Just finished a bow-only run, and I found it a lot of fun.

The game was a Game +, so I started with almost all skills plus my Eagle bonus skills, and soon enough had the other useful bonus skills as well. I also set the combat to “Easy”. To be clear, I did not do this run for the challenge—I am 56 with arthritis in my hands and wanted this run as easy as possible. I did it for fun and to experience the combat sequences in a new way and think about them differently.

Starting with Sip’s Strike (increased charged shot damage against armored enemies when using a bow) and Sip’s Quiver (loose up to three [uncharged] arrows without pulling from the quiver) was a huge help. Sip’s quiver is what you use in place of the shotgun—you can get off 3 shots in a second whilst still using a high-damage bow (Heart of the Eagle or Atlatl—I used the Atlatl as I tend to use long hold times on initial shots and the Sip’s negated its longer draw time in emergencies).

I had play-tested a bow in shotgun situations before (when I had stupidly taken that break-action shotgun into a situation with Yaaxil rushing me), so my only two worries were (1) the refinery using only the wimpy bow you find, and (2) running out of arrows on the final boss fight.

Neither one was an issue.

On Easy combat difficulty, the refinery fight was, well, easy, even with that bow. Once I got tucked in on the left side of that indestructible round thing (the helicopter AI is broken and if you stay on the left side by the ammo, it will stay on the right instead of swapping sides on you) and killed the guys who try to rush you, I could take my time and blow up barrels (that bow is so wimpy you have to use a charged shot to set them off) and use a couple of Fear arrows (these seemed really effective with multiple Trinity goons jammed together on those ledges).

Ammo turned out to be no problem in the final fight. I started out with a full quiver, full wood, and a lot of feathers, and finished with 29 arrows ready, 43 wood, and 32 feathers. I also picked up the couple of quivers of arrows laying around and recovered all the arrows I could from Jaguar Warrior corpses. I guess I used a bit more than 100 arrows, which surprised me, since, when I play-tested this section using only the bolt action rifle, it also took me around 100 shots on easy difficulty. I mainly used non-charged shots on Amaru, especially in the latter stages when I had to hit and move, so I expected to use a lot more arrows than that.

Two notes on the final combat. One, I took out the Jaguar Warrior adds first every cycle, as I didn’t need them shooting me or sneaking up on me while I was concentrating on Amaru. Two, Amaru/Dr. Demento is a *terrible* shot with a bow. You can tell he didn’t grow up in Paititi. If you can get him into a long range duel with a ranged weapon, you can do a lot of damage while he shoots arrows in the general direction of your zip code. He might be a better shot in higher combat difficulties, so watch out. Once he starts teleporting, it is difficult to get him to take you on at range, but, up close, he is vulnerable to Sip’s Quiver if you scramble away quickly enough after the 3 shots.


My next run will be a “Percy” run, using period weapons for the Fawcett expedition and no healing (he lost two members of his expedition to infection of their wounds, so, clearly, healing and wound care was not a priority). I’ll carry:

J&D Model 27 revolver

Sedgewick 707 double-barreled break action shotgun

Redding bolt action rifle

If these weapons were good enough for Lieutenant Colonel Percival H. “Difficulties be damned” Fawcett to get his expedition killed and swallowed up by the Peruvian jungle, then they are good enough to get *my* Peruvian expedition killed and, erm, hmmm. Maybe I didn’t think this all the way through…

8-)

Interesting idea.  I almost exclusively use the various bows anyway, works well for endless ammo and stealth killing.  So much so I still don't have the achievement for shooting three people in the head within a second or whatever it is.  Regarding bows the poison one has better headline statistics than the other bows but I don't know what the poison does, if anything; similarly the one that is supposed to be better against armour and the one that is supposed to be better against animals - do they actually do anything?

I find shotguns rubbish, the only time I really tried was against Yaaxil and the one time they should have worked well they were all terrible.

I feel you on shotguns. That stupid side-by-side is going to get me killed on my “Percy” run.

DO a bow-only run—it is fun,

As for bow damage, well, the devs did such a pathetic job on gun stats that I regard all the weapon stats as suspect.

For instance—the break action shotgun is displayed as having a higher rate of fire and reload speed than the various Bishop 600 incarnations, which is ludicrous. Sure it does, for two shots…

As opposed to say, Far Cry, that sort of absurdity makes me think none of the devs has ever been to the range.

Thanks for commenting,

Can't say as I've been to the range ever but if there's a big-money franchise like this with some vague semblance of realism to it then if what you indicate is correct, that the shotguns don't compare with reality, someone didn't do their research properly.  It's still quite fun, though, and I spend time trying to be stealthy.  Quite difficult with Yaaxil, though, given they invariably know you're there and attack like lunatics!

Actually that might have been an interesting thing; maybe these Yaaxil are, well, hard and all that, attuned to living underground, but some level where Lara could use stealth against them, stealth-killing but it suddenly gets rather more difficult if they find her, well, that could be fun.

Awesome! Sounds like fun. Thanks for sharing your notes.  I'm taking a little break to play Assassin's Creed Odyssey but I'll get back to TR soon.

It is ok.

The outside world is bigger than 100 Paititi's.

8-)

6 hours ago, Stellalune said:

Awesome! Sounds like fun. Thanks for sharing your notes.  I'm taking a little break to play Assassin's Creed Odyssey but I'll get back to TR soon.

AC Odyssey, any good?  I did AC, AC2, Brotherhood, Revelations and Syndicate.  Syndicate I liked; bit grindy in terms of things to collect.  Annoying social glitch problem, their servers are rubbish so I ended up with a 120-plus day support ticket where they didn't answer, didn't answer, didn't answer - then sent a code for AC Origins only it was AC Odyssey when I redeemed it.

Anyway - is Odyssey any good?  Any comment on play relative to Syndicate?  Have they fixed the often-bizarre automatic running thing (you know, hold the button, jump over obstacles to chase whoever then for some reason you decide to climb a building to your right rather than jump through the far-more-obvious window in front)?

15 hours ago, SpirantCrayon22 said:

AC Odyssey, any good? 

I've only ever played Origins, so I can't compare it to any of the others. I was attracted to Origins by the ancient Egypt angle and ended up getting hooked. Odyssey is very similar to Origins in terms of gameplay and definitely "grind-y" like most open-world RPGs. I'm enjoying it so far, though, but I've only just finished the second story section/area.

I haven't experienced the particular bug you mentioned. The mechanics seem different than what you described, but I've definitely seen a few minor bugs. Nothing like Tomb Raider or RDR2, though. ?