On my Mage I get owned by archers. Even with ironflesh spell I get one-shotted. How are they aginst warriors? I'm thinking about starting an archer. What do I put my points into? Health? What would I do in close combat? And what race?
Sorry for all the questions. Any tips would be helpfull.
Thanks!

Archers are very powerfull.. When u reach high lvl archer skill u have very good changes defeat every enemy fast.. Its just great skill.
First train smithing and make daedric bow thats awesome. And use class, daedric, ebony, elven arrows.. With that bow..

Even on my Warrior arrows hurt... Get your Alteration to 100 and get Dragonhide =) it works as if your wearing full armor upgraded.

Archery plus sneak is very powerful. Add some poison to the mix and an enchanted bow and it's even better. You can whittle down mobs from a distance then go melee with the sole remaining oponent.

archers are good. so good you can ignore armour perks. i use stam more than health, but that said you will be taking hits until you get the level 60 archery perk 'ranger' which lets you run with a drawn bow. until then it's wise to create/stock up on poisons, paralysis is best, damage health is second, slow and damage magic regen are also useful.

another tip is enchant your bow with a 1 second paralysis.

i'd advise you to get smithing to 100, just for a powerful bow, but you don't need to perk up to dragonbone. i only have 3 perks (steel which is mandatory but useless for archers, elven, for ledgendary bow, and arcane, because it's awesome.)

as for the archer perks i take all of them except the level 100 paralysis (things that aren't dead in two shots can be kited effectively with ranger and powershot) and the slowtime/zoom combo, as i feel it's a waste of perk points.

pre-ranger is a test of patience though. on expert i found myself skipping a good few heavy mekee types. illusion is very helpful but is also very perk intensive. but you will save perks by skipping armour so it's not out of reach

Early on it can be tough but it gets better.

Thanks alot!
What race would be best?
Any other tips?

2H Warriors will have as much trouble as a Mage due to less defence early on. although later on in Heavy armour, there is a high end perk that has a chance to deflect arrows, and Mages armour gets amazingly strong as you get better Alteration mage armour spells. A 1h + Shield Warrior has the chance to get the deflect arrows perk a bit earlier than most classes. Oh, and you could simply try to dodge the arrows & use the enviroment(trees, rocks etc..) to your advantage.

Archer is fun, especially with Sneak. Otherwise out of sneak you will find it harder to take down enemies, unless you use high end bows, improved bows & arrows + poison.

My archers are always sneaky, and i dabble in back stabbing with a dagger once i dwindle down enemies health bars with my bow from the shadows.

Archery
Sneak
Light Armour
Alchemy
1 handed weapons

If you want more of a pure archer rather then sneaky, thief/assasin type, take the Warrior sign over Thief, as it will level up Archery quicker.


Edit: Any race is good, as over time you can mould any race into an archer, it's just that the starting stats will be varied. I'm currently playing as a Dunmer myself.

Damage aside (which is good), I think archery is probably the best implemented combat, as far as general feel goes.

Arrows do hurt warriors though. Especially without the shield perks. Elite bandits can even do some good dmg. And one of the toughest bosses in the game (imo) is an archer.

My current character is a Wood Elf with high sneak. I don't use enchanted bows but simply the Dwarven bow. Archery is very good at all levels especially when combined with Sneak, when you get the perk for 3x damage sneak crits. it's very powerful even on high level enemies

I see Archery as a secondary attack. I develop it, but not as much as Melee. I use to soften things up from a distance or when the enemy is at a different level. Plus, my ammo can run out if I don't pay attention to it so I don't want it to be my only means of mayhem.

I found that if I invested a few perks into Conjuration, it really helped me with archery early on. Bound weapons can become more powerful, turn undead and banish daedra. Not to mention infinite arrows.

Bound Bow will carry you well into your 30's, and you'll have Conjuration high enough by repeatedly casting it just through normal combat at around level 10.

Its actually a good compliment to how slow sneak levels in comparison.

Poisons are always nice, and you will of course want to utilize Throw Voice and Aura Whisper for exploration and setups.

Ice Form and Marked For Death are nice when the fight gets up close, but I mostly just Unrelenting Force them and fall back.

Probably the best thing an archer in Skyrim needs to remember is to pick up every arrow you see and if the fight takes you out of your element ( i.e : Being up close and not at range) you need to utilize whichever tools you prefer, such as shouts or simply running away, to give yourself range. There is very little, if any, reason to ever drop your bow for a blade in Skyrim as an archer.

How do you manage to run out of arrows in Skyrim? You get lots of them from the undeads, the bandits, even the forsworn. Unless you sell 99% of the arrows you pick up, I can't see how you can manage that.

I was wondering that myself, I had an absolute horde of around 500 arrows by the time I was 20.

Though I've done plenty of archery playthroughs, perhaps I just know where to find the arrows and my accuracy is pretty damned close to 100 percent.

One shot, One kill... 50 percent chance to get your arrow back.

If you are trying to keep to using the top tier arrows for your level it can get more difficult. Sure iron, steel, and ancient nord arrows are plentiful, but when you get higher in level it seems that you don't get as many dwarven, elven, glass, etc... from looting corpses. Or maybe I'm just unlucky. And those low level arrows do much less damage, but they are good in a pinch.

I suggest that you get some good armor and armor skills. Even as a mage should you wear armor. You might want to wear heavy armor boots, gauntlets and a helmet with your robe, and carry a shield with you, too.

Rely on followers, or conjure an atronach, to draw some attention away from you.

The thing is that smithing doesn't multiply the base damage, it adds onto it. So in my opinion the best bow is the hunting bow if you have really good smithing. That is because you end up doing over 100 damage without fortify archery with a legendary hunting bow, but it draws back much faster than the daedric bow so you can put more arrows on the target. That is my theory, anyway. However the higher-quality bows have better enchantments if you are not enchanting yourself but use magic weapons.

Yeah archery is excellent, but mostly in conjunction with sneaking. Critical strikes + 3x sneak attack damage + extra damage from enchantments is very nice. I've made some encounters that were meant to be epic and tough into nothing by pincushioning the Big Bad from the shadows and killing them with a handful of arrows.

Interesting statement you make here.
Are you saying that the draw speed of the Hunting Bow is significantly better than that of the Daedric Bow?

... I tend to use Ebony Bows for the most part myself as I don't like the way the Daedric one looks... and I can get them free from the top-level Draugr... BUT I haven't done any tests with draw-speed. I wasn't even aware they were different.

Archery is awesome, and extremely effective. My stealth isn't that high (around 40 I think), but I can take out a room of three or four enemies without being detected easily.

Try it for yourself, that's the best answer.

My archery character has been very fun to play. She uses an Elven bow atm (legendary) with Daedric arrows.

I use a combination of spells from the schools of:
Conjuration like raise dead or an atronach (to give enemies something else to hit besides me) or the staff of Sanguine,
Illusion (like fear and fury) is always handy,
Alchemy (poisons)
and of course sneak.

Not every skill I use has all skill perks filled (archery is close to being maxed), just enough to distract enemies while I shoot arrows at them from the high ground. Since I roleplay, I made a Woodelf as they are notable archers (lore-wise). I also have the warrior stone activated to help with gaining lvls in archery faster.

Shouts I find useful:
Unrelenting force,
Disarm,
Dismay.
Animal Allegiance is nice as well as a woodelf if you've already used your power of command animal while out in the wilderness.

According to UESP:http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Archery