This might just be personal preference but I’ve never really found good reason to use any tier of pre-hardmode bow (haven’t made it to hardmode yet so I can’t speak for that). It seems like no matter what tier of equipment I currently have access to, there’s always been a more attractive option.
At noob tier when I still have yet to get non-wooden armor, I usually loot either the blowgun, wooden boomerang, or both from surface chests before I’ve even crafted my first bow. Since boomerangs don’t need ammo and blowguns are ridiculously easy to replenish ammo, I usually use them as my go-to ranged weapons for a good while, usually, until I get my first chakram or gem staff.
At mid-low-tier I find myself still using my boomerang for clearing my zombie and demon eye traps unless I’ve found a chakram, but my main ranged weapon by this time is whatever the best gem staff I can craft, but I have my pick of a few others. The flare gun is one I always carry after finding it, and an actual gun if I’ve smashed an orb/heart.
By the time I’ve started farming early bosses I’ll be using the space gun and meteor armor, or maybe one of the orb/heart ranged weapons if they dropped with a good enchant or I’ve already found and freed the tinkerer.
Honestly from day one all the way up to Skeletron I’ve never found myself in a situation where I thought “man, I really wish I had a bow”, because pretty much every monster or boss I’ve faced there was a ranged weapon that was either better in some way or nearly as good without the drawback of needing arrows.
My first attempt facing Skeletron the other day I was geared up in meteor armor with the space gun and died pretty quickly, but I still did more damage to him than my second attempt when I was wearing crimson armor and using a tendon bow with jester arrows.
Am I just missing something? Are bows actually super useful and I’ve just been overlooking them? Or are they really that unnecessary?
Answer
So I actually just started my expert bow run. I have done a gunner and summoner run through before. They’re not bad at all, just that they are situationally amazing, but average elsewise.
Starting out, bows are amazing.
Your progression goes:
- Start with wooden bow + Fire arrows
- Get to the Ice Biome ASAP.
- Get Frostburn Arrows.
- Work your way up the bow stack. Plunder the world, and build up your Jester Arrow count.
- Get your highest tier bow before Demonite.
- Use Jester arrows and completely wreck eater of worlds. Seriously, dies really quick and you just facetank him. You get a Demon bow + a worm scarf from this if you’re expert.
- You can do two things now, either use your new demonite pick and get yourself some hellstone, or go to the dungeon.
- Use Frostburn arrows to kill Skeletron, just aim for his hands to break his defense then just chip away.
- Dungeon dive for your cobalt shield cause why not. Your real goal is to get a Shadow Key.
- Go to hell now and get yourself a molten bow. If you got the Shadow key, go for a Hellwing instead.
- Use either Hellwing or Molten Fury + Jester Arrows to take out wall of flesh.
- Use King Slime summonings to farm souls of light.
- Farm Hallowed Mimics to get your Daedalus Stormbow.
- Use Hellfire Arrows as your bread and butter, 100 per bar of Hellstone, Cursed Fire Arrows or Holy Arrows to kill bosses. Usually the latter.
So, this is the point where I am l am starting to fall off. Daedalus Stormbow + Holy arrows let me completely wreck the 3 mechanical bosses. But I can’t exactly use it against Plantera. The Hallowed Repeater leaves a lot to be desired, even if I can use cursed flame arrows. It took me forever to kill Plantera just peppering it. I have a feeling I might actually need to farm for either a Phantom Phoenix, or wait for a Pulse Bow from the Traveling Merchant.
But for as far as I’ve gotten, bows are pretty amazing for kiting. Guns simply don’t do enough damage for me yet.
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