Archer Mage - Attunement Question

[zephyrii]

So just converted my relatively young (~25) mage to archery from polearms as I like the ability to double dip bolting/arrows. I went the 4x bow (5x when I can enchant or find one) + ebladed arrows.

I found the most annoying issue with arrows is getting the arrows back together after a fight and bundled all nice and tight while keeping them ebladed. Did some looking and it looks like one of the more annoying parts of eblading is that each bundle gets a different flare and can't be bundled together. Because of that annoyance, decided might as well do the elemental attunement.

My question is if there's any unique issues with any of the elements. I looked all over and understand that for the most part attunement is cosmetic and you can always random back. From an RP and mechanic perspective, my top choices are lightning and fire and maybe air.

From what I've been able to find mechanically, fire helps with trolls and the like.

Are there any other small differences? I remember shock bolting something once in water and got hit back with it, does lightning flares from eblade and the like have that problem as well?

I know lores help DF for spells, I'm guessing they don't do anything for the flares?

Thanks for any help.

[Kastrel]

Fire - Advantageous against trolls, some undead, some ice based creatures. May be completely ignored by many stone creatures, and can set of gas in the bowels.
Cold - Advantageous against some fire creatures. Lots of undead are immune to it.
Shock - Some creatures are immune to it. Sets off gas in the bowels, and shocks in wet rooms in Nelemar.
Air - Don't know much about air at all.
Vibe - Strong against some stone creatures. Don't know much more about it.

[zephyrii]

Thanks Kastrel. So lightning flares from arrows will also set off the wet room shocks? Only ever done it via spell bolt so wasn't sure.

Krakii doesn't mention vibe as an attunement option so seems like may be just the bard sonic weapons.

[Eliaku]

You can bundle your bundles of 20 arrows into a bundle of 100 the eblade. That way they all have the same flare. The advantage of attune with arrows is that if you enlarge each bundle before the large bundle the charge lasts longer. Seeing how you are a Mage. You can eblade at will. So you don't need to attune just because of eblade. That being said 415 is a kick as spells, I've killed many people attuned to lightening with 415.

[Eliaku]

Oh yeah and you want a 6x bow with ebladed arrows.

[Whirlin]

I haven't seen any substantial testing done to determine any correlation between lores and flare proc rate / potency, but I would say that there is no correlation, as it would typically result in two similarly e-bladed stacks to be unbundleable if they had different e-blading properties.

Vibe flare are earth flares. Supposedly they're extra effective against stone critters like fire and trolls. But honestly, stone critters typically suck for wizard hunting, so I've always stayed away.

And Kastrel really hit all of the different flares on the head, but like I mentioned over lnet... Fire's strength against undead and frost's weakness against undead is irrelevant, as we're talking about e-blading, and you'd need a bless for those. Plus puncture sucks for undead... so, you'll likely be bolting the undead.

[Buckwheet]

Air is void and my preferred flare type.