Crossbows | Elden Ring Wiki

How do you use a crossbow while on horseback?

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Honestly, what these need isn't damage or scaling because the base damage is pretty damn high for the stat investment. What holds these back is AoWs. You want Mighty/Enchanted for long range snipes, Rain for damage, stuff like that. Some interesting AoWs would boost this weapon class a lot. Just off the top of my head, an AoW that causes the shot to act like the wraith Bell would make for a very good pressure tool.

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I really want the crossbow the skeletal militiamen use. It is big and cool looking.

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So like just saying both exultation charms stack + helmets throw on arrows sting or max hp attack buff the pulley starts pulling dummy numbers like to run 2 lions great bows with 2 pulleys bleed and toxic bolts beings rot is a pain just use it to pop buff

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I'm not saying we need a crossbow AWP one shot pvp kill but encouraging the use of free aim on weak points could make crossbows much more interesting and fun. Not enough poise damage to stop a charging enemy, not enough DPS to kill bosses before sundown, excepting of course status spam with the pulley. Crepus should have a 10x headshot multiplier

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Still hoping they buff Crossbows and Bows in DLC.

I use crossbows and bows with all my characters and I've done it since the game launched. But the fact that a mage can throw their Comet over and over faster than I can reload or deal punishable damage back is just atrocious.
If I shoot a mage I deal maybe 1/15th of their health while if they hit me they deal 1/4th of mine.

Some would argue this is okay because you don't use FP and cannot run out on bolts since crafting exist. But while it is true, it is untrue in PvE where you cannot craft in combat. People will use Starlight Shards and use cheats to get infintie of Starlight Shards or use glitching to be able to get infinite amount of fp in combat yet they haven't tried to fix that.
Making Crossbows stronger would counter people like that.

So I hope that the automatic crossbow is going to be good. But something tells me it is going to be worse than Pulley Crossbow with less damage per shot and will only be a good status crossbow to "balance" the other crossbows. But adding this crossbow wont fix the problem that majority of Crossbows shoot one bolt that deals laughable damage.
In NG+7 it's worse where you can seriously only use pulley bow for status build up.

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Unless you're lacking the req. stats, soldier and light crossbows are not worth investing into. Heavy crossboy weights 2 more than the soldier crossbow, but deals much more damage. If you can afford the wgt. arbalest is the best option for general use, your only other consideration is fashion. If you only meet the int req. the full moon crossbow is a good bet, though it looses against targets resistant to magic (keep in mind that damage is calculated on hit, so using bolts with different elemental damage will only make your damage fall, since it will have to go through 3 dmg resistances. Use magic phy or magic bolts for better results). Otherwise, I'd recomend the pulley crossbow, as it has relatively high phy damage, high status buildup and a low wgt, though it also burns a ton more ammo. The rest are not worth considering imo.

I'm currently doing a crossbow + ballista only run, and you'd be surprised by how powerfull these weapons actually are despite no sclaing. There comes a point when enemies award you with enough runes to cover ammunition costs, and since you'll only ever need to level Vig and Vit, you become pretty tanky very early on. Give it a try if you can, it's not as misserable as people will have you believe.

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FULL AUTO GATLING CROSSBOW IN THE DLC BOYS

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Why was Dark Souls 2 the only game to have viable crossbows? Infusions, scaling, tracking bolts, powerstancing, actual variety instead of 4 of the same one each with different damage numbers... Michael Zaki hates ranged weapons and it shows

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Well, crossbows work with a shield, it is one of their best traits. No real ash to speak of. So since 1.09 crossbow might be the best way to use contagious fury from jellyfish shield - one of the best buffs in the game. So, silver lining.

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Lets pray for the dlc to put an ammo feeder ash of war to shoot 10 bolts volleys.

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i love from software barely changing weapon balancing throughout all their games, bows and crossbows still completely useless outside of pulling something or cheesing a boss. must be really hard to actually make a weapon type different for once

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They could've allowed
infusion on crossbows as to make it fit the side-arm role better. Like crossbows could do more damage than bows early game however, late game they'll need to be infused to get their true potential and have a sort of equal footing.

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i feel like Fromsoft are too afraid to make archer being a decent-strong class compare to sword master and sorcerer. magic has tracking, arrow n bolt does not and enemies are hard-coded to dodge projectile to begin with. buffing bow n crossbow with scaling wouldn't hurt the game in the long run...respectfully for PVE. im no PVP but i think people would very iffy about it but then again....magic exist.

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Man the crossbow bolts are so slow you can slaw walk to dodge them

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Can't even use these in conjunction with a melee weapon as it takes away its aow. Goddamn, as if shopping from multiple vendors, farming materials and limited good quality ammo was not bad enough for awful damage.

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I feel like they could buff these by a substantial amount and people still wouldn't use them simply because they have no scaling and are rather tame in comparison to every other weapon in the game once you are at a much higher level which much higher stats. Max Upgrade Arbalest 308 damage + Lordsworn's Bolt 65 damage = 373 total damage pre mitigation. That's the theoretically highest maximum (for a single damage type) you can get, and it's not even that amazing? Full Moon can do more damage for 2 less weight, but it's split damage, and it requires 14 Int for some reason despite the weapon not scaling with Intelligence, and you're basically restricted to only using Meteor Bolts if you want that little extra damage, using anything else will make it do less than an Arbalest on average. And Pulley is only even used to inflict Status, not even to really deal direct damage.

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You should at the very least be able to put the "no skill" Ash of war on these so you could use your mellee weapons ash of war while using it in the left hand. Its not like it would of been OP or anything.

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Where’s my powerstanced crossbows miyazaki

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All kicks should have been leg sweeps

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well well well....isn't it the most underwhelming weapon class.......they should all have 10 higher base dmg and a new AoW named "concentrate" or "focus" which place the user in a stance position, ready to fire but the crossbow would get like 20%+ AR and the 2nd slot for ammunition would automatically aim for the head ( like sniper crossbow in Dark Souls 3 )..........................................on a realism perspective, using a crossbow 1 handed is like holding a rifle with 1 hand.....do you seriously believe it will be an accurate shot? especially if you don't aim down the sight

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They should add high requirements crossbows. Like 40-60 strength with more damage than bow but longer reload. Or simply copy what DS2 B2 team have already implemented

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Basically you equip these for fashion, think of them as an additional armour slot. Sure you might do a little shootin' at a deer or something but remember it's all about that elden bling.

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I doubt they will ever add scaling for crossbows, although I want them to it just doesn't make sense. Increasing you strength isn't going to make your crossbow shoot harder, I do feel however that high dex should correlate to a faster reload speed.

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Why do these require so much dex? Jesus Christ man, strength builds only get access to two of these.

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Why their tracking is so awful? Even when person slow walks to the side, duh, even when he stands still the bolts fly next to him.

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Slow, weak, no unique attacks. Only ds1 had worse crossbows than this, and thats because you couldn't aim with them in that game...

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If they aren't gonna up the damage at least make the bolts faster, half the time they miss from something strafing ever so slightly

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I think a lot of people miss the point of crossbows. They're more or less the same as they've always been in any souls game. Damage isnt supposed to rival standard bows or most other spells. Its a quick way to push out some extra damage on a ranged target without most of the stat investment.

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Bruh you should be able to use aow when having cross in left hand

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Serviceable for melee builds that want a ranged tool to deal a bit of damage to a target while they are out of range, or for drawing aggro/luring individual enemies out of a group, but beyond that, kind of pathetic.

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So is there any at all benefit to using any crossbow other than the pulley one?

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damage gained per weapon level is way too low

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Something really peculiar that I just noticed about crossbows is that they have a very special backstep cancel. For medium load and heavy load (but NOT light load?) you can cancel backstep into a two-handed (but NOT one-handed?) attack very surprisingly early in the backstep, letting you (theoretically) quickly outspace an attack and then shoot immediately, but only if you're actually two-handing the crossbow (so that limits the pvp use of this where offhand crossbows are surely wiser overall). What makes this cancel especially odd is that you cancel before your feet even land from the backstep's hop, so you cancel before that landing sound even gets a chance to play, which makes it a very slick and quiet motion. A further implication is that you're canceling it into the normal pre-fire state, so you can hold your attack and walk before attacking instead of attacking immediately, meaning that you've canceled backstep quickly into a slow walk. It feels very slick in a slow-but-fluid way.

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the only good things you can do 2 handing it is to free aim and look like you got a rifle.... they should add a small scalling for high str/dex players for late game tho... they are weak when you’re lv200+

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You should really be able to access your right hand L2 while using these. It even shows the text on the screen.

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Here's to hoping the DLC will give this weapon class some much needed attention...

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These should be infusable with ashes of war like quickstep, so you can fire out of a dodge. Same with bows too.

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I one benefit I see to crossbows is that they can be shot one handed unlike a bow and are fast to shoot letting you have a quick range option while still having a melee weapon in the other. I'd mainly use them just to keep up damage when enemies get far away to keep stance from going back up but this can also just be done by carrying any throwing consumables which can arguably do more damage then most crossbows.

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The damage of Pulley Crossbow can be very good, but only with the help of blurred bolts (Best bleed bolts) combined with an extra amount of crafted bleed bolts. You can take on most bosses just with this weapon alone. If you ask me I recommend using Black Bow to get serpent arrows and put poison early in the fight to kill the boss faster and using the Black Bow for more mobile enemies such as Godfrey or Maliketh.

The best part is you don't need to gather materials for this. You can kill the merchant in Mohgwyn Palace for Blurred Bolts, Bloodroses (For Crafting Bleed Arrows/bolts) and Dwelling Arrows (Magic damage). Then go to Warmaster's Shack at Night and fight the Bell Bearing Hunter for infinite of supply with small bones. Lastly get Serpent Arrows/Normal Arrows at Isolated Merchant's Shack (Dragonbarrow).

In case someone cannot craft bloodarrows or bloodbolts, you can find the cookbook at Fort Haight.

A tip I'd like to give is to not forget you can do jump attacks while using bows/crossbows which will allow you to jump over attacks such as Godricks and Godfreys earthquake attacks which allows you to attack as much as you have stamina on them.

At tip If you're using Black Bow. You can start running to do a running attack which comes out faster than drawing the bow at the spot and is faster than jump attacks, but not faster than barrage. It has higher damage than barrage and is more effective against players than doing jump attacks or using barrage in most cases so combine them both.

Happy bowing everyone : )

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is it possible to use ashes of war with Crossbow in off hand? is I have a sweet build idea.

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Best use for a crossbow is to draw aggro from individual enemies and whittle down large groups

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Just for kicks it would be nice to see, if it hasn't been done already, a crossbow weapons guide and crossbowman build guide.

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After using both crossbows and bows, my understanding is that crossbows are the far superior choice for general damage. Bows can probably get better damage with the ability to scale, but crossbows have a faster projectile speed to get easier hits and can be used in one hand. The latter point is extremely important, as you can hold a melee weapon in the main hand to quickly deal with dangerous close range situations (whereas a bow user has to put their weapon away first). That's not to say crossbows are directly better, bows having access to many better status arrows, infusions, and serpent bow existing makes them amazing for applying status, a job that crossbows can struggle quite a bit with. But the crossbows ease of use and versatility makes it an excellent sidearm for any melee build wanting for ranged presence.

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Waiting for full auto crossbow in dlc. wait... Auto Ballista...

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let me powerstance these ffs

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We need an arrows sting +2 or something. The damage on these is so lackluster

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IMO there should be some kind of ashes of war for crossbows like rapid fire or crouching shot. TBH I love crossbows and I understand that the closest thing we got to either is the pulley or cerpus key crossbows but fromsoft kinda jacked us on the AoW

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After countless hours I still can't bring myself to use a crossbow. The range deficit as compared to bows is beyond my ability to understand why I would want to choose to use a lesser range ranged weapon. The pulley bow is my go to every time. With its 55 range and the arrows reach talisman I can dot enemies without them being aware. I do like cheese tho.

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Still no Marvelous Chester spin kick, what the hell Miyazaki??

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My disappointment is immeasurable. No form of scaling, no unique AoWs and the bastard child of the Avelyn and Sanctum crossbow.

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why did they give crossbows the kick? i feel like an ash of war where you summon a second phantom crossbow and shoot both at once would be cool

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The three main issues with crossbows is that they have no scaling (fine in some cases), absolutely no interesting ashes of war by default, and also the inability to change the ashes of war or infuse them.

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I'm fine with no damage scaling because it's a mechanical device, but levelling DEX should increase the reload speed of these the same way it increases casting speed of spells/incants

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Out of all the crossbows that I got, the Pulley is the only one worth your actual attention.

I was one of the (un)lucky few who got the Soldier's Crossbow first and that was the only crossbow besides the Pulley that I mainly used in my first run because there's little reason for me to use the others. Even though I made a noob mistake by upgrading the darn thing to +20, I barely have any regrets upgrading it because it was the only regular crossbow that I've used at the time. Even now, I only levelled the Black Key Crossbow for the drip, which isn't saying much in terms of viability.

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I dont know if I'll sound weird saying this, but i think across the board (with the exception of the pulley) crossbow damage should be doubled, or at least multiplied by 1.5.
Then again they could just give bows good scaling and put crossbows in the E/D level, which would work out just as well.

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Build variety on Crossbows seems a bit lackluster, but not in a bad place, but I wish there were more crossbows. Most builds I'd say can use crossbows like the Pulley Crossbow. But all crossbows now are all strength/dex/Int.
There's no faith crossbow or arcane one, yet everyone uses pulley crossbow as an arcane one to bleed enemies.

Compare this to bows where you can either have arcane, int, faith, quality or dexterity to build around. So it seems more crossbows could be added in the future.

Pulley Crossbow was probably made by Miquella so I hope we'll see a faith/int or faith based crossbow down the line, like a boss weapon. Or arcane since he probably has become cursed due to Mohg.

Also I'd also would like in the next game they make it so one or two classes start with a crossbow so new players can try it out early and see if they like it. Would improve start diversity since in this game we already have two classes with a bow (Which is good). But none of the classes start with a starter crossbow. This would make Light, Soldier and Heavy crossbow viable since a class could start with it and as far as I know these crossbows are useless compared to the others.

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i really hope the other crossbows get buffed at some point. you pretty much only see the pulley crossbow getting any use.

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waiting for the full auto crossbow in the dlc

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I'd say the biggest buff they can give to crossbows (and bows) would be to add more lock-on points on larger enemies. For example: troll can only be locked on at the knees and stomach, the knees give an awkward camera angle for melee characters and the stomach is useless for ranged users that wanna go for damaging shots, I'd say move the knee points closer to the feet, but not all the way and add one for the face.

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A cool feature to add on the crossbow would be to make it so that it scales with dex some, but it only increases the damage if you hit a weak point on an enemy. For example, let’s say a normal body shot does 100 damage, and a headshot does 130. With the change added, a normal body shot will still do 100 damage, but a headshot will now do something like 160 (which fluctuates depending on dex value). They can add it in descriptions like “While not difficult to wield, a skilled crossbowman can efficiently take advantage of an enemy’s weak spot.”

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oh so when enemies shoot crossbows you can literally watch the bolt curve in the air as it tracks you. but when i shoot a crossbow my target just has to move 2 centimeters to the side and its missed entirely

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I mean, yeah, I know that because it's basically a mechanical tool, they don't scale of anything (a pistol doesn't do more damage if wielded by a bodybuilder than a nerd who never exercises). But c'mon, at least scale it with dex or something. They can make it up with something lore-wise, like people that have high dexterity can aim it more accurately and deal more damage or whatever.

I am planning to make a High Page cosplay build with Pulley and Perfumer's Bolts, but it looks like I need to scratch it :/

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The only uses for these crossbows are to inflict build-up or just do some chip damage.

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Tested these minus the soldier's and full moon. Save the pulley, they all have the same fire and reload animations, comes down to whether you meet the stats and the weight for the better damaging weapon.

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Any info on the "Buckshot" crossbow?

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Any info on the "Buckshot" crossbow?

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Duel wielding Crossbows FTW! But seriously, all the upgrades and no better crosshairs for shooting, or faster action?
Worst enemy of sniping is the screen and handrails in the way.

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Kinda wish you could shoot behind a shield,ive played a LOT of EDF Fencer back then and i would have gone monkey if that had been something doable,and given how niche that is,i dont believe it would be something game breaking

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Using a crossbow is pretty nice for chipping off the last bit of health from an enemy without wasting FP

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I want utilize crossbows so bad in a new playthrough but sacrificing AoW for a bit of damage doesnt really seem worth it in the long run. I just wish they add a patch where you can add No Skill on this weapon type so we can finally maximize its potential.

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Funny that the kind of bolt you use is decided when you shoot, not when you draw.

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Crossbows is misspelled in the dropdown list for Weapons by Type. It's spelled as "Corssbows."

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Anyone else notice that if you use any bolt other than 'bolt' the arc is horrible and manual aiming is way to the left on PC?

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I really don't understand why we can't infuse crossbows, such a waste

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when the light crossbow isn't the lightest crossbow

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Fellas, greatshield xbox buiild - shoot enemies from distance if they run at you, shield up and bash depending on enemy (pvp or pve) carry shield that can block spells or extra damage (spiked great shield) stand back and spam bolts, you dont even need to chase, just literally stand still if they come near shield bach or charge, oince staggered or down, xbox --- its extremely fun

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Crossbows are extremely disappointing, because you cannot use them in your offhand without sacrificing the Ash of War (AoW) from your main hand. Instead of the default AoW "Kick" FromSoftware should change that to "No Skill", so we can actually use our main hand's AoW.

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They could have rejuvenated crossbows and at least made light crossbows work the same as short bows

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Corssbows

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is there any way to use an ash of war with one of these in your off hand besides unequipping it?

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People do not level vigor. Unupgraded at level 60 and I get serious damage out of my crossbows. You know I gotta upgrade then all now

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Avelyn? :(

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Kinda Disapointing there isn't an Erdtree Crossbow

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I miss demon souls cross bow stagger dmg ;( but crossbows r still cool in this game I like how they look and the reloading seems pretty fast

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Too bad they didn't make a cross bow pistol type of weapon.

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dual weilding crossbow is very fun.\n and more fun if I can bring more statck for Arrow

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Add some scaling FromSoft even if it is D . With how chunky boss bars can get in late game this makes these worthless other than for status affects

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Crossbows only need one hand to fire. This allows you to use your free arm for whatever you want. Even though they need to be reloaded after every shot, firing them is super quick. They're great for hit and run.

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fix free aim pls :(

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I'm about to go akimbo with these

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Only useful one is pulley crossbow and even then it's only good for inflicting status effects from a distance.

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I used a crossbow with bleed and plague bolts to kill Godskin Duo. I tried a bow first, but I couldn't do it because I kept getting tagged by their attacks. When I switched to crossbow I found it much easier to avoid attacks. Maybe that's why crossbow damage is a bit less

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I used a crossbow with bleed and plague bolts to kill Godskin Duo. I tried a bow first, but I couldn't do it because I kept getting tagged by their attacks. When I switched to crossbow I found it much easier to avoid attacks. Maybe that's why crossbow damage is a bit less

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I used a crossbow with bleed and plague bolts to kill Godskin Duo. I tried a bow first, but I couldn't do it because I kept getting tagged by their attacks. When I switched to crossbow I found it much easier to avoid attacks. Maybe that's why crossbow damage is a bit less

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They should really buff the base damage of crossbows. I get why they don't have scaling, but they get pretty much immediately outclassed by even a shortbow at base melee-focused class stats in nearly every Souls game. Buff bow scaling to C minimum and then buff all crossbows' damage by like 2x. Would make them much better for lower RLs, and even at higher RLs make them about equivalent with bows if you don't have high dex/str.

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FromSoftware once again showing that they hate an ranged tools that aren’t magic.


I mean, no optional or unique ashes for crossbows, no scaling, and **** damage. I was really excited about the possibility of crafting bolts to do a pure crossbow build, but no.

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They are all incapable of being infused with Ashes of War and only come with Kick? lame...

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offhand crossbows arent as good as they were in ds3 (for pvp at least, still nice to have to pve), it isnt a guarantee stagger and the dmg is overall reduced even with arrow's sting talisman and spear talisman and exploding bolts.

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I own and have tried all the crossbows/ballistas. If we are just talking about raw performance the best 3 crossbows are:
* Arbalest: Easy to get early game. Once upgraded to between +15-25 this thing is an absolute all-round monster and does great damage.
* Pulley Crossbow: Mid-game is easy to grab once you can teach Gelmir. Love this thing for the triple bolt attacks but boy it eats ammo.
* Full Moon Crossbow: Mid-Late game. Requires capital city access. For enemies that resist physical but are weak vs magic this can easily outperform the Arbalest.

The other non-ballista crossbows aren't really worth mentioning or upgrading. If you love crossbows just focus on those three.

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