Easy ranger question

[Selkie]

Do the extra shot bonuses only apply to bows, not slings and crossbows? It seems that way.

In which case, doesn't it mean a ranger is not worth his salt without a bow?

[Nick]

Yes and yes.

[Estie]

When you play a ranger, dont fixate on bows; expect to melee. If you find great bows, enjoy, but chances are that for large parts of the game the launcher is inferior to your melee. In such cases it is more efficient to go with the flow.
The reason is simply that melee weapons are created by the boatload while launchers (and then, bows) are few and far between.

Decoy works great with melee. On a side note, I think I encountered a bug:

I had decoy on the ground in front of me and Morgoth broke through the wall, removing everything in a 1 tile radius as he is now wont to do. The decoy vanished (got destroyed) I think, but not the taunt effect - for the rest of the game all monsters in the vicinity moved towards the decoy spot an waddled around it.

Another possibility is that the decoy did not get destroyed, but something prevented the monsters from attacking it - maybe a "good" weapon landed on the square ?

In any case, i was playing on life and couldnt investigate further, so no save file, sorry.

[Nick]

I had decoy on the ground in front of me and Morgoth broke through the wall, removing everything in a 1 tile radius as he is now wont to do. The decoy vanished (got destroyed) I think, but not the taunt effect - for the rest of the game all monsters in the vicinity moved towards the decoy spot an waddled around it.

Another possibility is that the decoy did not get destroyed, but something prevented the monsters from attacking it - maybe a "good" weapon landed on the square ?

In any case, i was playing on life and couldnt investigate further, so no save file, sorry.

Thanks for the report, bug filed.

[DavidMedley]

If the monsters could not see or hear you, the smell of you could lead them to the decoy?

[Estie]

If the monsters could not see or hear you, the smell of you could lead them to the decoy?

They certainly had LOS to me at least at some points during their round and round around the decoy.

After P died, I ported everything dangerous away and watched the remaining 5 or so for a while. From off the side a master Lich approached, moving/casting towards me; when his step brought him into LOS with the decoy, he immediately ignored me and joined the carousel.

Iirc, noone ever attacked/cast towards the decoy spot. There were various items lying about, so I cant be sure if the ; was visible or not.

And for the record, I did not cheese the whole fight - I placed this last decoy when P was at about 1 star. I dont remember how much further down I had shot him when I noticed that something was fishy.