Fletching

Aoenla's Fletching Guide

Introduction

This document is intended to provide a fundamental overview of the art of crafting bows and arrows in Everquest. The Bow and Fletching Guides you buy in the game give you just enough knowledge to get you started, and also just enough knowledge to let you make some really expensive mistakes. When I bought my first fletching kit and my first copy of the Bowyers Guide, I was starry-eyed with anticipation at the thought of the lovely bow I was about to make. I bought a piece of hickory, some string, and a whittling knife, because I thought I’d like a carved hickory bow, rather than just a rough one. Who wouldn’t? All these purchases represented roughly 105% of my net worth at the time, but I was too excited at the thought of my new mighty Weapon of Feathered Destruction that I was about to crank out with my own two hands. With gleeful mouse-clicks I put everything in the kit, musing to myself "I wonder what the stats on my doomsday bow are going to be….", hit "Combine"…and watched everything disappear. Gone! "These items don’t combine to form anything useful," or something similar appeared on the screen, and, as though giving me a little consolation prize, an extra message saying "Your fletching skill has increased! (2)." Argh!

I decided right there that I needed to know more before I went any farther. What kind of bows can one make? How skilled do you have to be to make them? What combinations of components are possible? Why would one select one combination over another? How do the handmade bow stats compare to the bows you can buy from the shops? What the heck are those vanes for?

This document provides the answers to some of these questions.

Bows

Shadewood...the NEW Holy Grail of player-made bows...

Bows consist of a staff and string, are sometimes constructed using optional tools, and optionally may contain 1 or 2 cams. The final statistics of the bow are all dependent upon the choice of each component.

To create a bow, you simply place the staff, string, and any optional components you wish into the fletching kit, cross your fingers, have all your pals /shout Good Luck!, and press the Combine button. With luck, if your fletching skill is high enough and all goes well, you’ll be left with a nice new bow on your cursor. If the attempt fails, the staff, string and cams are lost, and the tool (if one was used) ends up on your cursor. If the failed attempt involved some expensive components, you then /cry.

Staff material

Choices are Hickory, Elm, Ashwood, Oak, Darkwood, and as of Dec 2001, Shadewood, arranged in order of degree of difficulty and final potency. The staff material determines the base range, damage, and delay of the final bow.

These values form the basic statistics of the final bow. The choice of string, tool, and cams all provide modifications to these base values.

Note that the Bowyers Guide mentions Steel and Ceramic staves as other possibilities, however to my knowledge these component types have never been put into the game.

String is required for all bows. Choices include Hemp, Linen, and Silk. Hemp is the simplest to work with, and yields highest damage but greatest delay. Linen and Silk are progressively more complex to work with, and provide progressively lower damages and delays.

Tools and cams are optional, and indeed only allowed on certain staff materials. The simpler tool choice is the Whittling Knife, which yields a Carved bow. The more advanced tool is the Plane, which yields a Shaped bow. The use of Cams yields a cammed or compound bow, and are usable on Oak (1 cam) and Darkwood (1 or 2 cams) and Shadewood (1 or 2 cams).

The effects on the final bow statistics are shown below. All effects are cumulative.

Special Note about Cams and Shadewood:  When Cams are used on Shadewood, they not only provide the modifications to Damage and Delay as stated in the above table, but they ALSO provide a range bonus.  Adding 1 cam to a shadewood staff yields a 175 range bow, and adding 2 cams yields a 200 range bow.

At this point we’ve got everything we need to prepare a table or spreadsheet of data.  This table shows every combination of bows possible in the game. For comparison purposes, it also includes the bows available via purchase or quest within the game.  Note that all cost values are shown in coppers.

1. STORE-BOUGHT BOWS
   
   The first thing that jumps out is that the store-bought bows are a VERY bad deal for the money. New players of course don’t know this and buy those bows anyway (I know I did), but it’s clear that even the most basic bow is much cheaper and much more damaging than anything in the store.
   
    
2. DAMAGE RATIOS
   
   When I first started playing I just assumed that highest damage was the desirable weapon characteristic. So why would the more advanced components actually reduce damage? The answer of course is that delay plays a key part in the combat model. In general what is of most interest is the damage ratio, or damage / delay. This value represents the rate at which damage is dished out, and higher values are better. Although the more advanced bow components are reducing damage, they are also reducing the delay, with the result that the damage ratio is (usually!) increased with their use.
   
    
3. HIGH DAMAGE RATIO, OR BIG FIRST STRIKE?
   
   In general the argument that a high damage ratio yields a better weapon is based on the assumption that the weapon will be used multiple times, over and over, during combat. With bows this isn’t always the case – if you are playing in an area where you can’t get off multiple shots before you get into melee combat, it may indeed be better to go with one or two hits at a higher damage value. It’s a matter of combat style and situational tactics. So don’t fall into the trap of mindlessly lusting after that high damage ratio bow, you may indeed be better off with a rough staff and hemp string!
   
    
4. HICKORY AND ELM
   
   In general the system yields a very logical progression of higher damage ratios with the more advanced components. However, with a Hickory staff the Hemp string yields higher damage and a higher damage ratio. Plus, it’s the least complex bow to build. The Hickory/Hemp combination seems the clear winner in the Hickory category, although one small attraction with the faster bow is that you may get off more shots with it, and thus increase your archery skill at a faster rate.
   
   The Elm staff yields essentially identical damage ratios for all combinations of components, so there’s not much to differentiate between the various options. One attraction of the Carved Elm/Silk combo is that with a delay of only 39 it is indeed the fastest bow in the game!
   
    
5. CAMS AND TOOLS
   
   It is possible to make an oak or darkwood compound (cammed) bow without also using one of the shaping tools. From examination of the table, it doesn’t seem like a particularly cost-effective option, since building a rough compound bow yields very nearly the same stats as building one using tools but no cams. However, the data is presented for completeness.
   
   One interesting note on the use of the knife: It is definitely NOT cost effective to use it without also using silk, since the exact same statistics modifier from using the knife can be had at much lower cost and complexity simply by improving the string.
   
    
6. QUEST AND DROPPED BOWS
   
   The table also includes every quest and dropped bow in the game of which I am aware. The fabled Trueshot, and its successor the mighty Raincaller are shown, as well as the dropped Runed Oak and the Larktwitter.
   
   
   
    
7. MORE QUEST AND DROPPED BOWS
   
   Several new bows have surfaced in the game, shown below.  The Spectral Bow is found in Traks Teeth, the Bow of the Underfoot comes from The Hole, the Wind Saber (aptly nicknamed "The Uzi") from Old Sebilis, and the Efreeti War Bow from the Plane of Air.
   
   
   
    
8. EVEN MORE QUEST AND DROPPED BOWS
   
   Some new ones have been found in Velious (sorry, this is messy...)
   
   
   
   
    
   
    
9. THE BOW FROM THE WARRENS
   
   
   
    
10. TRIVIAL SKILL LEVELS
    
    Similar to arrows, the complexity of a given bow is driven by its most complex component.  When combining various combinations of components to create a bow, the game examines each component and uses the complexity value of the most complex component to determine the final complexity rating of a given bow.
    
    The values presented in this table represent the work of many fletchers.  Occasionally for some reason it seems that some very slight variations in the trivial values can occur between players.  If you discover that you have data that would seem to be different than what is presented in the table, I would encourage you to send me a note telling me that.
    
    A few of the more advanced bows are listed with best-guess trivial values, but these should be taken as guesses only.  
    
     
11. SUGGESTED SELLING PRICES
    
    As with any market-driven economy, the selling prices for bows is driven by the cost of materials as well as what the market will bear, i.e. supply and demand.  Some suggested prices for the most popular bow combinations are shown below:
     

    Bow	Suggested Selling Price
    Rough Hickory (any string)	1pp
    Carved Silk Elm, Damage 10 Delay 39	12pp
    Rough Ash, Damage 16 Delay 58	30pp
    Shaped Ash, Damage 12 Delay 41	60pp
    Rough Oak, Damage 21 Delay 65	150pp
    Shaped 1-Cam Oak, Damage 16 Delay 43	250pp
    Rough Darkwood, Damage 25 Delay 68	500pp
    Shaped Darkwood Compound, Damage 19 Delay 41	750pp
    Trueshot	200pp

    Special note concerning the shaped darkwood compound bow:  The shaped darkwood compound bow is exceedingly difficult to make.  Unlike the other types of bow stave material, darkwood never becomes trivial, and as the most advanced bow a player can attempt, the shaped dual cam darkwood has an acknowledged (and personally verified, ugh!) failure rate of roughly 40 percent at skill 200.  It is not uncommon (again, speaking from personal, painful experience!) to "enjoy" multiple failures in a row when attempting these bows.  I personally have failed five times in a row at one point, have failed three times in a row on two other occasions, and know of other fletchers who have experienced similar failure rates.  The high failure rate of these bows requires a correspondingly higher markup.
    
     

12. In the Shadows of Luclin tinkering upgrade it became possible for tinkers to create items which can give you a slight boost to your tradeskills.  The fletching tool is the Geerlok Planing Tool, which as you can see, adds 5% to your fletching skill.  Whether that modification is applied to your actual fletching skill, so that someone with a fletching skill of 200 would fletch as though they had a skill of 210 for example, or is implemented as a 5% increase in your chance of success, is a matter of some debate.
    
    
    
     

It is possible to change the string on your bow.  This allows the discriminating archer to change out bow strings and modify slightly his/her bow characteristics according to the situation at hand.

To change bow strings, simply place a completed bow into the fletch kit along with the new desired string, and hit the combine key.   The new string will disappear, and the newly strung bow will appear on your cursor.  The old string from the bow is not recovered.  Changing strings appears to become trivial at skill 16, but appears to always succeed, offering an interesting alternative to gaining skill at least up to skill 16.

Bow Component Vendors

1. FEERROTT
   Fugla (964, 1260)
   
    
2. KELETHIN
   Merchant Sylnis, standing by a wheelbarrow outside Trueshot Bows (-360, -610)
   
    
3. SOUTH KARANA
   The centaur Ulan Meadowgreen, in the centaur village near (120, -2200)
   
    
4. SUREFALL GLADE
   Tonsia, inside the Ranger guild house.
   
    
5. FIRIONA VIE
   Jessica Winter, inside the Ranger guild, near (-3430, 3315)
   
    
6. EAST CABALIS
   Klok, near (135, -200)
   
    
7. THURGADIN
   Argash, inside Argash House of Carpentry, near (-200, -290)
   
    
8. NORTH FREEPORT
   Timor Strongbranch, near (-100, -50)
   
    
9. SHADOW HAVEN
   Junun Rawkins, near (250, 950)
   Narmase Flecher, near (220, 1180)
   
    
10. KATTA CASTELLUM
    Rebecca Wolfeye, upper level near the Magistrate Palace, near (-400, -650)