Introduction to Fletching

Every archer needs an arrow to be effective. Without ammunition, the strongest bow, atlatl or crossbow is just a piece of useless wood.

A bowyer can be found in almost every town, selling arrows, shafts and quarrels, and the supplies needed to make them. The majority sell regular arrowheads, arrow shafts and quarrel shafts, but a few sell specialty arrowheads that perform a little better, and vary in the damage type they inflict.

For an archer, carrying the arrows required for an extended hunt can become quite heavy, and the arrows are not always of the best quality, and that's where the fletching skill begins to shine. The raw supplies for arrows tend to weigh far less then the combined result, allowing an archer to hunt for longer periods of time without restocking.

In its simplest form, an arrow or quarrel is made of two parts; the arrowhead and the shaft. The shaft determines whether it will become an arrow or a quarrel. The arrowhead can vary, and determines the type and amount of damage the arrow will inflict.

Regular arrowheads are the most common, and lowest quality head. Some other heads, such as armor piercing and broadhead arrowheads inflict more damage per arrow and vary in the type of damage inflicted. A regular arrow does piercing damage and a broadhead does slashing, for example. This is very important in maximizing how much damage is inflicted against a certain foe, and vulnerabilites vary.

There are also some tools as well, such as the barbed tool, which can change an arrowhead from one type to another.

With the help of an alchemist one can also change the properties and damage of an arrowhead to one of the more powerful types in the game. By applying oils to an arrowhead, such as acid oil, the arrow will inflict acid damage, very good against Iron Golems. There are many oils which can be applied to heads, all of which are listed here.

Thanks to Thorfinn Sigurdssen, there's a calculator you can use to calculate how much of each component you need to restock deadly or greater bundles of arrowheads.

The skilled fletcher can double or triple the damage an archer can inflict with a single arrow, and I hope that these pages help you to become such a fletcher. Good luck!

Flynn's Arrowhead bundle component calculator