One problem I have struggled with when theory crafting a wilderness only ironman is getting bowstring. The wilderness lacks a monster which naturally drops bowstring, but I think I have found a somewhat convoluted way of stringing bows without leaving the wilderness.
But before I get into the method, I want to point out why getting a decent bow in the wilderness is important. Without being able to rely on the mining and smithing skills for weaponry, attaining higher tier arms in the wilderness is difficult. The magic shortbow or shieldbow are tier fifty ranged weapons, able to fire rune arrows at full strength, which are dropped by many monsters in the wilderness, notably red dragons and fire giants. A few different monsters drop the magic logs, with two notable examples being the Chaos Elemental and the King Black Dragon, but the bottleneck is getting the bowstring.
Although flax is available on the rare drop table, albeit very unlikely to attain, the wilderness lacks the spinning wheel necessary to craft the flax into bowstring. Instead I have come up with an unconventional path to making a magic bow. The first step is acquiring a lot of magic logs, up to a few hundred if unlucky. Then, by fletching the logs while under the effect of wergali incense sticks, gain a small chance of a bow being strung automatically. Simple, but how to get the wergali incense sticks?
The first step is getting the wergali herb, which will require going into the chaos tunnels to kill giant ant soldiers until they drop the wergali seed, then planting it at the wilderness herb patch to get grimy wergali. (Alternatively the giant ant soldiers also drop the actual wergali herb, but since multiple are required, waiting for a seed is probably the better option.) Then clean the herbs, to acquire the clean wergali. The next step is to make the maple incense sticks, which require maple logs which can be acquired as a rare drop from ice warriors, which are found at the North-West corner of the wilderness. Craft them into Maple Sticks, then add accursed ashes which can be acquired from a number of different demons, with the lesser demon probably being the easiest option. Then combine the accursed incense sticks with the wergali, use the sticks, wait for potency level four, or consume six sticks to get the maximum buff immediately, then craft bows until one is strung.
This method can be used to make lower tier bows as well, but the magic bows are the only ones which can fire the rune arrows at full strength. I really like how this method combines a couple different pieces of under-utilized content, the chaos tunnels, the giant ant soldier, and even incense sticks themselves. The members wilderness only ironman going against the corporal beast is starting to seem much more feasible.
