Minecraft Forums

So, I was thinking 'bout Minecraft the other day and thought that in addition to regular bows, the more advanced version of them could also be added. of course, a suggestion simply cannot go w/o a suggested crafting assemblement, so here:(note that i made it of difficult recouces to find, thus harder to get)
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The advantage to this is that it, yes, requires 2 gold and 1 diamond, implying that the crafter must atleast have their fair share of mining in prior to owning a crossbow. the bolts, however, are the disadvantage to this:
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Yep. 2 iron every 5 bolts. also, unlike their wooden relative, the crossbow's ammo would not be retrievable if you miss, a fired shot is a fired shot. thus, crossbow's ammo is expensive. also, you gain ammo NOT by killing more mobs, so you can't just kill and kill and kill all the day long, you must mine also.

And so, I was thinking some other advantages be added, (other than the 1337ness of the crossbow itself, of course) such as power, and range. the crossbow would, upon impact with a mob, damage it severly. rather than it blinking red and bouncing up, it does NOT cause the jumping of the mob, creating easier rapid-shot kills. Im sure you first-person shooter would love that ;P. it would also deal out more damage to the enemy mob, depending ON the mob itself. enemy skeletons would not take AS much damage as, say a creeper mob. (due to its... er... lack in flesh) also preventing easy avoidance from skeletons. as, of cource, swordfighting and enemy skelly can at times be massively epic. crossbows would be good against bossmobs, implying you save crossbows for more difficult enemies, similiar to how i personnally chose to save diamond picks for more valuable recources, and use stone for everything else. It could be extra effective towards the mobs tending to reside in underground mines/hell areas, as of course iron would be abundant in those places.

thus, the crossbow would be better suited for miners, rather than full-bore rambos who just like to run around combating mobs al day.

Suggestions? Comments? Opinions? Flames? Post!

great idea but i think the crossbow should either be harder to craft or not as good as a bow. for a bow, you need to kill spiders which is more challenging than finding a iron vein and making some bolts. making another good weapon like this defeats the purpose of what notch was trying to do. he made two monsters, the creeper and spider, the only monsters that drop their own items, unlike skeletons and zombies where you can get feathers from chickens and arrows by crafting. he made these two monsters so if someone just waits out the night without EVER fighting then they will be missing out on a bow and tnt. making this crossbow would make people not want to go outside because it's unnecessary

I could lessen the amount of bolts you get per each time u craft it, like 3 bolts instead of 5, you have to keep in mind the crossbow is better suited for those who DONT go out and fight, otherwise you would never have enough bolts to actually have it effective. crafting the actual thing is easy, sure, but wtf is a crossbow good for with no bolts? so it would be more of a waste to use it, its only good for the occasional freakout moment where you have 2 spiders charging you and 3 skellys hopping around you. otherwise, its a waste. and if theyre mining all the time and not going outside, then eventually i believe notch WILL make it so thhat certain mobs will spawn down there, so you would still need something to defend yourself with, no? it would suck if you never went outside and just always mined and these mobs popped out of nowhere and you have to try to fist em to death. THATS what its good for.

um there are now two crossbow threads on the front page. Please use search.

i was aware of that. i do use search.

Then why did you start a new topic when you are saying almost the exact same thing? Look it up in the rules, don't double post a topic.

erm, I was asking your opinion of it. and also, I didn't find one that wasnt vague and undescriptive, I wanted a more complete one. or so was my opinion. and, to make it clear, im not saying i came up with this. its already BEEN suggested to notch, its not me trying to be creative. why is it that all my posts get flamed i mean like wtf can we PLEASE talk about the actual crossbow, not the rules? isnt it in the rules to stay on topic? I don't want to waste any more space further arguing my point, please just discuss the topic.

Bolts need to be cheaper. a lot cheaper. everything else sounds good, except it should be iron, not gold in the crossbow recipe.

gold and diamonds? This is an incredibly (arbitrarily) expensive recipe. I like the recipes in some of the other threads.

yeah, same as above. what do gold and diamonds hve to do with crossbows, and why no string. You can make a crossbow more expensive than a regular bow just by using iron and not completely dumping the string. after that, the expense of the bolts is what keeps it from being overpowered.

Yeah, that's pretty much the most nonsensical recipe I've ever seen. What exactly does the diamond contribute to a crossbow? Admittedly, you could say the same thing about the jukebox, but that doesn't excuse the gold.

No crossbows until we get some sort of special crafting system for more high tech objects. Maybe some sort of steampunk crafting table.

I was thinking that a crossbow would be a slower, more powerful version of a bow.. made like so:

Crossbow Recipe




( = String) 4 String + 5 Wood = Crossbow

The Crossbow would do three times as much damage as the bow, but shoots 75% as fast. So all in all when it takes 5 shots to kill a monster, it would only take 2 with the crossbow.. where in the time it takes those 2 shots to leave the crossbow you would get off 3 or 4 shots with a bow.

Crossbows would use arrows, I don't see why we should make bolts/quarrels specifically for the crossbow.. but if you all insist we can simply make bolts by using:

Bolts Recipe
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1 Iron Ingot and 1 Shaft makes 4 Bolts

Arrows to Bolts Recipe
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(Recipe based on possibility of breaking an arrow in half, and splitting the tip between the two.)
1 Arrow equals 2 Bolts.

Bolts to Arrows Recipe
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(Reverse the Process..)
2 Bolts equals 1 Arrow.

What do you all think?

If we're going to be pushing out better recipes, i'll just dig mine up, as inspired by Fhyve:

Quote from GreyAcumen »

I generally disagree with the idea that you need a more POWERFUL weapon that the Bow. (I have an idea for the less powerful ranged weapon of a Sling in the SAME POST as the shields) The bow needs its firing rate nerfed as it is, but having a range weapon of similar power but different tactics to use it could be acceptable:

Crossbow: Crafting (Workbench) [@] = String

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Bolt(x4): Crafting (Workbench)


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The Crossbow fires at only half the rate of a bow(once the bows speed is nerfed to be less than "as fast as the player can click the button") and will not travel any farther, however the bolt travels twice as fast as an arrow, does 1.5x damage of an arrow, and knocks the target back twice as far as if they were hit by an arrow.
Having a slower firing rate will put a much greater importance on accuracy, and the expense of needing to use iron and string to craft the crossbow, and 2 iron for every 4 bolts (and not having any bolts dropped by enemies) should make the price high enough that it offsets the potential advantage of using the crossbow.

The iron makes the crossbow relatively expensive to use, which helps balance out its power, but it also makes the recipe a little more visually identifiable too.

Crossbows are slow. Rapid fire? Phhbt. Unless it's a Chu-ku-nu or whatever, those machine gun chinese crossbows...

It's like a sniper rifle. VERY accurate, easy to use, yet slow. "Pew!" "load" "Pew!" "Load" "Pew!" "loa-JAMMED" "JAMMED" "Pew!" "Load"

Etc.

well... the reason the recipe makes no sense is because it has to be hard to craft, otherwise it would be too overpowered, and use of the bow would become useless.
also, it should be faster to reload, with less damage a shot, what would hurt more: a shaft of would protruding from your spine, or a sliver of metal in your stomach? also, you guys watch way too many movies. in the movies, sure, legolas or rambo can fire at a rate of 3 shots a seccond, but in real life, you have to be pretty damned good to do it that well. same with crossbows, a rambo with a crossbow would be about 6 shots a seccond, it was MADE to reload fast.

Quote from 1138_RINGER »

well... the reason the recipe makes no sense is because it has to be hard to craft, otherwise it would be too overpowered, and use of the bow would become useless.
also, it should be faster to reload, with less damage a shot, what would hurt more: a shaft of would protruding from your spine, or a sliver of metal in your stomach? also, you guys watch way too many movies. in the movies, sure, legolas or rambo can fire at a rate of 3 shots a seccond, but in real life, you have to be pretty damned good to do it that well. same with crossbows, a rambo with a crossbow would be about 6 shots a seccond, it was MADE to reload fast.

No it wasn't. It was made to load, aim, and fire EASILY. Crossbows were often designed with a stirrup in the front so you could hold the thing down with your foot while you pulled the string into place with both hands, locked it in, and then put your bolt into its slot. Because a crossbow has a latching mechanism holding it in place, instead of needing to use your hand to keep it drawn back, they generally have a much heavier poundage than a bow, allowing for a much heavier bolt to be fired, and for a much harder hit. The idea that a crossbow is going to be faster to reload is silly though, simply because it's a much more involved process.