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Thanks to National Novel Writing Month, I haven't put a TON of time into Skyrim yet, but the character I started was supposed to be a stealth archer, primarily. I always believe in handing decent CQC options, so I also use a sword and shield, but I noticed a disturbing trend in my ability to be an archer.

Very early on: I have no arrows. How can I shoot things without arrows?
Still rather early: I shoot stuff once and it comes running at me. Archery is not so good when the thing is wailing on you, especially with his friends.
After I get Lydia: I get one or two shots before she goes charging in. I can either do the same, or risk my shots hitting her rather than my enemies, and my sword still delivers considerably more damage.
After I finally get some mid-range perks: I can backpeddle and shoot while stunning things 50% of the time, plus I have bonus sneak attack damage, but archery fights still take painfully long, and the skill doesn't raise anywhere near as fast as my 1H.
When my stealth becomes very good: I can fire a shot, retreat and let the enemy reset, rinse and repeat, but it's very slow and I have to tell my follower to stay back at the entrance or she comes clamouring in.

So even though I profess that my character was intended to be an archer, and have tried to focus on using my bow when reasonable, my archery is around 65 while my one-handed is at closer to 85. Heck, my block is higher than my archery. I would say maybe this is because archery goes up more slowly, but the truth is it's just way more convenient to pull out my sword and cut things open. Am I alone here? Any tips on feeling more pro-archery?

Well if you think about it, archers keep a dagger or such becuse if someone gets near them bow is useless, as for Dmg, thats weird, what dificty are you on?

In a pre-Renaissance setting, archery or other ranged attacks (spears, javelins) are just tools to soften up the foe before the melee begins. So, imo, if you stick a poison on your arrow and sneak attack an enemy or two, and then switch to melee after you've gained some free damage, you're doing it right.

But the notion of kiting around a melee combatant and killing them with arrows is pretty ridiculous on its face. That makes nonsense of the concept of archery.

I think melee combat in this game is pretty wrecked

My 1st playthru was a 100% pure mage, every fight was an immense struggle for survival and took insanely long as my damage was low and I perpetually ran out of mana

My second character is a "Spellblade" who is pretending to still be a mage as his colossal sword does easily several times the damage his spells do, Its painfully sad that I stopped using my main weapon in this account and resort to using a Bound Sword because my main weapon is horrendously overpowered because of smithing

that's funny. I was supposed to be a pure warrior then ended up being a hardcore archer

I would suggest on the follower side of things get a archer folloer faendal in riverwood is a good starter

I have no problems with arrows. I've constantly had a good supply of iron and ancient nord arrows.

However, I'd be pretty cool if you could craft your own arrows... say one ingot plus one log of wood could make 20 or so?

Only problem I've had as an archer is, why can't you hit a blacksmith to make arrows?

One ingot = 10 or 20 arrows of the same type of metal? Why not?

Yeah.. crafting arrows would be good.
I use ebony arrows... find enough on kills and buy in shops. I usually 1 hit kill most things, so running out ain't an issue.

I originally was excited about the dual wield of 2 swords... but after time I realised dual daggers are just as good. If any one gets in close to me, they don't have much life left... so daggers work just fine.

I'm very happy with my archer guy. Always wanted to play this style. Well worth it.
You feel like a gunner with quick draw... you walk in a room and slow time down (perk) and kill 3 guys before they even have their weapons completely drawn.

Love when they are sitting at tables.... I walk in thinking.. "please, don't bother getting up" ARROW in the back of the head!

One hint for Lydia: go into her inventory and take her melee weapon away (a steel sword is her default, I believe), that way she'll do nothing but ranged combat.

One easy way to level archery w/o feeling a blade at your neck is to go to Angi's Hut south of Falkreath. Her tasks for your will level up your archery.

In addition, keep in mind that you will level your skills more quickly by attacking stronger enemies. So go put some arrows in some giants!

mr cowbell2 wrote:that's funny. I was supposed to be a pure warrior then ended up being a hardcore archer

I ended up doing that, too.

Bandits are always a good source of arrows, and even dreugr usually carry ancient nord arrows.

Point with bows is to use them as a sneak weapon, so lots of sneaking, then firing, then melee weapon out.

Because it's easy to feel outmatched by some of the bad guys, though, it's not so easy to just run a pumped up Nord warrior to smash through everything in the game. At some point, usually early on, they learn to be humble and cautious!

Archery becomes dealing good damage when you level it up to 40s-50s I've noticed. Sneak attacks and poisions help a lot, but at a lower level you don't have good perks in those neither, so it's understandable.

Keep at it though, eventually you will deal good damage with it and with the 3x sneak bonus perk, you will kill a lot easier. However, you should always have a melee weapon ready - I personally dual wield a sword and dagger. Dagger power attacks are so cool.

I've used a bow and no melee combat throughout the entire game up to 98 archery, every guild bar the Bard's College beaten, and level 35. I had no problem, I just supplemented with a bit of ameteur-level magic when things got rough, like scurrying off healing or spraying Frostbite from each hand at groups.
I don't see how ya'll are having any difficulty, unless you play above Adept.

At various places in the game you'll see people doing target practice with bows. They don't mind if you go up and snatch their arrows. Hey, while you're at it, drop an ingot of the appropriate material after every 10 shots and it'll feel like you're crafting them.

Archery combined with high smithing makes a deadly combination, especially if you have fortify archery enchantments....and when the bad guys get too close just shout them away and start shooting again, or switch to duel wield daggers

OP here. Let me respond to a couple things.

1) I have no trouble finding arrows NOW. It just made it hard for me to get started until I cleared out my first bunch of bandits.
2) I still don't have Quick Draw. I bet I would like shooting more if I did. I'll let you know when I get the 70 archery skill to do it. ><
3) I've already been to Angi's Hut and done her challenges. Early on, by sheer determination, by archery was slightly higher than one-handed, and this put it up by about 10 points, but it hasn't been able to hold that lead at all. After about 40, it just fell behind horribly.
4) Part of my issue is that I'm probably just refusing to do certain things that would help, like work on smithing or enchanting, but I don't feel like I should have to. I do concede I need to learn to make better use of shouts, since I tend to forget they exist. Shouts are like magic spells that don't require you to equip them to a hand.

enyamerT wrote:One hint for Lydia: go into her inventory and take her melee weapon away (a steel sword is her default, I believe), that way she'll do nothing but ranged combat.

I tried doing this tonight but she kept picking up melee weapons off of dead bodies.

O.o On her own? I have never had a follower doing that...

You get a longbow and some arrows as soon as the bear cave inside the tutorial area...

sneak skill and x3 sneak attack damage is very good. you can one-shot a lot of lesser mobs with this.

You can shoot arrows to distract opponents. They will go and investigate where the arrow landed.
If you hit someone that tharget will come looking for you, while his friends will go looking where the arrow hit their friend.

you can sneak to a new position while your target come looking for you. You can continue this cat n mouse game until even the biggest foe dies without ever finding you (including but not limited to, giants).

Archery perks help, a lot. Try to get at least one point in the slow-mo perk as well as the zoom in perk. Later on the stagger perk and eventually the paralyze perk help too. Same with sneak perks. Get that x3 sneak attack with archery perk. Slient moving and rolling in stealth are great too.

Once you get shadow warrior you are pretty much immortal. Get some distance. Shoot your primary target as long as the eye is not opened (you can often shoot two-three arrows without even moving and that kill all but boss mobs). Run away. Stand up and Sneak while you run. This will trigger the shadow warrior invisibility making it impossible for them to shoot you and they lose track of you very fast.

I can kill entire camps or high level bosses using nothing but sneak, archery, distance, movemente and cover. They simply never find me.

If you make a stealth character you also might want to consider the school of illusions.
Stuff like silent casting, frenzy, invisibility, calm etc are very powerful and have a lot of synergy with sneak...

Xenon wrote:You get a longbow and some arrows as soon as the bear cave inside the tutorial area...

What bear cave? The tutorial consists of...Helgen. Then the guy goes "whelp, you're on your own!" and expects you go to Balm...er, Whiterun.

you can sneak to a new position while your target come looking for you. You can continue this cat n mouse game until even the biggest foe dies without ever finding you (including but not limited to, giants).

Yeah, this is just so slow, though. If I didn't carry a melee weapon and thus I was dedicated to the spirit of the stealth archer, I'd probably do this, but I'm more interested in moving forward than in tickling something to death.

Archery perks help, a lot. Try to get at least one point in the slow-mo perk as well as the zoom in perk. Later on the stagger perk and eventually the paralyze perk help too. Same with sneak perks. Get that x3 sneak attack with archery perk. Slient moving and rolling in stealth are great too.

Is the slow-mo that good? I haven't bothered with any of those types of perks because they seem silly. I mean, you go slower too, right?


The rest of your points are well-taken.

As arrows weigh nothing you can store up a lot. I'm playing a generic\battlemage character, currently maxed out archery albeit without perks. A trick I've found to get arrows is to pickpocket the guards. You can get a dozen or so off each. Only steel, but it's better than iron etc. Of course now that I've maxed out my bow I don't really use it - I'd prefer a Bound Bow if I could get one, and I don't really need 1,000+ steel arrows of which apparently <30 were legally acquired.

Is the slow-mo that good? I haven't bothered with any of those types of perks because they seem silly. I mean, you go slower too, right?

The slow motion actually helps a ton believe it or not. Its one of my favorite on the archery tree. It gives you time to take accurate and fully charged shots while guys are running at you. If your fighting multiple enemies, or a charging one in close quarters, missed shots will be the death of you, literally. Even if you just take the first slow-mo perk (25% slow time) I think its worth it. Yes you go slower too, so I always draw my bow all the way back before zooming into slow-mo. I did encounter one sort of problem or even glitch perhaps using the bow with the slow motion perk and a particular dragon shout

azuarc wrote:

Xenon wrote:You get a longbow and some arrows as soon as the bear cave inside the tutorial area...

What bear cave? The tutorial consists of...Helgen. Then the guy goes "whelp, you're on your own!" and expects you go to Balm...er, Whiterun.

I actually think this depends on who you choose to follow during the Helgen dragon attack. For instance, My problem with archery is just that I suck at it. I have an utterly impossible time aiming. Dragons? Forget it; I'd rather hack them when they land on the ground. If I could find some easy targets to pick off it might be more enjoyable as I level up.

...or I can just stick to running in and bashing people over the head. Avron like!

Avron the S'wit wrote:

azuarc wrote:

Xenon wrote:You get a longbow and some arrows as soon as the bear cave inside the tutorial area...

What bear cave? The tutorial consists of...Helgen. Then the guy goes "whelp, you're on your own!" and expects you go to Balm...er, Whiterun.

I actually think this depends on who you choose to follow during the Helgen dragon attack. For instance,
[My problem with archery is just that I suck at it. I have an utterly impossible time aiming. Dragons? Forget it; I'd rather hack them when they land on the ground. If I could find some easy targets to pick off it might be more enjoyable as I level up.

ive done both sides and if i recall correctly come accross the bear on each occassion so im pretty sure it doesnt matter who you follow