Did crossbows get nerfed in 1.6 patch?

[LeYuno (DayZ) 51]

I am an avid user of the crossbow, against zombies that is. I don't like shooting other players, and tend to avoid them at any means possible.

I was used to taking my time sneaking up on walker or monkey zombies, and then aiming down sight, shooting them in the chest from 3-4 meter away making a path for me towards my looting place.

Since the 1.6 patch I noticed that I had to shoot two bolts in alot of the cases, because even though I aimed at the chest, the bolt would end up in the arm, or even cleanly miss the shot and the zombie would just keep walking. It even happend that they attacked me, since reloading and then firing the crossbow would take very long. Even after reloading I would need a few seconds before my avid mouse clicking would transfer into a bolt being fired.

Now I've been used to the crossbow and how the sights were off, and I have practiced until perfect and I have racked up some decent number of kills with it already. Heck, at one time I even took the time to clear an entire village of zombies before moving on.

So I was wondering, did the crossbow get a nerf, and if so, how did it get one? It's already a tad harder to use one since the ammo takes one slot per bolt and they often disappear after using. I really hope the accuracy or damage wasn't lowered for some reason.

thanks for reading and please post your comments.

[cesar10022@hotmail.com 3]

Crossbow has always been garbage and pretty much useless. Not sure how you managed to 1 shot zombies at all even before the patch.

[LeYuno (DayZ) 51]

The trick is to imagine the "crosshair" to be exactly 1cm above the actual one ingame while aiming down sight. Shoot at a wall to see what I mean. That's how I found out. The view model of the bow appears to be a bit low compared to the actual location of the crosshair. That's why I always shot them up close while prone..

[commiedic (DayZ) 0]

The Crossbow always one shots for me, but I haven't used it in the new patch, but it does seem to miss a lot even though you are two feet away and aiming at center mass.

[Powell (DayZ) 734]

I hope not. It needs a buff (ATLEAST A SIGHT)

[wasrad 42]

TIL people actually use the crossbow

[sirfluffkillington 1]

TIL people actually use the crossbow

Great if you object to people shooting you in close quarters - insta drop.

Sadly I get the occasional attack of conscience that means I drop the zombie creeping up on someone and then run away...while they're still trying to work out where the bolt came from XD

[LeYuno (DayZ) 51]

yea, but that's the thing.. I think the crossbow has been changed. I'll try to figure out if, and how.

[Shimmler 4]

afaik crossbow one-shots zeds only via headshots

and this has always been so

[Otleaz 3]

Need to be able to stack the ammo... Either that or retrieve used bolts from the body. Totally useless as it is now.

[joshuabeatdown 2]

Need to be able to stack the ammo... Either that or retrieve used bolts from the body. Totally useless as it is now.

You can retrieve bolts, but they are very glitchy. I won't use the crossbow again till they put in a quiver. With the glitchy bolts, and taking to many slots atm its not worth it. You can find silenced weapons/ammo pretty easily, and they last a lot longer than the bolts do.

[Duckman404 37]

At the moment, crossbows take up too much ammo space, are too inaccurate to use. I mean, come on, it's a hunting crossbow. They're meant to have some sort of sight!

The one time I tried using a crossbow, it got me killed in a slow, painful manner; missing too much, scrounging for ammo meant I encountered more zeds... and eventually they just wore me down because the crossbow was so damn useless.

[LeYuno (DayZ) 51]

that's good and all, but I didn't start a topic on how good or bad a crossbow ingame is. All i wanted to verify is if the thing was nerfed or not in the last patch. I could kill with it before, and now I can't anymore, so I think something changed.

[macish 0]

yepp got nerfed.. previously killed a zed with a single shot now you need two (or a headshot which is nearly inpossible at night)

so a very niche weapon just got a kick in the balls.. could also deleted the weapon imho.. slow reload, arrow do not stack needing lots of space and now even more difficult to kill anything with it.. not to mention that is usualy completly useless in a pvp..

so yeah got nerfed.. time to switch to another weapon.. sadly..

[REDRUM (DayZ) 0]

Need to be able to stack the ammo... Either that or retrieve used bolts from the body. Totally useless as it is now.

Um... you CAN retrieve the used bolts, from wherever they land, whether it be the ground, bodies (survivor/bandit/zombie), walls, tree's, animal prey etc.

[LeYuno (DayZ) 51]

yea, sometimes they tend to disappear though. I had it happen to me several times already. Not sure if the bolts may have a limited amount of uses and this causes them to disappear.

what I DID have happen to me is that they get stuck in mid air and I find them floating above ground, ready to be picked up again. I'm working on a little documentation for rocket to help him debug the weapon.

[Duny 15]

yes, it seems nerfed - 2 shot kill now. Floating bolts stuck in the middle of the air happened to me a couple of times already. Apart from outside visual check, my tactics of retrieving bolts is laying "inside" the zombie and seeing the bolt and the point sticking out, that I can grab. I retireve like this about 70% bolts, 30%got stuck underground I guess.

[zane 2]

They are nerfed. Just shot a player in the head with a bolt and he didn't die. Bolt was sticking out through his nose...

Sure hope they get it back to what it was adding stacked ammo (5 bolts per stack perhaps). It's my favorite hunting weapon in the game, silent and deadly. Well, not so deadly now though

[kaffaljidhma 1]

As long as it's easy to find and doesn't aggro zombies, it's a worthwhile weapon

[Merszowszczyzna 23]

It definitely got nerfed, either on purpose or due to a bug. I've been using it before the new update to try and troll people with it and found it to be quite useful during sneaking around towns. One shot always killed a zombie for me, now 80% of time it takes two shots.

I think it was always supposed to be two hits but one of the earlier updates made it a bit more powerful and 1.6 fixed that. Either way, it's sad that a bad weapon got even worse now. It was fun to use it even with its huge disadvantages.

Personally I think a bow would be much more practical. Faster to shoot while still having the same power if you're using a compound bow. Heck, even a recurve bow should cause as much if not more damage than a rifle.

[mind_grenade 24]

Sad, it was a valid weapon beforehand, now, especially with how buggy the bolt retrieval is it's just useless.

Oh wellz, back to the Winny then ;P