How fun is archery?

[1gecko]

Myself, I find archery to be hugely rewarding (from a gameplay experience perspective) - I find it a lot more immersive than wading into melee and suspending disbelief at how it plays out.

 

Don't misunderstand, I find Skyrim to have the absolute best (so far) melee system - especially taking into account blocks AND attacks balanced with skill progression and the player's reactions.

 

... but I find it takes much less disbelief or imagination to 'think' your character's armor (and maybe a bit of magic) prevented that return-fire arrow / spell from doing serious damage so that you could continue to fight as your character does (as opposed to dropping to the ground and trying to hold in your entrails after a sword should have openned you up).

 

I also find the self-challenge of going in with the bow (almost always sneaking - yes, I am one of those; my characters tend to be rather pragmatic: "I intend to live through this experience, and my best chance of that is if the enemy suddenly finds themself in Sovengard going, 'WTF just happened?'") to be very refreshing - and eye-openning to how the game AI has the NPCs react (and react fairly intelligently for a change). Things like shooting *beyond* your targets (while you are still hidden, of course) so that they go away to investigate the sound and giving you that wonderful shot in to their backs! And actually trying for 'real' hits that you can imagine would kill someone in one or two hits (when you put the arrow through their throat or between the eyes, it is very immersive that they dropped without much sound except that of their body hitting the floor - as opposed to when you shoot someone in the foot and they die <rolls eyes>)

[AstralFire]

Regarding multi-specialization, I prefer to have one weapon and get good at it per character. I like to travel light instead of having weapons all over my body. Also regarding ease, I just did most of the Main Quest on Master as a Resto spellsword without archery - it's quite doable, actually, but the release of horseback archery but no horseback casting, was a major motivator in me restarting.

 

I also enjoy stealth, I just hate when I have a character forced to use it constantly to do -everything-, because those types are invariably up a creek when they lose that advantage. I'm sold pretty well on archery right now, so I'm going to give a spellbow a try. I picked up one of the many explosive arrows mods, though this one only does explosive arrows, and they're pricey - no utility belt arrows, which always felt like they encroached on magic to me.

[Stemin]

Regarding multi-specialization, I prefer to have one weapon and get good at it per character. I like to travel light instead of having weapons all over my body. Also regarding ease, I just did most of the Main Quest on Master as a Resto spellsword without archery - it's quite doable, actually, but the release of horseback archery but no horseback casting, was a major motivator in me restarting.

 

I also enjoy stealth, I just hate when I have a character forced to use it constantly to do -everything-, because those types are invariably up a creek when they lose that advantage. I'm sold pretty well on archery right now, so I'm going to give a spellbow a try. I picked up one of the many explosive arrows mods, though this one only does explosive arrows, and they're pricey - no utility belt arrows, which always felt like they encroached on magic to me.

 

I don't want this to come out the wrong way... I'm not saying there's anything wrong with using only one weapon, but the whole point of the open perk system in Skyrim as opposed to birthsigns and classes and all that stuff they ditched from Oblivion is to allow you to pick a bunch of different character types.

 

Your points are all good, I just hesitate to see you classify everything so tightly.

 

For example your comment on stealth.... you're looking at stealth as if you HAVE to play a thief/assassin type player, but you just don't.

 

Just about every player I play I use stealth from my mage to my warrior with heavy armor, because quite frankly they put the stealth button into the game and I can't stop using it! It's the best radar in the game to let you know if someone's around before they actually show up hostile in your radar, and it's a total asset. I can't make myself not use it.

 

Is it the _right_ way to do it? No. My point is, there is no right way.

 

As a matter of fact, stealth HURTS your skill leveling because it takes less hits to kill everything and you're not getting hit, so your light armor/heavy armor, archery, one-handed, two handed skills and even magic all take longer to level if you're stealthing.

[AstralFire]

Actually, I'm not looking at Stealth that way... I used Stealth extensively my previous playthrough, despite only dropping three or four perks in it. I just wanted to make sure that archers weren't in a position where they were crippled or unable to really use their power properly if they were in a position where they couldn't use Stealth.

 

I generally prefer to play characters to certain archetypes, is all, and I'm interested in playing the Movie Susan/Natalia Lanvaldear/Movie Legolas + a bit of magic thrown in at the moment. The Link style "I use every weapon when appropriate" is pretty cool too, but I want to save that for a later playthrough so that each character feels more distinct to me. Additionally, the small amount of hotkeys in Skyrim forces me to do this, in a way, since I prefer to pause as little as possible - the more hotkeys I'm spending on equipping different weapons, the fewer hotkeys I can spend on spells.

Edited June 2, 2012 by AstralFire

[imperistan]

I don't want this to come out the wrong way... I'm not saying there's anything wrong with using only one weapon, but the whole point of the open perk system in Skyrim as opposed to birthsigns and classes and all that stuff they ditched from Oblivion is to allow you to pick a bunch of different character types.

 

Thats why I made different characters. I didn't just roll all the character types into one bag of a character.

[Athyra]

I loved archery in vanilla, using it on it's own is a little challenging but a lot of fun.

It was definitely a lot more fun lower levels, higher levels it was basically too easy,

 

I made an archery mod that splits the bows into long and light bows with different characteristics, that may be fun for you too :)

(link in sig)

[orand06]

Think of it this way... Archery is the only type of combat in Skyrim that requires any skill to master... Very Fun!

[Dovahkiin069]

Seriously I cannot play the game without it. Tried magic, kept getting killed. Tried sword and heavy armour, kept getting killed. Use archery and I rarely even get hurt. I put all of my perks into Archery, Sneak and Blacksmithing. I use whatever the current flavour of bow is with iron arrows. Low impact arrows like Falmer, Forsworn and iron give you the best experience per target. Mr. Master Vampyre too tough for you? Keep coming back when his guard is down. In the end they will all submit.

 

 

Rabbit

 

Its your opinion so i respect, but i am a pure soldier, who trust in my power and strength, all my perk i put on heavy armor,one-handed

smithing and block. if i sill have perks then i put on restoration ( i use in rare times, when my healing potions end).

[AventisArentino]

Definately most useful skills in Skyrim are from archery perk tree, but recently i downloaded this black sacrament mod and must say it is even funnier to play with that mod installed.The bow looks fantastic and it also do quite a damage.People explode when hit!fun fun fun :biggrin: not to mention invisibility cloack mode!

 

 

 

[luzburg]

Played through Dragonborn with an Axe/Shield/Bow/heavy/restoration character. It was a lot of fun especially with one of the new shouts (no spoilers ^^) The bow was particularly useful versus some of the new enemies.