Archery

Archery

	Bows and Crossbows provide two ways to deal ranged, physical damage to enemies. They differ in some mechanics, but both are considered to be 'archery' weapons, and thus are improved with fortify archery boosts. Bows can achieve a higher sneak attack bonus, can be enchanted, and are quieter and lighter than crossbows. Crossbows apply no movement penalty when walking with a bolt readied, fire faster, and reload slower. The other mechanics that are found in game are present, with any changes described.

Variants: All weapons have a stock order of what skins they can unlock with the more kills you get with them, and are purely cosmetic. Skins do not overlap; unlocking the steel dagger does not unlock any other steel variant. The order of variants for bows go in this order: Long, Hunting, Orcish, Dwarven, Elven, Glass, Ebony, Daedric, and Dragonbone. Arrows and bolts correspond with the level of the bow or crossbow, and like variants, do not provide more or less damage. Crossbows do not have the same variants, and only have the standard Crossbow and the Dwarven Crossbow. Crossbow bolts are considered enchantments, and thus benefit from enchantment bonus and do have damage bonuses.

Bolts: Crossbows cannot have regular enchantments, but instead in the enchantment category, special bolts can be used. There are four bolt enchantments to choose: Enhanced Bolt, Bolt of Fire, Bolt of Ice, and Bolt of Shock. These will be either steel or Dwarven depending on the variant of the crossbow. The enhanced bolt is a unique enchantment that makes attacks ignore 25% of the targets armor rating, and is increased with the enchantment skill to 27%. The remaining bolts are equal to the fire, ice, and shock damage enchantments on other weapons, but have a bonus in that they have an explosion that can deal the elemental damage to multiple enemies.

Bows:
>Speed x1	>Damage 90	 >Price 8 	>Weight 5	>Smithing Skill Bonus 7%	>Ammo 25

Crossbows:
>Speed x1	>Damage 98		>Price 10	>Weight 10	>Smithing Skill Bonus 6%	>Ammo 20

Headshots: Hitting enemies in the head with arrows or bolts will do twice the amount of damage. This mechanic is already found in game with the ice spike and ice spear spells, and is now applied to archery. This double damage stacks with the sneak attack bonus, allowing for bows to do x6 the damage and crossbows x4 on an undetected headshot.

Looting Arrows/Bolts: When a player has a bow or crossbow equipped, they can loot bodies and have a chance to receive any of the arrows or bolts that the body was attacked with or had currently equipped. Players that once had a bow/crossbow loose their arrows/bolts when they drop the weapon. The arrows/bolts the player had on death then stack with the dropped bow/crossbow; if their bow/crossbow was not active and thus not dropped on death, the player's ammo supply is lost indefinitely. Looting arrows has a higher chance than to loot bolts, and with adept archery the odds to receive arrows/bolts doubles. Looting arrows off a player WITHOUT adept archery goes off this formula: ArrowsThatHitPlayer x0.5. With adept archery, the formula increases to: ArrowsThatHitPlayer x0.75. With crossbow bolts, the formula decreases to: BoltsThatHitPlayer x0.25. With adept archery, the formula increases to:  BoltsThatHitPlayer x0.5. Arrows and bolts are always rounded up, so enemies killed by bows/crossbows will have at least 1 arrow/bolt to loot.

Buying Ammo: When a bow or crossbow is equipped, the shop opens up a fourth panel to buy either more arrows or more bolts. These prices are still affected by the speech skill.
>Arrows: 20 arrows (30g)
>Bolts: 20 bolts (40g)

Parrying with Bows and Crossbows: Bows and crossbows can both parry under certain circumstances. Both bows and crossbows can bash, and parry mechanics still apply. With apprentice archery, bows can zoom in at the cost of stamina. Arrows/bolts shot while zoomed in can then parry susceptible targets; regular arrows/bolts shot while not zooming in will not.

Movement with Bows and Crossbows + Being Parried: Crossbows have the advantage to have no speed penalty when the ammo is loaded, compared to bows which have a significant movement speed reduction when an arrow is drawn. This reduction can be reduced by 10% with expert archery, but still is a drawback. Bows that are drawn are vulnerable to being parried, while crossbows are vulnerable to being parried when reloading.