Zaryte bow

The Zaryte bow is dropped exclusively by Nex, the leader of Zaros' army in the God Wars Dungeon and also the most powerful boss monster to date. It requires two hands to wield, level 80 ranged, and degrades over time, but it does not need ammunition, much like the Crystal bow.

It lasts for 10 hours of combat before degrading, and then may be repaired by Bob in Lumbridge or at a Player-owned-house armour stand. It should be noted that the bow does not degrade in increments, and its stats stay the same for the entire 10 hours. The bow will not degrade if it is simply worn. It must be used in combat in order for it to degrade. The bow costs 2 million coins to repair at Bob's Brilliant Axes, or 1 million coins at an Armour stand with level 99 Smithing.

In terms of speed, damage and accuracy, the Zaryte bow is identical to a Chaotic crossbow when used with Rune bolts. However, a shield may be used with the Chaotic crossbow, whereas it cannot with the Zaryte bow, although here you may replace an Ava's Device, which is useful if you have a chaotic crossbow, with a cape. The Chaotic crossbow can also use enchanted bolts such as dragon bolts(e) to inflict heavier damage, albeit at a significantly higher cost. The Zaryte bow may be more useful than the Chaotic crossbow in specific instances where god protection is needed - for instance, when on a Spiritual Mages slayer task, one can easily achieve higher range attack bonuses with a Zaryte bow than with a Chaotic crossbow due to the bonuses lost from having to equip god-protection items. Also, since the Chaotic crossbow degrades at 2M per 10 hours in addition to the bolt costs, while the Zaryte bow degrades at 1-2M per 10 hours depending on one's Smithing level with no ammunition costs, the Zaryte bow is significantly cheaper to use per shot than a Chaotic crossbow with Rune bolts, its equivalent in accuracy and ranged strength. The difficulty in earning tokens for the Chaotic crossbow has its counterpart in the difficulty in either killing Nex or earning enough GP to buy the Zaryte bow off another player. Ultimately, which weapon among the two is better depends a lot on how the player intends to use them.

For specific instances where long range is important (especially the fight caves), this bow may be useful as it has longer range than any other weapon in Runescape, tied with the Crystal Bow and Hand Cannon. Also, because it has no ammunition requirement, it can be used in Barbarian Assault at full strength, which might be important to players intending to use range there.

The Zaryte bow also has a lower ranged attack than the Magic longbow (sighted) but has +115 to ranged strength bonus while strength of other bows usually depends on the ammunition (max +60 with dragon or god arrows or +70 with a full Crystal bow). This makes the Zaryte bow the strongest bow in the game, but not the strongest ranged weapon as it is surpassed in strength by the hand cannon, several types of bolts and Morrigan's Equipment.

Wielding this bow or any piece of ancient armour will make all factions in the God Wars Dungeon unaggressive.

Dropping monsters

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Trivia

 * In the Behind the Scenes article prior to the release of the Zaryte bow, it was claimed that the bow would be "as powerful as dragonstone-tipped rune bolts". However, upon release the bow only had the power of regular rune bolts (+115 ranged strength), rather than Dragon bolts which give a bonus of +117. The originally claimed power of the bow was additionally misleading in that the bow doesn't have the dragonfire special effect given by Dragon bolts. Although Jagex did not state this, many people believed the bow to have the special effect.
 * A fully repaired Zaryte bow will last for exactly 60,000 game ticks worth of combat. Since the base speed of the bow is 4, it will get exactly 10,000 shots on accurate/longrange stance, or 12,000 attacks on rapid stance before degrading. This works out to a total of 100-200 coins per shot on accurate/longrange, or 83-166 coins per shot on rapid.

Zaryte bow