# Orcish arrow

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Name

orcish arrow

Appearance

crude arrow

Damage vs. small

1d5

Damage vs. large

1d6

To-hit bonus

+0

Weapon skill

bow

Size

one-handed

Base price

2 zm(+10/positive enchant)

Weight

1

Material

iron

An orcish arrow is an arrow for use with a bow. It appears as a crude arrow when unidentified. It is slightly less effective than a regular arrow. If you are an orcish player firing them from an orcish bow, your multishot counter is increased by 1, meaning you may multishot up to one more arrow than otherwise.

Generation
Orcish Rangers start with an orcish bow and stacks of orcish arrows instead of a regular bow and arrows.[1]
Uruk-hai have a 1⁄3 chance of being generated with an orcish bow and 3–14 poisoned orcish arrows.[2][3]

Strategy
Orcish arrows are often spawned poisoned, allowing a 10% instant death chance against many early game monsters. This overcomes the lower damage, though it's bad to be on the receiving end of them without poison resistance. And it's hard to come by any without having them shot at you.
Orcish rangers are in a particular position to benefit from using orcish arrows, because they begin the game with the gear necessary to multishot them and can ignore the dangers of poison in retrieving them. 
These arrows are less useful to non-orcs, as they have less damage and are uncommon to find after the early game. If you are lacking in arrows, orcish arrows can at least fill the quiver slot to keep more preferable fodder from breaking in use.

References

↑ src/u_init.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 216

↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 412

↑ src/makemon.c in NetHack 3.6.6, line 157