ElCabong
Survivor
Like I said, for the comparisons I made there was no bolt loaded. It is an apples to apples comparison. I'm aware that when you look at the trader, there's a stonebolt in the crossbow. I didn't do that."No bolt" is not an option. It's not about having one loaded, it's what type you have selected. You have to manually select the same bolt type, it makes no difference to the damage tooltip whether the ammo counter shows 1 /100 or 0 /100.
The quest rewards show stone bolt damage, so if you want to compare to those, you have to select a stone bolt for the one in your inventory. Same for vendor items.
Maving more mod slots might make up for it if the higher end item is close enough to the low end one. But when I've got a yellow crossbow bolt at 77.9 and say I get a purple at only 60, I don't think I can mod that up to make the difference. Especially because I put two mods on the yellowBut, doesn't having more mod slots make up for it? Well, sometimes it does... You know it kinda shows my mentality, that I when I do find a low quality item that does higher damange than my high quality with low damage but more mods slots. I always keep the former. Just due do it doing more damage. Even though the latter, would be more better in the sense that with more mod slots it should in theory. Make its damage output almost up to par with the other item.