Places for good bows or maybe what i should upgrade?

Archery is a little weak(the first perk on skill tree also helps alot).Get an Ebony/Deadric bow.Use ebony arrows and also enchat it to deal alot of damage.You can also abuse of smithing skill by using potions to make bows deal around 600 damage.
Edit:Get the 3.00x sneak damage at sneak tree of skills.

Archery is not weak at all imo. Using it with sneak is awesome. And if you feel like it gets too hard you could just change the difficulty setting, you dont HAVE to play on master

edit: tips: just buy a lot of archery perks and use sneak should be enough, no need to "abuse smithing"

Just use the highest you find. There's a woman south of falkreath who can train you 6 levels for free. Just have to do some tasks.

Also, use sneak! Lots of fun.
And NOT underpowered

Adept,i have feel good arrows(Orcish and Dwemer) and i'm obligued to use iron arrows.

Well if you have 3.0 sneak damage perk, stagger perk and 30% increased draw speed you shouldnt be having a hard time on adapt? I feel pretty powerful with my archer on expert

If you want to rock archery with any effectiveness you pretty much need to invest almost all the perks into it IMO. The faster draw speed, movement... all the crits, staggers and paralyze %chance. You can easily get away with skipping the zoom time slow perk. After all of that archery is pretty damn good. Just takes a lot of perks

That's what I got going on in my current game on master, only without the 3x sneak... Archery is definitely viable on any difficulty

at about 75meters the target site is dead on as the target is closer pitch your aim lower if the target is really close aim slightly left. Get Eagle Eye and Steady hand right away. I kill most things 1 hit with a bow.

What the guy means (I assume) is that archery doesn't do as much damage as dual-wielding daggers.
It is, however, the best form of ranged damage you can pull off, and also much more precise when you have potential friendly fire situations than melee...
ANYWAY... advice...

#1. Get the best bow and arrows you can. You might get lucky and find some, but chances are you'll probably have to sell the other useless crap you DO have and buy a decent bow and arrows from a Blacksmiths (or the Fletcher in Solitude). Also, wear any gear that you get which fortifies your archery skill (they aren't rare). FOR THE RECORD... once you get high enough levels, you can get Ebony Bows from Draugr Deathlords... as well as Ebony Arrows. Supple Ancient Nord Bows aren't a bad choice either.... but both of those bring me to the next point...

#2. If your enchanting is decent (or the nifty bow you found is unenchanted), you might want to enchant your own bow. Fire is the most efficient damage choice early on. Might also want to see if you can enchant stronger Fortify Archery items to wear. They make a REALLY big difference at higher levels of enchanting.

#3. Sneaking helps. It really does. 2x damage multiplier is the base, and can be upgraded to 3x with the right perk on the Sneak tree... but either way, it is MUCH easier to score sneak-attacks with a bow than it is with melee weapons... AND also easier to get the hell away in one piece if things go bad. Just sneak to a good hiding spot... shoot some hot death into someone's back (aim for the center of mass), and then make sure you're well hidden until it blows over and you can take out the next one...

#4. There is a certain Bosmer in Riverwood who, assuming you do a certain quest around there in his favour... will become your follower if you ask him. He also provides Archery training. Point is, you can get him to train you while he is following you and then get your gold back from his inventory without having to steal it. This can get you up to level 50, if memory serves.

#5. Use easily procured enemy arrows until you've got a good stockpile of stronger arrows. I typically collect Ancient Nord Arrows as I encounter a LOT of Draugr archers ... and they're stronger than Iron. Also, any Steel arrows that get fired into you are good too. IF however you get a small dose of Ebony or Daedric arrows... hold onto them.

#6. Those Ebony / Daedric arrows you might find? Give one to any archer companion you might bring with you. They'll be able to use it indefinitely... and you can recover extra arrows from enemy corpses. Better yet, if you're with the thieves guild.... reverse pickpocket one arrow each into every person in the thieves guild base... and when they go to practice the archery, you can just pick the arrows off the target as they're shoot. Free supply of infinite arrows of your choice. Easy. Once you have a few hundred, start using them regularly.

#7. Get all the archery perks you can... ESPECIALLY the slow time ones. They make hitting moving enemies at long range MUCH easier... and much more satisfying.

[EDIT]: #8. Alchemy. Poisons. Moar damage. Slow / paralyze effects. Also a good source of money for better bows. Also also can has fortify archery potions. Nuff said.

Archery work extremely well with sneak, get the 3x damage perk from sneak, as you are far away you can easy get multiple sneak shots on target.

Smithing is very important as you can easy upgrade your gear combine it with enchantment and you can get +40 in sneak and +50% archery damage at low level with enchantment.

The quality of the bow is less important as long as it's an material you have smithing skill to improve, has done over 100 in damage with an hunting bow.

I like to enchant frost on my bows for that slow effect.

Not sure if i'm allowed to share steam screenshots but it contains no spoiler it's just an awesome pic of a bandit who i nailed with 2 arrows 1 up each nostril lol!!

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/649874715363880796/9359165F27E23891D12BE59BD4AEB1B0768C6CED/


Issac

Nords are 50% resistant to frost. Nords are... most of the human population of the game.
Fire might not slow 'em, but it is guaranteed to be more worthwhile in the long-term for damage.
Besides... there are poisons for slowing enemies... as well as straight up paralyzing them.

Yep i have those skills,still takes little damage on a Blood dragon.But my archery skill still is low(around 43),this sneak character is my 2o and i'm still at level 23.



Exacly,if you'r character is low at sneak skills, the enimies will find you easily,and the bows doesn't do damage like dagers.Now my sneak skill is around 65,i can easily kill a giant with 2 hits,but i dindn't like much the bow perks and find potions to increase the archery skill is hard,and also the 20% damage, that it gives will not gives insane damage agaisn't a mammoth or a dragon.I'm working with my smith skill and enchanting skill to change that,i already keeped 5 Daedra hearths to some Deadric stuff.

One thing I always wonder, why do people have problem with their stock of arrows? I always have enough, and for the sake of saving the best arrow for the strongest, I always ends up shooting giant and dragons with Forsworn and Falmer arrows. In the end, I never get the chance to use any of the good arrows like Dwemer, Ebony, Orcish and whatever, I don't need them, Iron is good enough.

Oh, to contribute to the thread, don't hire companions, they would only block your view, alert your preys, and lit your behind on fire.

I agree! I have over 1000 of each arrow expect for Deadric. I only take Companions to help clean up dropped items. I make them wait at the entrance of a cave/mine so they don't hinder my view.

Liking or not liking them is personal taste.
I end up killing things with arrows even when I've set out to make a melee character sometimes.
I just can't help myself.
It just becomes the eternal question of "Why risk my sneak bonus by trying to get up behind them and backstab, when I could get a guaranteed 3x bonus from over here?" ...

I'm on my third character now, but my first char... who alternated between archery and destruction... was regularly one-hit-killing dragons from extreme range. And those dragons have insane awareness of their surroundings so it is tough to sneak up on them.
But then he did have a daedric bow upgraded with maximised smithing AND a smithing potion, dual-enchanted with recursively boosted Fire and Shock effects (got all the enchanting perks too)... AND wore the full set of fortify archery gear... The hilarious thing is, he only had the first level of the archery damage-boosting perk. All the damage was provided by smithing and enchanting... =p





I actually shoot my arrows. At everything. If I'd done that with Daedric and without using any resupply exploits, I'd have run out VERY fast. As it happens... I used Ebony Arrows because Draugr Deathlords provide them with moderate regularity... but even so, I ran out quite often... because I actually used them.

I think that it's because you are alternating between two skills, the "either or" mentality doesn't work well with archery. If you want to be a good archer, be an archer, and nothing else.


I shoot at everything (even the pesty bunny, also the only 'living' thing I've never killed in my archery life), and there are times I couldn't recover the arrows as well. I never ran out of arrows even though I never buy arrows.

I think archery is very powerful.

Then again, I'm using a D?dric bow enchanted with fire damage, and I carry a good stock of weakness to fire potions.
I've got a ring and gauntlets enchanted with fortify archery.

There's not much apart from dragons that needs a third arrow.

Seems everyone pretty well summed this up.

The only thing I'll mention is the arrows you use don't really matter so much, they have nearly the smallest effect on how much damage you do. For example... Steel arrows are extremely common, iron are equally as common. But the difference in damage between a steel and an ebony arrow is only 10 points. Following all the other advice, you can very easily be hitting for around 500 (or more) damage while in sneak mode.

The main 2 things I would definitely take from everyones comments are these.... Find or craft yourself a decent bow. Ebony or Daedric. Upgrade it to legendary if you can. Second, invest perk points into archery skills, especially 5 perk points in the first archery perk, that right there will double your damage. And the sneak one to triple your bow sneak damage.

Use sneak. Get to know the friendly Bosmer at the Drunken Huntsman and the fletcher in Solitude.

I enchant for fire damage, as I find it overall the most useful. Paralysis is also nice. My character is an alchemist so Weakness to Fire is her most useful poison, with the fire bow. I carry an extra bow enchanted for soul trap, when I see an opportunity to fill some soul gems. I have not found any bow in the world better than one I can craft myself. I use mods to craft Nightingale bows which I self-enchant.

Once you start filling up the archery tree and sneak perks, you'll be a god. I use the Aura Whisper shout a lot to scout ahead and find targets. Good arrows are expensive, but once you get some perks you won't miss many targets so it evens out later. You can also equip an archery companion with 1 pc of a high level arrow and they'll be able to use those infinitely, which you can then loot.

I do not think archery is weak i am playing on master and my bows are doing 250 damage, i think that is alright(without the alchemy enchanting abuse).Combine it with sneak and you are a killing machine but dragons can be a problem tends to lack punch against elder and ancient dragons.

Aim for the knees.

Why did i not think of that.