Topic says it all, lol. Especially considering how well Bethesda has already done throwing weapons in previous games made 10 years ago. Seriously Beth, why the step back? Morrowind was better. Lots of different throwing weapons, you could poison each one at your hideout with no problem. Oblivion was better, You could recover your arrows from people and the landscape.

This game - You have to poison each weapon before you throw it. Meaning, you have to carry all the poison with you, all the time, and poison each weapon you want to throw right before you throw it. That's realistic, right? Hardly... Is that a glitch or something? I have done extensive research over this. You can try it too. Here's what I did:

Batch of 10 throwing knives.
Equip one and poison it.
Drop one throwing knife, and try to poison your batch of 9 again.
It will say it has already been poisoned, so this would lead a regular person to believe "AWESOME! One poison and I can apply it to my entire batch of throwing knives? Sweet!".
After playing around you will quickly notice only your initial throwing knife, the first one that you will throw, was poisoned -- but none of the others.

So, what would be the logical way to poison a batch of throwing knives then? One by one. Tedious, but realistic. So here's how you -would- do it:

Drop your throwing knives one by one.
Pick one up, poison it, put it down.
Tediously do this for ALL of them.
Then, pick up all your now poisoned Throwing Knives.

Time to test them out:

Chuck one of them at what ever won't die in one hit+poison (A human follower is perfect).
Watch the health trickle down.
Now whip another one at your target.
No damage after the initial hit.
Go back to your inventory, try to poison one of your knives, that you definitely already poisoned.
You can poison it, because the effect was lost after you threw your initial, poisoned, throwing knife.
You wasted all those other poisons.

This is definitely a glitch that makes one not want to use what the developers of the game put time, money, and energy into creating. When you bought the game, you payed for these weapons that are pointless. You payed for this glitch to exist. The weapons do low damage, they have a very limited range, they have potential, but are rendered inferior to almost every other means of attack, mainly because you can't poison them all before going into battle. Just imagine if you had 30+ poisoned knives you could just throw and throw. It'd be awesome. It'd be worth using. It would be worth the time to go find the ingredients for poison and stockpiling throwing weapons. But instead you have to carry around all that poison, and constantly hit the menu button, and reapply after every throw. You might as well just save time and shoot the enemy in the face, which I'm sure is how most people play this game.

Here's a quick, short list of strengths and weaknesses throwing weapons have:

Strengths (4)- Silent, lightweight, poison-able, appealing to people who like to try different styles of playing every now and then, or play as stealth assassins.

Weaknesses (7)- Weak, unrecoverable, rare, low rate-of-fire, short range, have to poison each one specifically before throwing (kicks the thrill of battle right out the window), given the pretty shotty *aiming abilities of this game, you almost have to be in vats before you can confidently throw.

Now here's what needs to be changed, and easily can be, to make throwing weapons more worthwhile:

1) That glitch where poisoning each knife individually doesn't matter? That needs to be fixed. I'm pretty sure the dev's programmed it so that after poisoning a throwing weapon with that name (maybe repair rate aswell), the effect goes away after throwing it, so that you don't have permanently poisoned throwing weapons.

2) Make throwing weapons sold by more vendors. As far as I know there are only three places you can buy them, and one of them requires a speech check then sells them to you in imperfect condition. A one-use weapon... that you have to repair...

3) Make them recoverable. This is not a difficult thing to do. They have done it before. If you can recover objects fired by the Rock-It- Launcher, I don't see why you can't pick up thrown weapons - off the ground or out of dead bodies. And don't tell me it's because of "resource issues", I'm not buying that. You can drop literally dozens of items at once (including throwing weapons) without freezing the game, but you can't make several throwing weapons stay available to be picked up? Just make it like Oblivion with the arrows where they start to disappear if you shot out too many.

I don't see why you can't just make poisoned throwing weapons a new weapon all together, like in Morrowind. Give the poisoned weapons their own quantity. That way you can equip "Poisoned Hatchets" or just "Hatchets" in your Hotkeys. Perhaps make Poisons a 'Mod' and attach the mod to the throwing weapon? "Throwing Knives+"? It honestly disturbs me more than a little that Bethesda has started making their own audience create the best, most creative content by far. It's gotten to the point where they create only B grade content, and let the players make the game worth playing. Console players are left out, and it isn't fair. What bothers me most is that the developers have already done this exact thing correctly, and now they are doing it wrong. Like a kid that gets bumped up a grade, and then held back for two years. I know you are probably going to say "This isn't The Elder Scrolls/Go play Oblivion then/Bethesda doesn't want to keep doing the same thing". That's all valid, and I understand, but a game company should never work backwards. If you had a feature in one game, don't ever make it so that same feature is lessened in the next game. You definitely shouldn't take the feature out completely either. Not unless you are adding a better feature that outdates the previous one, like Resident Evil with the buying/selling system. That's how you LOSE your customer base. Be loyal to your customers and give them what you know they like, and you customers will be loyal to you.

*That's another thing that bugs me - why is the aiming in Bethesda console games so slow? Do they not have people testing this game for the console versions? I always play at the highest sensitivity, and it still points at a snails pace. Try playing this game at the lowest settings for the 360/PS3. It's pointless. No one would every want camera movement that slow. It's completely asinine and it makes no sense. The dev's need to increase the sensitivity parameters.


Well, that's my novel. Whatcha think?

I think everything you said is correct, and all of your suggestions should be put in a future patch.... Until something like that happens, at least making throwing weapons recoverable, I won't be using them. You made the effort putting these weapons into the game Obsidian, you should make them useful.





Exactly, maybe I'm overreacting as I've had a bit to drink tonight, but what kind of business practice is that? These are Hamburger Helper games.

I agree completely. On my first playthrough I played as a cowboy style chr. I was thrilled when I first found a throwing hatchet for sale. The price seemed a little steep, but I bought it anyway. Then, to see how accurate the throwing weapons are, I hurled it at the door.

The animation was fantastic as it spun across the room and embedded itself in the doorframe, "Awesome, I can't wait to chuck that at the next fiend I see." I walk over to the door. "WTF!? Why won't it let me select it? What's going on? I can see it, it's right there. My crosshair is over it. Let me selact it and pick it up you [censored]!!"

Needless to say I have never used a throwing weapon since.

The threw a [censored] javelin and it pierced a legion soldier. he didnt die.... NO human can surrvive that... i hit him right in the chest for chirst sake !

I would just say you craft poison version of the throwing weapons at campfire with the weapon and poison.

Also I would like to see some damage increase given how slow the throwing animation is.

Throwing Knifes should be hit-scan, that way people can't snipe with them yet have a decent chance to hit with it.

I think that a chance to recover the thrown weapon/s is needed. Perhaps it can start at 10% and move up in increments of 10% each time 20 points in Melee are taken (with the point being the greater the skill with throwing, the greater the chance of making a "clean hit" that doesn't damage the weapon). So, with 100 Melee skill, you'll have a 1/2 chance in recovering a thrown weapon.

Theres a simple solution to all of this - dont use throwing knives.

What if I want to use throwing weapons? Should I be forced to use alternatives because Obsidian failed to make throwingbweapons work correctly

Thanks guys, I'm glad so many of you agree with me. I love playing as a stealth character usually, and decided to make a ninja build this time through. Machete, Chinese armor and bare fist-unarmed only. Once I remembered there were throwing knives in this game, I decided to implement them, and that's how I learned the throwing weapons are such garbage (with the exception of the spear, which takes me out of the experience since it's so unrealistic to carry dozens of spears at a time).



Looks like someone didn't read the topic. Either that or they missed the point entirely :confused:

The argument here (One of my many) is that we paid the devs for a game they made, and they made things in it that work poorly/not at all and they should FIX these things so that we WILL use them. Would you want to pay full price for a new car with no working windows? You wouldn't dare say "Simple solution - don't use the windows" would you?

My issue with thrown weapons is there are so few of them in the game. This seems to have been addressed in a patch as I notice more of them now as loot, but there are still not enough of them in the game.

It would be nice to be able to apply posions in batches. And for sure, be able to recover them, if you can find them.

I am sure that's why they omitted the idea. But it wouldn't be such a problem if we can have a steady supply.

[quote name='Yomenus1' timestamp='1298542862' post='17221135']
The threw a [censored] javelin and it pierced a legion soldier. he didnt die.... NO human can surrvive that... i hit him right in the chest for chirst sake !


To be fair, humans in Fallout are alot more resilient than IRL (all those non-fatal point-blank shotgun headshots show that) but even then throwing spears do a really sad amount of damage.

I would use them a lot if they could be recovered. Why in the world aren't they?