I’ve been reading all these threads about blunted arrows and how they’re useless and other threads about how they’re really good and everything in between, so I decided to dig into it a bit and bring you some conclusive (or concussive?) data
Blunted Arrows:
Bow health damage DOES apply which will result in likely killing NPCs with lower health and high Consciousness bar (Ana the Reaver and her exile bunch are the most notorious examples of this as they have a T4 bar but barely any HP) so it is recommended to use the bow with the lowest damage.
Blunted fitting on the bow DOES apply bonus concussive damage.
When a bow does NOT have a blunted fitting on it, light (left click) and charged (right click) attacks will do the exact same concussive damage, however the health damage will increase the longer you charge it, so in this case it’s recommended to use light attacks only.
When a bow DOES have a blunted fitting on it though, miraculously it gains a charged attack bonus concussive damage that is a fixed amount regardless of charging time → In this case it’s best to use right-click to initiate, but immediately left click to release the arrow to avoid charging up the health damage portion as the bonus will be the same regardless.
Truncheons:
Strength does not in any way affect concussive damage anymore, in fact it’s counter-productive as it does affect the health damage portion of the truncheon possibly increasing it from 1-2 to 3 with 20 points in Strength.
Despite their animation being exactly the same, heavy attacks with a truncheon do slightly more concussive damage (35 vs 40 with a steel truncheon with no fitting)
The blunted fitting yet again has a heavy attack modifier, so if you have a blunted fitting on, heavy attacks - despite looking the same - will do bonus concussive damage (steel truncheon + advanced blunted fitting: 65 per light attack / 100 per heavy attack)
Authority appears to increase concussive damage by 6% per point in all these cases. So in the example just above if we put 1 point in Authority that truncheon with the blunted fitting will do 65*1.06 = 68.9 (rounded to 69) on a light attack and 106 on a heavy attack. Same thing applies to concussive damage from a blunt arrow as well.
Interestingly it is indeed true that you cannot capture Ana the Reaver and other 1 skull Exiles with blunted arrows regularly (unless you have a 1 damage Legendary bow). At 20 authority and using a hunting bow with a blunted fitting and doing the instant-release heavy attack trick mentioned above… their consciousness still decreases in tandem with their HP. However if you equip a hyena armor set on top of all these tricks, then you will just about be able to knock her out Though again, she is an extreme case since the devs did not give these river bosses enough HP to match their consciousness meter. Pretty much every other NPC will be much easier to knock out without them dying.
Hope this helps and clarifies some things with how you knock out thralls in the new system
Cheers!
Isn’t there a bow with 0 (zero) damage out there (forgot the name)?
What if one uses this together with blunted arrows?
(Wasn’t there a thread about this before 3.0?)
Hmm… these are the lowest damage bows in the item table sorted by damage I’m not sure how many of these are obtainable and how though as I never had the ones with 1
Thanks for the breakdown . That’s information we can’t get on console
I managed to knock out 2 low level cimmarans with blunt arrows and with bow you make on yourself with a kit before my sabertooth killed them he was disappointed so I chopped them up with cleaver . On ps4 just kept hitting R1 have to try charging next appreciate the tips.
So… all of those 1 damage bows are legendary, 2 of them are exclusive to Siptah as they’re eldarium recipes, the only one that that’s not is the Fling Shot, so maybe that one is available on Exiled Lands as well
Yea, but that would still be miles better ofc Truncheons also do 1 damage and a difference when used in a “regular” build is doing ~10 or more damage with a hunting bow vs. doing 1-3 with a truncheon, so a 1 damage bow would still be miles of improvement, too bad they’re locked behind eldarium RNG on Siptah and some serious legendary RNG on EL
And moreover there are some (easily available) food, some potions and some armor increasing your concussive damage. Now I can knock out Accursed Berserker nearly with 4-5 arrows while my Berserker with a truncheon tanks his wild brother.
I haven’t tried that, though I can quickly do so…
However the weapon does not have any concussive damage associated so my prediction is that it’ll use just the amount from the blunt fitting as normal
Yup, I just tried. It does the concussive damage of the fitting - which is actually quite considerable as you saw from the OP as well.
That actually makes it a very viable knockout weapon, without any attributes it gives you a 60 damage to consciousness - so more than a steel truncheon without a fitting. With a maxed out authority build that shoots up to 132 So yea this further proves what we kinda knew already, that the fitting itself seems to count for way more than the base truncheon.
I just did, it works as intended (100 concussive damage became 115 and added 5 authority it became 145 so it’s not bugged or anything and applies to the regular concussive damage and not the one you gain post authority)
No, they don’t appear to affect it.
I tried agility armor, food, potion buffs to see if there’s any relation between those and then the perks.
Though the game has a wild interpretation regarding “behind” I even turned on cloak mode and tried hitting them out of the blue from behind, but no change. I also tried to test dead shot by shooting them from very far away - still no change to concussive damage.
(Btw, the other day I did test whether the strength perk of increased finisher damage applies and that doesn’t either, it’s the same for every single hit of the truncheon)
You can also craft the Royal Lemurian armor for an additional +50% concussive output, as well as drink the Hunters Potion from the JhebbalSag alter for another +50%. Add the feast Codemage mentioned for another 15% and yeah, knocking thralls out is easy.
Recently returned after nearly a year break and started a new single player game because my old server was closed so I’m really low level still
I’ve been having a pretty hard time knocking out some guys with the blunted javelin before they died, which is weird because it says it only does 1 damage. Iron truncheon was doing much better for me
How much effect does upping your authority have on how easy it is to KO fools?
Like I said the main post, it’s a 6% improvement per point of authority as such it scales off of what you already have. The blunted javelin has the same amount of concussive damage as the basic wooden truncheon, so yes definitely use the iron one over that and if you can, unlock weaponsmith and put a blunted fitting on it - that will be the most help.
