Hello, I am new here. I'm building what is commonly known as Archer class; as a bosmer. Yet, I've found that archery seems kinda pale, in comparison to the usual plain-old two-handed Barbarian style or fancy magic nukers. Do you have some tips on doing this more properly? I'm on level 11 and recently pass through 50-ish on Archery, focusing mostly on Overdraw, Power Shot, and Critical Shot perks.

Thanks.

Archery is a little lackluster in the first few levels, until you manage to find a good damage bow and higher quality arrows. From personal experience, I'd recommend using Archery with Sneak, and taking advantage of Sneak Attacks. It can take out many enemies in one shot, and a large amount of life from tougher enemies before you have to engage them in close range. It works pretty fine.

Also, it is worth the effort into leveling Smithing up until you can forge Elven equipment, more specifically the Elven bow and arrows. The Elven Bow is the best standard bow until Ebony and Daedric equipment start showing up, and if enchanted, will certainly be your weapon of choice (as well as armor, if you use Light Armor) for several levels.

Go for the ranger perk, it will make a big difference. You can give yourself an advantage by slowing the enemy either using poisons of slow or a bow that does frost damage. Alchemy plus archery is a good combo.

What would be the best character setup for damaging boss-type enemies, such as dragons? It's hard to sneak against them, especially the random encounter ones.

I've never tried alchemy-archery combo. Stealth with smithing is already too much character micromanaging too me. Maybe it's time to experiment, though. Any general tips for that combo?

Edit: Or am I wrong when I assume I can build a heavy hitter archer?

I used to think archery was lackluster too since my characters are mellee warriors. That was until I enchanted the arrows with fire damage, it's fabulous to see your enemies burn from afar. I also love the eagle eye perk where I can close up the target . Good luck!

Poison does work on dragons. In my opinion, there are two types of characters that have great advantages over dragons: archers and mages that use wards. As an archer you don't have to get close. You may get hit with the dragon's breath attack, so it is good to have a potion of resist fire or frost. (alchemy again). Poisons that are effective against dragons include anything that damages health, magicka or stamina. With high powered magicka damaging poisons you can get them to stop shouting.

Brother, just do what feels right. What I did was used a Conjuration Spell called "Bound Bow". It is basically a Daedric Bow plus arrows for mages. But it helped in a lot of my archers, which I mainly do. But I would get your smithing up to 100, craft your self some jewelry and what not, enchant them with fortify smithing, craft some DragonScale Armour,
DragonBone Bow and DragonBone Arrows (as in almost every dragon bone you get, ou turn into DragonBone arrows). Put on your enchanted smithing gear, drink a fortify smithing potion, then smith everything to legendary.

After that spend done time in sneak mode, as in always stay sneak, no one will care (unless you start picking pockets). Level your sneak, get the marksman perk.

Then, well, go cause chaos.

I think most archers have a back up for their bow. I guess the classic choice is a melee weapon. My character is a no melee mystic archer however. She uses a conjured bow to deliver damage and supportive magicks as back up. If cornered at melee range for example, instead of pulling out a blade, she is likely to summon help, paralyze her foe or cast an illusion that will terrify them into running away - to get shot in the back. 'Crowd control' is accomplished either by long range sniping or using frenzy type spells to thin the ranks.

She does fight dragons very successfully because her bow is powerful and she has taken steps to have a very high passive magic resistance. The key to her dragon fights is staying out of melee range (easy to do with dragons). With her magic resistance and powerful bow, she can stand at range and, in an exchange between her arrows and the dragon's breath, she wins every time. A bonus of high magic resistance is that it lets her fight mages the same way - in fact she views their 'ward' spells as simply nice bright targets for her arrows.

Ohhhh, I love mages who cast wards, even that silly Mage armor. For me I stand there and be like "dude, I got a bow and arrows made of dragons, and your going to throw up a ward to protect your self from magic"? For me, I see killing them as a service, eliminating the STUPID!

If you have Dawnguard, try the crossbows. If you have access to dragonbone weapons and armor they will make great arrows and a good bow. Daedric is better, but a pain to get, if you don't know your way around Skyrim. When you get around 90 in archery with a legendary bow, you will be ridiculously over powered ..... Well in most cases.

On a side note, I usually run heavy armor and sword and shield when I'm playing an archer. Try to use stealth where you can with archery it can be devastating.

For me personally i don't need to use a melee weapon as backup while using bows thanks to paralysis poisons and the power shot/ranger, so i exclusively use bows.

A tank (follower or conjured) is a help when playing an archer.

Lydia does a great job keeping giants or dragons busy whilst I pinprick them to death.

Be wary of the bullseye perk. It can paralyze an enemy that would have otherwise been killed.

I remembered I paralyzed a giant just as Serana launched a Lightning Bilt at it. I never found that giant again, but a good bit of "welcome to the mile high club now *******" was in order.

You don't need a melee weapon and you don't need to take smithing all the way to dragon armor. You will probably need some smithing though and crossbows are good. If going pure archer you need a way to slow enemies somehow so you don't get overwhelmed, whether its through alchemy, enchanting, or magic. There are many ways to do it: frost, paralyze, slow poisons, ash spells, turn undead, fear enchantments or spells, or even conjured helpers. I would going all out with archery but also add a method of slowing/incapacitation as a supplement.



Edit: if you haven't already done this, look for the Demon Hunter on the Skyrim blog. There might be too much magic in that build for you, but it should give you ideas for a successful archer that doesn't have to rely on sneak. And the atronach stone can help too.

When the enemy bot gets close, instead of running like a headless chicken, do the right thing: bash it with the bow, then shoot. Rinse and repeat till it's dead.

Or give it the most famous shout of all: FUS! RO! DAH! (Welcome to the cloud district Nazeem)

This - I always forget that you can bash with a bow!

I also recommend the Hunter's Discipline (especially great when you are using the best arrows such as Ebony, Daedric, etc.). I think the description isn't accurate. It says you recover more arrows than when you don't have the perk but it seems like my archer now recovers every, single arrow!

My current archer doesn't use armor so there's lots of sneaking (she's also an assassin). 2/3 of her attributes points go into health. It's pretty easy to become overpowered if you combine archery and sneak so be careful.

Unrelenting Force is nice and fine -but it has something bashing doesn't have: a cooldown

Yah, but bashing only works for like a second. Unrelenting force sends hem flying allowing for you to land several shots before they get up, expeccially if you have the quick draw perk.

Quickshot is just 30% bonus. Elemental Fury will show you the real meaning of speed. In terms of crowd control, I'd take Ice Form any time -but not Unrelenting Force.

Either way, there's still the matter of cooldown to consider, especially in a boss fight. So: Let's say you only have Unrelenting Force in your arsenal and you just used it. What do you do till it's back up, run like a headless chicken, or close in, bash and shoot?

You can always save yourself from the pain and turn the difficulty down to novice -right?

All my play throughs are on Legandary, except my newer characters. Learned that lesson too well, I kept dying, in Helgan Keep.

But I would use Unrelenting Force, land several hits, and usually one of those arrows paralyzed them.

If I got a mage through Helgen on legendary, you could certainly get an archer out of there

As for Bullseye, it's paralysis chance is 15%. Bringing the skill to 100 in order to get it, may not be that hard, if you really focus on the skill. However, what you describe, doesn't cover what happens when Bullseye fails -because it will. This, is because in order to get to Bullseye, you had taken Quickshot and before that, Powershot: 50% stagger chance.

Stagger, is the real workhorse in Skyrim's physical weapons combat, whether it occurs from bashing, power attack, or a perk -magic combat is different, since there's an array of methods of avoiding getting hit.

Even when everything else has failed you, stagger will not. So, either you know how to bash, or switch to panic mode and start running like a... ah well, I wrote it too many times arleady