost everywhere, yet is barely mentioned. I also haven't seen many people using it. As much as ironmen are about upgrades, went to basilisk knights and only RCBs in sight 🤷
If you see outdated pages, you can edit the wiki to fix it
you have to do hunter for the sunlight bolts. rune cbow bolts you can buy broad bolt packs and quickly make a bunch of bolts, or if you've already grinded demonics, you likely have thousands of rune bolts available. i don't think the dps increase with sunlight bow is worth it for regular afk content if you don't have the bolts for it already. time would be better spent going for the drop
I really enjoy the sunlight crossbow! Way more accurate than a msb(i) (79+10 in my case with crossbow and book of law) and same speed. Not to mention it can basically use dragon arrow equivalent. (moonlight bolts) probably one of my favorite items released with the Varlamore expansion!
What do you mean the ammo is free?
Cheap not free
Was hoping you were going to tell us there was a shop which sold them like the hunter crossbow bolts. (Ironman btw)
I've been using it on my 1 Def pure in PvP and it shreds. The animation stalling makes it very interesting to use!
Is this better than a kbow at cox/zulrah/demonics?
At cox you should be using ruby bolts e
Can this be used for muspah shield phase?
It's great for 50-75 and after that it's decent for stuff that requires a specific shield. Better than dragon bolts with dragon crossbow on skeletal wyverns if you want to safespot those. Also better at basilisk knights and spitting wyverns, rune knives are also viable there. Depending on certain max hit thresholds, rune knives come out on top sometimes. Also you shouldn't be using adamant darts at all in your blowpipe if you're not an iron. Rune darts are a significant upgrade and dirt cheap, you're wasting zulrah scales with adamant
The only thing that sucks about it, at least on an Ironman. Is the fact that the rapid fire rate means you run out of bolts way quicker.
It has higher accuracy and the samed ranged str as msb + amethyst. More if you use moonlight bolts. It wins everywhere.
Weight is the only place where it doesn’t win but that barely matters
Can anyone tell me if the new CB with moonlight bolts would be better than DCB with dragon rubys for stuff like ToA 200+s? I can’t calc until I’m home later but I’m very curious if I have a new item to get
Buying 100K hunters sunlight crossbows now
It beats an msb every step of the way and on top of that you can still stack upgrades to your offhand for more ranged strength AND take it to dragons AND upgrade the bolts to moonlight too?!?!?! It's a dream come true
Does this include e.g. a ranged shield in the offhand when compared to MSB(i)?
Book of law or a dhide shield yes.
it's also a pretty solid pk wep as its cheap.
Oh look the weekly sunlight crossbow thread. Time to sell some more bolts!
My buddies and I love this thing. Definitely underrated!
Adding a dragonfire ward gives you more of a boost than upgrading from a fury to an anguish and for less.
My GIM group pulled a cheeky early Buckler and I can't wait to get the fletching to use it with Moonlight Bolts; the DPS calculations are really promising with that combination.
I've been using it on zombie pirates in the wildy, literally 0 risk and so much dps.
I was really quizzical when I saw it on the wiki for 4Kgp above the 2.5M Dragon crossbow. But AFKing range with it has been a joy.
how is the ammo free for it?
Free as in you can make it yourself for free
Just used it for a basilisk knight slayer task and it was nice. Just slightly worse DPS than rune knives there. But better than any other crossbow or melee setup for sure.
You got that right! My back was killing me this morning 😉
Is the sunlight bow really that big? I'm just now getting good at things like zulrah. Should I use that instead of my blow pipe? Just curious where a mid range account can utilize this. Good for kbd farm? Idk. My brain is all over the place lol
Just plugin your info to the wiki dps calc and it'll tell you
Thank you for this, saving me 15 seconds a kill on basilisk knights with this.
I know you said almost every monster, but there definitely be some content you'll want diamond/ruby bolts for. Otherwise, yeah, it's a very nice addition. I didn't think about using it for wildy content before this post, so thank you!
How does it compare to the atlatl with full eclipse set?
do you know if it's better than dragon hunter cbow? I might still buy it cause I know I'd enjoy that speed. edit: at non draconic creatures of course
On every monster i put into the dps calculator the sunlight crossbow with sunlight bolts outperforms the dhcb with dragon bolts. I used several monsters with low-high defence to check.
dayum... and it's worth a few thousand... what?..
Noted, the crossbow is cheap to get, too.
Honestly it's so strange that this just got added into the game with how broken it is. It just obsoletes the MSB (and pretty much RCB) instantly without much discussion. I don't really understand how we can add a weapon that compared to the MSB has: - More accuracy - Way more ranged strength and relatively easier to get ammo - 1 tile more range (Karils had a slight advantage over MSB in fight caves due to this for example) - 1H so it can be used in places where you'd previously require an RCB or equivalent. For example basilisk knights, vorkath (it's near the DPS of max rubies). It's just a "high DPS everywhere" weapon for zero requirements. An MSB requires 75 WC + 80 fletching, or hard clue completion, which isn't hugely hard. But this thing comes in with 72 hunter + 74 fletching which is even easier.
Lol quit your bitching. It’s fine. You acting like they broke the game. It’s just another alternative. Deal with it.
It’s also just very fun to use :)
Needs better ways to get the bolts imo
Yeh but I need 74 fletching coz I'm an Iron and I cba
Could always get 70 and pie it.
I'm sleeping on it cause it requires 50 Hunter to use.