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[Seryntas]

I have every single possible bolt material on my map - stacks of rutherer bones, forests of trees, every metal in the game except for bronze...and I could get some bronze if I needed it.  But I can't find on the Wiki whether adamantine bolts are the best kind of bolts - in fact, I thought I saw somewhere that they were the worst.  What's the right answer for what material to make bolts out of?

[ltprifti]

steel if you have everything else covered

[Fearless Son]

I think it varies to a certain extent depending on what kind of target you are shooting.  If firing at unarmored targets, I would expect silver bolts to be very effective due to their density.  However, when firing at armored targets I suspect that silver would be very ineffective due to its softness, and steel would be much more effective at penetrating armor. 

Of course, a steel bolt in the lungs will probably kill an unarmored target just as well as a silver bolt would, so the question in that case is somewhat academic. 

[shlorf]

The bolt mechanics are weird to say the least, common sense would suggest bolts initially do piercing damage, but the wiki says they do edge damage (That means it will either slash or pierce and if i read the bit about contact area vs size right they should pretty much always pierce). For edged weapons steel is second best and adamantine is best because of its ridiculous max_edge parameter. Then why is adamantine the worst material for bolts (that's also written on the wiki btw).
Well for normal edge weapons the strength of the weapon wielder plays a big part in the damage that is done. Bolts however seem to rely on a kinetic energy model (of which no one but toady probably knows how detailed it is). Kinetic energy is 0.5*m*vē so it scales linearly with the bolts mass and quadratic with its velocity (the latter appearing to be a non-factor since ranged weapons always seem to fire ammunition at the max_velocity from the raws).
The biggest difference for bolts should come from the fact whether they pierce the armor or not (if they don't the damage is changed to blunt which can still damage the target even if the armor material completely outclasses the bolt material in all properties).
So what you would theoretically want is bolts that are very heavy and very hard.
Steel would fit the very hard part and adamantine would fit it even more. Silver would be the heaviest of the possible bolt materials, but its also very soft.
Anyway i don't know why i just wrote all this as testing shows that all bolt metals except adamantine perform pretty much the same. Imho just base the choice depending on what you have too much of.

[slothen]

metal, non adamantine bolts.  Adamantine bolts are like getting a pencil thrown at you, silver is like getting hit with a brick.  I usually make bronze and silver bolts.

[Alastar]

Copper, bronze and silver are all good with differences being mostly academic (silver seemed ahead against fleshy things, bronze against tinny things). Iron and steel haven't done well in my tests.

[Zidane]

I use bone because what's better at killing a baby elephant than the bones of it's mother?

[BuGGaTon]

adamantine is extremely light and hard.  With the force of someone's weight behind it then it's a formidable weapon, think like a lightsabre.  Imagine being shot with a nerf gun whilst wearing metal armour.  Not quite as effective

[Hans Lemurson]

I use whatever's cheap, and generally like to designate a specific material to be used for each activity so I can control it.  Running low on meat?  Whip up a new batch of silver bolts for my hunters!