[Imbuing] Help me make an awesome spawn bow - hit area

[[JD]]

So recently I started toying with hit area bows and found some cheap non optimized ones on vendors around. They seem to be really cool but I want to see how far I can push the limit.

I've heard you can only have one hit area on a bow, is this correct?
How high can you take it without special ingredients?

I plan on using a high SSI dropped bow and then imbuing it to save materials.

In the past because my skill is low sometimes I'll take it to a higher level friend to finish off.

What are the best things I should put on a spawning hit area bow?

I'm thinking of:

SSI high as possible (this will already be on the dropped bow)
Hit area (I'm thinking hit cold or poison)
Balanced to chug pots, since theres tons of nuking mobs
Damage Increase, just enough to give me 100 DI

But what will the last mod need to be for best effect and best bang for the buck? I'm a stealth archer so most of the time I am in wolf or ki-rin form and will not be using specials to clear a spawn so hit mana leech would not be necessary. Remember I will be using this bow to clear tons of trash mobs from level 1-4 of various spawns.

thanks

 

[Silverbird]

I am not shure, but what about a Yumi and use its double shot special? (In that case mana leech would be wise.)

 

[[JD]]

for various reasons I will be in a ninja animal form, so no bow specials. most the trash mobs are so low they dont take specials to kill anyway

I guess I could leave that last mod for reptile slayer, repond slayer, etc as that would have far more impact on the damage I do than any other one single mod. repond would be for rat spawn right? or is it better to do Vermin slayer

 

[lols]

These are my spawn bows. I mostly use the Windsong nowadays. The pre-patch ones have increased damage which is nice to have.

I like them to be versatile, so no slayers, I wear a vermin slayer tally or a trinket when doing undead.

I really like the stamina leech so that I dont have to worry about getting trapped by monsters.

 

[Basara]

Stamina leech would be good, just in case you do get hit, to minimize refresh potion usage (allowing you to concentrate on GH and cures for the pots).

 

[[JD]]

At a spawn I normally run in Ki-Rin form for the insane Enduro regen so I don't have that problem - it's pretty neat! Slayer as the last thing would add a lot of damage but it'd mean I'd need a LOT of bows. I would also like to just have one bow for spawning, not 8, damn they cost so much!

 

[aoLOLita]

Don't forget if you use a loot bow, you lose the Mod cap bonus from imbuing an exceptional item. I generally equip a Talisman w/high exp & fletch skill then burn through an Oak runic tool (bought a couple dozen when they were 5K each) - use Ash wood - and wait for a 20-30 SSI bow or nice slayer (slayers typically have very high Dur, saving on PoF costs) to pop up and then imbue from there.

I generally only make Magical Shortbow because it is naturally fast and has decent range plus an area effect special. For my spawn bows, I used to add 44% HDL to the 44% Hit area effect, but realized that it was a wasted mod for low lvl mobs.