The more I play Morrowind, the more I love it. One of the features I am enjoying currently is the variety of weapons, and inclusion of throwing weapons.

I bought a brace of throwing knives from someone in Balmora today and equipped them as I walked off toward Hla Oad. My character has Marksman as a major, so I figured I'd save my arrows for tougher enemies than the rats, kwama foragers, and cliff racers I was likely to face on the road.

I notice that the damage of these weapons is quite low, but that seems to be partly mitigated by their speed. Drawing back a bow takes probably a good 2 seconds per shot, if I want the arrow to hit with full force, whereas I can toss knives as fast as I can click the mouse.

Unfortunately, I don't seem to be getting a lot of throwing weapons back after they've been thrown. As in, I don't get any back after they're thrown. I think I went through my 20 knives on a kwama forager and a cliff racer.

Are these weapons simply un-retrievable from enemy corpses? If I miss, is it ever possible to retrieve them from the ground?

Anyway, even with those issues, I'm really enjoying experimenting with the different weapons. Does anyone have any advice for "optimizing" throwing knives, so to speak?

Retrieval from corpses should be about 25-50% of those that HIT. Misses are always lost. There are mods to change the retrieval rate.

I generally use a bow and cheap iron arrows (1 Septim apiece), rather than costlier throwing weapons, since the bow itself provides a huge boost in damage compared to that of the arrow or other projectile, or your Strength bonus. If you place a feeble enchantment of ANY kind on the bow, it will damage resistant enemies such as Ghosts and Daedra, regardless of the arrow type.

Oh, I use a bow too, and it seems generally more effective. I really like the idea and speed of throwing weapons, though - do you think they are or can be competitive?

As an aside - is there any reason to buy more expensive arrows? From what I can tell, the arrows themselves don't provide any damage...

What do you mean by "the bow itself provides a huge boost in damage compared to... your Strength bonus"? Does Strength play into Marksman weapons at all?

Yes, strength determines how much damage you do with anything physical. Though Marksman skill raises Agility, the actual agility attribute only determines how reliable you are at 'hitting' people with what you try to hit them with.

This is the same with how, though conjuration raises intelligence, willpower is what actually is used to determine the chance your spell has of being successfully cast.

No kidding! That's ... pretty awesome, actually. Another reason to keep incrementally raising that Strength score.

(Man, it's a good thing I chose the Lover birthsign, or I would be whiffing all over the place.)

Guess it's time for me to visit the good ol' UESP and get schooled on the intricacies of Morrowind.

Also, regarding the base damage... never you fear. Once you get into the 1st expansion (assuming you have Tribunal and Bloodmoon), you will find the throwing weapon to end all throwing weapons. The mystical darts of which I speak are capable of killing werewolves, and even gods, with only a few hits.

Also, the higher your marksman skill, the more likely you will retrieve arrows or thrown weapons from corpses. Magical weapons are NEVER retrievable. All the more reason to have an echanted bow and cheap arrows.

http://www.gamesas.com/user/441020-jaberkatyshusband/: You might be interested in a mod called "Throwing Rebalanced".

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=9253

Thanks for the tips!

I do have Tribunal & Bloodmoon, but haven't installed them yet because of the

Not running any mods now, but a friend hooked me up with a ton of mods he likes. Eventually I'll get to mods, but right now I want to experience the vanilla game. I'll have to check that one out, though.

Damage from an arrow includes that of the bow (the minimum if you rush it, the maximum if you draw back completely before release), the damage of the arrow (generally far lower than the bow), plus a bonus of about 1/10th your Strength. A plain iron arrow does 0-1 damage, and a plain iron longbow does something like 1-20 or 25, so 20 (bow) +1 (arrow) +5 (strength) = 26 damage per shot, and a better arrow for 4X the cost will raise that to 27. Getting a better bow that does 30 (Bonemold) is far more beneficial than buying arrows for 10X the price that do 3 or 4 extra damage. The bow will do +10 with every shot, compared to the +2 of +3 for the arrow. Of course, you can locate a handful or rare Ebony or Daedric arrows that do something like 10 or 15 damage, but a dozen of those (which is probably all of them in the game) would cost more than a high-end bow, and they're HEAVY.

I keep a couple of enchanted arrows (skeleton archers in tombs sometimes carry them) for special occasions where every last point counts, otherwise the difference between standard Chitin (or Iron) and heavier volcanic Glass (or something like that) is relatively trivial, and not worth it in my opinion. I sometimes go through 100 arrows on an extended venture, and that's a lot of extra weight as well as expense.

Unfortunately, thrown weapons don't get the "bow" damage bonus, so they're pretty heavily underpowered in the game, and the speed doesn't make up for the fact that you have to use 3X as many of them. Add their cost to that, and they're barely viable except for RP reasons. They needed a significant damage boost for the next game, but were chopped out instead "because nobody used them".

but, we don't need attributes.

There are at least two mods aimed to postpone those attacks. I prefer Cyrano's mod.

P.S.: One thing I've noticed about retrieving spent arrows is that sometimes they CTD my game when I try to shoot them again. So much so that I just leave them in the NPC/creature to avoid that annoyance.

Try stacking them with some fraction of your existing arrows in inventory, instead of equipping all of them at once. I've never seen a problem with retrieval, other than the odds being so low.

Tip - if you nock an arrow and find that your target has already fallen and can't get up, you don't need to waste the arrow. Enter inventory, unequip the arrows, and then return to the game and fire the empty bow. Don't forget to re-equip the arrows; it's embarrassing and bad for your health to reach into your quiver at the start of the next encounter and grab.....nothing.

Ah, great tip, thanks!