Hexhunter bow

The Hexhunter bow is a bow found in the dungeons of Daemonheim while Dungeoneering. The bow is a unique drop from the soulgazer, requiring 98 Ranged to wield. The bow is one of the rarest items in Dungeoneering. It is classified as a shieldbow.

Though soulgazers officially require level 99 Slayer to damage, they can be killed by a player with any Slayer level using the Retribution prayer, Wrath curse, or the passive effect of the blood necklace. 99 Slayer is also required for recoil damage (such as Deflect Curses and Vengeance) to damage a soulgazer. A survivalist's potion can be used to temporarily raise your Slayer level. With a strong survivalist's potion, the soulgazer can be killed with 88 Slayer.

It is the only weapon in Daemonheim that has a passive effect, as well as one of two items in Daemonheim to exhibit a passive effect; the other being the blood necklace.

Passive effect
The Hexhunter bow will deal 20% more damage when used against foes that use Magic, regardless of their combat level.

Sagittarian shortbow
The Hexhunter bow has nearly the same extra damage as the sagittarian shortbow, but it fires 0.6 seconds faster. This makes Hexhunter bow far superior on autoattacks. However, while Sagittarian shortbow being a two-handed weapon which receives an additional 50% damage using abilities, the Hexhunter bow is a shieldbow which does not have any ability damage multiplier, thus making it inferior in offensive performance. The Hexhunter bow however has defensive stats that put it nearly on par with the sagittarian shield, and additionally it gives access to shield abilities, but offensively it is significantly worse than the Sagittarian shortbow.

The following data is the comparison of two bows in term of ability damage

Sagittarian longbow
The Sagittarian longbow and the Hexhunter bow have similar stats. While the Sagittarian longbow has a slightly higher armour rating and life points boost, the Hexhunter bow does more damage over time.

Also, since Sagittarian longbow is level 99 weapon, it has slightly higher ability damage than hexhunter bow due to it being level-scaled.

Former bonus
Before the Evolution of Combat, the Hexhunter bow had a different passive bonus: its ranged damage increased as the opponent's Magic level increased. This made it one of the most desirable items in Daemonheim, as it could hit very high and accurately on forgotten mages, necromancers, reborn mages, demons, and dragons. Its damage per second easily exceeded the damage per second of the most damaging melee weapons, and it was a far more damaging weapon than any other bow in Daemonheim. The bow was also very good against most bosses (even those that would not seem to have high Magic levels, like Dreadnaut and Gravecreeper, though this was most effective when employing the use of a Bloodrager's Sundering Strike special attack to lower the boss's Defence).

Trivia

 * The Hexhunter bow is one of only two bows in the game with a speed of 'Fastest', with the other being the seercull.
 * The name of the Hexhunter bow is derived from the word 'hex', which means an evil spell or curse, the equivalent of the German word 'hexe', to practise sorcery. Hex is also pronounced in the same way as the Dutch 'heks', which means witch.
 * The Hexhunter bow's former passive effect was removed with the Evolution of Combat, although a Jagex moderator has said that it may possibly be reimplemented. This was done during the summer of 2014, although not to the usefulness of how it was before EoC.
 * Before the release of The World Wakes on 4 March 2013, the bow had a damage bonus similar to that of the sagittarian longbow. Due to the Hexhunter bow's faster speed, this not only made it superior to the longbow in every aspect aside from accuracy, but also made it rival (and potentially even surpass) the Sagittarian shortbow due to the Hexhunter bow's ability to deal similar damage while still retaining armour, life point, and shield bonuses. The damage bonus was removed with the update for balancing purposes.
 * The Hexhunter bow was given a damage buff on 17 April 2013 to make it on par with tier 11 Dungeoneering bows, but it will still deal less damage per second than the sagittarian shortbow.
 * The Hexhunter bow was given another damage buff during the summer of 2014 that causes it to deal 20% more damage against magical foes.

Hexhunter bow