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Enill

Archer?

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I started this by watching videos on YouTube and such and thought "ye know I wanna be an archer" now iv talked to someone and they said it's not for pve, is that true?

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Arrows can take a bit of time to make. But if you're willing to do that, archery is perfectly viable in PvE.

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My (limited) expirience with archery in PVE is that after firing a shot or two the critter is not even half dead and is chewing your face in melee range, which is ... suboptimal.

 

It can work if you can shoot from safety (e.g. from a ship vs non-swimmers) or if you have someone to distract it.

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archery in RL - two arrows and most criters are dead (one tend to do the trick normally). In wurm... 15 arrows and you can kill one. The only good point with archery is that it takes the same amount of arrows to kill a mob and the same mob in champ form, so 15 arrows for both trolls and champ trolls.

 

Now if PvE could get a boost on archery, that would be nice. Why, well, because i'm an archer in RL and it totally sucks in wurm, i learned it the hard way and now just kill stuff with two handers.

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Archery is perfectly viable (and fun!) in PvE when you do it right. However - no matter how good your archery skill and gear - you also need melee skills. Archery is situational, in some situations it's very effective, in other situations you better rely on your melee skills and gear.

 

Here are a few bits of advise for an upcoming archer:

1. My personal 30/30/30 rule: don't even think about using archery in the wild (hunting mobs) without at least 30 archery skill, QL30 bows and QL30 arrows. That's the absolute minimum.

2. Focus your training on longbows. Add in some training with the medium bow when you value flexibility. Do not train short bows for PvE, unless you want to switch to PvP at some point.

3. At lower archery skill use hunting arrows for hunting, I advise to switch to war arrows when your archery skill is close to 50.

4. You need a good amount of arrows. I carry 2 quivers (i.e. 82 arrows) on a hunting trip. At low skill you will need to spend a bit of time looking for the arrows from missed shots, at higher skill it's rare that you miss a shot. Note: in winter it's easy to spot arrows, likewise in all seasons on sand, thus go training on deserts.

 

Fun thing to do with archery: hunt hell hounds. :)

Spot the bugger from range, use longbow to shoot, hound will run at you but you get 2-3 shots in at longbow range, switch to medium bow, get in another 1-2 shots before the hell hound is at you, switch to melee weapon, the hound will arrive with less than half this health left. Switching bows and to melee weapon is easiest when you all have them on your toolbelt and an equip keybind.

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That's awesome all of it, glad to know it, now is traps a thing could I possibly lure a mob into a trap of some sort, for example I was thinking maybe setup a v shaped fence and lure them in or I seen a trapping skill but would that help in archery situations?

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No, traps are PvP items in Wurm, no effect on mobs.

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If you're far enough away from the creature when you shoot it, it won't come after you. It'll just panic and run around in circles.

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6 hours ago, bdew said:

My (limited) expirience with archery in PVE is that after firing a shot or two the critter is not even half dead and is chewing your face in melee range, which is ... suboptimal.

 

It can work if you can shoot from safety (e.g. from a ship vs non-swimmers) or if you have someone to distract it.

Not remotely true.  I kill things ALL THE TIME with a long bow, and they never so much as smell me fart.  Archery is useful if that's how you wanna play. :)

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9 minutes ago, Slickshot said:

Not remotely true.  I kill things ALL THE TIME with a long bow, and they never so much as smell me fart.  Archery is useful if that's how you wanna play. :)

If you don't mind most critter glancing your arrows at 30%+ and then you have to go look for them.

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2 hours ago, Pingpong said:

If you don't mind most critter glancing your arrows at 30%+ and then you have to go look for them.

The higher you get in archery skill the less you miss ;). Also helps to hunt in daylight hours.

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1 hour ago, Slickshot said:

The higher you get in archery skill the less you miss ;). Also helps to hunt in daylight hours.

You'll note that glancing has nothing to do with skill or daylight ^_^

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So the arrows are really that hard to make? And what is glancing? Like a "you glance the target"?

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Glancing is when you hit the target but your arrows just ricochet off without doing any damage to the target. It appears to be hard coded to each mob species.

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Arrows are easy to make, especially if you consider that whilst training archery skill you'll most likely only be using shafts on an archery target.

 

You'll get fletching skill from making the arrow shafts and by the time you have hit the archery limit of a target (40 if i recall correct) - You'll be able to start making 30ql arrows with ease and 40ql is the sweetspot you should be aiming for early on.

 

Archery whilst hunting is viable if you don't mind collecting the arrows from the creatures corpses and you know what to avoid (Bisons absorb alot of shots before they die, trolls, sharks and some others are the same).  But there are many creatures that don't take many arrows at all before they die and your archery skillgain is based on hitting the targets not just getting the killing blow like the overall fighting skill.

 

TL/DR: Archery is perfectly viable even as a new account - it may just take a little bit of time to get into, but that's the same with everything in wurm so buckle in.

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I found that trolls are great archery targets. If you keep a distance of 10+ tiles while shooting them, they'll usually stand still until dead. Hell hounds though will run to you, no matter what distance.

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If you've nearby tundra, steppe or desert, they do make arrow recovery a lot easier. Also turn off all tile decoration to reduce distraction.

 

A spyglass is also useful, especially for longbows to make sure the target is roughly 80m/20 tiles away though as your skill goes up the +/- widens a lot.

 

My go to targets used to be things like crocodiles and trolls, after a while you can tell almost exactly how many arrows you need.

 

I also used to carry a satchel of arrow heads and if I ran low just chopped down a nearby cedar and made a fresh bunch on the spot.

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1 hour ago, Gaeron said:

If you've nearby tundra, steppe or desert, they do make arrow recovery a lot easier. Also turn off all tile decoration to reduce distraction.

 

A spyglass is also useful, especially for longbows to make sure the target is roughly 80m/20 tiles away though as your skill goes up the +/- widens a lot.

 

My go to targets used to be things like crocodiles and trolls, after a while you can tell almost exactly how many arrows you need.

 

I also used to carry a satchel of arrow heads and if I ran low just chopped down a nearby cedar and made a fresh bunch on the spot.

Hey I never thought about taking arrow heads with me.  Usually when I go hunting with the bow I just build up a few quivers of decent ql arrows, and a large cart with a crate.  I'd say I get about 200 shots with 123 arrows.

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A spyglass I heard it was only an event item or something like that 

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11 hours ago, Enill said:

A spyglass I heard it was only an event item or something like that 

 

You get a spyglass for staying premium for 12 RL months. Can buy it from players as well. That said, a spyglass is in no way required for archery. With a bit of practice and experience you can judge the distance to a critter just fine without one.

 

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11 hours ago, Enill said:

A spyglass I heard it was only an event item or something like that 

 

Its now a loyalty reward after you've bought your twelfth month of premium, Before that it was part of the reimbursement system which is now defunct.

 

As it its now a loyalty reward the silver value of these has dropped massively and you should be able to pick one up for around 5 silver.

15 hours ago, Slickshot said:

Hey I never thought about taking arrow heads with me.  Usually when I go hunting with the bow I just build up a few quivers of decent ql arrows, and a large cart with a crate.  I'd say I get about 200 shots with 123 arrows.

I always preferred hunting on steppe or desert so I'd get a very high recovery rate, I also repaired all arrows after using and chose cedar because of the easy re-imp to ensure they stayed over 30ql. The only way I lost arrows was breakage and when the spider crocodile decided it could climb cliffs to get out of my reach.

 

On Chaos I've been involved in some desert making projects and every time came away with quite a few re-discovered arrows that people had lost.

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19 minutes ago, Gaeron said:

 

Its now a loyalty reward after you've bought your twelfth month of premium, Before that it was part of the reimbursement system which is now defunct.

Loyalty program must be broken. I'm getting near 2 years and haven't gotten one.

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Ive done a lot of archery in pve. Its really sweet for taking out squishies line spiders, wolves, beers and even trolls. Great thing is you can easily take out champion animals with low ql gear and crap fs with archery. When it comes to scorps and crocs though it is better to bring a long a decent weapon like a shovel or pickaxe

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3 hours ago, warrior said:

Ive done a lot of archery in pve. Its really sweet for taking out squishies line spiders, wolves, beers and even trolls. Great thing is you can easily take out champion animals with low ql gear and crap fs with archery. When it comes to scorps and crocs though it is better to bring a long a decent weapon like a shovel or pickaxe

I mean you gotta bury the remains anyhow, right?

Edited by Slickshot

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