Archer Guide

This guide covers the design and training and progress path of archery based characters, but any character can be helped by having some archery skills.

How to Arch

Bows in this game function off a simple principle - arrows have very low base damage, but extremely high crit modifiers. So you will either do 5, or you'll crit and do over 50. There's not a lot of in between with archery.

It's not completely clear from the get-go, but ranged attacks use a different critical hit system from melee. Almost every time you shoot an enemy, the game will tell you how on-target you were, saying something like "grazing hit", "good hit" or "good hit!!". The number of exclamation marks actually increases the more accurate your shot was. This increases the multiplier, allowing extremely accurate hits to balloon to absolutely huge damage numbers. This is to simulate how bow hunting works in real life - if you shoot a deer in the butt, you've ruined its day and maybe it will die of infection in a couple of weeks. If you shoot it in the heart, it will die almost instantly. The same principle works for zombies.

All ranged weapons have a dispersion stat and a sight dispersion stat. Dispersion represents the randomness applied to your shot after it is made, sight dispersion is the same thing but refers to how off your aim might be between your eyeball and your target. Dispersion is offset by skill, the amount of time you take to aim, and stats, and the effects of dispersion increase for every tile between you and the enemy. Crits are determined based on the amount of dispersion at the point the projectile strikes your target.

In other words, you'll do more damage if you shoot better, and it's easier to shoot better if you're close to your target. You might consistently do 12 damage if you're 10 tiles away from a zombie, and suddenly explode to a consistent 70-80 damage if you're 5 tiles away. It's something you need to get a feel for.

The easiest way to get started with archery is to practice shooting your bow someplace safe, watch how long it takes in the sidebar, and when you're feeling confident, start practicing on lone zombies, preferably in the dark. If they close to melee (and they will), do not try to keep shooting them. Either run away, or drop your bow and use a hand-to-hand weapon.

Lastly, don't forget that arrows often cause targets to bleed. Zombies are undead and don't need to eat or breathe, but they still use blood to move energy to their muscles. If you deprive them of this, they'll die like anything else. If you proc a good bleed on an enemy, you may be able to simply run away and let it die on its own. Don't worry, the kill still counts.

Enemy Armor

A huge roadblock early on is armor. Armor is applied before critical hit multipliers and there is an initial damage threshold you have to beat, so if your arrow fails to penetrate the enemy's armor, you will do little to no damage. Early game enemies like skeletal and SWAT zombies have pretty decent armor and will often completely shut out your attempts to shoot them. You'll have to plan for this and work around them, or engage them in melee with something that can deal with them a bit better.

Enemies will only get more armored as the game goes on, but that's OK. You can actually circumvent this problem via weakpoint proficiencies. Weakpoints will occasionally proc when you attack an enemy, allowing you to hit a gap in their armor. You will naturally learn weakpoint proficiencies as you fight enemies, and having these proficiencies will greatly increase the rate at which you proc them, but what you really want to do is dissect dead enemies. This will rapidly improve your proficiencies and make you more effective at all forms of combat, not just archery.

Stamina

An often-overlooked but VERY IMPORTANT fact is that loading and aiming a bow consumes quite a lot of stamina. It's easy to get into a groove of shooting rapidly and taking out several enemies, only to realize that you've exhausted yourself and the undead are closing in. Because archers frequently need to reposition or switch to melee, it's important that you watch your stamina closely. If it's half empty, step away from the fight and take a break.

Character Creation

Profession and Traits

Certain professions begin play with bows, read carefully through the list to see if there's one that suits your needs.

Specific traits for archers are mostly movement and utility based. As an archer you need to stay at range, so movement bonuses such as fleet-footed and parkour proficiency (via the traceur profession, or via hobbies) can help you re-position, and for night raiders, light step, weak scent and night vision will give you a tactical advantage in the dark. Indefatigable and fast metabolism will both help with the stamina issue, though they won't completely solve it.

Strength

Strength is one of the most important stats for archery, as it determines which bows you can use. The survival bow (which is the weakest) requires 6 strength, while the wooden greatbow (which is not the strongest!) requires 17 strength to fire. Currently, the compound hunting bow is probably the best pick for most characters. It can have its draw weight adjusted, requiring 7 to 11 strength, and does more damage on the higher setting.

Because many effects, notably pain can reduce your strength, 12 is a good starting stat. However, proficiencies are available which can help. The Archer's Form proficiency, which you gain ranks in every time you fire a bow, has three stages, and each reduces the strength requirement of all bows by 1. Certain professions and hobbies begin with ranks in this proficiency, and it's not difficult to pick up during the game simply by using your bow normally, so even lower-strength characters can be successful archers.

Another option is bionics. The muscle augmentation CBM adds 1 permanent strength to your character, and hydraulic muscles can be activated for a temporary +20 strength boost. Some artifacts may also be able to grant stat bonuses, usually at a cost...

A note on the ranged penalty

The ranged penalty is calculated behind the scenes. Perception and dexterity lower than 20 increases ranged penalty; by 1.2 points for each point below 20 perception and by 0.5 points for each point below 20 dexterity. It's very hard to quantify how much it affects the gameplay, sufficed to say, every point in perception is worth 2.4 as much as a point in dexterity when it comes to ranged combat. It rarely comes into play until you're shooting more than 20 tiles, and a "normal" character (8 Dex, 8 Per) has very little trouble once they get to 4-5 skill in archery. This is subject to change.

Perception

Perception affects the ranged penalty and therefore has a slight impact on accuracy in the early game before you've really trained archery. Perception also affects your trap vision, which should not be overlooked. Archers can struggle in the confines of labs and survivor houses, where being able to identify traps and lure targets to them can make a big difference in dangerous situations. The higher the better, but currently, strength matters far more for skilled archers, where the primary skill (archery) dictates accuracy.

Dexterity

Dexterity also affects the ranged penalty, but really should mostly be considered for its role in melee combat, which you shouldn't entirely neglect even if you plan to go full archery.

Skills

Archery is obviously the primary skill to consider. In addition to improving your accuracy and aim speed, it will dramatically improve your critical hit rate.

Fabrication is your primary method of acquiring new bows and ammo, so if you start somewhere safe, this could be worth a few points to skip the most basic weapon.

Gear

Unless you picked bow hunter, you'll need a bow. High-quality bows can frequently be found in hunting stores, which are located occasionally on their own, or much more frequently in malls. Given the hazards associated with the latter, it may be easier to craft something to start with.

Crafting a survival bow requires one point of fabrication and one survival. These skills are easily gained by foraging in underbrush and carving wooden beads or other simple objects. Once that's taken care of, you only need a stick or a plank and some string. The survival bow is very weak and will generally only do single-digit damage, but it's a decent way to get some practice in, and may be useful for hunting small animals.

The short bow is the next available weapon at two fabrication and one survival. It, too, is very weak, but with its much higher accuracy, you might actually get something done with it.

Weapon Mods

There are different types of mods for primitive (stick) bows and modern (compound) bows, but they generally do the same thing. Sights will extend your effective range, dampeners will reduce the sound your bow makes, arrow rests and stabilizers improve accuracy. All of these are great and other than the five-pin bow sight, should be applied immediately.

The five-pin bow sight does a lot to improve your bow's range, but slows overall aiming time. It may be a good idea to wait until you're very comfortable with your weapon before using it. The single-pin bow sight does not have this issue.

Arrows

There are several different types of arrows.

Aluminum broadheads are the best arrows available, however they aren't craftable and likely never will be due to being made in some obtuse factory process IRL. Carbon fiber hunting arrows are the next best thing, with wooden broadhead arrows coming in behind that. Wooden broadheads are craftable, but as they have forged steel heads, that requires a lot of setup. For the beginner, makeshift wooden and metal arrows are going to do just fine. Avoid field-point and small game arrows, as these deal less damage (so as not to pulp birds and squirrels when you're hunting for food).

Quivers

Quivers are extremely important, because every time you fire your bow, the game accounts for how long it takes you to retrieve your arrow from its container. Items stuck in a backpack often take a very long time to retrieve, giving zombies ample opportunity to get in your face and ruin your day.

With 3 tailoring, 1 archery, and 1 survival, it's possible to make a birchbark quiver without any leather or other hard to find materials. A regular quiver only takes 2 tailoring, but requires that you have plenty of leather lying around. Either way, make it a priority!

Useful Items

Aside from the above items, you may want to make it a priority to find or make a good bashing weapon, like a mace or even just a cudgel. Enemies which are resistant to arrows tend to be vulnerable to bashing damage, so having something you can swap to in case a skeletal zombie comes around might make all the difference.

If you have the deft and/or pro skater traits, it may actually be a good idea to wear rollerskates or heelies. These will allow you to quickly reposition as enemies approach you, and the traits help with the knockdown effect that frequently happens when you get attacked in melee with skates on.

Another great find are any form of night-vision, infrared, or low-light goggles. Stealth is always a great tool, especially if you have a bow dampener, and extending your nighttime visual radius will make your life a lot easier.

Caltrops or even bear traps are an item you can keep in your bag and activate to lay down a damaging barrier in front of you before you start shooting. Enemies will reliably move toward your position when they hear the twang of your bow, and slowing them down will allow you to reposition or escape easily. You can even pick them back up when you're done!

Talking dolls, noisemakers, phones, e-ink tablet PCs, laptops, and some other items can be made to play sound, which will attract zombies. You can leave these in an area lit up by a flashlight or headlights, then snipe the zombies from the cover of darkness.

Should you be lucky enough to lay hands on a teleporter, it's always a great emergency escape button.

Mutations and CBMs

Troglobite, Lupine, Bovine, Elf-a, and Lizard are all great lines for archery, but any mutant that gets increased perception, dexterity, strength, or night vision is great. Ursine, Beast, Crustacean, and Cephalopod are poorer choices due to their high innate hand encumbrance and especially cephalopod's low speed. Mouse's extreme stamina and speed may also help it, and surprisingly, the same is true for Chimera.

Feline, lupine, rat, and rabbit get stuck with paws or little paws. This is definitely a disadvantage, but if they avoid wearing gloves, the hand encumbrance is very manageable. The same is unfortunately not true for Ursine or Beast.

Spider and gastropod get special mention here: both mutants can lay down a field (slime for gastropod, web for spider) which practically immobilizes enemies for several seconds, making them easy targets. Gastropod is very slow, which makes repositioning difficult, but spider is one of the fastest mutants around, and with its night vision, it makes a very good archer. It does have a small amount of inbuilt hand and arm encumbrance from its chitin, but this is often lower than what a human would get from their equipment, and more than worth the tradeoff.

Bird is currently an incredible archer thanks to having the best perception, very high dexterity, and amazing running speed, however do note that this is only true through 0.H Stable. 0.I Experimental builds change bird to have wing-arms that make them very poor archers, though they get other things as a tradeoff. Experimental players may still find bird to be a great archer if they avoid getting the bird wings mutation.

Specific mutations to aim for would be Reptilian IR, any of the Dextrous, Perceptive, or Strong mutations, and any of the Fast Metabolism traits. Feline

As for CBMs, joint servos, bionic lungs, infrared vision, night vision, diamond corneas, synaptic accelerators, and wired reflexes are all solid picks, as well as the aforementioned hydraulic muscles and muscle augmentation.