Introductory GUIDE to the Improvised Bow and Archery Mechanics

[FlimFlamm 509]

// Is this the section for guides? Well shoot, I'm committed now. Here goes:

 

Nobody expects the Improvised Bow! Our chief weapon is stealth; stealth and skill; skill and stealth. Our two weapons are skill and stealth, and devastating accuracy. Our three weapons are skill, stealth, and devastating accuracy... And an almost maniacal devotion to the Bow!... Our four! No... Amongst our weapons... Amongst our weaponry, are such elements as skill, stealth...

 

I'll try this again....

 

Nobody expects the Improvised Bow! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as skill, stealth, devastating accuracy, and an almost maniacal devotion to the bow, and nice leather hats.... Oh damn...

 

What is archery? Is it useful? How can I be good at it?

 

These are all questions that demand answers, luckily this thread is here to provide them for you!

 

Firstly, what is archery?

 

Archery is the phenomenon of using the tensile strength of some cordage in order to propel shaft like projectiles into the bodies of your target. You may have encountered the implement known as "The Improvised Bow" in game, which has been specifically engineered facilitate archery, and so we shall begin by exploring the process for creating an Improvised Bow.

 

Acquiring the Improvised Bow:

 

Improvised Bows are made from any long wooden stick and some sort of cordage.

 

Long sticks can be found by applying any kind of knife to most trees and selecting the "cut off branch" option. Ashwood sticks and generic long sticks can be stored in the melee back inventory slot and on their own are deadly weapons, considered by many to be the most powerful melee weapon available (as of .58). Your first action if you need to construct a bow should be to craft an improvised knife. This can be done by gathering a stone by any rocky terrain and then crafting the stone into a knife by reapplying it to the same rocky terrain from whence it came. Rocky terrain can be found near costs, lakes, river beds, most industrial buildings, most houses, and many other places. Improvised knives are easy to get and are very important for the needs of archers.

 

Your second objective will be to get a long stick. It doesn't matter whether or not is is an Ashwood stick or a generic long stick, as long as it is gathered from a tree with a knife it will suit your needs. Once the stick is acquired the final ingredient is cordage.

 

Cordage can come in the form of rope, improvised rope (created by adding two stacks of 6 rags), or animal guts* (2x1 inventory size guts).  Simply add the cordage to the stick and select the Improvised Bow option. Incidentally this is also the same way to craft a fishing rod, but that's a lesson for another time!

 

Congratulations! If you have followed the directions successfully you will be the proud owner of a shiny new Improvised Bow...

 

 

What's that? " How do I get arrows?", you say?

 

Arrows:

 

 

We begin by acquiring piles of short sticks, which can be found by cutting down bushes with a knife (improvised knife makes it easy) and making piles of 5. Once you have a pile of sticks you can sharpen them all at once with a knife (improvised knife comes in handy, once again). The final ingredient to creating improvised arrows are feathers. Feathers can be acquired by repeatedly searching through the small chicken coops located in every town, or by killing a chicken and skinning and quartering it. You get 20 feathers for killing a single chicken which would probably take 5-10 minutes of rooting through chicken coop to gather, so if chickens are available it is preferable to using coops. Once you have some feathers and some sharpened sticks, simply add the feathers to the sharpened sticks and one by one your improvised arrows will be added to your inventory. Make sure you have room in your inventory for the newly created arrows, you might need to stack them as you are creating them to save space. Arrows can be made into stacks of 5, and loaded as a stack into the bow itself.

 

Improvised Arrows can be upgraded into Bone Arrows. Simply add bones to improvised arrows and one by one bone arrows will be added to your inventory in the same way improvised arrows appear from sharpened sticks. Bones can be gained by skinning and quartering animals and humans. The larger the animal the more bones you will get; 2 bones per chicken, 4  per goat, 4 per pig, 5 per human, 8 per deer, and a whopping 10 per cow (unsure about exact bone numbers here). Bone arrows fly a good deal faster and farther than improvised arrows, and they deal more damage. Often times a bone arrow will kill a human in one shot along with small game, up to and including pigs. Bone Arrows are not guaranteed kills but deal a significant amount of damage none the less.

 

Composite Arrows are the pinnacle of arrow technology; put simply, they are the cat-bee's knee-pajamas. They fly very fast, meaning you need to lead moving targets less. They fly farther, meaning you don't need to raise the aim of the bow as much to hit more distant targets. The damage is superior to even that of the bone arrow. I have always killed players in one hit when I manage to strike them with a Composite Arrow. Unfortunately Composite Arrows cannot be crafted and can only be looted. Their loot location is currently unknown and their loot prevalence I would consider rare. If you find composite arrows, a screen shot of their spawn location would be much appreciated for the purpose of tracking their spawn rates and locations.

 

 

 

"So now we have a bow and some arrows? So what? How do we use them effectively?". Well let me tell you...

 

Becoming an archer:

 

The first step to firing the bow is to load arrows into the bow. The Improvised Bow can be fired accurately from both first and third person perspective views, but we will focus mainly on first person perspective style shooting which is the easiest to master.

 

While in 1pp mode, equip your bow and bring your character into a raised weapon stance (not "looking down the iron sights mode", but rather simply "fists/item raised mode") which by default is the space-bar hotkey. Once in this position, the actual zoom of your character can be altered with the FOV slider or by pressing, holding, or double tapping the + and - keys on your numpad. By double tapping the + key, you will bring your character to maximum zoom (outside of FOV alteration). By holding the right mouse button you will also activate the zoom function like the + key does, but you will also begin holding your breath. It can be desirable to use the + key because you can zoom in without holding your breath for too long if you want to take your time  on a shot; ideal for target practice. You will only need to hold your breath for a few seconds max right before you take your shot so that you can stabilize the natural weapon sway of your bow.

 

In order to fire an arrow from the 1pp/bow raised position, press and hold the left mouse button and your character will draw the back the arrow. Once the bow is fully drawn releasing the left mouse button will result in your character releasing the arrow and the bow firing. If you draw an arrow and decide you do not want to fire it, pressing R will remove the tension on the string and allow you to release the left mouse button without firing. If you do decide to fire, the first step to hitting your target is to understand the secret of hidden bow sway. This is a mechanic that occurs when you have an arrow drawn and a secondary sway can be observed on the bow itself and some parts of the environment. This sway follows a pattern of movement: "RIGHT-RIGHT-LEFT" in an endless loop. The secret to making your arrow fire straight is to release the arrow at the exact moment this secondary bow sway reaches the left most point of the sway loop. If you release the arrow at the correct moment in the sway pattern, then the arrow will go perfectly straight according to wherever your onscreen reticle indicates, if you release the arrow to soon or too late, then it could fire wildly to either side. Luckily, once understood  this mechanic is quite easy to master and presents only a small hurtle in mastering the bow. Here is an example of 1pp/weapon raised stance which has the bow-sway clearly visible and also shows the correct moment to release the arrow:

 

Once you are able to make arrows go straight, the next skill to master is judging distance, and raising the aim of your bow accordingly. Arrows follow a parabolic curve, like all projectiles, and so the farther away your target is the higher you need to aim. It's hard to say exactly what the maximum range on the bow is, but I've been able to repeat accurate shots (on a level range that I have already practiced on) at at least 125 meter distances. The effective max distance that I would personally try and engage targets at ranges from 75-125, depending on arrow quality (75 for improvised, 100 for bone, and 125 for composite). I cannot give you any great rules of thumb for judging distance and appropriate angle of fire as bow technology is relatively new and undeveloped in the world of DayZ. Short of some sweet GIF examples the only way to learn ranging is to try it out and learn through experience. Here is a 100m shot in a barn:

 

The third important skill of an archer is an ability to judge elevation difference between you and your target, and to understand how that will affect the appropriate angle of fire. Generally the more elevated the target is, the more you will need to raise your angle of fire to compensate, and the farther away an object, the more this effect is compounded. The reverse applies when your target is lower than you. You don't need to aim as high as you normally would at a given distance is your target has a lower elevation. The way elevation affects appropriate angle of fire is tricky and myself am still learning. Here are some GIFS which show shots with varying elevations:

 

That's it! Understanding bow-sway/release mechanics, some experience with angle of fire (aiming higher to compensate for distance) and elevation, and you're on your way to becoming a bona-fide archer in the world of DayZ!

 

Tips and tricks:

 

Firing arrows into an open or closed door makes for an excellent target. It is roughly the size of a human and when it is filled with arrows, you can open the door in order to view the arrows in "vicinity" tab view.

 

Collecting arrows from target practice is possible, simply have an unloaded bow in hand, and look at the arrow or view it in "vicinity" then right click the arrow and select the"load into bow" option, then eject the single arrow and stack it with the others, and repeat!

 

Firing while looking over your shoulder is possible but you get less zoom. With experience this can be quite fun and accurate:

 

 

Carrying a stack of 20 feathers is convenient but carrying various piles of bones is not because they cannot be stacked, upgrade your improvised arrows to bone arrows as soon as possible to potentially save on inventory space and acquire spare arrows!

 

The bow is very silent, making it very useful for killing zombies. An improvised arrow to the chest should take out any Zed.

 

There is a way to quickfire the bow and to release the arrow before the bow sway loop begins. It requires precise timing on the release as soon as the arrow is fully drawn. I am practicing this mechanic myself and so I leave it to you to discover more!

 

P.S: please share any bow related media or knowledge! It is your personal duty as all archers are champions of the people!

Edited July 17, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[odin_lowe 3686]

Fantastic guide.  :thumbsup:

[FlimFlamm 509]

Fantastic guide.  :thumbsup:

 

Thanks! That means a lot to me :)

 

I did my best to cover all the basics and hopefully it will spark some interest in the bow! I have never encountered another player wielding the bow, and this is something I aim to change!

 

I hope to release an advanced bow guide once I have the required  knowledge, skills and footage. The Recurve Bow is going to be released soon enough, and this has me quite excited!

Edited July 17, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[-Gews- 7443]

My EXP character has a bow and plenty of "composite arrows" since no one takes them from the loot piles that are everywhere. Problem is with 0-5 players per server I haven't found any players to try it on. They made it better in 0.57 at the expense of realism. 330 feet per second from cut wood stick and a rope? Get out. Forget recurves, that's compound IBO speed.



A while ago I made some tests with the bow, comparing with those, the composite arrows drop only 25% of what they used to (max range ca. 365 m). No matter what they do I still don't think most people will use the bow. It's always going to be worse than a gun so it will be left to the "survivalists" and people using it for kicks on the coast.

[Tatanko 5591]

Awesome guide, Flim! This is an area of the game that gets neglected by the vast majority of players, and I think a big part of that is not understanding how to use them effectively. I will freely admit that I know very little about being skillful with this weapon.

 

 

Oh, and check your PMs ;)

[BeefBacon 1185]

I've tried using a bow in the past, but in previous versions putting together a bow before finding a weapon was pretty difficult. In fact the one time I decided to skip guns and focus on making a working bow, bows didn't work. I was gutted. Spent all that time finding an ashwood tree, some rope and some chicken feathers only for bows to be broken. I've not tried again since.

 

I'd certainly use bows if they could be broken down like the trumpet (or maybe they can, I've not played in a while) or if there was a separate bow slot. As it stands, guns aren't rare enough to warrant using a bow, especially since it's quite easy to craft a suppressor.

 

Still, excellent guide.

[FlimFlamm 509]

My EXP character has a bow and plenty of "composite arrows" since no one takes them from the loot piles that are everywhere. Problem is with 0-5 players per server I haven't found any players to try it on. They made it better in 0.57 at the expense of realism. 330 feet per second from cut wood stick and a rope? Get out. Forget recurves, that's compound IBO speed.

A while ago I made some tests with the bow, comparing with those, the composite arrows drop only 25% of what they used to (max range ca. 365 m). No matter what they do I still don't think most people will use the bow. It's always going to be worse than a gun so it will be left to the "survivalists" and people using it for kicks on the coast.

 

I think they actually toned down the arrow speeds a bit, you should do some re-testing!

 

Back when I announced that the bow had suddenly been buffed, it seemed like arrows were flying way faster and farther than they do lately, although I may have just gotten used to them :/

 

I could deal with slow arrows, just as long as they have an effective enough range!

[-Gews- 7443]

I think they actually toned down the arrow speeds a bit, you should do some re-testing!

 

Back when I announced that the bow had suddenly been buffed, it seemed like arrows were flying way faster and farther than they do lately, although I may have just gotten used to them :/

 

I could deal with slow arrows, just as long as they have an effective enough range!

 

Still seems fast to me. Here was what I got before with improvised arrows, tested with rangefinder. Note that even at point blank the arrow impacted under the center of the screen.

 

 

 

At the same time the speed was increased they dropped the damage, perhaps inadvertently. Composite down 40%, improvised down 25%. Two to four times less drop is still a decent trade-off in terms of effectiveness for most situations. For ambushes I would still prefer the extra power for one-shot kill.

 

I don't think this bow deserves an effective range any longer than 25 meters, effective meaning a good chance of a skill-based one-shot kill. Part of the issue is that 25 m looks a good ways in real life but seems very close on the screen's two dimensions, that leads to more complaints about limited range than it should. The limited spatial awareness makes it hard to get a feel for the trajectory and your eyes are locked to your bow's elevation. Then the rest of the clunky and annoying mechanics such as being locked in place while drawing and aiming. After running you are out of breath for a good time, and while out of breath timing with the sway doesn't really work and accuracy goes to pot. Since DayZ is a running simulator odds are your bow will be hard to use most of the time. It's easier to simply grab a gun and ammo which will be far better in just about every situation so just about everyone will grab the guns, but killing with the bow is very satisfying.. I still think the bow works best for planned ambushes although with the massively increased range this isn't as necessary as before. 

 

As it stands the arrow speeds will be the same from either the recurve or improvised bows so there's a decent chance they'll still be changing these stats around. But for either bow the speed should be no higher than 60 m/s at most. Say 50-60 for recurve, for the improvised bow more they could do 30-45 m/s. Even a few m/s makes a large difference in effectiveness since the difference in the drop of the arrows is roughly equivalent to the square of the difference in speed.

[FlimFlamm 509]

Still seems fast to me. Here was what I got before with improvised arrows, tested with rangefinder. Note that even at point blank the arrow impacted under the center of the screen.

 

At the same time the speed was increased they dropped the damage, perhaps inadvertently. Composite down 40%, improvised down 25%. Two to four times less drop is still a decent trade-off in terms of effectiveness for most situations. For ambushes I would still prefer the extra power for one-shot kill.

 

I don't think this bow deserves an effective range any longer than 25 meters, effective meaning a good chance of a skill-based one-shot kill. Part of the issue is that 25 m looks a good ways in real life but seems very close on the screen's two dimensions, that leads to more complaints about limited range than it should. The limited spatial awareness makes it hard to get a feel for the trajectory and your eyes are locked to your bow's elevation. Then the rest of the clunky and annoying mechanics such as being locked in place while drawing and aiming. After running you are out of breath for a good time, and while out of breath timing with the sway doesn't really work and accuracy goes to pot. Since DayZ is a running simulator odds are your bow will be hard to use most of the time. It's easier to simply grab a gun and ammo which will be far better in just about every situation so just about everyone will grab the guns, but killing with the bow is very satisfying.. I still think the bow works best for planned ambushes although with the massively increased range this isn't as necessary as before. 

 

As it stands the arrow speeds will be the same from either the recurve or improvised bows so there's a decent chance they'll still be changing these stats around. But for either bow the speed should be no higher than 60 m/s at most. Say 50-60 for recurve, for the improvised bow more they could do 30-45 m/s. Even a few m/s makes a large difference in effectiveness since the difference in the drop of the arrows is roughly equivalent to the square of the difference in speed.

Not exactly sure what the numbers on your screen indicate, but I get what you mean about distances not feeling correct in game. The very long barns are reported to be 100 meters long but they only feel like 50m. I think that composite arrows might currently be over powered but the current range of the bone arrow feels right to me. If it was lessened very much then it would be useless in almost every situation. Currently I tend to stay behind tree cover or near buildings in towns so I can get close enough to make a kill shot, but with the current range that means quite close. They could hit me with a magnum at around 100m, surely I should be able to reciprocate if my archery skills are up to snuff.

 

Not exactly sure what sort of differences the recurve bow should have, and how much the regular bow should get nerfed (whether just the composite is nerfed, every arrow, or if at all), but if they are going to be in game then they need to at least be useful in some situations for the sake of gameplay.

Edited July 18, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[-Gews- 7443]

Not exactly sure what the numbers on your screen indicate, but I get what you mean about distances not feeling correct in game. The very long barns are reported to be 100 meters long but they only feel like 50m. I think that composite arrows might currently be over powered but the current range of the bone arrow feels right to me. If it was lessened very much then it would be useless in almost every situation. Currently I tend to stay behind tree cover or near buildings in towns so I can get close enough to make a kill shot, but with the current range that means quite close. They could hit me with a magnum at around 100m, surely I should be able to reciprocate if my archery skills are up to snuff.

 

Not exactly sure what sort of differences the recurve bow should have, and how much the regular bow should get nerfed (whether just the composite is nerfed, every arrow, or if at all), but if they are going to be in game then they need to at least be useful in some situations for the sake of gameplay.

 

The numbers are the distance, ie: at 50 m the arrow impacts on the blue line. In that picture the brick wall behind the blue line is exactly 50 meters away. Outdated drop and they've changed FOV as well but interesting for comparison... I will see if I can make another similar image for a side-by-side.

Long white barns are 71 m doorway to end wall, the shorter white barns are 50 m. I think 100 m is too far for this bow. Technically you could hit them with even the old bow at that range if you were skilled enough, but that would be an exceptional shot, not really "effective range". I don't like the nerf and buff for any balance reasons, I don't mind if these are placeholder values to get people trying the bow but ultimately they should improve it via better, more fluid mechanics instead of placing wrong values for properties like speed. It's tough because even when functional it would still have a short kill range.

Chris Torchia talked about adding sights for the recurve bow so I assume that's what the main advantage will be, initially.

[FlimFlamm 509]

The numbers are the distance, ie: at 50 m the arrow impacts on the blue line. In that picture the brick wall behind the blue line is exactly 50 meters away. Outdated drop and they've changed FOV as well but interesting for comparison... I will see if I can make another similar image for a side-by-side.

Long white barns are 71 m doorway to end wall, the shorter white barns are 50 m. I think 100 m is too far for this bow. Technically you could hit them with even the old bow at that range if you were skilled enough, but that would be an exceptional shot, not really "effective range". I don't like the nerf and buff for any balance reasons, I don't mind if these are placeholder values to get people trying the bow but ultimately they should improve it via better, more fluid mechanics instead of placing wrong values for properties like speed. It's tough because even when functional it would still have a short kill range.

Chris Torchia talked about adding sights for the recurve bow so I assume that's what the main advantage will be, initially.

 

O.K I understand the image now, thanks.

 

Regarding barns, they tend to come in various sizes, I'm not exactly sure how many variations there are but the ones I typically use are like the long one in berezino at coordinates 122 062.

 

Also, what method are you using to measure distances? I was using DayZDB itself but if it is innaccurate at least I could get some sort of ratio which I could use to correct some old numbers. Have not had a range finder in quite awhile, perhaps I should begin hunting for one.

[-Gews- 7443]

Also, what method are you using to measure distances? I was using DayZDB itself but if it is innaccurate at least I could get some sort of ratio which I could use to correct some old numbers. Have not had a range finder in quite awhile, perhaps I should begin hunting for one.

 

Rangefinder or A2SM. The "cowshed"/long white barn is modeled in 3 pieces so the length varies on how they put it together. The one you mentioned at Berezino is 92 m.

[FlimFlamm 509]

Rangefinder or A2SM. The "cowshed"/long white barn is modeled in 3 pieces so the length varies on how they put it together. The one you mentioned at Berezino is 92 m.

 

A2SM? I tried deciphering this acronym but to no avail :(. The reason why I ask is because I'm working on a rangefinding technique based on thumbnail (from thumbs up animation) height and so I need some precise standard distances to calibrate the rules.

Edited July 18, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[-Gews- 7443]

A2SM? I tried deciphering this acronym but to no avail :(. The reason why I ask is because I'm working on a rangefinding technique based on thumbnail (from thumbs up animation) height and so I need some precise standard distances to calibrate the rules.

 

ArmA 2 sample models. You can check the height of some objects in there and use that in conjunction with the in-game rangefinder to find the subtension of the thumb.

[FlimFlamm 509]

ArmA 2 sample models. You can check the height of some objects in there and use that in conjunction with the in-game rangefinder to find the subtension of the thumb.

 

Thanks, I'll see if I can download it and extract any useful info!

[blackberrygoo 1416]

I used a bow again Because of you flimflamm, ynfortunately on experimental they are very buggy and required me to constantly reload my stack of five for the next arrow to load , and when I realized my character releases like a 6th grader dicking around with a bow in gym class , I decided to throw my bow at the deer and shoot them with my magnum instead ..

Great guide man , I seriously hope that the bows get polished though because as of right now using them is putting yourself at a serious disadvantage even against small game that doesn't fight back ... I shoot bow every week irl , not professionally mind you, but when I first started I realized how to control that recoil but my character , he just loves to shoot all the way to the left for some reason , it must be a bug with experimental because it seemed a little too far for average bow recoil !

[FlimFlamm 509]

I used a bow again Because of you flimflamm, ynfortunately on experimental they are very buggy and required me to constantly reload my stack of five for the next arrow to load , and when I realized my character releases like a 6th grader dicking around with a bow in gym class , I decided to throw my bow at the deer and shoot them with my magnum instead ..

Great guide man , I seriously hope that the bows get polished though because as of right now using them is putting yourself at a serious disadvantage even against small game that doesn't fight back ... I shoot bow every week irl , not professionally mind you, but when I first started I realized how to control that recoil but my character , he just loves to shoot all the way to the left for some reason , it must be a bug with experimental because it seemed a little too far for average bow recoil !

 

Glad I inspired you to try it out!

 

Regarding the reloading bug, I have never encountered that before. I shove stacks of 5 arrows into my bow and it lets me fire 5 in a row without needing to manually reload.

 

Regarding shooting to the left, I know what is going on there. You are releasging the arrow at the incorrect moment. If you look at the GIFS and study the "becoming an archer" section it will explain the precise moment you need to release you arrow to fire accurately.

 

The bow sway pattern is "RIGHT RIGHT LEFT", you release the arrow the instant your bow arrives at the left most position! :)

Edited July 20, 2015 by FlimFlamm