Archery

Archery is the ranged weapon skill, covering the bow, crossbow and heavy crossbow. It lets you deal full weapon damage from up to 10 tiles away — at the price of ammunition, a mandatory stand-still before each shot, and no shield to hide behind.

What the skill does

Whether an arrow hits is the same contest as in melee (see Weapons):

chance to hit = (your Archery + 50) ÷ ((their skill + 50) × 2)

Damage is scaled by Tactics, Anatomy and Strength exactly like a melee hit; the regular bow additionally gains a damage bonus from your Fletching skill (up to +20% at 100).

The archery rules

• You must stand still for 1 second before you can fire. There is no shooting on the move — reposition, plant your feet, then the shot comes.
• Every shot consumes ammunition: arrows for bows, bolts for crossbows, drawn from your quiver or backpack.
• Recovery: when you hit a monster there is a 40% chance the ammunition survives and can be looted back from the corpse; missed shots have a 40% chance to fall to the ground nearby.
• Range: bows shoot up to 10 tiles, crossbows up to 8.
• No parry: you cannot hold a shield with any bow (all two-handed), and ranged fighters cannot parry blows.

The heavy crossbow's 16–44 roll is the biggest single hit any ranged weapon can deliver — see Weapons for how those numbers scale. The tribal bow is a sidegrade looted from the savage tribes, not an upgrade.

In PvP, archers trade the melee fighters' special blows for reach: there are no ranged special moves, but forcing enemies to close the distance while you fire is its own advantage.

Skill cap

Archery caps at 100.0 — there are no Skill Scrolls for weapon skills, so it cannot be raised to 120.

Training 0 → 100

You gain with every shot at a valid target, hit or miss:

1. 0–30: buy the first points from an NPC bowyer or ranger.
2. 30–100: shoot mid-tier monsters that can't easily reach you — archery is unusually pleasant to train because you can kite. Bring plenty of arrows and loot them back from corpses (40% recovery). A regular bow's higher speed gives more shots — and more gain rolls — per minute than the crossbows.
3. Train in dungeons for 20% faster gains; guarded towns and houses are slower. On the newbie island Adena gains are doubled but capped at 70.0. See Skills Overview for all gain modifiers.

Keep cheap ammo flowing: a friendly fletcher (or your own Fletching skill — which also boosts bow damage) makes training nearly free.

Related

• Weapons — damage, swing speed, hit chance and the archery weapon table
• Archery Mastery — the Archery mastery (Piercing Shot, Crippling Arrow,
• Skill Masteries — how the mastery system works Rapid Fire) and the Arms Lore two-handed/bow specialization
• Tactics · Anatomy
• Fletching — craft your own bows and arrows