Bow sniping distance?

While trying to measure bow range I tried two very distant shots:

One in the kiln just after the end of the stairs.
With the hawk ring and gough's bow I managed to hit the 2nd black knight! Not sure about the damage if there was any.
I believe Pharis's bow also connected, but not the composite bow.

The other was by the entrance to queelag's domain
With Pharis's bow I shot the farthest crag spider I could see, the one closet to shiva I think. Again not sure about the damage.

On another occasion I tried from the crow's nest, but the enemy by the waterway was not rendered nor the skeletons for that matter. Seems enemies only appear when you are on the firelink circle.

Lastly a +5 lightning avelyn with lightning bolts can almost match the damage of a +15 composite bow with heavy arrows and 40/40. This was against giant sentinels though.

What shot distance have you managed so far? It seems the problem is actually finding the place...

One of the furthest shots I've personally managed is from the Oolacile Township bonfire. When invading the world of some gankers, I saw them chasing a red spirit. I took out my Gough's Bow, and the hawk ring. From that little area next to the bonfire, I aimed, and shot the host off of the bridge by the Bloated Sorcerer, the one past the Mimic and two bloated heads.

There's an isolated roof in Township which you can jump onto.
I cosplayed Hawkeye Gough (completely) there and when I got invaded, just as soon as I saw the HP bar over at the bonfire, I shot an arrow in that direction. It took me some trial and error to get it right but after I learned how, the invader got an arrow right in the face. It did only some 30-ish damage, but it did knock him on his butt and I guess he must've been very :shock: .

I've sniped a fleeing invader in New Londo from the area with hollows all the way to the place with the first two ghosts. He tried to pop in a Humanity, but my arrow was faster. It was PURE LUCK, because the game stopped rendering him and I just shot at the place where he disappeared.

Anor Londo. I was cosplaying Silver Knight archer on the walkway where the infamous archer duo is. The host was not coming. Then I noticed him on the first walkway leading to the last two Lesser Batwing Demons. The game didn't render him, but it did render the effect of his Grass Crest Shield. So I shot the green aura and somehow managed to knock him off the walkway to his death.

If you don't see numbers you didn't do damage. You can score hits though from crazy distances. I define a "hit" as seeing the hit animation. Again, no number, no damage. However, if you can poison a creature the poison effect still works without damage. For instance, from the area without lava, before killing Ceaseless, you can poison the Taurus demons with pharis and hawk ring with poison arrows. Later in that area, you can poison the lone Capra down by the Firesage door from the area with the rest of the Capras or even about where Kirk spawns. If you find Lautrec the Ganker anooying you can poison his whole crew without even taking a step forward when invading his world. This technique is good for sandwich making

The farthest I've shot was when I was dragon butt hunting with my friend. I used Pharis's Black Bow + Feather Arrows + Hawk Ring. There were actually times when the butts were to far away for me to hit, even when I tried aiming up and to the left. :shock: I never new this combo had a range limit.

The Sniper Crossbow with Sniper Bolts and Hawk Ring is probably the longest possible ranged attack

Wow. Amazing shots described. Would love to see that gough shot
Best I got was some strafing shots and headshoting kalameet by pure luck with lock on. Manus had it happen to him a lot tough. Funny thing about oolacile: the bloated guys heave their heads, which makes a headshot all the more tempting.
I always loved that level design, actually seeing all the way down there.

About the crossbow, I though about it, and it can be targeted with a bow first, maybe with sniper bolts to follow the straightest path... If you ever get around to actually use it significantly in that range

skarekrow13 wrote:If you don't see numbers you didn't do damage. You can score hits though from crazy distances. I define a "hit" as seeing the hit animation. Again, no number, no damage. However, if you can poison a creature the poison effect still works without damage. For instance, from the area without lava, before killing Ceaseless, you can poison the Taurus demons with pharis and hawk ring with poison arrows. Later in that area, you can poison the lone Capra down by the Firesage door from the area with the rest of the Capras or even about where Kirk spawns. If you find Lautrec the Ganker anooying you can poison his whole crew without even taking a step forward when invading his world. This technique is good for sandwich making

I used the poison sniping tactic to deal with Lautrec and co too. It also works for the Anor Londo archer knights - though you have to find a particular point on the first walkway just after the demons. I think if you stick to the left side there's a point where their arrows hit the railings but yours can go over.


Also, if you're being a COMPLETE jerk, you can kill Gwyndolin this way. It's rather hard to tell if you're hitting him or not, and he takes like 7 arrows to be poisoned and will have to be re-poisoned 3 more times over the course of the fight, but it's how I kill him without him even moving or attacking. You don't even need the Hawk Ring or Pharis's bow to do it if you're careful. However he's so far away you can't actually see any numbers, but you do notice his health bar gradually depleting.

bla wrote:Wow. Amazing shots described. Would love to see that gough shot
Best I got was some strafing shots and headshoting kalameet by pure luck with lock on. Manus had it happen to him a lot tough. Funny thing about oolacile: the bloated guys heave their heads, which makes a headshot all the more tempting.
I always loved that level design, actually seeing all the way down there.

About the crossbow, I though about it, and it can be targeted with a bow first, maybe with sniper bolts to follow the straightest path... If you ever get around to actually use it significantly in that range

If you are acurate without locking on, then you should definitely use it for sniping, specially if it's stationary enemies, like maybe the royal sentinels in Anor Londo, or the Hellkite Drake.

Projectiles will be shot in front of your character, so you have to face your enemy perfectly, the vertical angle is defined by your camera, if you are looking up, the arrows will be shot in that direction.

The X axis of the camera doesn't matter.

The Dragonslayer Great Bow is great for taking down the Black Knight snipers on the ledge in Anor Londo. It also takes down Lautrec and his buddies when you invade to get the Fireseekers Soul back without aggroing them if you stand far enough back. The same tactic works for Gwyndolen too. I don't think this is cheap, chasing after Gwyndolen and being hammered, getting up to him and him teleporting away before you can so much as tickle his toes, is an exercise in frustration as far as I'm concerned.

I tried killing gwyndolin with strafe sniping using the pillars for cover but that was taking to long so I used normal tactics which far was easier, but that's just me.

I actually did a whole playthrough only with bows (longbow and composite bow) and for most bosses I would just kite them.
I've never wrapped my head around aiming with thumbstick, although I play with a pad not mouse. The sniping I did was mostly on stationary targets, with moving shots being much rarer.

As far as shots flying straight, it depends on arrows: heavy arrows drop a lot more and seem to stray right. Feather arrows are much more precise.

One question: the leo ring mentions strengthening thrust attacks (which arrows classify as) but only on counter damage. So how does it work? I have to block and shoot or maybe shot an enemy while he is attacking? Sadly I missed that ring.

bla wrote:One question: the leo ring mentions strengthening thrust attacks (which arrows classify as) but only on counter damage. So how does it work? I have to block and shoot or maybe shot an enemy while he is attacking? Sadly I missed that ring.

That's something that used to confuse a lot of people. Some used to believe that hitting an enemy after he hit your shield was a counter. It was even on the wiki, but then it was proven false and removed.

Also, a counter is not a critical.

A counter is hitting an enemy when he is performing an action. You have to hit him while he is in an attack or casting animation.

Only thrust and piercing weapons with physical damage can counter. Bows and arrows have been proven to work.

Using the BBoP, Feather Arrows, and the Hawk Ring, I've made some pretty obscene shots. You can fire farther then you can see enemies spawn really. Trying on things like the hydra or un-aggrod undead dragons work well because you can see it from pretty far away.

WandererReece wrote:The farthest I've shot was when I was dragon butt
hunting with my friend. I used Pharis's Black Bow + Feather Arrows +
Hawk Ring. There were actually times when the butts were to far away for
me to hit, even when I tried aiming up and to the left. :shock: I never new this combo had a range limit.

That's a good one too. You can snipe them at real crazy distances from the Chaos shortcut bridge. I screwed with an invader once by doing that. I was up on the bridge and he was refusing to come up, trying to lure me into fighting him in the lava, so I aggrod like 10 of the dragon butts, so they were all around him stomping around. Shame they couldn't hurt him, but it still made for a pretty chaotic experience I'm sure.