At early stages, Archery is insanely underpowered, dealing about 10 damage per shot, when most low level enemies have about 50-100, taking 5-10 arrows, quite clearly.

Later stages, they still feel a little underpowered, mine does about 60 damage per shot, but very few enemies can it one shot kill.

They need to give it a bit of a boost, because even with the perks, it's not powerful enough.

It balances out pretty well around level 30. I augment with alchemy poisons and fire enchants a bit, but by that level I'm easilly 1-shotting giants. Granted, that's with the 3x sneak damage perk.

I'm Level 43, and it still feels underpowered.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

wait... ur trolling right?

My Archer/Conjurer shoots for 84 damage at level 23 with her conjured bow... which provides me with infinite arrows as well.

If I get a sneak attack..... which is often,.... then it's 252 damage (x3)

I'm running around in barely improved, unenchanted forsworn armor... which isn't that strong.... simply because I rarely get hit. I killed 2 giants and a mammoth before they even knew wtf was going on.

No.

Archery is extremely powerful at any stage of the game.

Did you play Oblivion?

Are you not upgrading your bows?

I'm lvl38 with an Nightingale bow (Epic) and Deadric arrows. I can one shot Most enemies without poisons.

Are you using any items to boost your damage with a bow? I'm wearing both the Shrouded cowl 20% bow damage and the Ancient shrouded cowl with 35%. Yes I got a lucky glitch, the ancient cowl doesn't appear on my characters head, so I can wear a second item on my head and the AR and enchantments stack.

For a few hours yeah, but I don't remember any of it xD

^This.

PS: If you want a boost.... you can get Archer Training followers (ie; free skill levels) both at the very beginning of the game, and then a more advanced one not that much further. This will skip you straight past anything even remotely considered as a difficult time with archery when you skip straight to staggering arrows....

though on my second guy who uses archery... and is not even fully specced.... and didn't use any trainers.... it was still ridiculous and my best option in the early game for my sneaky assassin guy.

Bows in oblivion were pitiful to say the least.

I feel the exact opposite. My bow had always been my best weapon. Not sure if your putting perk points in archery but with that my bow is a one hot kill for everything in skyrim while sneaking, dragons are about 4 shots. I use a a glass now with glass arrows or a ebony bow with deadric arrows. If I hit an enemy with my bow they go flying into the air. The feel that the whole game archery is a little overpowered. That's what's great about this game. You will have a different experience the the other person.

Tip. If you feel it's not powerful enough enchant a few things to make archery more powerful. I think you can archery enchantments can be put on helmets, gauntlets, rings and necklaces. If you have a high enchantment skill with perks you can get an 160% power on your bow by enchanting those items. Also there is a great perk in the sneak perks that adds 5 times damage when sneaking.

I had a lot of fun with my archery character, and felt it was one of the more balanced aspects of the game. Sneak helps it a lot. Early on you might need to rely on followers and horses as tanks, but I think that's how it should be for all the combat disciplines.

Very much agree with this. I switched to archery as a main spec at about level 10, I relied on swords for the first bit. It is very powerful for me and I don't have any extra enchantment bonuses for archery and haven't fully perked the archery tree yet. Once in a while I do need a poison for the big guys, but that doesn't happen often.

@Imp of the Perverse: Yes, sneak is very much a companion of archery and helps tons. I preferred my bow over daggers.......using daggers means more leg work and im not having none of that lol

It's actually 3× damage when undetected, not 5.

I knew it was either 3 or 5. I couldn't remember if backstabbing was 5 or 3 or archery was 5 or 3.

You CANNOT in any way deal 10 damage with a bow, because arrows add damage, and the skill adds half the skill level in damage.
Skill level 20 + 10 damage bow + 10 damage arrows = 30 damage per arrow.

Crouch when meeting opponents, and you sneak attack for 60 damage on the first shot.

Lol, not to pick on ya or anything but the perk for backstabs with a dagger increases it to a total of 15×.

I think you're thinking of the default (no perks) damage bonus for sneak attacks with a dagger, which is 5×.

There is no "overpowered" or "underpowered" in a single player game. You either make it work... or you don't.

Try soloing Baldur's Gate 2 with a mage... then try it with a rogue.

This is the way of single player rpgs. Some builds are easy, some not so easy.

yea i find that archery without sneak is kinda meh, i took quite a few hits to kill a bear with an exquisite glass bow

as long as you use a mouse, archery is amazing.

i cant imagine doing archery with the controller, i dropped that like it was hot.

This, it was a [censored] joke.

Daggers being underpowered in combat (due to fortify one-handed having no effect), I've heard. Destruction magic being underpowered, I've heard. Unarmed (or lack of) being underpowered, I've heard.

First time I've seen anybody complain about Archery though. For every play through, my bows have done stupid amounts of damage, and I could always kill enemies before they even reached me. Doesn't sound underpowered to me at all...Are you putting perks into Archery? Maybe your skill is underleveled? Or you're just using a low level bow or not upgrading your bow?

I play on adept and my bows do great damage. My thief very rarely needed poisons as mobs went down in 1 shot unless they were powerful. 1h/shield warrior has no enchants to help archery and maybe 1 or 2 points spec'd to increase it's damage with a skill that is half of my 1h skill at level and a mediocre bow that kills most enemies in 2 to 3 shots even when not sneaking.

If archery is hard for you, you are doing something wrong or you are playing on a higher difficulty... and in the case of the latter, what did you think would happen?

So how is using a mouse to play soo much better than a gamepad? Please explain this theory.