Elven bow

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) Elven bow.png
Name elven bow
Appearance runed bow
Damage vs. small 1d2
Damage vs. large 1d2
To-hit bonus +0
Weapon skill bow
Size one-handed
Base price 60 zm
(+10/positive
enchant)
Weight 30
Material wood

An elven bow is a type of weapon that appears in NetHack. The elven bow is a one-handed launcher designed for arrows that is made of wood, and uses the bow skill. It appears as a runed bow when unidentified.

Generation

Elven heroes, Barbarians, Knights, Samurai, and Valkyries start the game with knowledge of the elven bow. Elven Rangers start each game with a +1 elven bow.[1][2]

Elven bows make up 3250 (1.2%) of all randomly-generated weapons. General stores, used armor dealerships and antique weapon outlets can sell elven bows.

13 of live elven monsters are generated with an elven bow and 3–14 elven arrows.[3]

Description

While wielded, elven bows grant +1 multishot, +1 to-hit and +1 damage bonuses to elven arrows shot from them by an elven hero, but not a hero of any other race polymorphed into an elf.[4][5][6] Monsters gain a +1 multishot bonus each for shooting non-cursed elven arrows and for shooting them from a non-cursed elven bow[7][8]—non-player elves gain +1 multishot, +1 to-hit and +1 damage when firing elven arrows from elven bows.[9][10]

History

The elven bow first appears in NetHack 3.0.0. From this version to NetHack 3.0.10, the defunct Elf role starts with a +0 elven bow and a stack of +0 elven arrows as their secondary weapon if the TOLKIEN option is defined at compile-time[11][12]—otherwise, they start with a +0 bow and a stack of +0 arrows as they do in previous versions.[13][14][15]

The multishot bonuses for monsters shooting elven arrows and shooting them from elven bows is added in NetHack 3.6.1 via commit 8c0810f6, and is attributed to SLASH'EM.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, upgrading an elven bow will produce a standard bow, and upgrading a standard bow has a 13 chance of producing elven arrows.

A non-cursed elven bow has a 13 chance of adding an additional shot to the multishot roll: a hero shooting 1 arrow from an elven bow will shoot d2 arrows 13 of the time, a hero shoots d2 arrows will shoot d3 arrows 13 of the time, and so on.[16] This bonus does not apply to dark elven bows.

UnNetHack

In UnNetHack, two elven bows are generated in the second alternate layout for the Castle in the narrower wing at level creation, where they are placed on the center squares of the barracks overlooking the drawbridge—one of the bows is always blessed.

dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, a wielded elven bow gives projectiles fired from one +2 to-hit, and its weight is reduced to 20 aum.

Belthronding is an artifact elven bow that creates elven arrows when invoked.

Hack'EM

In Hack'EM, upgrading a standard bow will produce an elven bow, and upgrading an elven bow will produce an orcish bow.

References