Game Mechanics: If you give a mob a bow + arrow or it should gain ranged attacks

[CrazyPro]

Ever wondered why archer mobs drop a bow and a single arrow?

Well, that's what gives mobs ranged attacks in the first place.

You should be able to trade a bow and an arrow to any mob in the game and it will gain ranged attacks based on the stats of the ranged weapon and ammunation you gave it.

It still works this way on live:



In this video on live, I charmed a rat (because mobs will give items back to you when uncharmed on live, unlike on p99 where some mobs will equip items you give to them and utilize them but not drop them unless they were charmed when you traded it to them) and gave it a bow but no arrow, and then broke charm, kited it around, and it never shoots at me, so I charm it again, give it a single arrow, break charm, and then it starts spitting infinite arrows at me out of it's mouth. I killed it, found another rat, charm it, and then I gave this rat a throwing weapon, broke charm and kited it around just out of melee range and it never threw at me, so that rules out throwing. (makes sense since there isn't any documentation of of fire giants throwing their throwing boulders at people) I kill it, and then find yet another rat, charm it, give it a single arrow, break charm, and it doesn't shoot at me.

So that narrows it down to this:

If a mob has a bow and an arrow in it's inventory it will gain ranged attacks, that's why mobs with ranged attacks have always been guaranteed to have a bow and single arrow since the game's release.

I can't find a single bit of information regarding this online literally anywhere, not even now, because I guess it was too stupid of an idea to try that nobody has bothered to test it out until now, but that's how it works.

No matter what kind of mob you give it to, be it a mage pet, rat, or raid boss, if it accepts items, it will shoot arrows at you if it ever gets a bow and an arrow in it's inventory.

This behavior is absent on p99, I believe the devs mistakenly just manually added ranged attacks to these mobs in their special_attacks string.

On P99, I can give an axe to an orc pawn (uncharmed) and he equips it and starts slashing. I go to another orc pawn, give him a bow, and then a single arrow, and aggro him, and he never shoots it.