Edit: Just found out from a helpful post below that the ammo for BB doesn’t even impact elemental damage at all. This makes this problem way worse.
I main the BB and I love it. But the thing chews through ammo faster than both other ammo weapons by a significant margin. A single mutation will see me burn through more than 500 rounds. Often close to 800 if the mutation is corrupted.
It’s essential that you use orichalcum cartridges to achieve the weapon’s actual power. The rounds sell, when there is stock, for around 0.7g per. 500g per mutation or so. This is not sustainable anyway because, and this is the crux of the issue, they’re not easy to make. So few sell them.
I’m 200 engineering and the main reason I leveled this craft first is this. But the recipe for cartridges is so flipping expensive!
It’s 1 ingot and 3 silk plus gunpowder. The ingot and gunpowder are fine but 3x infused silk… For a couple weeks supply I have to farm 900 effing units of the stuff. It takes longer than anything else I have to do. And it’s all consumable.
Can the recipe just be cut to 1x infused silk please? And can ammo not be consumed in expeditions? The latter is most important for me. I think it’s rank unfair that I have to maintain this just to maintain my potential dps anyway, if I’m honest. And I reiterate, the BB uses tons of rounds per minute more than the other weapons. Yet every click takes the same ammo as the bow which does its damage in way fewer hits per minute. Let alone the fact the bb requires much more riskier play but that’s besides the point.
My game play generally centers around me constantly switching ammo in and out depending on my content. I shouldn’t have to do this.
I used to run bow on my first character and it was OK because your attack rate is never more than 1/s or so and you can maintain maximum damage this way. Often enough, you’re attacking even slower than this but that’s how bow (and I guess musket) is designed. I don’t think all the skills even use an arrow.
The BB unloads about 5 rounds in less than 2s, then you’re switching to another weapon to fire once, then switch back to fire the next two in 1s. If you don’t do this, the BB is not being used effectively enough and your group will suffer. If I use star metal, I’m losing 5% damage. Now I’d sort of do this to be honest but star metal bullets are still rare and still take a lot to make. And that’s still sacrificing 5% damage. No other weapon has to do that.
If it’s an easy mutation, not PVP and so anything else then I just run without bullets and get no bonus damage. It irritates me that I have to do this at all. And it’s easy to forget.
I just find myself using the BB less and less unless I have to and again… just stupid. Why should it be this way. Other MMOs I’ve played allow you to basically get unlimited ammo as a high-end perk. Now, I don’t think this is necessary but I do think ammo is way too costly to make given it’s so heavily consumable.
If they just removed the really silly 3x silk requirement for crafting, it’d make a huge difference. And I still think… if we don’t have to repair in expeditions, why should 3 weapons have to basically still pay for maintenance in them?
So today’s my biweekly dull four hour farm for stuff just so I can use my weapon properly and I just checked because it’s been a while since I made arrows and had to laugh when I saw that arrows require one orichalcum ingot and only 2 ironwood planks and 3 feathers
What the hell?
Why are cartidges so expensive to make? Even the gunpowder is way more faffy than feathers but 2 ironwood is way, way more reasonable than 3 infused silk.
Please AGS can you revisit this? 1 of everything is plenty enough (for both arrows and cartridges). That or can you at least add a new recipe for orichalchum pellets that is just 1x ori ingot, 1x silk and 1x gunpowder? The BB uses way more ammo than the other two weapons.
Just to put this into perspective… today I must farm around 900 infused silk to make enough cartridges for a week or two of game play with the BB for me and my friend. That is (without bonuses, so somewhat less than this):
There are 6k bullets at 0.45g per (an absolute steal, I’m guessing that guy just leveled up engineering on bullets and is selling them off because that’s never worth the time it takes to make them - I just bought these right away) and then 3k bullets at 0.7g per (not unreasonable but not worth it for just 3k bullets).
That’d be about 5k gold for 9k bullets, which wouldn’t last me a week and I’d also then have no more to buy because what nutcase would actually try to make money off of this recipe?
PS you can’t make money off it unless you farm everything yourself. Even just the cost of the fibers puts it way above 0.7g per bullet.
From what people have told me and tested, there is no damage bonus for bb when using different ammo types, seems to be a bug, so use whatever cheap ammo you want for bb
My god that’s even worse. No not only do I still need to use it (if I don’t then I still lose damage, even though it’s 10% instead of 20% on my PVE BBs) but when I do spend all this time crafting it I’m actually only getting 10% damage boost instead of 20%? So it costs more than arrows to make by a significant margin, I use more than both bow and musket users by a huge, huge margin and… it actually gives only 10% damage boost for my PVE BBs. And that’s just normal shots, not considering the skills which are mostly 100% fire and that’s the biggest part of my PVP BB.
Thanks for the info, I appreciate you telling me… just, this has made me more annoyed about this.
