I've never really made any use of archery in Oblivion, and as I'm returning to the game for a proper shot at playing after having only played it a tad a while back. As I'm returning to the game I would like to play it in a completely fresh way; however I'm not really sure on what sort of character a marksman build would go best with. I'm thinking one of the better stealth races, combined with a daily life as some sort of thief.

All suggestions welcome.

What difficulty do you play on?

any character can be a marksman, its just the amount of training that takes effect, train against enemies that are slow, or go to places where they cant hit you, jump on rocks to get away from them, and fill them with arrows. its gonna be rather costly to train with a bow, you will need to constantly repair your bow, as well as fund more arrows, its also good to specialise in a melee weapon, a shortsword is probably a good choice. invest a lot in stealth. and alchemy, poison you rarrows, scavenge ingredients on site to make potions for money or benefit.

Thanks a lot; I think I'll grab a dagger or shortsword for my close-quarters defence. Money shouldn't be too much of a problem. Any good early bows I could get?

Wood elves get the best jump start since they get racial boosts to both Marksman and Sneak, plus they start at 50 in both Agility and Speed. Other good choices are dunmer, khajiit and argonian. But as said above you can make any race into a marksman, some just take a little longer.

Mara

Archers can be the most environmental player. You have to use the area to your advantage. (ie, cover, a vantage point, a place where you can jump onto, then fill your melee opponent with arrows) This makes Acrobatics a neccesary skill too. Skills I'd recommend are...


Marksman, Blade, Sneak, Acrobatics, and Light Armor. The next skills really depend on your style of play. You could do Security or Alteration, but some people think its a waste because you can get the Skeleton Key (i prefer not using the Skeleton Key, it takes the fun out of lockpicking). THen some other possible skills you might want are: Mercantile, (it's hard to level if its not a major skill), Alchemy (Using a poison on your weapon may result in a one hit kill combined with a sneak attack), and Illusion (can be very useful for sneaking, however, without a high Intellligence, it could be a waste of a major skill, and you can find or enchant Chameleon equipment)

pfft.. builds.

just get a bow and start shooting stuff ffs.

Until Acadian jumps in with the definitive archer answer, let my just add in a few small pieces of advice. Always try to get sneak shots in, and always poison at least your first shot, if not every one. Remember that you can block with your bow if you are cornered, but is better to run backward and keep shooting when someone is charging you. Invisibility spells are handy if someone gets too close. Same with paralysis.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1111379-having-a-hard-time-with-marksman-at-50-difficulty-s/ is a recent thread....

I think there is plenty of good advice above.

I recommend augmenting your bow with either blade or magic (both if you want). It sounds like you want marksman as your primary killing skill and to back it up with a blade. Here are some things such a character might consider:

- Take marksman as a major skill and try to bump it up at least 3 skillups for every time you level. When you level up, try to improve your agility attribute. Those things will help keep your lethality going up as quickly as enemies gain hitpoints as you and your foes level up together.

- As SubRosa wisely said, get good with sneak and poison - learn 'em and use 'em.

- A bow? Use the best available regular bow available for your level. Once you can repair magic items and capture souls (Azura's Star is very handy here), then enchant your bow. You did use the time learning to repair magic weapons to get into the Arcane University so you could enchant your own stuff, right? Since you are using a blade as your back up, you don't really need to immobilize your foes (like a no-melee mystic archer loves to do). Therefore, I would enchant your bow with a 1 second soul trap and plenty of elemental damage.

- An archer who uses a bow as their primary weapon does best with a slow, methodical playstyle. Plenty of detect life and snooping around and selecting firing positions.

- As far as build stuff, gee it just depends on so many variables and things like how you want to play, how fast and high you want to level, how 'uber' you want to be, what kind of image you want your char to have, what you want them to wear, how much you like to use certain skills and so on. Therefore, I generally stay away from specific 'how to build a good xxx' questions.

take this, and add sneak. the ability to ignore armor, run while sneaking, eventually wear heavy armor(all depends) are among some of the best things you can ever have.

Steal a fine steel bow off the IC guards. That's a damn good early bow. Also Hatred's Soul can be acquired pretty early.

I suggest doing the leyawiin quest and go find the black bow bandits. You can start the quest by just asking around or head str8 for the castle.

Also knowing a couple of summons is great too, try to summon something with loads of health and is huge for blocking your opponents path to you forcing them to fight your Conjured fiends. Daedroth and Storm Atronarch are good for this but zombies and skeletons will do too. Need a bit of magicka though.

I have a breton archer going, always uses conjuration and poisens.

thats also a good idea mumatil, i think its easier to learn how to summon than to learn how to use blades, but if you use blades on your summoned creatures...yeah..

summoned units with a long time duration can distract a unit and keep them back while you move back to get a good shot on them, and when they move back to block, you can fire on them as they counterattack. and adding poison to that arrow that you scavenged on site...yeah...great stuff.

What gpstr said. That's one of the first things I do if I'm looking for a bow early on.

Acadian and the others here have mentioned all the good points.
But in my experience acrobatics is a must, outside scan for high rocks and fort walls to mantle. Caves tend to have no places to scale so be extra carefull. Aylied ruins leap on plinths then walls even a low level character on higher difficulties can deal with most enemies there with minor planing.

Remember to scout have a back up and escape route, just in case.
Sneak stick to shadows, and stay at range, find the best posistion to take the shot first.
When sneaking don't move after your first shot, as you may get the bright eye of detection, but that just means you've made them wary not that you have been seen.

Poison is your best friend, even early damage fatigues are well worth it, two of them low to mid levels, combined with hand to hand if they engage close will have the foes unconcious quickly.
Choose your targets, mages first as summons allways spot me automatically, take silence poisons / spells.
Try illusion in general as a back up, as anyone that gets to close can be mind controlled, or you just go invisible.

As proof that any race can work, my Orc Archer is doing rather well. He is a lot of fun. The idea of an Orc sneaking around shooting stuff from the shadows just really makes me laugh. Since he was thrown into this Oblivion crisis, he has taken it upon himself to broaden his skills, so he has taught himself Conjuration which is pretty handy as a minor skill, same thing with Alchemy.

Now I know I didn't steal this one from you, like I did the Courtesan, but my newest is an Orc stealth/archer. Must just be a 'great minds think alike' thing.

It came about because I was running around with Jibran, my Redguard swordsman (claymores exclusively). He's tremendously tough at this point, and is wearing enchanted clothing, so he's got lots of spare encumbrance and isn't afraid of much of anything. He kept breaking off while he was going from one place to another to go into random dungeons, and I was enjoying it so much that I started considering making a purpose-built dungeon crawler. My first thought was one of the more standard stealth races, but part of what's fun with Jibran is that he's got so much strength and carries so little stuff that he can often clean out an entire dungeon in a single trip. So I decided on a high-strength fighter race instead. But I'm currently already playing a Redguard and two Nords, so...... and then I thought, "Why not an Orc?" And then I suddenly realized that there are already purpose-build dungeon crawlers in the game-- Orc Adventurers. So that's what I made-- Lud gro-Dalum, the Orc Adventurer-- light to no armor, lots of stealth, lots of archery and a bit of blunt for up-close work.

And of course, one bonus to an Orc archer is that they're the only race that can get drain without using an exploit or finishing KoTN.

My first character was an Orc who used bows too, and stuck around in his Daedric boots. I liked him because he was so durable (and yeah, how nobody could hear the "clink clink clink" in the shadows :laugh: ).

However, Malgak would not be amused to know someone was laughing at him :stare: lol

Reroll a different class, haha just kiding....but seriously.

Marksman imho was so underpowered in that game.

incidentally, are there any summons in the game for any woodland critters? something to accompany my bosmer archer who frolicks through the woods? without mods, i run on 360 but have all dlc.

This isn't a summon but in KofN if you get the ____ ,they grant the power to not be attacked by woodland critters and you could always make a control creature spell. No animal summons in vanilla, which bites.

hey good news. i just looked it up and you can actually find a summon bear spell in spell tomes if you get a lucky drop. dang, i'd give anything to be able to summon a will o the wisp as a bosmer.

Stealth and Posion are your friends. At low levels an any stealth arrow will kill an opponent, at higher levels poison is needed because of higher hitpoints in your enemies.