Bow

How it plays

• Hold critical distance, which the reticle signals: farther out, arrows lose their full value; closer in, stamina goes into dodges.
• Build the charge between movements rather than standing still.
• Swap coatings by phase: status when the threshold is close, power when the part is open.

Focus Mode and wounds

Focus Mode is the bow's normal state: most shots are placed while aiming, and wounds can be designated directly. Its Focus Strike triggers at range, which no melee weapon can do.

Defending

No guard, no offset: distance is the defence, and stamina is its price. A bow out of stamina can neither shoot hard nor step away.

What it brings

• Always hits the part it aims at, without depending on the monster's height or stance.
• Changes function mid-hunt through a simple coating swap, with nothing to reforge.

What loses hunts

• Shooting from maximum range out of caution: that is where shots return the least.
• Judging the bow's status palette from the bow itself: it lives on the coatings, and a bow showing no status can inflict four.

What the data says ?

• Its status palette is read from the coatings, not the weapon: read like a melee weapon, the bow would look incapable of the four statuses it actually all carries.

  profiles.bow.statusSource

• The sleep coating is the rarest in the category: only 6 bows take it, where 30 accept the power coating.

  profiles.bow.mechanics.coatings.sleep

• Inflation of 1.2, the lowest in the game: a bow's displayed attack is nearly its true raw, and looks trivial next to a hammer without being so.

  profiles.bow.bloat

• No status escapes it: poison, paralysis, sleep and blast are each carried by a coating.

  profiles.bow.missingStatuses

Defence

• Guardno
• Power Clashno
• Offset attackno

What belongs to it alone ?

• Coatings

  power 30close-range 30pierce 27paralysis 26exhaust 17blast 15poison 8sleep 6