Crystal bow



The Crystal bow is a powerful bow available for purchase from Islwyn after a player completes the Roving Elves quest, and is an optional reward from the quest alongside the crystal shield. To wield the crystal bow, a player must also have 70 Ranged, and 50 Agility. However, since one of the requirements of Roving Elves is the completion of Regicide, which requires 56 Agility (boosts allowed), it is nearly impossible to wield the bow at level 50 agility. It may also be purchased and sold on the Grand Exchange after being bought from Islwyn while it is in a "New" state. The completion of Roving Elves is still required to wield the bow if a player obtains it in this manner. However, recharged bows do not count as "new" bows to prevent buying a crystal seed, recharging it and selling for a massive profit. It is worth noting that as this bow has the powers of Seren, goddess of the Elves, it does not require any arrows in your quiver, unlike other bows.

The crystal bow degrades during use. When a player first obtains a crystal bow, it will be a New/Full Crystal Bow. After 250 shots, it degrades into a "Crystal Bow 9/10", and for every 250 shots thereafter it will degrade another 1/10th, until it reverts into a crystal seed after a total of 2,500 shots. As the crystal bow degrades, its ranged attack bonus drops, as shown on the table below. Once the crystal bow has reverted to a crystal seed, a player can buy a New Crystal Bow for the cost of 900,000 coins, or have their crystal seed enchanted into a bow by Ilfeen. While having the seed re-enchanted costs 900,000 coins for the first time, the price lowers by 180k each time you get it re-enchanted, from 900k initially to a minimum of 180k. The number of times you have had a crystal object enchanted is combined for bow and shield; if you have had a crystal bow enchanted twice, charging a shield will cost 450k, just as if you recharged it twice. Also when recharging multiple bows the recharge price is lowered for all bows at the same time (so you will not have to pay full price to recharge each bow).

The crystal bow is one of the most cost efficient ranged weapons available. Even at the highest recharge cost the cost per shot is only 360, which is roughly the same as rune arrows. After each recharging becomes more and more efficient. At the minimum recharge cost, 180,000 gold, it is 72 gold per shot, which is roughly 1/5 of the price of rune arrows yet consistently stronger. The only downfall of the bow is that it accuracy deteriorates below that of a magic bow, which is a small price to pay for extremely cheap, strong arrows.

Maximum hit
The maximum hit for the crystal bow is 250% of your range level. For example, if your range level is 70, your max hit is 170-180. You can increase this by using a ranged potion. Although 250% of your range skill is its max hit at 10/10, when your bow is on 1/10 it will have fallen to 200%. An alternative to the Crystal Bow is a Rune crossbow, which is one-handed. Due to a shop update broad-tipped bolts have increased drastically in price causing the Crystal Bow to rise in popularity. Note however that the crystal bow has a tendency to cause massive lag when used, and so players are encouraged to use the weapon only if they are running safe mode. Players have reported hits as high as 342. The ammunition is estimated to be around 360 coins a shot, and when the recharge price is at minimum, a shot would be worth around 72 coins.

Bugs

 * Shortly after its release, players were able to buy the fully charged bow for 180,000 coins in a member server, then cast high alchemy on the same item for 540,000 in free-to-play. Jagex banned the accounts that abused this bug and prevented all players from casting alchemy on member items in free-to-play servers.
 * When the new high-detail graphics came out in a beta stage, players using the crystal bow to attack would see the bow pulled back instead of the string on the bow (this has been fixed).

Trivia

 * When attempting to light a fire using the crystal bow, a following message appears: "The bow resists all attempts to light a fire. It seems that the sentient tools of the elves don't approve you burning down forests." It used to say "You cannot light the fire, because the Crystal Bow has no string" - Which was, before the graphic update, true. However, after the HD update, Crystal Bows were given a string, which made this message obsolete until it was changed.
 * Even though it takes only 50 agility to wield the crystal bow, an agility level of 56 is needed to complete the Regicide quest, which is a prerequisite to complete the Roving elves quest. It is possible to complete Regicide using agility level boosts to reach level 56, using a spicy stew, however, this still requires level 50 Agility. It is however, possible to buy the bow from the Grand Exchange at full charge, but it cannot be wielded until Roving Elves is complete.
 * As with javelins and throwing axes when equipping arrows and bolts the ranged strength does not change.
 * The Crystal bow is the only bow that has its own Ranged Strength bonus.
 * When the bow fully degrades, it appears as a Crystal seed in your weapon slot. When you unequip the seed, you can not equip it again.
 * The Crystal bow has the second longest firing distance of all ranged weapons and is only beaten by the Dark bow.
 * Before the HD update the bow's string was invisible.
 * The number of shots fired by crystal bows is tracked per player rather than per bow, making it possible to prevent a fully charged bow from degrading by using another crystal bow for every 250th shot.
 * The crystal bow was one of the items considered for having the option to re-colour at Barbarian assault.
 * If you try to alchemize your crystal bow, it will say "You can't do that to elven crystal!"
 * When you shoot the crystal bow it looks like the arrow is bouncing off the air.
 * The Crystal bow is much like the Zhi-bows from the David Gemmell novel "Echoes of the Great Song" which are crystal powered, have strings of light and fire bolts of light.
 * The Crystal bow's arrows look similar to the arrows fired from a Magic bow's special attack.
 * The arrows the Crystal bow fires appear to be steel arrows.