[Suggestion] Better poison arrow

242 votes

Current iteration of the poison arrow sucks. Does an extra like what, 20 damage over time? Bump up the DOT, make it last way longer or, better yet, forget the DOT and instead add status effects like slow and/or lowered attack damage. Make it cause some kind of havoc on your friends?

Planned Balance Suggested by: Headache (14 Sep, '21) • Upvoted: 06 Jan • Comments: 22

Comments: 22

12 Sep, '21
Michael H Merged
After spending the time and points to unlock poison for poison arrows it's very underwhelming to the point of seeming pointless.
1
13 Sep, '21
Sophie Merged
On top of that it has a rather high cost. With 2 spoiled meat and one Sulphur per poison packet and 2 of them per arrow. The poison damage would be low but not bad if the arrow did normal damage but it seems to do next to nothing on impact
15 Sep, '21
Lielos Merged
Poisoned arrow need another effect to be effective, like a slow for example
15 Sep, '21
taylor.faithfull Admin Merged
"poisoned arrow not usefull" (suggested by Lielos on 2021-09-15), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.
27 Sep, '21
ArroBast
I am also currently very disappointed in the poison arrow. I put 10 of them into a bear earlier today and they did just about nothing. The DOT is so low that I have never actually every managed to kill anything with it.

I would suggest adding a small chance of an instant kill every time the DOT kicks in to make them worthwhile.
27 Sep, '21
Marilith Merged
The damage from the status effect wasn't great but what struck me was how short-lived it was. It's just not as effective as using a higher tier arrow, even if you allow the poison to take its course. I think just making the duration effectively unlimited while leaving the damage where it is would solve the problem. That sounds scary, I know but this would give poison its own niche to stay relevant in relation to other ammo types. Fire arrows behave similarly in that they're a damage over time effect but the flames are highly visible and mark a fleeing target so they have some great utility there, even as a kind of combat torch. Poison then could be a sure kill but require the effort to track your quarry as it works its magic. Against aggressive foes, direct damage is always king, although putting fire and poison on the mammoth was fun, if not terribly effective beyond being comparatively easy to craft relative to bullets/shells and aluminum/carbon arrows.
27 Sep, '21
Frigus
I played with poison arrows in BW2, useless for hunting as it did much less damage and the animal ran far away.
I like the idea of a slow. I know it already exists in the talent tree (bow, i believe).
also, the talent version seems maybe overpowered?
maybe make the arrow almost guarantee a small slow (enough to outrun a bear?) and make the talent more of a stun, or have a talent to make the arrow more effective, or both?
30 Sep, '21
PopsInSpace Merged
The dot on poison is 5 ticks and just for a few seconds, about 8 seconds. If the poison doesn't kill have it give them a dizzying effect or slow down in motion over time.
07 Oct, '21
Agent Orange
Agree that the poison arrow definitely needs a serious buff to become useful/warranting spending the points on, maybe have variants based on build requirements ? eg:
Long duration/lower damage per tick (higher maximum) from fungus/mushrooms/tree sap and arrows
vs
Short duration/higher damage per tick (lower maximum) from spoiled meat/poisoned fish meat and arrows

Perhaps this crosses the line into what the fire arrows are meant for, but just throwing in ideas.
09 Oct, '21
Steph Merged
absolutely not worth it. Shooting mob in head with normal arrow does significantly more damage than the total poison damage. Even if you miss the head, poison is only hurting for 5-10 per tick. Easier to shoot with lots of arrows (and more effective)
25 Oct, '21
Beaux Merged
I have similar view. After spending points and crafting (2 pastes per arrow) I was a bit dissappointed. A bear will wreck my entire build before I see any effacacy of "the green jab". lol It would be nice to see the effects ,for one, but also to know if the poison buff is on the animal or not. Sometimes I wondered if it even took any effect or glitched.
08 Dec, '21
Sergo Merged
Making poison arrows is kinda hard because one need to wait a lot to receive a spoiled meat. 700+ sec for 1 spoiled meat while making 1 poison arrow require 4 spoiled meats. Thats 2800 seconds of realtime. Ridiculous doesn't it? What is even more crazy - that these arrows do very little damage and poison duration is very short which make them pretty much useless.
I believe you should make them far more lethal or make them much easier to produce.
09 Dec, '21
Crazydaze Merged
I agree with this.
A temporary workaround for spoiling meat faster is to put 1 meat per slot in any container (including inv), then one can produce a lot of spoiled meat within the 700s timeframe. That being said, the cost of poison arrow for the useless damage it provides, just isn't worth it.

I also feel that the fire arrow needs to be buffed better. The recipe is fine, but the damage is minimal. Maybe make the fire arrows do the same "max" damage, but on a shorter time frame which would be much more helpful.
12 Dec, '21
Skwiggily Merged
Making the poison arrows more worth making seems to be the better way in my opinion. If they were actually worth spending that much realtime to make, it would be fine. 10 seconds of `4dmg/sec is not worth in the slightest, doesn't even add up to another arrow shot. It should be more like 5dmg/sec for 60 seconds or 90 seconds.
14 Dec, '21
Dave
Poison arrow damage stacks like the cave worms do against you. I've been able to kill an elephant with ease using them.
23 Dec, '21
Rasmus Larsen Merged
Could also just make the poison arrow do as much damage as a regular stone arrow. There is no reason for a stone arrow to do less damage then adding poison to it. Maybe just rework poison so it can be applied to any normal arrow regardless of type. Then poison would always be a buff, which it should be.
27 May, '23
cmopatrick
let us make scorpion poison arrows... they should fell a polar bear with two shots.
07 Jul, '23
cmopatrick Merged
Why not add a drop from scorpions that is "scorpion_poison" or "scorpion_poison_sac" that we can use directly (or with the mortar/pestle) for making scorpion poison arrows with the same damage stats that scorpions already apply to our characters. Those high damage stats have to be in your tables somewhere. Apply those stats to our use of scorpion poison arrows.

It seems to me that an alternative to multiple types of poison arrows would be to change recipes for existing poison arrow to use a much higher base number of points damage and then have maybe 3 recipes to attain that: 1) require 9 normal poisons; 2) require 3 cave worm poison sacs; & 3) require 1 scorpion sac. An alternate variation on this could be to make a "concentrated_poison" with the mortar/pestle with 9 normal, 3 cave worm, or 1 scorpion, then make a "concentrated poison arrow" to do high damage or even just to make a standard poison arrow that does this much higher damage.
25 Jul, '23
cmopatrick Merged
This one should probably be added to
https://icarus.featureupvote.com/suggestions/214015/suggestion-better-poison-arrow
28 Jul, '23
Elissa - Producer Admin
"[Suggestion] Make Poison Stronger" (suggested by Michael H on 2021-09-12), including upvotes (53) and comments (9), was merged into this suggestion.
09 Nov, '23
Gerrit Merged
Duplicate of https://icarus.featureupvote.com/suggestions/214015/suggestion-better-poison-arrow

And yes, there is a lot of "empty content" in the game, including poison arrows.
09 Nov, '23
Elissa - Producer Admin
"[Suggestion] Improve poison arrows" (suggested by Sergo on 2021-12-08), including upvotes (2) and comments (3), was merged into this suggestion.