Buy them every time you see them and use them basically every turn, I had the same issue until I literally just started buying out every vendor on sight
@@jamesbailey5350 The "L" in trying to correct someone's pronunciation with your specific regional pronunciation in a reply to an unrelated comment is the other kind of L
While robbing every merchant blind of all their possessions, I always snag their arrows too, because those are good to hoard in my box in case I ever need them one day
I put them in the box I keep right next to my bucket of fish full of the inhabitants of the goblin camp from act 1. I'd bring them with me, but I need inventory space to hold all the cultists of Moonrise Tower and stuff them into this barrel. But of course, nothing compares to the Heavy Chest full of Ornate and Gilded chests full of miscellaneous, unsorted weapons, armor, and junk I pull out then slam down on some merchant's counter before extorting them for every single gold coin, healing potion, camp supply, and moderately intriguing magic item they have. By the way. For whatever reason, merchants seem to put containers of items into their personal inventory instead of wherever shop inventory goes. If you know in advance which merchants you're going to ice later (or just male some good predictions), you can sell that crate of goblin weapons like 4 or 5 times. Just. Picking the half ton crate off the corpse is sometimes difficult...
Roaring thunder is extremely underrated, it shouldn't be anywhere bellow S or A tier. Even with such low DC, it can push back targets that cannot be targeted, throw off the cliff multiple targets at the same time and gives the ability to everyone in your group to push back targets from bigger distances than gust of wind and without wasting spell slots. They also have better control over the position everyone will be thrown (in the video it states that you are supposed to hit the target which is NOT how these are meant to be used). A fighter can throw 3 of these arrows per turn, meaning that even strong targets will fail the SAVE and die. These can make the slayer, balthazar and so many other fights so much easier.
It's possible I should have been more clear in what I was saying - it's not that you're supposed to shoot them at enemies, it's that if you do, you can't usually use the knockback, and if you don't, you're losing out on damage. In your example of a high level fighter, you're probably giving up on 100-200 damage for a small chance to knock enemies back - why not just attack them? It will just kill them faster. The sanctuaried bhaalists *are* a real use case, but by that point in the game you'll have way better tools to deal with them (including either smokepowder or many targets arrows if you want an arrow-based solution)
@@Cephalopocalypse Hmm. I mean, you can certainly use the knockback effect if you are shooting a creature. Not sure about console, but on PC you can fine tune the direction the enemy will fly based on where the arrow is placed on the enemy's body (and get minor adjustments on nearby enemies too). Between move speed and arrow placement, you're getting at least a 60-90 degree aiming arc to send the enemy flying. If there's a ledge nearby an enemy, it's just a ~50% chance to just kill the enemy on hit (so you can redirect the rest of your attacks elsewhere). Can blast them into other walls/hazards as well. Definitely think this one is being slept on too, especially considering arrows that are good for 1 or 2 fights are ranked much higher. It's normal damage, but with a chance to instantly kill the enemy if there's a chasm nearby (and there are lots of chasms in the game).
Definitely not D tier, IMO. They're good for knocking mid level horde type enemies off edges for instant kills. Ones that usually have no good loot but can cause a lot of offensive damage and tie up your party with their attacks and positioning.
I’ve been able to reliably reproduce this, but if you have surprise and the auto-crit from assassin, EVERY SINGLE DAMAGE INSTANCE of arrow of many targets is a critical hit. So you crit on the initial hit, all the riders, crit on the second target plus all the riders, crit on the third target plus all the riders, and the fourth target as well. With Titanstring and Giant Elixir, strange conduit, the gloves that give sneak attack force damage, the sword that gives +D6 Necrotic damage on enemies that haven’t acted yet, elemental weapon from the drake throat Glaive, and sharpshooter I’m doing absolutely NUTS damage. 70+ damage per target, and with action surge or war priest charges I’m doing that 2-3 times on the first turn of combat. NOTHING can stand up to that kinda damage.
I love using Roaring Thunder in the Moonrise assault to get the archers out of the rafters and make them fall all the way down to the floor and take a ton of damage. That's about it.
@@henriquealves5740 Yes, extra attack works on melee, ranged and throws. So even if you throw a potion to heal an ally you still get an extra attack from it.
I think I would add my voice to the comments calling for Roaring Thunder to be higher than D tier. Basically, on PC, moving the mouse, you can choose to hit "different" parts of the same enemy, still getting the damage but getting a different angle to potentially move that enemy. This had made arrow of roaring thunder a regular default of mine for certain high stakes fights (e.g. underdark boat fight, Nere/Duergar fight, can use while clearing out moonrise towers main floor on archers in the rafters, etc.). That said, I think intelligent use of them for the normal amount of damage plus the chance to reposition is just strictly better than, say, arrow of lightning. Certainly not competing for A or S tier though.
Agreed. Having an arrow that can do several character-turns worth of clearing whatever chaff is shooting at you from rafters, higher cliffs, another boat, or whatever is worth the price of admission. They also usually don’t have loot you need so there’s only a small price to pay for seeing a bunch of enemies fall to their certain death is just. So. Satisfying.
Probably the best Moment I had in this Game was when I fought Karniss in my Honour Mode run. He was the only Enemy left and had just cast sanctuary, so I couldn’t think of anything better than shooting a rolling Thunder Arrow next to him. It completely yeeted him off the Roof he was standing on, killing him although having around 80 health left. Had me completely shook for a Moment.
And yet, the ENEMY with Roaring Thunder arrows somehow always manage to kill half the party, including inexplicably the character with the HIGHEST strength. I swear, the computer cheats with that freaking arrow every time.
The Death Shepards can't be silenced and apparently can bring back ghouls an infinite number of times even though you burnt the corpse. Which if a corpse is burnt you can't use speak to dead on a corpse. "Too damaged".
I think that's literally the only fight I've ever used them in, and it's against enemies who have Sanctuary so you can't directly damage them anyway. Super niche case in a single fight, and generally underwhelming everywhere else. D-tier seems fair, especially since Gust of Wind will knock those helpers off without the DC-12 save.
Yeah! I think that's pretty much their only real use-case in the game (some people have mentioned the Nere fight, but I think that's mostly trauma from being knocked into lava themselves :P). By that point you should have much better tools to deal with those enemies though (including smokepowder arrows and many targets arrows if you want an arrow-based solution)
@@Cephalopocalypse I've used them exactly once, because I got surprised by mimics in the Underdark and the DC was 5% higher than a shove on one of them near a cliff, rolled the 35% twice and got it on the second time... I can't really think of any situations where Thorn Whip or any of the other forced movement options aren't entirely preferable. The effect is good, but it's the worst example of the effect.
Orin fight, Nere fight, Gnoll fight, the Duergar boat fight, the phase spider matriarch fight, the massive moonlight towers fight, Saving Smythn inspiration fight, etc. The roaring thunder arrows also synergize incredibly well with the Hunger of Hadar spell. Warlocks can Eldritch blast a foe back into the black mist, Barbarians can throw them back in directly but most everyone else can use these Roaring thunder arrows to push enemies back into the damage.
When using the Titanstring bow, the illmater arrow also reapply your strength modifier an additional time to the damage. Assuming you are using a strength elixir this mean 1d4 +5 they can also safely be used against opponent even if you have melee teammate in there without the risk of friendly fire. One of my most used arrow for act 1 & 2.
Acid arrows are especially useful if your melee characters are running GWM. That -2 to enemy AC really helps with landing those big hits more consistently
Yeah, arrow of many targets on a character that has a bow with cold damage (via drakethroat glave) and the snowburst ring is too good. Not just awesome damage but great control too. So many proned enemies.
The arrow of transposition has one very specific usecase that you didn't mention, that i find comes up almost every single encounter: The ability to teleport your Barbarian who wants to use their first bonus action of combat to rage right into the face of the enemies. Since barbarians also get extra attack, this often lets you get out a much higher-value melee attack on the first turn of combat, and is especially valuable for tiger barbarians who can just immediately bleed 3 enemies, giving them disadvantage on con saves as well as activating all the other effects that apply when attacking bleeding characters, such as BOOOAL's benediction or some aspects of the beast etc.
I have never used the Salving Arrow, thus placing it D tier for me, and have used many a Roaring Thunder to end or shorten fights near ledges, pushing that one up to B tier.
Love these consumable lists, I always learn so much valuable information! The elixir video actually changed the way I play the game, thinking of how my characters will use their “elixir slot” is much more efficient than trying to remember which one to use for when I’m in a tight spot
Roaring thunder arrow will always be S tier in my book because of the slayer fight in act 3. I had run out of aoe and thats the only thing that kept me in my honour run. deals very well with targets that have sanctuary on them.
Just finished up a solo gloomstalker/assassin playthrough with heavy arrow usage and it was so much fun. Sneak in with an arrow of many targets, invis, repeat. Packs just fall over. I think i did the whole goblin camp with them only getting a total of 4 attacksin before i was able to sneak/invis away. Highly recommend, so fun.
Roaring thunder is criminally underrated here. The missed damage opportunities argument assumes the melee attacker is able to get in melee range (not counting opportunity attacks in order to do so). It's a guaranteed check for knockback even if you miss the shot (which you shouldnt be using for damage in the first place) and usually your martials arent going to be dealing big damage with other arrows either. It's a great way to zone enemies pushing them back to difficult terrain like spike growth or back down to lower ground after they spent the turn dashing up. Roaring thunder means your martials are able to support your ranged squishies without having to take melee damage. An example is fighting steel watchers - you'd rather stay far away letting your fighters soak their ranged attacks instead of going melee and likely getting maimed. Throughout that fight, you could continually attempt to boop them into a chasm for a free kill, or in general for a martial character to get a quick free kill while waiting for enemies to approach your party.
My main issue with all the arrows that create hazard surfaces is that the moment battle is done all my companions will go out of their way to walk through those surfaces 😡
A couple of things: the arrow of arcane interference does eork, but only if you’re before the targeted enemy in initiative, which will cause them to be silenced on their turn. Secondly, arrow of many targets can hit enemies in sanctuary if they’re near the original target as it works like an aoe. (It even hit invisible creatures, tho idk if that’s intended). Cheers mate.
Roaring thunder was my favorite arrow. I loved using those to shoot enemies off high ground by shooting behind a target. Now they took fall damage and are probe and vulnerable for my melee allies to maul them. Some pets, barbarians and druid transformations are very grateful to receive a prone target delivered to them on a silver platter. I also used it to help an ally disengage. Sometimes when you get ambushed the one attack to disengage instead of all attacks to disengage is a better slternative to creating distance. Or when a melee enemy was far enough away I could push them back further out to force them to dash me instead of attacking me. You can also use it to set up a future attack, grouping enemies and pushing back NPC allies so your magic user can cast a fireball and not risk any friendly fire. Roaring thunder is an arrow that rewards you for map awareness and positioning. I made a lot of use out of it, but its not as useful as the elemental arrows but more relevant than those slaying arrows. Roaring Thunder is atleast C tier for me.
Gotta disagree with the acid arrow, I've never seen one deal extra damage, and enemies just move out of the acid the first chance they get. The only saving grace is that the AC penalty is nice. D-tier imo. Fire arrows are the better version of acid arrows. Arrow of darkness area is too low to be actually useful. If it was even half of what the spell does, they might be worth using casually. With the right party, they might be great, but that also just goes to show how inflexible they are normally. Arrows of salving are available way too late into the game. Once you're able to buy them, your party is already strong enough to 1) end combat before getting inflicted with the ailments, 2) just don't get inflicted by the ailments because their saves are so good, and finally 3) there's a good chance your characters are just immune to the effects.
The slaying arrows are really straining your (reasonable) policy to not mention spoilers. Putting Dragon Arrows in A tier when there are 2 fights against Dragons (one of which you can also use the cheaper Undead slaying ones) is a bit of a stretch to me.
roaring thunder, bard flourish push, battlemaster prone/push is how i discovered the much fun sport of using bhaalists for bhaal ball. monstrosity good for one boss fight. many targets sooo broken
I use darkness arrows to steal from vendors since the area of effect is much smaller than darkness spell. You’re obscured while attempting to steal and you’re able to steal a few times while in turn based mode.
The best way to use a roaring thunder arrow is to reposition yourself. Use it on a cleric to reposition an open hand monk or something. It can save your damage character wasting action economy to disengage. It’s best used in the same turn as your free disengage. It’s way better than healing your monk or casting a protective spell because it’s free economy and then you can use your movement to reposition after.
Disagree about the thunder arrow. It's easily saved by the important enemies but it's incredibly useful in dispatching the minions in a huge bunch. Normally they are week and you could shoot them one by one by one thunder arrow takes care of most of them since so many fights are on cliffs and stuff.
I got so annoyed with it after a while, and gave up on using them.recently I was trying to use them to push Dame away from the bone chill effect, and ofc she saved like 4 of those
i think you are doing a disservice to the ilmater arrow, because some fights have healing numbers that are extremely high. myrkul for example heals for about 50~, that is from my experience much more than a typical undead slaying arrow and denying that amount of healing can single handedly carry fights that do it. and i dont think its really comparable to the bone chill cantrip because not only is it a attack action instead of a cast action, but also it just happens along with the normal attack while a caster would need to interrupt their plans for that turn to cast it, the level of ease that archers can do it with essentially means if you have a archer in your party no enemies can heal for the entire game.
One thing you didn't mention of arrow of many targets, if you have the shortbow of the banshee, the frightened condition can apply to all of them. I'm using it on my sword bard to stack up my arcane acuity and I always seem to frightened at least 1 out of 5 per arrow hit
Roaring thunder is way higher than D tier in my book. In all of my runs, they have been monumental in winning fights, either pushing enemies off ledges or into hazards, pushing my allies away from them to prevent opportunity attacks while saving an action to dash, knocking around targets like the chanting bhallists or anyone else sanctuaried or just making any minor adjustment to possitioning.
Dragon Slaying arrows are mostly useless. You will face only TWO dragons in the entire game, assuming you take on Ansur, unless you also piss off Qudenos, for some reason. And the dragon at the top of the netherbrain, you don't even need to fight at all.
Dude, the Ilmater arrow is so clutch. I was fighting the lava elemental and i couldnt do any damage because of its healing that let it heal up to 120 hp per turn. Shot it once with the arrow and the rest was a piece of cake.
the arrows of roaring thunder should be higher cause the first time one of my characters died was when Gale got thundered into a lava pit. >:( Also lost an honour run cause the whole party was trying to sneak past an archer I didn't know had an arrow of roaring thunder and we were standing next to a precarious ledge.
Yes those duergar archers in the Nere fight completely ruined my day with these on my first honor mode run. They seem to work better for the AI than for players
Yeah, roaring thunder should be at least B: Situational one hit kill & AoE preparation for non-casters is sooo good. I used them on my shadow monk, who almost always went first, a lot of times: Teleport into a good position, knock 2 more enemies into a pile, on higher levels shoot another arrow - then the caster comes in with Fireball, blizzard, whatever.
They're much better against the party since PCs will tend to have minmaxed stats, so Gale will often have a very low str save and can fail a DC 12. Enemies tend to have pretty good str saves and even ones with a +0 pass the save 45% of the time - for me, that kind of failure rate just isn't worth it!
I must have gotten lucky in my runs because I'd rate the thunder arrow way closer to the top. It is my most used arrow because it's so prevalent and easy to knock a few enemies off into oblivion. Typically open with that and then let the melee guys deal with who's left. Obviously the bomb is better, but way harder to obtain. Thunder does work in all the acts. Darkness is spot on at the top though.
oh wow, arrow of roaring thunder is my personal favorite to use, at least in the early game. I just love things that give knock back and its really useful to conserve spell slots and such. D tier i feel like is a bit harsh for the many cases knock back can be used. Its also just an additional bonus as opposed to a regular arrow, which is nice for battles where you dont really want to put a surface on the ground. I've had cases where I was able to hit it on the wall and push enemies closer. Granted, the smokepowder arrow is better at it in a lot of cases, but in the early game i had a lot of mileage out of it. And for end game, was very useful fighting bhaal cultists and the lorroakan fight. On the flipside of it, Darkness is my least favorite one to use. Maybe since I did not take the niche advantage of making it works but it usually means my ranger/spell caster can't hit the target anymore, which sucks for my gloomstalker/thief ranger which usually has a lot of actions to just kill it. I'm sure theres equipment or things to work around that, but it would probably require a lot of investment and a dedicated build to work.
I find transposition arrow is very good on non-archer high AC tank builds, especially combined with Sentinel and any "damage on miss" equipment. you can use your movement & the bow to position your tank character in tight concentrations of enemies. it just lets you get up close and personal quickly.
Your list is very similar to what I love to use in my games. I do like Ilmaters arrows a lot in act 1, but after that, they are not that good any more. And arrow of many targets is so powerful and nice.
Another great tier list for BG3 in the bag! Curious though: several times you’ve said “having [blank] arrow on each character…” yet the magical pockets mechanic allows any character to use an item from another other character’s inventory. Ergo wouldn’t dividing the stack among the party be unnecessary?
Arrows of Darkness are **incredibly** strong on builds that run hexblade/fighter crossclasses - everyone had devilsight and 3 ranged attacks, and you can put out darkness without spell slots or concentration! Getting everyone on eldritch night gives you even more darkness casts :D
I guess I shouldn't have used a Roaring Thunder arrow against Ethel while my friend was in the cut scene with her and knocking her into that bottomless chasm in her huts basement bypassing that boss fight entirely.
I don't know the exact mechanics of Silence in BG3, but in D&D 5e, Silence only prevents you from casting spells that have a Verbal component. This should prevent Shield and Hellish Rebuke, but not Counterspell, as Counterspell only has a Somatic component, so it only needs a free hand to cast it. BG3 doesn't care about Somatic components though, all characters can cast spells while they have stuff equipped in both hands without problems, so this means in BG3, as long as you have a reaction available, you could always cast Counterspell.
They simulate verbal components by some spells (like Hypnotic Pattern) specifically having "you can cast this while silenced," and ignore somatic entirely (or rather, all spells have verbal only).
@@Cephalopocalypse I see well that makes it pretty confusing then, because in game Counterspell has an incantation so that would imply a verbal component in BG3, and if some spells like Hypnotic Pattern have it worded like that, while Silence's tooltip has a similar wording in BG3 as in 5e, it just seems like a bit of a mess.
it just occured to me that the fact bards can't use this arrows while flourishing is a real nice edge other archers can get over them. Particularly lvl 11 fighters, a whole 4x weapon damage + riders over a 10-2 bard
I did mention that all on-hit effects work, but I definitely could have spent more time on it! I just didn't want the video to turn into 15 minutes of hyping up many targets arrows :P
At level 3, I defeated the level 5 Matriarch Spider with a single shot using a thunder arrow. I knocked it down a hole and got the trophy Pest Control.
Tactical spoiler for the end of Act II: . . . . . I tried using Arrows of Ilmater on the Avatar of Myrkul at the end of the second act, because I knew he would devour those Necromites and I didn't want him to heal from that. Unfortunately, it turns out that the healing technically happens on the sacrificial Necromite's turn, and since the Bone Chill effect stopped at the end of his OWN turn, the Avatar of Myrkul was totally able to benefit from that healing. At first I thought the arrow was glitched out or something, but when I reviewed it afterwards I saw the order of operations. So, I guess the short version is: Don't bother with Arrows of Ilmater during the Avatar of Myrkul fight in particular, they will not prevent his healing because of the way the healing happens (through no fault of the arrows' own). [EDIT] Unless you can apply it *after* Avatar of Myrkul's initiative (but before the Necormites)
I don't know if it's a bug, or intentional nerfs since this video was made (I only got BG3 about a month ago), but I've noticed two factors that make special arrows a little weaker than described in this video: First, the game only lets me select a special arrow for my first shot on a character with the Extra Attack feature. If I hit the ranged attack option for my extra attack, it brings up the menu of special arrows in my hot bar, but they're all grayed out and unselectable. The other thing is, I've noticed arrows that are supposed to create a surface being inconsistent in that, particularly against larger targets.
Acid arrows will also explode things that go boom. Learnt that the hard way. I don’t think they explode liquids like wine, but they def will explode those glass fire bottles.
Worth mentioning that the arrow of transposition CANNOT be used as your extra attack! I am not sure if you get an extra attack if you use it first, but if you have attacked once and are on your extra attack it won’t let you fire this. At least, it hasn’t for me in the past.
re: Arcane Interference, enemies _should_ be able to cast Counterspell while silenced, and _shouldn't_ be able to cast Shield. It would be funny (albeit also frustrating) if they somehow got that backwards.
I get that each arrow has different usages in some major fights. so the "tier" of the arrow will vary and you're doing a general use tier list so maybe my perspective is skewed. For my honor runs, I couldnt kill bhaalists with arrow of many targets in one shot. Roaring thunder was the way to go when i had to kill one in the turn. Arcane interference saved me in house of grief from that darkness concentration. etc etc. I would move roaring up a little because it can prone enemies from fall height or 1 shot them but sacrifice like 50g of loot which isnt too bad.I 'd like to give those two an honorable mentions, cause screw darkness and hadar and other cc spells! I'd personally put them in A tier. My only critiques are (my opinion, doesnt mean its right lol) : Acid removing AC by 2 by Act 2 wasnt reallly too big a help if the stats of the characters are decent enough. especially when you got like risky ring other things too that helps you hit.. I think i barely shot those in any of my runs i completed. I'd personally move acid down a bit to like B or C tier. ice seemed to never prone enemies (maybe its my luck idk). Ice arrows was nice with create water in moonrise though. I could see it in B or even A tier since it can kinda mess up alot of enemies if done right. Appreciate the content though! its fun to see other people's perspectives. maybe i should try to use the other arrows more often.
You may not have mentioned that poisons, damage riders and enhancements, and conditions are all transferred through the different arrows and onto any damage surface left behind.
Immater arrows are usually the ones I sell unless I’m desperate. Most characters don’t heal, unless your fighting a group that has a labeled cleric, like the flaming fist guides, your waiting to see if they heal before you use the arrow. I normally just have 1 for each character and I’ve never brought any.
In addition to all what you said, Arrow of Many targets bounces can hit enemies in Sanctuary, which in one certain encounter where the main enemy is surrounded with those who buff her while staying in sanctuary make that encounter just a joke. Totally imbalanced consumable. And you can stack infinite amount of them in creche (I don't know, maybe even earlier, but cheche trader is the first one I can think of).
Ice arrows are definitely S+ tier. You can double the cold damage on wet enemies, so you deal 4d4 extra damage and can create a much greater ice surface if you casted water. Same for lightning arrows, probably S tier on water surfaces (the electrocuted damage is doubled too). Fire arrows are meh, too much enemies resist to them, and you practically just use them to fire explosives.
I remember when I made the Ethal fight so much easier when I fired an ice arrow at the one I thought was her out of her clones. She slipped and Karlach got to wail on her with a speed potion and dropped her down enough for her to surrender.
I too do like Darkness but I was surprised at least 2 times in honour mode by enemies being able to throw bombs or stones into it: Yurgir's Merregons and Goblins. Merregons have Devil's Sight, so no hiding in Darkness from them. But Goblins only have Darkvision. I created a bug report and they are looking into it.
Yeah, there's some weird issues with darkness still - the game's lighting engine is incredibly buggy. My (completely unsubstantiated) theory is that the darkness effect sometimes intersects either environmental lighting or hidden level geometry and leaves little tiny holes in the protection effect, then the enemy targets your exposed elbow or something like that. The downsides of an analog rather than grid-based combat system!
the one time i needed to use a transportation arrow i only had an extra attack left but the game wanted my full action for the arrow and said no. was quite infuriating.
I don't know if this is the same issue, but there's a bug that prevents you from using special arrows as an extra attack, when they are inside a bag in the inventory. I had the issue for most of my first run, but when I put them at the top layer of the inventory, I was able to use them.
If arrows could be used with the bard-ranged-doubleattack, id probably have used them all up by now. but like this, i choose to use bardic inspiration instead
Strangely, i think it's kind of cool that bard builds feel less about the arrow and more magic, while eg ranger uses the arrows way more. Maybe not the goal but it's just a fun distinction to me. And probably also good for game breakage limiting. :D
My main problem with these are that most are AoE and my party is heavily melee focused. So hilariously enough Illmater's is the only one I actually use at all because it's the only one I can just focus with
Ive never used the darkness arrows,i hate being blinded and usually roll drow for darkvision to help prevent i guess im just not cordinated enough for it
