25,000 arrows and 50 Ranged Combat

My definition of grind is doing repetitive behaviors I normally wouldn't do for the sole purpose of leveling, or keeping gear in working condition. These behaviors are usually characterized by being menial, simple and boring. Killing countless wolves to level my skills does not a fun game make.

 

Not Disagreeing that it is tedious but that is the way the game is going to be you will have to gradually work your way thru skill levels to get stronger. As I have stated in a few other places it is sad that we have been handed the "easy" game in previous releases and now are going to have to "Work" to make a Adv Char.

There are other ways to level - have you done the Quests, they give some nice Exp Quick at lower levels. The Healer Quest was 5K in R20 of course we don't how that correlates no but took players from Adv level 5 - 10 in a blink before.

 

Yes but after you get the exp, you still have to grind the skills just like they are talking about.

 

True True but you can only grind for a few points , VERY few, and you are not just grinding you should be out Killing more creatures earning more exp, eventually you will be able to hit something harder.

And again if you have ALOT of skills set to raise you will use up your points VERY fast, if you focus those points in certain areas you might get stronger faster

But wandering off topic, enjoy the game

 

Great job Kvow in documenting your experiences with archery, as it clearly needs some tweaks to the skill-set. I managed to raise my ranged combat to about 40, and aimed shot to about 60 but unfortunately I just had no gold to support my continuing archery profession, so I switched to bludgeon and its amazing how quickly that base combat skill is going up. I quickly burned through the 20k gold my friend loaned/gave me (haha my archery profession made sure i could never pay him back), and while I did loot the occasional item off an elf, once I sold the items I could not afford the amount of arrows I used.

Does archery raise of ranged auto-attacks? It didn't seem like it was, which is probably the reason the skills raise so slowly. At least with bludgeon, I gain skill for actually using it. Not to mention, when I swing my mace it doesn't require an item each time. I would have loved to continue my adventures as an Archer but it just was not viable as a new player to the game (I started about half way into r20).

 

OK, so I spent some time shooting a gustball with no arrows. Here's my conclusion:

• Progress is very slow and boring.
• Since I wasn't using arrows, I quickly ran out of focus and then progress slowed way down (from it's already slow pace).
• I wasn't gaining any wealth or resources.
• I wasn't gaining any Adventurer levels.
• Did I mention that it was extremely boring? I actually fell asleep at the keyboard several times.
• I don't play games to be bored.

My conclusion: If you want to develop your character that way then be my guest. I see absolutely no harm in it. BTW, as was already mentioned, you won't be able to after you use up your pool of points and certainly not after the next wipe.

The OP's point about how slow and expensive it is to train an archer is very valid. I've played nearly every day for at least an hour since R21 and my Ranged Combat skill is 37! I didn't count the arrows but it's a lot.

 

Hey @Kvow i was wondering if you leveled using auto attack, or free attack? i'm at 43 in Ranged combat and i think i'm just close to the 10000 arrows spent using free attack. Using the air-ranged combos is helping, since using them doesn't consume any arrows.

 

I found using as many archery based abilities was the best way to level the ranged combat skill, but it just wasn't viable in the wild when you had to use focus on damage dealing abilities (aimed shot) to actually defeat an enemy. If you have the arrows to spare, the extra damage from auto-attack also helped with this but it was dps at the cost of a lot of arrows as the rate of fire is just so high.

 

Thank you Kvow for all the hard work! Great job man

I know you already stated it, but I feel especially beginning players (and folks who just started out in archery in R21), may feel confused of all the conflicting (sometimes even self-conflicting ) claims. So if you will forgive me to explicitly sum it up once more in here too, as this thread is read by beginners as well:

The current state of not gaining base ranged skill from a normal attack (free or automatic) is a bug, confirmed by (developer) DarkStarr and also confirmed by (developer) Thud, in here. As a consequence of this bug, it is extremely difficult (might be even impossible) to become a GM in archery. It is possible (as Kvow also proved) to achieve GM level with some special skill like Aimed Shot, but even that is way harder than it should be, because the base skill is a major component when calculating hit rate, and one needs to actually hit in order to raise the skill levels efficiently.

The bug has not been fixed in any of the R21 patch builds, so we can hope that some slightly larger archery overhaul is going to happen later. I hope sooner than later, because the current state makes realistic testing of archery pretty hard and somewhat pointless.

 

@Tyde @KuBaTRiZeS I was using auto attack. I knew it burned up arrows and I also knew it was not increasing Ranged Combat. Just simulating what normal game play might look like. Other than to save arrows I'm not sure why I'd use free attack. So many clicks and the full charged shot is not a good use of combat time.

@helm I dont know that Ranged Combat does more than change your base damage modifier. Seems most of my attack skill can be attributed to str dex int and Ranged innates.

 

I've locked off almost all my other skills and I'm raising Piercing Shot to see how much 1-50 increases Ranged Combat.

 

Besides saving arrows (proved very useful for that) I use the full charged shot time to combine skills while running, or to wait for more glyphs to show up, but i acknowledge that in the current state of combat is far better to use skills than to charge a free attack; you'll use up your focus faster but your DPS will be higher.

Chris said in another post that our hit chance was calculated as 50% + BaseCombatSkill/2, and reduced if the enemy level is above your level + 10.

Waiting to hear your results! For me its the most useless skill of the whole tree... maybe i haven't used it in the appropiate situations...

 

Nice! I'm only raising piercing to see if its different in PvP. For mobs it seems bad. Maybe I've never shot heavily armored mobs? I'm also raising it to see if the act of leveling it raised Ranged Combat more quickly.

I'll do a 1-50 arrowless Piercing shot update in the other thread!

 

I think making the plain arrows free and weight way less would help me a lot. I never have money for anything due to the cost of the arrows .... had to sell one of my row lots to get enough gold to buy the darn arrows

 

Attention attention. The results are in, my friends, and archery needs your help again! Give it love

Cheers

 

If you are using arrows to play... which seems normal to me you will find yourself mob gated. This means you need to hunt solely skeletons for the most part and archer skeletons at that. Archer skeletons drop the highest value weapon that weighs the least! They also drop 10gp corpse wax and 30gp residue and some gold.

Ruined Keep is excellent for 1 on 1 (enter via the back and skip those first two that are bugged out on a platform). South Ravenswood is good post level 35. There are a few tricks to getting them one on one but its worth figuring out.

 

Hmm...I am now barely able to kill one of those wolves in South Ravenswood (hit adventurer level 36 late last night...), but I have been pretty unsuccessful in getting them one on one on a regular basis , so I am stuck in Greymark Forest fighting less powerful large grey wolves and trying to go one and one with elf archers, fighters, and mages (hard to pull just one of them too...)

I probably should have gone with Kvow's method of focusing on Aimed Shot I tried to raise all of mine relatively evenly, so my ranged combat skill is currently 49, my Aimed Shot is at 59, and the rest (Blinding, Piercing, and Disabling Shot) are at 56. Lesson learned...

As Chatele and others have mentioned, arrows will drain your gold very quickly (repair kits too...). I have purchased roughly the same amount of arrows as Kvow has to reach this point, and I can honestly say that if I had not stocked up on gold prior to the end of last release, the prohibitive cost (!) of archery would have been a definite deterrent to playing this archetype, which I have been playing since R10 (Yes, I know you can play without arrows, but the increased focus cost will drain your focus bar very quickly, which often results in your character's death - i.e., which makes arrows kind of a necessity)

 

Some how I almost repeat ALMOST feel like the devs don't want us playing an archer deep down ....

 

I'm sure all the constructive feedback given to them is considered. There are a large amount of people that cry realism when it comes to matters such as arrows! I respect that realism is important to some people, but my priority is on an enjoyable gaming experience

So where is the balance? Someone suggested some sort of arrow retrieval which could help the situation. Ie: shoot 100 arrows into a mob to kill it, and there will be a percentage of arrows that are able to be looted once it's killed.

The arrow scavenger also needs to be tweaked to a higher rate. But to solve the special arrow problem, just have everything require regular arrows. But don't do that until something in the arrow mechanics has been changed.

 

I think they went with ammo scavenger just giving you a %chance of not shooting an arrow because it's easier than programming adding arrows to mob loot based on per encounter arrows fired.

That would be 100% speculation!