Well, ever since all the new ranged weapons have come out, I’ve started to wonder which the best to use was. As I have only 45 ranged, I do love this skill and I was hoping to further train my ranged to a higher level, but I had no idea what was best to use. Well, this past weekend I decided to do a little investigation to determine which was the better ranged weapon; the arrow, the crossbow bolt, or the throwing dart. I decided not to use spears or throwing knives, as they seem to have the characteristics of hand-to-hand weapons, but I will test them as well in the future and add the data to my report. So anyways, I decided to test the average hit damage of these ranged weapons by using them against black knights. I decided to use the standard version of each weapons, meaning that I used bronze arrows, standard crossbow bolt, and bronze throwing darts. Along with this I used a regular longbow and a regular crossbow.

  Here’s my arsenal:

I agreed to test each type of weapon 7 times against black knights and record their hits each round. After compiling the hit damages, I took the average of each session and then averaged the sessions to determine which of the three weapons had the highest/lowest average damage.

Here’s my data for each weapon:
D=Dead

Well, as the data shows, technically the bronze throwing darts have a better hit average than do the crossbow bolts and bronze arrows. Considering there is only a 0.11 difference in the averages of the highest/lowest, all three ranged weapons have basically the same hit factor, but one could argue that the throwing darts are better. Well I also would like to add some information about each type of ranged weapon. When using bronze arrows, a longbow has a long range and one can hit enemies from far away. When using bolts, the crossbow must be shot within a close vicinity of the enemy, but a shield for extra defense can be used. When using throwing darts one must be very close to the enemy (closer than with a crossbow), but a shield can also be used for extra defense. Another positive for throwing darts is that they don’t need to be used with any kind of mechanism such as a longbow or crossbow. This can leave space for extra food or another item.

Well, if anyone has any comments about my investigation or anything I should add, just post.

Thanks