Hi guys, I am trying to play an Archer Knight in Skyrim and I want to do it without sneaking. My last character was an Assassin so I have had too much of sneaking goodness but now I am bored of it. So this time I created an Archer with Heavy Armor. I want to play this character more as an Archer Warrior/Knight rather than a Ranged Rogue. I really don't want to use any melee weapons and I don't want to use sneak at all.

Now bear in mind I am talking about low and mid level progression here (Master & Legendary Difficulty). I am level 10 and My archery is 42 at the moment and I am using a Dwarven Bow. And I am having very hard time against most enemies especially mages, who run almost twice as fast as I do and they move all the time while attacking with flames, lightning etc, so it a [censored] to target them with bow and even if I hit them I don't do much damage to them.

On the other hand, when I use a Two Handed Ancient Nord Sword with Two Handed Skill of *16* only, I do a lot more damage than I am doing with 42 Archery and Dwarven Bow, also I win fights way more easily than I do with far more superior archery and bow.

This character has proved severely disappointing so far. I really want to play her as an Archer Knight, but this is proving almost impossible. Also the other skills I am focusing on at the moment are Conjuration, Restoration and Smithing, which makes my main skills Archery, Heavy Armor, Conjuration, Restoration and Smithing.

Can anyone give me any useful advice here, how to make this Archer Knight work. Like I said I really don't want to go melee or use sneaking therefore please don't tell me do it.

Any useful advice will be much appreciated , thanks

It should get easier once you get the archery stagger perk. Is that level 50? You probably want to mix in a lot of shouting too, for cc purposes

Lower the difficulty, profit. You're level 10. You're not proving anything to some imaginary online community of Pr0-Skyrimz.

Once you reach an appropriate level and have smithing, then you may increase the difficulty if things get too easy.

Perhaps get a follower or two in order to occupy your enemies in order to try and distract them and pick them off? That might help some, as well as using the slow time perk when blocking with your bow in order to draw an arrow on people like the mages faster.

I don't feel good about myself or the game if I lower the difficulty , my assassin made it through in legendary with ease, this character should too.......... I just really want to overcome this flaw in gameplay that I can kill enemies with two handed ancient nord sword with the skill of 16 twice as fast than I can with my dwarven bow with archery skill of 42.

At the moment it appears to me that combat is designed by developers with stealth in mind, that's why it felt so sublime when I played the assassin.

I think the problem is that you're developing too many skills. For early survivability, you need to focus on your main skill. At level 10 you should have over 50 archery. Plus, get enchant to 20 with 2 perks and make fortify archery 18 items for a total of 72% boost. A Dwarven bow should then be doing 49 damage plus arrows. (at adept, of course)

Alternatively, get a bound bow (a book is available at level 1) and boost your magicka to cast it. (atronach stone plus a novice hood should be enough) That's even better; with the same set up you could get over 100 damage.

Just because sneak is over-powered does not mean you should punish yourself. The point of the difficulty system is to adjust the individual's need. Everyone plays differently and it's difficult to "balance" that for everyone.

Once you can uber-smith your bows, then the difficulty increase will be appropriate.

I'm not sure what other advice I can give. You're doing abysmal damage because of the difficulty.

Turn down the difficulty and increase it back to Legendary as Your character increases in Skill. Without Sneak, Archery is mainly a method of softening a target for Melee.

Get over Your "must play on maximum difficulty" mindset, play on Expert. A Game is meant to be a distraction from the annoyances of RL, not as a source of constant annoyance because Your character is getting killcammed by Skeever. We know You think You should be able to play any playstyle on Legendary, but We know better. Be kind to Yourself and follow Our advice.

Hmm.....ok, turning down to Expert and focusing on increasing Archery Skill on priority. But I am still getting by on Legendary with two handed swords, even with 18 Two Hand skill (without any perks) but can hardly make a dent with my 45 archery now, this just seems lame and completely unbalanced.

I never really thought I would be disappointed with this game in this manner, when I was playing the assassin.

Anyway thanks for all the responses. It seems Archery is significantly underpowered without stealth in comparison to melee and spells, even though a large sized bow is just as difficult to handle as a two handed sword, I don't see any reason why archery had to be tied up with stealth in order to do any decent amount of damage.

I guess no choice but to turn down difficulty.

A good way to play a non-sneaky archer is to use Alchemy. On mages, use paralyse, damage magicka, damage magicka regen poisons. On melee warriors, use slow poisons. Also use elemental resistance potions and fortify archery potions. Concentrated Poison is a great perk here.

For Archery, Power Shot, Quick Shot, and Ranger are also pretty essential.

Problem with archery, in order to deal maximum damage, one should sneak. At least the first shot, should deal massive damage before they close in.

Even with the power shot, it is a 50% chance to stagger all but largest opponent.

Why dont you look into being a battle mage, crusaider or paladin? Since heavy armour is involved.......

Go heavy armour, invest in magic. Or a crusaider, invest in restoration and heavy armour, restoration.....but both builds would require melee weapons though, i mean the whole idea of heavy armour is to be able to get in the middle of a mosh pit of enemies and survive like a tank really.....

Specializing in archery....light armour comes to mind and some sneak (to keep dealing sneak attacks with the bow only).

I currently run a Cruisaider build focusing on hitting the undead. Heavily invested into restoration, heavy armour, one handed, block, smithing, alteration, archery (for that first shot at range to deal massive damage) and enchanting. Basically supportive spells and using Dawnbreaking to set the undead on fire and a chance to explode......

Undead are a LOT in this game, draugr, ghosts, vampires, dragon priests and so on.....

What exactly are you killing on legendary with your 18 in two handed weapons? It would take forever even to kill a bandit outlaw at that skill level. Legendary is just whack since you do 1/4 damage