[915][Guide] How to use the Archer effectively

I wrote my Knight guide yesterday. Today, I'll be focusing on using the archer like a pro. I'm actually pretty good with all the classes, but the Archer has gotten such a great buff in the 915 update that they actually become far more usable than in previous builds, thanks to increased coin gaining. While the 919 build update came out today, this guide pulls from my knowledge of 915 (As I haven't played 919 yet) but the majority of this guide will still be relevant to it and for at least a few more of the next updates to come.

First, let's talk about the abilities that Archers possess.

1. Single shot half-charge. To use this, press and hold L-mouse for a second. The minimum time it takes to draw a single arrow back and to fire it feels to me to be about one second, maybe a tad less. A slightly drawn bow will travel an extremely short distance and will deal a very tiny amount of damage. The only time you will ever use this is in close quarter 1v1 archer on archer combat, or against a builder closing in on you. In all other cases, this attack is completely useless. (Well maybe you could blow up a mine with it.)

2. Single shot fully-charged. If you charge your bow until the circle is complete, which takes about a second and a half, you'll release a single shot that will travel the maximum distance. In KAB (King Arthur Beta, the new release) the arrows travel less far than in the classic game, so make note of this if you're a returning player. A single arrow charged to full may kill a fellow archer in close combat (Sometimes they live though, it probably does less than 2 hearts of damage so they'll need to be hurt first) but a knight can easily block it with their shield. If unblocked, it will stun the enemy for a split second, though not long enough for you to hit them with another charged arrow.

3. Legolas Shot. The Legolas shot is so named because of how Legolas fires three arrows at once in the LOTR movies. If you charge your bow for around 2 to 3 seconds, until the tip glows and you hear a "ching" sound, then release L-mouse and quickly tap it twice to fire three shots in rapid concession. These shots will -NOT- penetrate a knight's shield at distance, only in close range (within around 1-10 tiles, you'll get a feel for it when you play), they will kill any enemy archer if two or more shots hit them, and usually if all three connect it will kill a builder. If a knight is at full health and doesn't block, you will -NOT- kill them, as it doesn't deal 5 hearts of damage. The Legolas Shot also has a better stun rate than a single charged shot does.

4. Grappling Hook. In previous builds of KAB, the grapple didn't exist and instead R-mouse used the Knife, which dealt a 3 heart backstab attack or half heart frontstab attack. The grapple is far more useful and interesting though. With practice, you can scale the vast majority of enemy towers (watch out for spikes!), you can fire it in front of you while walking to increase movement speed, and you can hook yourself to a ledge and shoot arrows from the ledge onto enemies below. For more specific tips on using the grapple, see the tips section below.

5. Water/Fire Arrows. Water and Fire arrows can be purchased 2 at a time for 20 and 30 coins each, respectively.
-Water Arrows can stun enemies and also put out fires, just like the Water Bombs for knights. Their use is fairly limited and useless for solo archer combat. For backing up a knight or squad of your allied knights though, they're cheap and have many uses.
-Fire Arrows are the best general use special weapon in the game. If they hit an enemy, they inflict the Burning debuff, which causes their controls to go wonky for a second, deal damage for the first hit and a small amount over a period of time, or if they hit a wooden structure they catch it on fire and burn it to the ground. They do -NOT- catch wooden vehicles/boats on fire though, so be careful of that.

6. Bomb Arrows. These bad boys can be purchased for 50 gold each (Only one arrow at a time!) and detonate on impact with whatever they're fired at. They have the same destructive power as a knight's Bomb, but they can be shot further and higher, as well as being unable to be slashed out of the air by a knight's slash attack. They also deal damage to shielded knights, unlike the regular or fire arrows, so that's a thing too. Most people use them for pinpoint accurate building and vehicle destruction though, and that's what I recommend most.

7. Laying Prone. Pressing down on the keyboard, or S, allows an archer to lie down and hide behind things, such as bushes, crates, or even dead bodies. This skill actually is rarely used and has little use on the average CTF server, so I wouldn't recommend it for the average match.


Also note that arrows can be deflected in midair by other arrows, and aside from special arrows (Fire,Water, and Bomb) regular arrows can also be slashed out of midair, in addition to being deflected by shields.


-General strategies for playing as an archer-

Use your grapple effectively! Practice in a single player map by building a tower with lots of joints and parts sticking out, then trying to scale it as an archer. Add in spikes, traps, etc, and see how momentum and physics affect your falling.

Learn to aim with the bow! Practice offline by yourself in any of the various challenges, or play some PVP deathmatch and get good at aiming and learning how gravity and power affects your shots. In less than a day you can be firing shots like a professional sniper.

Archers are best at destroying enemy bases. Knights may have kegs and bombs, but archers are the only class that can reliably burn down wooden bases in seconds with a well placed shot, or who can carve out a path up a sheer structure so that knights can scale it. (Builders can too, but they have to get close and often die before they can actually break their way through the whole thing.)

Archers can fire a regular arrow into a wall and use that arrow to climb the structure. With the addition of the grapple, this ability is mostly useless, but still it exists!

Archers cannot light kegs, but they can still grab a lit keg/bomb and chuck it or run with it! Have a fellow knight light a keg, then quickly scale an enemy structure to destroy their overhangs! Seriously, not enough people do this.

Archers can use drills! Grab a drill from base (Make sure to mine your own though, don't steal a builder's drill) and climb to a good spot and start drilling into enemy structures! You can also use a drill on a fellow archer or a builder to quickly get the melee advantage on them. Don't try this on knights though, they can break your drills, and you, very easily. Keep in mind that drills do not overheat when mining resources and they overheat at 1/3rd speed when mining enemy structures. On dirt though, they overheat very quickly.

Archers can break an enemy knight who is shielding with a legolas shot. However, you must be very close. Use this method at your own risk.

Prioritize your targets effectively. Yes, you could attack the knight charging at you. However, that builder following right behind him is more likely to die and he's probably there to mine into your base, so kill him first. Even if you die, taking out a battle builder affects the enemy more than a single knight does. (Unless you have no walls up in your base, in which case holy fucking shit, kill that knight ASAP)



-Tips for facing an archer-

If you're a knight, toss a bomb at them when they're up high, slash at the tree they're on to try and knock them down, or murder them if they're at ground level. Dodge their legolas attacks and deflect all the other ones.
If you're a builder, rush to get in close and hammer away, or build something to deflect their attacks so they can't hurt you.
If you're a fellow archer, shoot better than them.

It doesn't get any easier than that.



If anyone else has more ideas for improving their archer game, lemme know and I'll add it to the OP.

 

actually you can scale any bar non-existing mass bridge walls (3-4 layers is passable, 5 is not I think. actually saw a thing like this once and it took a lot of minecrafting to make)


please use the term "grappling hook"/"grapple"

 

Oh, thank you for sharing this awesome and ingenious tactic, didn't think of it myself!

 

Thanks guys, I tried not to give away all my prostrats but some of the better ones leaked out.

/makesanote
Edit: Fix'd

 

*See classes & mechanics* -archers have less discussions, poor archers nobody likes them D:

--- Double Post Merged, Oct 28, 2013, Original Post Date: Oct 28, 2013 ---

anyway, sometimes they are OP,"sometimes", "SOMETIMES"

 

Well to be frank, I am going to make a guide on archers, they definitely have less possible than the knight, although their possibilities are odd to see in action.

 

It's like guides without gifs are pointless.

 

Well, I'm not going in depth on the weird things, just showing the details of the regular mechanics, you can record gifs too Klokinator, try downloading LICEcap

 

Eeeeeeh.

It's clear you don't play Archer that much. A lot of your information is indefinite, and/or incorrect:

You don't even know how much damage a single arrow does? Definitely a bad sign. It's 1 heart.

It's point-blank - within range of their slashes. 10 tiles is a pretty good distance; if I could stun a Knight from 10 tiles away with a shot, they would all be yelling, "ARCHERS OP!"

It's probably 3 or 4 tiles at the MOST.

Wrong. The Legolas shot is simply three fully charged arrows fired in quick succession. Each arrow stuns just as well as a single fully charged arrow. I know because I've fired many a single fully charged shot into a Knight at point-blank to stun them and get away.

Wrong again. Bomb Arrows are actually far more powerful than regular bombs... but only against buildings and siege engines. Against players, they can deal up to 2.5 hearts, as I read in the last devlog, whereas a Knight's bomb can deal 3 hearts.


If you're going to post a guide, you should at least know what you're talking about.

 

Okay

And this is where you fucked up the argument and acknowledged that archers are underpowered.

 

Geeze, little harsh. Keep the pvp to the game yeah?

I love how it seems like the only people who come to guides are those looking to critique them -_-
At any rate, I found the bit about using drills pretty interesting, hadn't even thought of that, could be absolutely devastating :D

 

If you're fighting with an archer, stand in open space with no trees/tall buildings. He wont find any way to pass by you. (WARNING: This does not work if the archer is me)

 

I've used that trick many a time on an unsuspecting fortress. Most enemies say "Oh look an archer scaling the wall. That's not even a problem" but if you put the drill in your inventory they can't see it at all. Pull it out when you're under an overhang and you've got yourself an entry way :D

 

XD yeah I love their reaction.
"Oh hey, archer on a wall, w/e....hey is that.."

 

This needs to be updated archers can't use drills anymore lol.

 

Just thought I'd post for a reminder because it seems people that are making recent archer threads are getting linked here and it won't help them at all.

 

I'm surprised it was archers with drills that got called out and not the goddamn Legolas Shot.