I did a google search for 'no sneak archery' to get some ideas for archer builds, and was surprised to find almost nothing relevant. Seems that the consensus is that sneak and archery go together like peanut butter and jelly. But it's also a consensus that it trivializes the game, and leads to boredom.

My first character was a 'ranger'. Back in november when we were all skyrim newbies, I thought sneak only worked on the first shot, so I spent most of the time sprinting away from creatures so I could fire some pot shots and not get destroyed in melee (because I had light armor and died very quickly). It was tough, especially against anything that could also sprint, but it was hella fun and after I learned how to abuse sneak, I really wished I could go back to that old kiting gameplay. After a few failed experiments, I discovered the most fun kiting build possible (for me).

Here is a video of my latest character in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsfKNk7mLLM

Perks

The essential framework is archery (duh), and alchemy. You could beat the game on master without much trouble with just those two skills. http://skyrimcalculator.com/#111038 are the perks I consider essential. I don't take Ranger because it makes kiting too easy (ie. boring). Feel free to fill out the rest of the trees with whatever perks you like.

I also perk light armor, just because I have to put the points somewhere, but it's not necessary (unless you play DiD; I don't). With no Ranger perk, you will get hit more often from ranged attackers, but you should be using cover against anything that can kill you quickly from range anyway.

Beyond this, sadly, I find it difficult to choose more skills to level. I never take magic because 1) almost all schools would completely trivialize the build and 2) I hate having to sheathe my bow just to cast a single spell (bring back quick cast beth). I also never use melee weapons because if I ever find the need to use them, it means I have failed at archery. That leaves smithing, enchanting, and pickpocket. Smithing and enchanting would destroy any semblance of challenge, so those are out. That leaves pickpocket, which is the most useless skill in Skyrim, because it is optional (unlike speech and to a lesser extent lockpicking), but it makes creatures stronger while you stay virtually the same. To get any combat use out of it I'd also need to level sneak, which is a cardinal sin.

Until DLC hopefully adds some fun new skills for this build (trap-making please!), I roll with just those 3 skills, sometimes with pickpocket just for the hell of it.

Poisons

So how do you use a bow 100% of the time without getting shredded in melee? The answer is slow poisons. Lots and lots of slow poisons (hotkey them). You can stockpile them very easily, to the point where you'll always have a surplus. Easiest way to do this is to gather all the deathbell in the swamps between solitude and morthal (there's close to 100 nodes there), and mix it with salt piles, which are abundant (search all those barrels and sacks). If you mix the deathbell with river betty instead, it'll add some nature damage on top of the slow effect, but to start out you should just make a nice stockpile of the normal poison. You should do this very early in the game, or you will have a really hard time against anything that can sprint. The poison lasts for 30+ seconds early on, which is plenty, and it quickly escalates to beyond a minute, which is an eternity. One single dose of this poison will turn a giant into a harmless loot pi?ata.

To make gameplay more varied and interesting, I like to brew other poisons, particularly lingering damage health (I never bother with magicka poisons because it's faster to wittle away at a mage's health than his magicka), which is also quite easy to stockpile. I used to also stockpile paralyze potions which also have abundant ingredients, but the effect is too overpowered so I just brew a handful for emergencies. Fear and frenzy poisons would be fun to use, but for some reason even with max alchemy and all the poison boosting perks I can't get their max effective level beyond 12, which is useless.

Particularly if you want to play my self-gimped version of this build (see below), you may want to brew multiple effects poisons. Here are the two I use the most (in some cases I left out hard to get ingredients):

slow + weakness to poison + damage health = deathbell + river betty + one of the following:

• bleeding crown
  
• chaurus eggs
  
• abecean longfin
  
• giant lichen
  
• sabre cat tooth
  
• small antlers
  
• pine thrush egg

Until you've collected enough river betty (which is a pain to farm), you can mix deathbell + salt pile + bleeding crown for a poison with just the slow + weakness to poison effects.

lingering damage health + damage health = imp stool + one of the following:

• slaughterfish eggs
  
• slaughterfish scales
  
• mora tapinella

+ one of the following:

• void salts
  
• troll fat
  
• small antlers
  
• skeever tail
  
• nightshade
  
• falmer ear

You can also brew a poison with the same previous two effects + ravage magicka with an imp stool, orange dartwing, and red mountain flower. The best place to gather imp stool (or any mushrooms really) is chillwind depths. I recommend not clearing the cave so that it will reset in 10 days instead of 30.

Visit this http://rp.eliteskills.com/skyrim.html for all your complex poison / potion needs.

Kiting

When you come across a melee creature, there are four possible scenarios: 1) he's fast but susceptible to slowing poisons (bandits, forsworn, etc.) 2) he's slow but immune to poison (draugr, vampires), 3) he's fast but immune to poison (fortunately only ghosts fall under here and they're rare), 4) he's too damn fast even when slowed (beasts). For the first two scenarios, sprint to range, stop, quickly turn around and shoot, rinse and repeat. Slowed creatures or sluggish undead won't be able to outrun you, making you untouchable, provided you have room to kite in. In scenario 3, if you have level 3 unrelenting force, then you can probably kill him before he can reach you again. If not, your best option is to either outsprint the ghost until he's out of stamina, or sprint to higher ground and abuse pathing (which svcks but is less tedious). Scenario 4 is easily handled by the (admittedly cheap) animal allegiance shout, which allows you to kill the beast(s) before they regain their senses. If you don't have that shout nor level 3 unrelenting force, then I consider that an emergency which is grounds for using a paralyze poison, as you can't kite even slowed beasts and you often can't tank the damage either, especially on master.

Shouts

I like to use fire or frost breath as supplemental damage as I rarely need unrelenting force (usually only use it for ghosts or when I get swarmed). I use the level 1 version of these shouts because they have nearly twice the dps of the level 3 shouts (due to cooldowns). On dragons I always use marked for death, and for beasts, as I already mentioned, animal allegiance.

Attributes

Once you get power shot, the value of stamina greatly diminishes, but I still like to take it up to 200, then concentrate fully on health. If you're a redguard, you can probably go health all the way, and brew a few stamina potions just in case, which might be a good idea if you want to play DiD.

Races

Any race will work, but taller races have a higher run speed so that's something to keep in mind. Bosmers will reach power shot sooner, and their racial is very useful until you get animal allegiance, which can be handy if you're trying this build for the first time (or playing DiD). I just pick my favorite race and ignore the racials.

Stones

I don't take any XP boosting stones because I like my games to last long, but if you're trying this for the first time, then you might want to take the warrior stone to get to power shot faster. After that, the lord stone is probably the most useful. If you want to go heavy armor instead of light, then the steed stone would be the obvious choice until you get conditioning.

Extra Challenge

I like to give myself an extra level of challenge by self-gimping: I always use a long bow, iron arrows, and hide armor. This can make master difficulty frustratingly hard in some places, but the long bow is surprisingly good because although it has low base damage, it is one of the fastest firing bows in the game (second only to the bound bow I believe), which gives it a decent dps and facilitates kiting. You will need to use and abuse damage poisons and shouts, but against high HP undead things can get a little monotonous at times. If you enjoy smithing, you could level that and upgrade the long bow a bit which might help (not sure it'll offset the increase in creature hp from leveling smithing though), and you'll get a nice little armor boost as well.

Conclusion

I believe this is a well-rounded build that is heaps of fun and goes well beyond the spamming of your mouse buttons. If you decide to give it a shot, let me know if you enjoyed it or if you have any ideas to make it more fun.

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probably the best archer build but i didn't understand one thing: do u want to make an archer that attack, run, attack, run attack, or one shot - one kill?

The Archer class in Morrowind included block and long blade as major skills.

Why not make an archer with
- Archery
- Light armor
- Sword branch of one-handed (NOT power attack)
- Block (the branch with power bash, not the shield branch)
and
- Either crafting (to make good equipment), speechcraft (to purchase good equipment and training) or lockpick (to raise probability of good loot, wastes two perk or so)

Kind of like the one in Morrowind, minus lots of stuff.

I like poisons and Archery - very strong. I actually like poisons in general. My favorite poison for and archer is Imp Stool + Canis Root + River Betty - that gives Paralysis + Lingering Health Dmg + Max Instant Health Dmg. A brutal combo.

Slow poisons never seem to work for me. On one encounter there were two cave bears. I hit one with a slow poison and then started to run, but they both stayed up with me. It did not seem to work at all.

I generally do not like to kite. Start with a bow shot and then switch to melee when they get close.

Attack, run, repeat. Last thing I want is to be one-shotting creatures as that's just boring.


Because then I wouldn't need to kite. And kiting is much more fun than constantly having to switch to a sword, IMO.

Yea, as I mentioned in the OP, beasts can outsprint you even when they're slowed. They're just damn fast . Animal allegiance shout makes quick work of them though.

I will have to give it another try then. Persoanlly, I think you should mix in Two Hand with this sort of playstyle. They just go so nice together!

What's a kite and kiting? I'd assume we aren't talking about the kites you FLY, are we?
My arche always keeps a dagger with him because it's impractical to draw and shoot an arrow while your enemy clobbers you.
Also, light armor. Preferably you'd keep away from melee combat, but when you are forced into those situations, you want some protection.

Kiting is a classic cheese tactic in computer games. In this case you shoot an arrow and then sprint out of range. Turn around shoot another arrow. Sprint out of range.

Normally, mages usually kite a target.

@Asgard - I would be very interested in a different approach. A non stealth, non kite character. For instance, using destruction to lay down runes as a trap. Arxhery is fun, but unfortunatel sneak ruins it.

Kiting is a well known gaming term, and yes, it refers to flying kites . It basically means running away from someone so they can't hurt you, and they keep following you, as if they were a kite that you were pulling.

You can avoid any and all melee combat through the use of poisons and sprint, as I explained in the OP, so you'd never need to use your dagger.

But kiting is so much fun... . Especially indoors with multiple melee NPCs chasing you.

A no-stealth and no-kite archer is easy to do with conjuration and/or a companion, but I think it would get boring fast (haven't tried it though).

What good would the runes do other than add a little extra damage?

Ahh, the overall opinion is that archery is weak without stealth. And constantly kiting is not very apppealing. Now I understand you like it, but... I think your play style is unique, but you have a good understanding of the power of archery without sneak.

I think you should focus on different builds that use archery as a primary kill skill, but without sneak.

For instance, which bow is the best for non sneak attacks. how about a good backup melee weapon?

My character Rashir uses daggers and bow 'n arrow. Becuase he looked cool both ways and I couldn't choose. I decided that if there were to many enemies the smarter idea was to pick them off with my bow 'n arrow. If there were enemies in single corridors I could easily sneak up with my daggers. And he's well rounded just in case he accidentally got detected he uses his dual daggers in combat.

Nah, it's not weak at all. If you do the smithing + enchanting thing you can one-shot many NPCs even without the sneak multiplier. Sneak just takes it to a whole different level of broken.

Best bow for kiting is the highest damaging bow that is fast enough to kite with (I'd never use a daedric bow for kiting because it takes forever to shoot). One day I'll do the math to figure out which bow this might be. Ideally, you'd have two bows: one for kiting, another with the highest possible dps for shooting ranged NPCs. I can't be bothered with that though hehe. Long bow ftw!

And I don't use backup weapons so can't help you there .

edit: tomorrow I'll add recipes for some useful multiple effects poisons. Off to sleep now.

The reason you don't find sneakless archery is that it takes no cost to simply couch before letting loose for sneak damage bonus. You don't even need the sneak perks. It simply does not make sense to do otherwise.

Here is my point - most people think archery + sneak. Otherwise archery is weak. You say that is beyond easy. Infact you like to gimp yourself to make the game fun. I can understand that. But most people are not there yet. Myself included. An unsmithd long bow with iron arrows seems aweful. How in the world do you kill anything with 400+ health? That would take 20 arrows?! Still take quite a few arrows with poisons.

I like archery. I think sneak archery is lame. Fun for the first hour, but boring after that. Lets see a powerhouse, non-sneak archery build. I have googled and searched for a non-sneak archer build and have seen very little. It would be fun fun to see one that is over the top. Then explore the more entertaining gimp builds.

This actually makes me want to try my "heavy armored archer" build ive been thinking of for a while. Dont know how effective it would be, but for some reason the thought of wearing full daedric armor with a daedric bow appeals to me...

My current char is an Imperial, Heavy Armor guy. He wears only (custom black) Imperial gear. He is like a fallen angel type of char, with sword and shield...and even able to duel wield very effectively. I use no Enchanting or Alchemy perks. The only Smithing perk is Steel. He does use a bow. It is just because you have got to have some type of ranged attack. Otherwise, you can never get the Dragon on the ground.

I also implement the mod, Deadly Dragons, so the fights are absolutely brutal. No followers, and I have the "scared people" setting active. So, no help from the common folk. My first fight took 1 hr real time. I went through every arrow in my inventory. I had saved them all from the start of the game. Almost 200 arrows, before he was down. I never was able to use melee. Two shots from him and I would be done, without healing. I leveled twice in that fight. I raised my Archery skill up....Oh God, who knows?

I only have taken the 2/5 of the Overdraw perks. Those are the only Archery perks I have taken. This brings my ranged damage to be equal to my base melee damage. Fair is fair and no cheap sneak attacks. The ranged is only used on dragons, so far. So not much chance of sneaking there. I mean when you are confronted by them, on the road. Catching one sleeping, you can get a sneak attack off...just one.

I may start dabbling in poisons with this character. I have played several characters the were very strong in Alchemy. So I know what poisons can do. They are quite powerful indeed, if you have the perks. Still, they are extra damage without the perks.

I wanted to do a Heavy Archer, but Critical Shot just isn't competitive enough with Sneak attack criticals (This is true for all critical attacks that aren't sneak though) to make a stand-up archer feel powerful without abusing smithing.

As promised, I added some poison recipes. I left out some ingredients, either because they are rare and there are easier to find alternatives, or to avoid ingredient overlap between the recipes.

College is closed today so hopefully if I have time I can make a quick youtube vid of some indoors kiting so those of you unfamiliar with it can see how it's done and how fun it is.

I like this build a lot! And I'm all for the no-sneak archer as I found out too that archery gets a bit boring with sneak. At least for me. Sometimes it felt like opening the console and typing "kill". And with the NPCs that didn't die but had 3 arrows in their EYES, and then saying it was just their imagination...well, you see where this is going.

As for poisons, I (also) like the Paralysis & Lingering Damage Health. For a guide I used http://skyrim.melian.cc/?cmd=cmdSkyrimAlchemyWizard until I learned the ingredients. OR (it might seem silly to some) for RP reasons I kept a small notebook where I wrote ingredient effects as I learned them, recipes, but I'm going off topic...

Anyway, I think it's a great guide and I hope you expand on it. Like what poisons do you use for certain enemies. Like trolls for example (I assume the Lingering Damage health as to stop the damn thing from regenerating).
Or, is it viable to put some points into block? I know you're going for "ranged only", but sometimes, when things get nasty, it might come in handy to bash the NPC and stagger them so you have time to back up.

Hey lorelai.

I use a lingering damage health + damage health dual poison on nearly everything that isn't immune and has lots of hp. My slow poison also comes with the weakness to poison effect to boost the damage some more. Sometimes I use the slow poison on ranged NPCs that won't stand still so they're easier to hit .

I'm currently trying to figure out how to make frenzy and fear poisons useful, but I think you need 100% fortify alchemy which isn't easy to achieve without enchanting. According to the formula on uesp.net. you can get those poisons to affect level 30 NPCs with 100 alchemy, all the poison perks, and 100% fortify alchemy, but I'm not sure that formula is accurate.

As for the block tree, I've seen many posters claim that it works with bows but when I gave myself the perks through the console I couldn't get any of them to work. Maybe I'll try the experiment again, but in any case, it would be a pain to level block through bow bashing alone.

Yeah, I see what you mean about bashing. It would be used rarely so it wouldn't level up enough...

As for the multiple ingredient poisons, I'm curious in what order the effects apply. Say you have a "weakness to poison, damage health" poison, will the weakness be applied correctly before damage effect?
About frenzy, 30 seems pretty low...but if it would be higher the Archers would be like arrow-shooting Illusion mages, so I'm ok with is being that way.

I also wanted to ask if you use any .ini settings in order to get those damn arrows to reach longer range, and if those setting work. I didn't try them before and I find it annoying that I can see a creature pretty far away (hence, it's loaded) but when I fire my arrow it doesn't reach the thing.

I find Steady Hand essential on no-sneak archers on a 24" screen with an Xbox 360 controller.