New archer character: first impressions

With my Sara Brae account I started over from scratch. I took the path of Love and acquired the archery skills. I have never played an archer before, so my feedback is from an archery newbie. My first impressions:

• I was pleasantly surprised to have a number of archery skills in the skill tree ready at my disposal, and to be wearing basic leather armor.
• The tutorial at Solace Bridge was rather confusing, getting me to fight with a sword and not taking my archery skills into consideration. But the opening tutorial needs a lot of work anyway, and I'm sure that will improve.
• In the past I was able to skip the beginner quests with a new character, but not with the archer, because I needed gold immediately for arrows. I prefer to be virtuous and not loot the dead bodies in Solace Bridge, but this time I did because I knew I would have to buy some. A brand new player might not be aware of the cost and leave Solace Bridge without a penny. (In that case, having the Bridge Defender's sword when the arrows run out is a must.) I didn't want to use the sword and shamefully admit that I finally resorted to selling a bunch of looted weapons that Kara Brae had stored in her house from R21 for just such a predicament.
• I was able to kill beginner mobs (one or two at a time) in Solace Bridge, East Perennial Trail and Random Encounters without many problems, however my focus ran out quickly and I had to resort to auto-attack with the simple arrows. In a random encounter it cost me around 40 arrows to kill a simple grey wolf. I expect that this number will go down as I gain more experience in using the bow (I am still missing my target a lot), but for now I have to leave scenes when I am out of arrows. The alternative would be to equip my Bridge Defender's sword and use that. Maybe that is the better course to follow.
• I have skills in my combat bar which say they use special arrows, but my special arrows are all gone. The skills seem to work with regular arrows, but it is not clear what the difference in effectiveness is between using the special arrows and the regular ones.
• It occurs to me that I don't know how to get the special arrows. At the blacksmith's I bought regular arrows looking under "A" for "arrows". I didn't look under "F" for "flare arrows" (not sure that is the right name). If they are purchasable from a blacksmith or a player vendor they should be in the sales inventory under "A", e.g. "Arrows: Flare". If these special arrows must be crafted, there should be some tip saying so (maybe there is already, I was a bit lax in reading the tool tips).
• The beginning archer build has no way to fight mobs up close. The only close-up skill is Gust, so the archer has to resort to running away all the time. I will be asking experienced archers for tips on what additional skills to acquire.
• All in all I am enjoying playing with the archer build in R22. I have enough skill that the beginner mobs are not so difficult and frstrating as to put me off. At the same time, the need to constantly keep a supply of arrows is challenging, and gives me incentive to achieve the crafting skill to make my own arrows down the line. This having a longer term goal is motivating.

 

well get used to selling everything, cause you will run out of arrows alot, and they are expensive and you can carry only so much .... and you will run out of focus a lot faster cause it takes a lot of arrows to kill stuff.... starting out as an archer is really tough .... I wish they started archers with free arrows to get them started and lower the cost of the arrows cause you will need more then 100 arrows to venture and that's running into town to buy or craft more every time you run out in battles ... while other classes don't have that concern .... they need to rethink the arrow thingy ..... there has been many suggestions in other posts, but nada , archers still are hard to play, harder then the rest of the classes ..... IMHO

 

I find the best strategy for starting out as an archer is constantly running around kiting with or without arrows, as starting out they are hard to attain easily. Just keep running around and around, most mobs won't be able to touch you, and you can just spam you aimed shot while running, and "over the shoulder" (ie, you twitch turn 180 fire, 180, run) It's pretty easy and as long as you don't kite them too far away from their spawn, or into a bunch of other baddies, you should be fine It does take a long, long time though, compared to just standing there in plate w/a sword I'm sure it'll get some more love sooner or later, so I'm not too worried about it's current iteration. Once you get some skills in increased range you'll actually get to fire a shot or two before the mob gets within melee range, and with free attack you can charge them up nicely (but again, charging a shot for 5 seconds just to miss 75% of the time isn't the way to go).

I'm not sure if mob's aggro range being bigger than your archery range at level 1 is designed that way or not (hopefully not) but you never know

 

Yeah, there's no best tool to an archer than a good pair of legs It's basically how Lord Ravnos pictured it. I should emphasize the "in circles" part, because if you run in straight lines you'll only get in trouble. Also, free attack is da bomb! saves you arrows and does lots of damage when it hits... nonetheless its better to miss an arrow that could've hit for 40 than 10 arrows that could've hit for 4 each.

Regarding arrows... you can be an archer without arrows, actually, but then your skills use up a lot of focus. I'd bet you've been depleting your focus fast because you're using skills without the ammunition they require. I'd recommend to carry all kind of arrows you'll use, you can buy them at the blacksmith (Disabling shot -> Bola Arrow, Blinding shot -> Flare arrow, Piercing shot -> Bodkin arrow). The best way to supply yourself with arrows is to craft your own; each time you craft the "arrow" recipe you get 100 arrows! the hard part is the metal... but it's matter of mining a bit, scrap all the weapons you get and then build ingots from scraps. You'd need to buy the special kinds of arrows, though.

Regarding tactics, it's nice to have the enemy affected by disabling shot (it's easier to kite) and by blinding shot (they lose dex so you'll miss less). Focus on raising Ranged combat skill since every hit you miss is a wasted arrow and damage undone. Air magic fits like a glove; dex buff, and both gust and discharge can be combined with aimed shot with useful effects. I also use Sprint as speed buff since it lasts more than Dash from the air magic tree, and Dodge because it doesn't trigger GCD and it's cool not to get hit sometimes Other archers use Ice arrow from the Water Tree for enhanced kiting or fire arrow for dot damage. Also, I don't think you can survive without healing touch (at least) in the long run.

 

Running from mobs and Kiting in this game is HARD ..... since the scenes are not very wide and there's too many things you run into to do this, and most times I end up with more then 1 mob to fight at this point because of it .... So I don't like kiting, I prefer to get them to half health before they reach me ... Now if only I could actually get two good shots of to do that, but they still reach me before that, shooting the arrows is SLOW compared to the speed of the mobs ......

 

Yet people complain when the monster archers kite them!

 

Remember that shooting while running drops your attack by 20 so at low levels with low attack it makes missing even worse.

Open the V tab and watch your attack go up and down while you run/stop.

 

What monster archers? Most of the archers I have come across are like me, still trying to hit foes consistently (my base percentage to hit with ranged combat is currently only 50+ 27.5 = 77.5% before any modifiers)

 

Is Ranged Combat going up with auto attack this release? Have not had time to observe yet.

 

My ranged combat skill did not budge at all last night (bar does not seem to be moving or, if so, by only a miniscule amount...)

On the other hand, my guildmate did say that he switched from free attack to auto attack this release and his ranged combat skill did rise by 10 points last night , so presumably it IS working properly now

 

Think it means the mob archer, that keep running away when you get close enough to hit. Teaching great strategy to player archer?

 

That makes more sense It is very frustrating trying to chase them down

Silly me, I eventually get tired of running away from my foes and end up standing my ground That's a VERY bad thing... especially if you are pulling three or more foes (which seems to happen fairly often to me)

 

I've noticed that everytime i shot a free attack my xp pool decreases. I'd say it's working... but i wont believe until i see my bar raising because of a free attack