The Stealth Archer Was Inevitable
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- čas přidán 23. 03. 2024
- I've put around 100 hours into Skyrim in the last year, casually popping in and out to just play around. Of course, I have another 400 hours or so across three different versions of the game, and no matter what I seem to do in any of them I always end up crouched, with a bow, in some shadowy corner, and today I want to figure out why.
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every time, "oh, this time I'll play a melee build, hmm, but I need a ranged option for dragons so let me grab a bow and now I'm a stealth archer"
Lightning magic? Oh wait.
I just use dragonrend
@@Pokefan3332 ahh yes, Dragonrend at lvl 15
Geez every time with every play through. Even in my magic user build.
@@eljefe485 Going to be a mage this time.
Conjuration/illusion build....quietly conjure bow....
DANG NOT AGAIN!! 😂
tl;dw stealth archer is inevitable because it avoids the janky combat
Cap of all my years of playing Skyrim I’ve never down a stealth archer build 😂
@@alexochoa918 then you have more tolerance for janky combat than most ig
@@alexochoa918 That's impressive, I love summoning minions and so my first playthrough started with conjuration. Then, as in the video, I learned to summon a bow...
This is why I ask myself why people even still play Skyrim to begin with. The world is barely populated and the NPCs only personality is which of the 10 voice actors they have, the story is... basically non-existant, levelling up your character is not really motivating, and the only "meaningful" gameplay is going into boring caves, doing the janky combat and finding gear that is worthless because you never use anything as the stuff you can make by yourself is always better, and selling it is pointless because there is nothing to buy with gold once you have a house.
I genuinely do not understand what anyone finds "fun" about this game, other than stuffing it full with mods and basically making a new game for yourself out of parts. And the porn
@@CErra310 Everyone have their preferences. I guess you could try playing it yourself, to try and understand it. Get it for cheap from somewhere. And if you have, and still dont like it, well, good for you. Maybe you like shooters, or strategy games. For us, skyrim players (though, I havent touched it in a long while), there is just something more fundamental from the whole game, its atmosphere, the freedom, and even the messy bug-fest that it is, that makes it so liked. Modding adds another layer(ers) to that.
Nostalgia also may play a role, as it originally came out at a time when many games arent as ''high tech'' as nowdays, and at the time, it was an amazing game as well in comparison, according to the genre.
My personal guesses/feelings though.
Why stealth archery is the most common playstyle :
- Because at early levels, it allows you to win fights you otherwise wouldn't be able to.
- Because the stealth skill level pretty fast and give you a huge damage boost quite early.
- Because at higher levels, it is still one of the most efficient way to one shot weak enemies, or deal massive damage to stronger enemies before having to properly engage with them.
- Because shooting at stuff with a cool slowmo kill cam is more fun than going into a wetnoodle slapping contest, or using a magic system that make you ask "why does every NPC spellcasters seem to use a magic system 10x more powerfull than mine". Stealth is overpowered, but it also feel like the least jank combat playstyle of the game.
- Because the fantasy of the stealthy "they're dead without ever seeing me" guy is appealing to a lot of people.
You just have to be willing to explore the game with a reduced walking speed most of the time...
Because due to how leveling in Skyrim works, the game forces you into whatever playstyle you chose early one as you would have only stealth and archery leveled up against tougher enemies. Taking on level 15 enemies with 10 in one handed is a bit problematic.
I ran with a mod that disabled the kill cam because the damn kill cam calulates the start of the trajectory path of ranged attacks from somwhere between the player's feet and their knees to some random point betwen nose and knees on the target. Had the kill cam shove too many shots, both with archery and the "bolt" spells", into berms, ledges or between the legs of what I was aiming at.
Honestly this is some wussy shit. Bad video. Bad players. Sword and board forever.
When you level up stealth enough, it also moves just as fast as standing up. As a result, there is no reason to pass through an area where you might assume enemies to be without crouching because there is basically no penalty
The kill cam is pretty epic when it works properly. As for winning fights you shouldn’t, the playstyle definitely helped me use my potion reserves a bit less, and I almost never have to fall back on my stockpile of food items. I also remember one time where I glitched out the guard AI by standing on a support beam directly above them in a shop and taking out like 6 of them. The playstyle even lets you kill Heimskr without being sliced apart if you can position yourself correctly.
It’s an incomprehendable amount of time in the future, the universe is nearing heat death, time is understood to be finite rather than infinte.
The last motions of the smallest particles make their dying motions, a new stealth archer in Skyrim sneaks past the bear under Helgen.
possibly the best comment on any youtube vid
when i read this i heard Werner Herzog's voice the wholetime.. it works
nice poem
Don't need to sneak past. Frost Spider venom and a stealth shot combine to kill it without it reaching you if you're not playing on "everything is a damage sponge".
The conjuration slander tho. I'll have you know, collecting flowers as my two dremora throw hands with a dragon while yelling profanities at it in the background is peak gameplay.
For real, my Conjuration playthroughs are always op
Hire Marcurio as a follower and you don't even need the dremora. He's such a good spell caster that he often clears out enemies before I can even reach them. lol
I actually combine these two as Bound Bow is the most OP and fun!
I am a foreign dignitary, these daedra are my escort.
Ah! There you are weakling!
This is like the Skyrim version of “why everything turns into crabs”.
It just works
Why does everything turn into mudcrabs?
So, here is a Giant Enemy Crab.
Shit, that's exactly what I wanted to comment :D
Crab? People?
I cannot believe anyone mentioned the Ranger's Apprentice in 2024, I loved those books and hardly meet anyone who's read them.
Dude same. Pretty sure I let out an audible gasp when he mentioned those books lol. I was absolutely in love with that series. I made a ranged pure on RuneScape because I wanted to be like Halt and Will, and then Skyrim came out and played a stealth archer and never looked back.
I love those books as well and even now Flanagan is making more so more content on the way :D
Literally my favorite book series was so suprised to hear it's name
oh man i was so happy to find someone else that read those books
Love this little group we have here! It’s been so long since I’ve come across people that know and love rangers apprentice
I remember one playthrough. I told myself that this time I'd be a spell sword. Well, the bound weapons happen to be particularly strong for most of the game. So, I run off and hunt down the spell for single sword.
"While I'm at it, might as well get bound bow. It'll be a while before I have good ranged spells."
I don't need to explain the rest. You all know what happens from here lol.
As a stealth archer addict, investing a bit in those kind of spells is good for if an enemy gets to you before you dispatch it. Once it gets up close, blasting it with simultaneous flames and sword slashes is a lot better than keeping the bow out.
@@superhappygamer1162 nah. fus roh dah and keep the bow out
@@ShuRugalsure
If you're boring
2024.
Im finally healed. I no longer fight reality. I just started right out as a stealth archer this time.
"healed" lol, it really paints the picture of the inner turmoil we face
Past me was upset at myself for keep falling into a rut with games and struggling to break habits and “play it correctly”.
Present me is embracing my ruts from the start because tbh they’re fun af.
Now I've got the rising urge to play as a drop-dead-gorgeous archery wood elf chick next time I play Skyrim. In fact, I should seriously get back on doing that again. Then add in some other stuff that can make *that* build a whole lot more dangerous (and hilarious!).
Playing anything else is painful because I have to purposefully avoid using the good stuff (bows) and force myself to use the terrible stuff (spells. I still can't bring myself to go 2-handed). Also, why would anyone stand up straight or ride a horse when you can crouch and a) be harder for enemies to see and b) get an early warning that "Hey, someone sees me. Are they hostile? Maybe I should back away, quicksave, and shoot them to find out."
Part of the problem with the stealth archer thing besides the suffering of trying to resist it and inevitably falling back into it at some point is that while it's satisfying for a while, I personally find it gets boring and too easy most of the time. When it's not easy it tends to swing too hard the other way and you're getting bonked in two hits by something that won't fucking die.
When you're crouching holding a bow, your form somewhat resembles that of a crab, the penultimate shape that evolution seems to favor...
Stealth Crab, ultimate playstyle
@@zehkiel8018stealth ranged crab comrade
The 2nd last shape?
what's the final stage then?
@@stevbe1723I suspect poster in question is unaware penultimate refers to the second to last...
"Magic can go f*** itself. Mages don't know how to sneak."
I'm aware you were mostly referring to sneak bonuses, but illusion magic. Archery certainly helps, but the illusion tree is primarily how I'm able to play Skyrim on the maximum difficulty. I don't need a damage bonus when I can frenzy a room full of enemies, hide with invisibility, and watch in amusement as they kill each other.
Yeah, this video way undersells the utility of Illusion magic. If fury isn't your way, you can also just use mass calm and stroll through the dungeon collecting anything you want. The only real downside to Illusion magic is that it's quite a while before your spells will work on undead or dwarven automatons.
@@irrevenant3it underselling most things, it makes fundamentally disingenuous points about archery alternatives in order to elevate its own point. It does this because the answer is simple: the game is a much smoother and more enjoyable experience as an archer.
@@irrevenant3 The other downside of illusion is that at very high levels the spells just don't work anymore on certain opponents. If the spells work you are a god, If they don't work you need to figure out another way to deal with your enemies. You can boost the effectivness of illusion spells by being a vampire or using potions but drinking potions every time your spell fails is not exactly engaging gameplay
@@jonaslinterMostly I don't play to super-high level (I like playing different builds and, once you reach high enough level, you kind of just end up with all the everything). But also the spells max out pretty darn high. Googling says, dual-casting with max perks, without potions, Illusion caps out at lvl79 for Frenzy, lvl83 for Calm, and lvl88 for Fear (that's for human opponents - it's more like 60-80 for non-humans). There's very few enemies that are higher level than that.
@@irrevenant3 Hmm. I might have misremembered this. I was pretty sure that being a vampire was the way to make illusion viable versus high level enemies. Perhaps I just never bothered to dual cast illusion spells :)
My schoolmate was the model for Ranger's Apprentice. The writer was local to my hometown. Good dude. We gave him so much shit for it but It's nice to hear you enjoyed it.
Bro 😂 that book series was my life as a 14 year old kid. I read every single one I could get a hold on.
You can take the bow away from an archer but you can't take the archer away from a bow
Me having the bound bow spell
Me when crossbow
I'm trying to remember in which game I saw a ballista shooting people.
Some of those could have been archers.
Elden Ring, right?
Can run around with a ballista and shoot what may as well be spears rather than arrows or bolts.
@@Velumbra I haven't played Elden Ring yet.
Also, I did mean a ballista that shoots people as projectile.
I think that's too over the top for ER vibe 😅
I think stealth archery is inevitable because no matter what kind of combat you focus on, it just makes good tactical sense to start each fight with a ranged ambush from stealth and then switch to your main weapon of choice.
This. That initial arrow is totally free in most cases. If they don't find you, so is the second. There is no practical reason NOT to start every fight with a stealth shot.
And I also blame Bethesda’s janky combat where you’re always taking insane damage from the most luscious of cases to where it just stops being fun to do sword and shield after a certain point.
Because the bandit lord that barely has anything on, has more resistance to your melee weapons while looking like an actual Conan model.
Not always true. A strong ambush can be a high-damage backstab, as opposed to a medium damage snipe. If you play a sneak-thief, as the guards call you, you should have plenty of damage at your disposal in melee combat.
@@void1895 sadly unless modded, a lot of enemies will still see you sneaking to them, as they are almost everytime in a cave turned towards exit.
@@GhostAeonWolf illusion spells and high stealth don’t care
The moment Ranger's Apprentice was mentioned I knew this was gonna be a good video.
Two other things worth mentioning :
- Carry weight : this is a limitation that everyone feels throughout the game, especially when wandering the land to collect things is much more fun than having to go back to the city to store or sell your overencumbered inventory. Melee weapons are notoriously heavier than bows, and that's before you take into account a greater need for good armor when you're into the fray, versus an archer who can go the entire playthrough without needing anything more than light armor, if at all (better stealth).
- Controls & Shortcuts : Magic is versatile, but this comes at a cost. You need to change your equipped spell(s) all the time to really benefit from all its potential. It can be boring and tiring when it comes to pre-buff before every fight, and downright clunky when you have to do it mid-fight. With archery, the worst case scenario is having to switch to broad and sword in case you get swarmed in an enclosed space with little room to create distance (and if you get in such a situation, you're stealth-archering wrong). 99.9% of your gameplay is fluid, organic and dynamic from a controls point of view.
Everything you said is true and relevant, but Id argue there is another important reason for the rise of the stealth archer: safety. With stealth arching you are sneaking around in peace, choosing when to engage and dont have the stress of people hitting you, blocking or anything else. You are in control most of times. Which is a good thing for all the people who are not coming from action games.
the melee combat is also garbage, you can't reliably avoid hits because of the hitscan system and how all weapons have the same reach, but big enemies have more reach than you do.
My solution to the garbage melee combat was to dual wield maces and use elemental fury. I shredded every powerful enemy in the game to pieces. I've still never played a stealth archer.
@@shagword1149 that still doesn't sound fun to me
It's also the gameplay style that best suits the quicksave spam. Clear a room, save, rinse repeat
This safety also has another side benefit in the fact that it lets you completely disregard all survivability options, which means you can just invest even further into dealing damage. It's a self-reinforcing loop and arguably the optimal way.
You get the same result in terms of DPS as a character twice your level if all those extra levels were put into defensive perks.
Without the need for armor or healing, your inventory is a whole lot lighter and ready for more valuable loot.
Basically half the game just becomes a new source of money instead of an essential aspect of staying alive, and that freedom allows you to focus on things that let you punch way above your nominal level.
Devs tend to underestimate the sheer impact that having lackluster melee combat has on other combat systems, it could be lobbing wet noodles at enemies but if the melee doesn't feel good enough players have a tendency to want to avoid it as much as possible roleplaying aside for obvious reasons.
my biggest issue with skyrim melee combat is how the camera jerks around everytime you do anything. that added with the fact you dont really have any way to tell if the enemy is in range of a swing, make the combat feel at best janky, and at worst nauseating.
It’s also pretty frustrating when you come face to face with a strong enemy in a small room and your attacks deal 10% of his health, while his attacks deal 60% of yours and are VERY hard to dodge. Sure, you can always go level up and come back later, but in the moment it practically feels like a difficulty softlock.
@@OvercroxStarted a new playthrough earlier last month, a Breton Sword and Shield character with a strong focus on restoration and alteration magic, because those are systems I've almost never engaged in in all the years I've played skyrim.
Master difficulty + Survival mode, early game genuinely sucked ass. I actively made myself never carry a bow, so the game sort of forced me into conjuration magic early on just so i could have a follower tank hits while i shield-bashed for ages and poked for 2% of enemy health bars. I do play lightly modded, mainly with a perk overhaul and magic mod because alteration and restoration are basic as all hell in vanilla pre-expert/master spell levels, but yeah. It sucked.
That said, mid-late game when you really get a big stamina bar and can balance shield bashing and endless CC, it's clunky but its good fun. I do still find myself needing to summon a frost atronach to tank every now and then, though, despite having a build dedicated to being a tank...
Absolutely!
Hell, the main reason I got into Vermintide and later Darktide was because of how good the melee combat felt!
I actually don't dislike the melee combat that much. It's just not very practical going against the iconic enemy of the game being dragons and all.
Part of it, is that even tho the combat is janky, they got the feel of archery right, and it feels so good.
Also enchanting armor you CAN get spell cost down to zero for magic, which basically means unlimited destruction
lmao minding my own business watching a skyrim video and my own thumbnail shows up
I'm not freaking out. I'm not freaking out. I'm an adult, who's totally chill, and in control.
Holy shit man I love your work, this is great, and I'm freaking out just a little bit.
@@ThaneBishop thanks dude :) dig your video!!
Archery in skyrim leads to the best moments. I love watching people miss a shot but the arrow cam starts and the arrow flys by the enemy to nail a rabbit or bird in the background minding their own business.
JUST AS PLANNED
"That was just a warning shot!... Troll, that's currently charging at me"
Strangely, the kill-cam can actually cause a projectile to miss even if it would have hit as the arrow drops in the animation.
@@roax206 YES, this happens to me a lot, I've noticed. It's particularly annoying when it happens, because the kill-cam tells me that I _should've_ been able to kill whatever I'm aiming at, but the game basically did the equivalent of an older sibling "accidentally" hitting your controller.
And the entire poison mechanic is PERFECT for using with a bow! Putting paralysing poison on your bow is so OP its hilarious!
It's a blast haha. If this was a longer video I think I'd have talked more about how the other Skills and systems in the game support the combat styles, and the alchemy -> archery path is really good, I think.
Try using exploit alchemy enchantment and Smithing so you can kill every single enemy
@@ThaneBishop go for it. people watch 8 hour videos about these lol
If you're able to see a poson effect caused by an arrow, you're doing it wrong
Stealth Archery = Instagib
Came here to say this. Also, the fun of Alchemy is that it gives you another thing to do (collecting ingredients) while you are wandering around the world. I ended up using silenced-scoped rifles in Starfield too which felt a lot like stealth-archer.
I love how this video is in the context of Skyrim, but in Oblivion and Morrowind (much less so in Morrowind) the same "issue" exists.
Even in Oblivion, a game with no "talents" or perk tree, levelling stealth with anything but a bow is... well impossible without cheese. Same exact deal in Morrowind.
In both predecessors, the optimal way to level stealth is to auto-run into a wall, crouched, near an NPC (in Morrowind it doesn't even need to be a hostile NPC lol).
In Morrowind, Magicka doesn't even recharge like it does in Oblivion/Skyrim - you need to rest or drink potions to replenish. In all 3 games, spells do not naturally level-up with you - you gotta buy/make replacements with higher damage... but also higher Magicka costs.
Also keep in mind that in Morrowind and Oblivion, magicka as a resource is capped at 100int x2 = 200, with clothes or fortify potions bringing it up from that cap (in Morrowind fortify magicka doesn't even increase magicka total, just current, so you can end up at 350/200 magicka). A lot of the really "holy hell that's a nuke" spells cost well over 100 magicka to cast, so they're pretty much a one-and-done deal in fights imo).
So out of the three combat styles, we have melee, which has no range but is otherwise solid; magic, which either has limited resources OR doesn't scale well into endgame (unless you custom-craft spells or cheese); and ranged, which exploits stealth bonuses, extreme accuracy, plentiful ammo, range (duh) and scaling damage.
Unless I'm RP-ing and play by my own set of rules, ranged ALWAYS wins. It's literally "crouch, point and click and watch that unfortunate soul 2km away die lol".
I won't deny that my play style in Oblivion is hop onto a rock the enemy can't get onto and then turn them into a pincushion. XD And that sneak was my first maxed stat (followed a horse and rider from the one northwestern town all the way to the Imperial City while sneaking).
Morrowind...you absolutely need ranged because otherwise you're never getting those Cliff Racers. D:
It's even worse than that. Prior to Skyrim you got a fixed amount of exp per use of a skill and the cost of spells exponentially increased with their power, making magic even worse unless you cheesed the spell creation system.
This tickled me so pink since the first time I played Skyrim I was a competitive archer in college and felt very much in tune with Skyrim archery mechanics the same way
That's amazing!
I was wondering what an actual archer's take on Skyrim's bow mechanics might be, so thank you for pitching in
I picked up archery because of skyrim 😅
How to stealth mage: Get the silent casting perk and cast mage light into a room full of enemies. Now that enemies are gathered around the ball of light, cast a frenzy spell into the group then start casting fire balls at the group as they fight each other.
Alternatively: get Invisibility, Dark Brotherhood gloves, and the perk that makes dagger sneak attacks deal 15x damage. You cast invisibility with one hand between each attack, guaranteeing you can sneak attack, and then stab with your dagger in the other hand to deal 30x damage. It's the highest damage build in the game, and automatically kills anything!
@@normal6483FINALLY! Someone else who appreciates daggers+invisibility
this sounds like a lot of fun😂
Alternately, throw whatever explosions you want, then cast harmony and pretend you were being stealthy the whole time
And if you're low on mana you can pull out a bow and- *goddamnit*
The game kind of conditions you to be an archer when you really think about it. Helgen basically acts as the tutorial level of the game. When going through Helgen, there’s no real defined way of doing it, no playstyle that you’re told to adopt in order to succeed…until the end of the dungeon. Right after you get past the frostbite spiders, standing in the way of you and the exit to the cave is a sleeping bear. Both Hadvar and Ralof will tell you that they’d rather not fight the bear and would rather sneak past it. But they say that if you’re feeling lucky you could take a bow and catch her by surprise. Then they literally hand you a bow and arrows. So right there the game basically straight up tells you that if you come across a powerful enemy that you can’t handle in open combat, you should sneak and use a bow. The game doesn’t tell you to pick up a greatsword and use it or use a sword and shield, that’s just something that you try yourself, but the game flat out tells you that sneaking and bows are effective. So that strategy is planted in our minds right there at the end of the tutorial and it holds true for your entire playthrough. For a new player, that sort of guaranteed safety and success would condition them to adopt that particular style of play going forward. It’s low risk and very effective. It’s also a low maintenance build that doesn’t require much to work well. You focus on two skill trees, Sneak and Archery, that’s it. Anything else is just icing on the cake. For a melee build you would have to focus on your weapon skill tree, armor, block, smithing, etc. Stealth Archer is so simple yet so powerful that any other style of play is really just rendered obsolete by comparison.
stealth archer + bound bow = a stealth archer with summon backups to distract the enemy, that also never needs to carry a bow or arrows for a LARGE amount of the game.
TRUEEEE
Funnily enough, i didn't understand English enough to understand that Hadvar/Ralof told me to use the bow and sneak back when I first played Skyrim. I ended up smacking the bear with a sword and melee the whole fight. Made it alive but barely 😂
Not really. At the beginning of the keep they both tell you to get warrior gear, Ralof even tells you to give the axe a few swings. Are you "being conditioned" to be a warrior? In the torture room, they tell you to unlock the cage with the mage gear and get anything useful. Hell, right after that there's your first oil slick that you can light with flames to kill the archers. Are you "being conditioned" to be a mage? At the bear they tell you you can sneak by or attack. The game flat out tells you throughout Helgen Keep that there are multiple way of playing. Warrior, Mage, Archer, stealth. You aren't being conditioned to be anything, you're being shown the last of the options they haven't introduced yet.
The only people that fall into constantly playing stealth archer are people that can't even handle Bethesda's weak ass combat without playing in the easiest way possible.
@@jackmars931that was a pretty good argument until you got to the end and it just turned into an exercise to validate feeling better than everyone else for not playing a stealth archer
One reason I think archery has such a strong draw is that it rewards skill. There is a LITTLE bit of skill in melee, but mostly it's just a numbers game. You swing until they die. You block when you see them swinging at you. But if you try to side step an attack? Nope! The AI automatically follows you. They can turn on a dime and hit you anyway. Magic is even worse. You just hold down or spam a button until they die or you run out of magicka. Meanwhile, with archery, you have to time your shots, take into account gravity as it pulls the arrow down, as well as your own elevation compared to your enemy's. It's very satisfying when you see an enemy walking by in the distance and you nail them in the head.
Nothing in Skyrim combat feels white as satisfying as when you use archery to one shot an enemy that seemed just a liiiiitle too far away to be possible, having to aim leagues above their head to do so.
I would say skill make a massive impact on melee, but it doesn't feel as rewarding.
Managing exact distance, just-barely-dodges in between strikes, instantly powering through guards and minding stamina levels is a much more involved process than archery is. It just still doesn't feel very good.
Archery is arguably more punishing for those that lack skill though.
"Fisting doesn't come attached to any set of skills in Skyrim."
And yet for some reason, Bethesda had it in their mind to program in special animations for OHKO with unarmed combat. I discovered it recently and it's nuts, I've seen 3-4 unique animations just for unarmed OHKOs. One of them is a suplex.
The NPC with the least amount of Health has 75. The maximum damage you can do without the heavy armor unarmed perk is 32 as Khajiit with Gloves of the Pugilist, and 40 as Vampire Lord using Gloves of the Pugilist. If you take into account the Poison Talons perk for Vampire Lord, then that adds 20 for a total of 60 which is still too low. Gauntlets usually have low armor rating too, so unless Smithing was level 100 or something, I can't see it happening in normal gameplay.
Stealth archery in skyrim simply comes at no opportunity cost. You have to actively TRY to not do it.
If you are sneaky it's a great way to kill any target you need to kill without taking risk.
If you aren't it's still a great way to engage combat getting a few free shots.
If you are a ranged combatant you'd rather start by sneaking.
If you are a melee combatant a bow will still help you against dragons.
If you are a melee combatant you have no reason to rush headfirst into melee against other melee combatant you can just pummel them with arrows and wait for them to switch to your melee weapon.
If you use magic it's still optimal to have a bow to launch your first attack before you start using magicka since it doesn't consumes your main ressource.
If you use magic it's still optimal to have a bow in case you run out of magic while it regenerates.
Basically having a bow is the path of least resistance and is always an option that is there at pretty much no cost. So yeah everyone ends up doing it naturally unless they're doing a challenge run. Playing without a bow in skyrim is like playing dark souls without an estus flask, you can but the reason is going to be internal not external.
I've never had a desire to be a stealth archer unless that's what I decided to be before starting a new playthrough. My first character was a Spellsword. As the role-player that I am I did not deviate from that. My second was a Nightblade, which is stealth+dagger/sword. My third character was similar, except she was more of a stealth-mage.
Most of my recent characters have been heavy armour characters, which makes it difficult to be stealthy. If I'm a paladin or knight I might have a bow or a crossbow, but remember these are very honour-based builds. Starting combat by pummeling the enemy from far away with arrows is NOT honourable.
@@Danjen3ify Yeah so that's what I'm saying, you actively tried, you set yourself internal roleplay limitations on how you were allowed to play that character.
Nothing here is guided by the game design, it's your personal drive to roleplay those characters that pushed you away from stealth archery but it was still the path of least resistance, just one you chose not to take.
I can tell you with confidence that every single one of those character would have been stronger if you added a bow to the mix and crouched from time to time. Even the heavily armored character (especially the heavily armored character actually).
It's not a criticism of what you decided to go for, it's fine to roleplay in a roleplaying game, it's just a shame that roleplaying ends up basically amounting to playing a challenge run rather than being helped by the game.
I dunno, I built a unga bunga two hand heavy armor nord and never once needed to open with a bow. It was objectively the fastest I've ever bashed, slashed, and bodied my way through skyrim. I also got rich really fucking fast, because I just did not care about all the other classes of gear, and put zero effort into crafting.
@@XahnelI mean you don't *need* a bow, it just has no opportunity cost, that doesn't mean you need it.
The game is overall not that hard so yeah you can play pretty much anything.
At higher difficulty though having a range option helps a lot but that's also cause the way bethesda does difficulty is basically the worst way to do it.
Bear in mind I'm not saying being a specialized stealth archer has no opportunity cost, I'm specifically saying, having a bow and arrows and doing a sneak attack with it when given the opportunity doesn't. Becoming a specialized stealth archer kinda just tend to happen from there because of how the leveling works and the fact that you don't need anything else to take out your ennemies after some time.
I DON'T have to actively try to not do it because doing the same thing over and over is something that NPCs do
When i play rpg games i want do have different experiences . Now i know Skyrim is mostly action adventure and not a real rpg but I'm not going to play the same game for hours and hours doing the same thing
I don't care my build is weaker than le funny stealth archer. Being obsessed with meta in a single player rpg/ action adventure is lame
it was pretty funny seeing you talk about how magic causes you to accidentally attack friends and then watch you kill an npc while trying to shoot a bear. Definitely done that multiple times
I want you to know that behind that clip was like 5 or 6 minutes of me in the editing bay torn between 'this shot of me killing a person by accident definitely devalues my point', and, 'this shot of me killing a person by accident is hilarious.'
@@ThaneBishop Glad you kept it in, made me chuckle while watching.
Yes, my last replay I attempted a mage. I killed Faendal in the 1st hour, repeatedly, until I gave up reloading my last save.
Then Janessa. Many times over again. Same story of reloading prev save to avoid but ….. Oh and poor Marcurio. I eventually got Mjol cause she is essential character…. I think.
Lost count of times I killed also citizens while trying to kill a dragon. More reloads. 🙄. Never had these issues as an archer or even a two handed axe fighter. My mage is now using rather often a bow. And magic when safe to use on enemies only….
@@franglais-riders Same thing goes for shouts most of the time. I normally play melee builds, then I start going for stealth kills which eventually leads to me using a bow lol.
@@franglais-riders Maybe just don't use companions?
listen, I find you videos really nice and I've already watched this one once before, but I actually adore the blocked attack effect in skyrim, it has the perfect inverse effect on me, the slight shake and sound just fill me with the same energy as someone chopping a tree one swing at a time
I think the fact that dragons fly is also important here. They are usually your toughest enemy and tend to stay in the air blasting you until they are wounded sufficiently to land. This makes bows essential when fighting them and leaves melee fighters running around on the ground getting zapped until they croak.
Consider: lightning spells
They don't need to be wounded to land, if you just run around in an open area for a while dodging their flames/frost then they will land and you can punch them
@@bluemountain4181 Perhaps... I wouldn't know because my character is always dead before the landing stage.
@@iainsan Play as a Khajiit, dual wield the healing spell. Run around healing yourself until the dragon lands within clawing range and then scratch them to death, MEOOOOWWWW!!!!!
Dragons are no match for the angry kitty!
(But although fun at first this playstyle does get boring because every fight is the same)
or... you can ward yourself from their breath or use Dragon Rend to force them to land.
This video is now the official meeting place of Stealth Archers Anonymous.
Greeting fellow adventurer
Are stealth archers ever *not* anonymous?
I'll make the coffee...
I don't know about that. I only use archery as secondary weapon. Having range option is good for any builds. There is not much investment or perk skill required to spent to use compared to magic. Well unless I am Mage then I don't need bow to begin with.
Does it include "archers" from other games? In more modern games I still end up with sniper rifle with silencer on it, shooting from some dark corner in hi-tech chameleon armor.
This was a really well thought out analysis. Great work man, loved the video :)
I knew there was a reason I always gravitated to this build (outside of cool roleplay stuff), so it's really satisfying to have a breakdown of how the game itself makes it the best playstyle, rather than just personal preference. great video!
When 20,000 years of stealth archer epigenetic DNA sneaks into your builds
Stealth makes it so that enemies move around less before you attack them, which only makes it easier to leverage your bow's precision. Other fighting styles not only fail to have this synergy, but actually conflict with themselves. Shield-bashing an enemy in the middle of an attack results in a SHORTER stagger animation, meaning you're actually punished for properly timing your bashes. Melee stealth does a bit more damage but is ultimately a lot harder to accomplish since detection is range-based. Power attacking feels bad because it locks you in place yet has very little feedback on the enemy's side beyond damage numbers, and the stagger it inflicts is random
_laughs invisibly in 30x backstab DMG modifier_
"a bit" more damage?
@@occultnightingale1106 Dont forget to skill *Block Runner* this way you can sneak around faster XD
It amazes me how underrated shield block-one handed attack dance is
Where Skyrim went wrong with magic was not having it scale with Magicka. Having all your points put into mana makes you a glass cannon but you're spells are going to hit like a truck. Of course there are mods for this. Even without that mana scaling and mods of any kind, with the right enchants, potions and spells you can become a god like being. The trouble is it takes WAY longer to get there. With any stealth build, you can be a god by level 20 or even level 10 in the anniversary edition and the Bow of Shadows.
The allure for me, regarding stealth archery, and most forms connected to thievery in Skyrim tbh, is that sensation of being smart about it, in Dark Souls, you go “mano a mano” against your opponents, but TES has a built in ecosystem of “living” individuals going about their lives, and you’re specialising in outsmarting them all, being pickpocketing, stealth offing etc, you disrupt the ecosystem for your own benefits, without them even realising what happened, and of course, stealth archery being the strongest build only feedback loops the power fantasy behind it.
Something that I did that made Skyrim melee combat way more fun, was that I got a mod which disabled the reduction of player damage when you increase the difficulty, because a big issue with turning up the difficulty in Bethesda games is that you feel like you're fighting with nerf guns and pool noodles. After doing that it meant that I can kill enemies in just a few hits, but they also kill me in a few hits, so it becomes more intense and you have to use strategy, but you can still be aggressive and go on the offensive unlike the vanilla game on high difficulties where you just have to resort to cheesing the game.
Now don't get me wrong, it's not something that "fixes" the combat in every way, it's still a far cry from games like Dark Souls or Mordhau (I love that system I wish we had that in an elder scrolls game so bad), but it's at least fun, which is enough for me.
I've played with a similar mod for Better Legendary, where Legendary difficulty increases all damage done by 300%. It doesn't fix the clunky melee combat, but it does add a whole lot of extra intensity. Was really fun for a playthrough
Fixed palyer/npc damage is one thing, but the best mod to improve melee combat is TK Hitstop. It is so simple: it adds a ~20th of a second delay whenever your melee attack connects. It makes melee hits feels so damn satisfying.
The vermintide and darktide games have some of the best melee combat if you like good melee grab vermintide 2 on sale it's really worth it in my opinion
@@BigGomeroh yes. Vermintide is fantastic.
That mod sounds awesome. I had the same complaint about the higher difficulties.
You know, you can just loot the wizard and his stuff through the bars of the cage, you never HAVE to lockpick it to get his gear
I played Conjuration mainly because it went so well with whatever I wanted to play it with. I never felt like the 1 summon limit was too much and I played archers but would rather do conjuration with illusion perks that silenced your Destruction casting. Yeah you lose the Sneak attack bonus but it all felt OP anyway. And when you go down the rabbit hole of Min maxxing your archery/sneak and therefore turning up the difficulty slider to keep it interesting. It pigeonholed your playstyle to exclusively Archery. It's great to hear your perspective on how you play but it just reinforces to me that what I was doing was for a reason!
Great video and thanks for sharing!
I think it was inadvertent, but happened because the *Thief* devs working on TESV just couldn’t help but bias the game towards stealth. It has its own vibe and I love it.
This would mean that the actual developers would have an influence on what they're doing but that's just not the case as we've learned over the last decade. Being a working level developer at Bethesda means "Do what you're told, it doesn't matter if what you're told is braindead gibberish"
@@Oroberus tbf pre Skyrim Bethesda had less than a 100 people working on compared to the 450 now
@@victormanyeruke9997 That's absolutely correct and this isn't a thing that always 'was this way' but it is a thing that started to happen during the development of Oblivion
The last title that wasn't just 'generic lazy shovelware' by Bethesda themself was indeed Morrowind.
This extends to the degrees that even the 'good' things they did post Oblivion are mostly not done by themself but done by other studios they purchased or subcontracted and then took over. The gun play of Fallout 4 f.e. isn't something Bethesda did, it's just a carbon cop of id Softwares Gunplay and especially Fallout 4 is a great example of their 'dumped down' approach to gaming and especially RPGs
It was a steady decline, starting with Oblivion
@@Oroberusmorrowind is to an enjoyable gameplay experience what scraping your genitals with a cheese grater is to masturbation.
@@Oroberus they would have some influence, they might have put more effort into stealth mechanics other than magic or warrior mechanics
Cut scenes may not be gameplay, but the German Suplex kill animation is sick af.
That's the one exception. Suplex kill cam is peak gameplay for skyrim.
I've never played stealth archer. I've done stealth melee. it was always super satisfying getting the throat cutting anim.
I’ve been playing Skyrim on and off since 2011, and have logged well over 200 hours playing on two different systems. In all that time, I have never deliberately pursued levels in either archery or stealth-I’ve really only used those skills when it felt like the game was effectively forcing me to. I’ve collected thousands of arrows, and shot perhaps a few dozen.
For years, all the memes about stealth archery have simply baffled me-but now, having watched this analysis, I can at least understand the phenomenon. It’s not a part of my own ‘roleplaying’ engagement with the game (I’m still chasing the high from that original trailer, with the shouting mighty-thewed barbarian!), but I can see how other players, with different priorities, would find this route appealing.
Thanks for an interesting video!
I suddenly realized I haven't played a stealth archer for the longest time, because my game is modded to Aetherius and back, and a handful of those mods make base Skyrim look positively pre-Cambrian. Timed blocking, stamina management, extra/more differentiating perks for weapons and elemental spells, support for unarmed play...
...and your vid made me realize it was mostly bringing melee and magic up to _parity_ with archery.
skyrim's one of my favorite games. i actully waited six months after it came out to even attempt playing it because it was *NOT* my first bethesda game and ...bethesda games without mods go from borderline unplayable to gamebreaking unplayable (because of bugfixes that modders have to do or players have to find workaround solutions for) and then you get to the actual game and you want to be a mage and if modders haven't been working on improving or giving nuance to the systems themselves, it kinda just...feels very bad. so yeah. i'm a lot like you here lol
You MAY think alteration is weaksauce support magic. That's until you learn that the paralysis skills invalidate like 95% of all combat in Skyrim, turning it into hacking on helpless, frozen opponents.
As a Mage player myself, it is so much easier to put a "paralyze for 1 sec" enchant on a melee weapon than using the expensive spell. Especially when combined with the 5 sec standing up animation
@@jackrabbitgee6641 With enough magic regen you can cast it near infinitely. And with a few buffs they lie on ground for half a minute. And it also has near infinite range so you don't even need to get in melee. Just paralyze everything from afar and wait until your dremora lords finish the job.
@theshinken definitely true but the pure disrespect of using my Legendary Iron Dagger of Tripping to cheese a Draugr Deathlord cannot be overstated
@@jackrabbitgee6641 That's true. The ultimate disrespect xD
Similar I feel is the "Impact" perk. I still don't know how Dualcasting an adept-level spell meaning I can stunlock a dragon for as long as I have MP (and having a load of things that lower MP costs and having the backup of the dragon shout) but I remember being baffled it was considered fair game.
"and I haven't even mentioned stealth, so I'll sneak it in here at the end" ha, punny.
First minute of watching and hearing you mention the Ranger's Apprentice instantly made me sub and like the video. That series was the joy of my childhood.
RANGERS APPRENTICE DUDE!! I can’t believe you mentioned that in the video lol, that series is so niche and absolutely incredible. I looooved it
My thoughts exactly! I was looking for someone else who would mention it it’s top 3 series ever for me
I fucking LOVED Rangers Apprentice as a kid, I was obsessed with fictional archers and I did archery as a youngun
Yeah, hearing that series name-dropped was *very* nice. So underrated.
10 years, and I've heard about it once
FINALLY
Yes! Loved those books growing up!
Turning off the targeting reticle (and sneak eye) makes archery in Skyrim so much more satisfying.
You should try Kingdom Come Deliverance then.
It's archery system uses no reticle and makes it much more challenging
Yo did u see the KCD2 reveil trailer?@vincentd2582
@@vincentd2582 almost as challenging as English, eh?
@@hah-vj7hcthere is nothing wrong with their comments or their English. are you taking the piss?
First off, a tip of my hat to you for saying it: "Cut scenes aren't gameplay."
To your point, I'm a sucker for sniping. Being able to flit about in The Outer Worlds (huzzah, Obsidian!) and watch from a long way off as I reduce clusters of baddies one at a time while seeing them either panic or get progressively angry is incredibly fun. If I ever do play Skyrim (or whatever comes after), I will almost certainly play a stealth archer
about the magic system I think one interesting thing is that it's actually a great system that happens to have been made by the least imaginative people on the planet which is depressing. With mods skyrim has the best magic of any game ever. There is so much potential for complex utility spells or varied summons, I've had spells that build ice walls, spells that create a vortex, localized hailstorms, spells that mark my opponent so I can track them through walls, spells that infest my target and summon spider if I kill them, there is just a lot of potential and while the lack of scaling can also be fixed with mods it's also not such a big deal when the spells do more than just deal damage.
Having the option to dualcast or use different spells in both hands is also great. But again there could be real depth here if they just thought about doing more than just basic spells. You could have spells that combo with each other, or dualcast that alter the nature of the spell rather than "more damage but cost more".
It's just so frustrating because the elements for a great system are there but the actual spells are boring af.
I'll say the same thing about shouts. I used to play with a mod that would make every shout have an individual cooldown rather than a global one. And while it sounds busted and kinda is, it's just so much fun to actually just switch around between your shouts and use various different effect, and you really feel your power grow as you unlock more shouts, rather than stick to a few dominant shouts because using your cooldown on the other ones is just not worth it. And it gets even better with again, mods that add more interesting shouts to the game.
I hate how good modded skyrim can get because it really shows that the game didn't have a fundamental barrier to doing those systems well, they just weren't interested in actually delivering a deep experience.
Are you by any chance talking about ordinator perk mods?
And yes the vanilla system is mediocore at best and destruction is a bad joke.
Best magic system in any game ever?
Mods make it darn good, I love Midas and apocalypse with ordinator.
But someone has never played dragon's dogma and it shows.
@@yourface2464 I haven't indeed.
Looked it up and the spells are definitely miles better than vanilla skyrim though I still think you can do some better stuff with modded skyrim, in particular there was a distinct lack of utility and scenery altering magic. But it looks cool for sure.
I was also kinda going for hyperbole out of frustration haha, I'm sure there are some games with great magic but skyrim wasted potential in vaniilla pisses me off
@@Laezar1 I think it's good when someone can admit to frustrated hyperbole, so thanks for doing that.
_maybe_ its one of the better first person magic systems out there, but lots of third person games have done way better.
Another point is that there are no penalties for shooting in melee. Even if the enemy closes the gap you can still use a bow effectively
Bow has a built in bash
You can stealth mage, but you need the Quiet Casting illusion perk. When you cast spells, do they make a sound, unless you got this perk. (Bonus: Shouts are also magic, so this perk also affects them. If you got the quiet casting perk, are all of your shouts quiet)
Not all destruction spells are AOE. First you get the Novice constant fire spell, then apprentice bolt without AOE, then adept bolt with AOE, then expert bolt without AOE, and finally master spell with AOE (except lightning. Master lightning is a constant fire spell)
This was great. I also agree with how the sentiment is with Archery. I was taught as a kid how to use a bow. I loved it, a lot. Then when you get to use it in a game, you are always comparing it to how it feels in the real world, and to be honest, as you mentioned there was no 'drawback' to the archery mechanics. That and the fisting puns made my day, and gave you an automatic subscribe, and that was halfway through the video. Listen to your friends, you have a talent for this. Best of luck in all that you do.
btw I love Dragon's Dogma's take on the archer archetype. It gives you multiple arrow types that ranges from status effect to arrow that one shot but you get only one. But the most important are the skills that goes with it, it's very fantasy like in its execution but it still makes you feel powerful and it also reward accuracies when you combine it with the locational damage system the game has. Altho to be fair that's just DD in a nutshell every class feel powerful if you play it well.
The Mystic Archer is like my favorite version of Archer. And more games should feature Alternate forms of magic thats more then just Spellblade.
@@BlueBDyou say most games have spell blades but that's like my favorite flavor of magic besides necromancy. I can't think of many games that do a proper spell balde especially with interesting utility spells instead of a fire and lightning attack that's just a a glorified gun that's glowy
@@BigGomer Yes but that's still a spellblade. Sword and Magic is far more common then Magic bows that are not really simple, like a bow that has infinite ammo.
Problem with DD is that only 4-5 skills are worth using at all in each class. They are awful at balancing, they just make whatever sounds cool and let it rip. Although tbh I prefer that to a perfectly balanced game where every option feels the same *cough* Outer Worlds *cough*.
The skyrim mod Arcane Archery (not the creation club one) is the best magic archer I've seen in a game. Not only do you get 6 types of elemental arrows which each have 3 subtypes, you can use your shout cooldown to inscribe any spell onto an arrow type and it will be casted at the point of impact. So you can assign Fire Wall to your fire arrows, turn undead to your Holy arrows, Fury on your Magic arrows etc.
Not me running around with my pawn's fully loaded on mushrooms and explosive arrows to supply the A-10 warthog of firepower that 10 fold shot is.
Ahh yes, the primordial human urge to throw sticks at things while hiding in bushes.
Another good point to bring up with stealth is that while moving while crouched slows you down, moving while crouched, especially with a bow out, is not affected by your encumbrance status. If you are over encumbered, you will move at the same speed as if you are not over encumbered, as long as you are crouching and aiming your arrow. This means that you can passively upgrade your stealth buy exploring the Overworld after clearing a dungeon, or simply going from the dungeon back to a town to sell off the goods from that dungeon. That then allows you to spend gold on more arrows and better bows or enchantments, which fuels this positive feedback loop
"This time I will play a magic + blades style."
"Ooh. Conjure sword, now I can go full magic."
"Conjure bow? What a nice ranged alternative."
*1 hour later I am, yet again, a stealth archer.*
When every sword is a pistol with no range, the bow-shaped rifle becomes the only fun weapon.
Aptly put
I think perk synergy is also another thing that pushes people towards stealth archery, since there are very strong archery perks in the sneak tree. Even if you aren't going for a sneaky build, you naturally want to sneak at the start of combat in order to get that bonus damage, and it snowballs from there
Compare that to magic's perk synergy with restoration, which most people don't know exists. All magic skills use the same magicka pool and the perk you need is very high up in the restoration tree, so they can't be leveled at the same time and you won't find out they work together unless you really look. Add onto that all of the extremely weak gear and low health, and it turns into a combat system that naturally pushes players away from finding synergies
Definitely want to see more videos like this man. Keep it up!!!
one thing i always appreciated is that your arrows actually arch upwards in the first leg of your shot. just as a real arrow shot form a real bow does. so instead of going straight for a bit and then just falling off, you get a much more interesting arc to your shot.
Dude, I'm happy to finally hear from a CZcamsr that read once of my favorite books growing up. I loved how the rangers train and breed horses for endurance and obedience over strength. Then they went into intricate detail of how their bows are used and made and the metal composition of the two knives they use.
Most of their opponents would use axes or swords, so a set of knives let them exploit flaws in their armor if a threat gets too close to use a bow. Then they made it even more realistic by explaining how that they're trained to fight differently than a knight.
Sorry, I'm rambling but I think I read Ruins of Gorland a dozen times as a middle schooler alone, but I've been tempted to pick up the audiobook for a while. Either way you earned a like from me less than a minute into the video lol.
thinking about it, my characters were...
a stealth archer, who did use a dagger at times
a stealth archer
a sword and shield fighter, which was pretty fun since you could take on a lot of stronger enemies because of the parry mechanic (also opened fights with a bow)
a stealth archer
a mixed mage
a stealth archer that used silent casting, illusion and conjuration so he could use muffled movement and bound bow/sword without anyone noticing
the last one was my favourite and did play it 3 times, i think
something about not even having a weapon in the inventory when NPCs are giving you weird looks is funny to me
You should try a stealthy, one handed, alteration+illusion build. A dagger and the illusion/alterstion combo is pretty fun and versatile. You can cause some pretty funny chaotic situations and basically get your enemies to kill each other.
Always used a dagger and light armor with this one.
I know it sounds kinda squishy but with alteration and dagger dps you can be tanky and dish out pretty high dps.
I have an idea. Use an stealth+illusion+conjuration build. It will result in you at high levels using anger spells to make enemies fight each other and then throw 2 Dremora Lords to kill those that survived the improvised FFA fight.
I think another aspect is the fact that Skyrim has no hard defined limits on classes. You are free from beginning to end to engage in combat the way you like. Like you said, the tangible benefits to stealth archery are so immediately apparent, that even if you're sunk deep in melee or magic you're free to choose the more reliable option at any point in the game.
Yeah, I myself usually don't go for "builds" so to speak aside from focusing more on magic because it's cool to just dual cast destruction spells at point blank range and obliterate enemies before they can hit me. I just kinda dabble in whatever kind of play style works best for the situation. Granted, I've never actually made it that far in the game (I keep picking it up only to leave it for a while and start over again) but yeah, stealth archery is generally pretty easy and fun for me, so I just do that when I get to a new area with enemies, provided I have the space and line of sight, until I get spotted before switching between spells and different weapons when my magika needs to recharge.
It’s a perfect example of unintentional mechanical feedback loops. A leveling system where you get better at what you do repeatedly, plus certain skills that are just more functional at lower levels.
Very well done. You make many great points about why I became a stealth archer all the way back in 2011. 👍🏻
1:30 it was supposed to
Do you know about a game series "Thief"? Enough developers from them have worked on Skyrim. If you've played Oblivion or Morrowing, you know that stealth was a joke there (unless you've used a full chameleon enchant). So it was reworked into what it is.
If your sneak skill is high enough in Oblivion you can literally sneak right in front of someone and they won't see you. If anything, it's way too OP in Oblivion.
@@Danjen3ify If you had difficulty slider on the easiest, then yes.
@@Danjen3ify And that's WITHOUT Chameleon shenanigans.
You did not need full chameleon to pull stealth shenanigans in Oblivion, although it was certainly silly and broken if you did.
Are you high? Sneak was so good in Oblivion, plus then you can add all the chameleon bullshit if you want to 100% break it, plus you could immediately get max level with no effort from the first DB quest. It was pretty much just as good as in skyrim.
Whoa! It's like every facet of Skyrim was severely lacking depth, or something.
how could that be?
It still frustrates me that the guy who made the objectively worst quest line in Morrowind was the one who was promoted to creative director... Which ultimately caused quality to drop over the years to the point that these games are barely playable without the modding community...
@@firestorm208Skyrim was insanely popular when it came out before you could even mod the game...what a stupidly dramatic thing to say
@@JohnDoe-hj9fhPopular is not the same thing as quality.
@@mushyroom9569 Bad games aren't popular for 13 years. Either way calling them "barely playable" is idiotic
That last line before conclusion: chef's kiss.
The thing about combat in Skyrim is that it basically revolves around the stagger mechanic. If you can stagger the enemy repeatedly, you can kill it without taking damage. Melee can do this well, even if you're not cheesing with food. Because of the Impact perk, magic can do this well from range. If you utilize your enchantments later on you can make your spells cost nothing, which means that low damage Firebolt can permanently stagger lock everything. You can essentially stay safe at range and deal free damage until you win. And if you want to be even safer you can fight from stealth, which can basically guarantee that you will always control how the fight begins and progresses.
But archery? Just crouch. Lob an arrow into an enemy. Did it die? Hit another enemy. Still standing? Move back a bit, they'll never find you. Just wait for them to forget about the arrow sticking out of their neck, then shoot another. Rinse and repeat. My first character was a very unfocused mage who had far too many skills spread out for his level, and I eventually hit a small wall trying to deal with the vampire cave quest at Morthal. After trying to beat the vampire boss like a mage for a few deaths, I looked through my inventory and equipped the underpowered bow and iron arrows I'd been carrying around as a backup when my magicka ran out. A few minutes of stealth archering later, everything was dead. I carried on as a mage, but I was highly amused that I could effortlessly deal with an encounter I was that unprepared for with skills that were almost at their base levels.
And yes, the primary culprit here is actually Stealth, not Archery. Archery just happens to unintentionally synergize a little too well with the stealth mechanics.
"Cutscenes aren't gameplay".... BASED
I mean that's not an opinion it's a definition lmao
Yes but you do need to at least left click at the correct distance and enemy HP situation to trigger that cutscene in the first place which to me makes it gameplay. As is doesn't differ from the core gameplay in any way, point to a direction and spam left click.
what a hot take
Based? Based on what?
@@thechugg4372 Yes and it's getting blurrier by the day. Doom, for example. It's a fun game. Both of the modern additions are extremely fun and I enjoyed playing them multiple times. Glory kills, something the games get a lot of praise for, are still just quick cutscene. It's an execution that rewards the player with health and some other pickups also if you like. For the harder difficulties it's also a brief invulnerability while you're doing it. "I frames" are always appreciated.
It's still just a cut cutscene. One with clever implementation, yes. But that just means you are rewarded and actively encouraged to watch as many 1 second cutscenes and you can possibly achieve.
When you mentioned there was only one kind of bow it threw me because I’ve been using a mod that expands Skyrim’s weapons and skills for so long I forgot that there wasn’t variety in the weapons. I’m so used to having my longbows to enhance the strength and distance of my stealth archery and then having to switch to my shortbows when the enemy gets too close. I basically forgot what normal Skyrim was so… limited in the weapons and skills.
I wasn’t aware that there were stealth archery guides, especially since it’s so easy and natural to gravitate to that a guide seems redundant.
It's the undeniable satisfaction from that long-range arrow snipe cutscene, just for the other enemies to pretend it never happened.
The last run I remember doing was a heavy armour and crossbow build.
The crossbows being not silent made it less important to try and be stealthy and no shield and long reload time naturally leads to heavy armour (I understand that theough smithing/enchanting/alchemy this is redundant).
It also left the points not being spent in sneak being spent elsewhere which was nice.
The run was only slightly modded to make the default crossbows more accessible. It was a fun run.
Stealth Archer was my JAM. I loved it. I love magic, and I just could not get out of the grip of that satisfying Archery Mechanic.
Now play stealth mage archer, bow summon only
Funnily what broke magic for me, or rather Destruction, is that I ended up spamming dualcast fire or lightning bolt, depending on target resistances.
Well, that and Destruction having no stealth option.
7:50
"Please exist and also be good"
It's in the hands of the Divines now, brother
I'm sure Emil will take good care of it :clueless:
@@formbi X to Doubt
@@LeonM4c that was a joke
@@formbi sorry, hard to tell these days
Restoration IS a perfectly valid school of magic. I hate relying on potions. It's honestly one of the most fun magic options I've used in Skyrim. I even saved Riverwood from losing any NPCs in a dragon attack, after seemingly endless resets, by finally giving up on damage and just going full healing-spells and letting the village save itself, basically becoming the TF2 Medic and going, "Wait, that WORKED?!" Good times
“I love the Ranger’s Apprentice book series” alright you’re getting my sub for that alone.
When you are 100% in archery and sneek skills you can literally break the game running around crouching and killing everything with a single but very common anciant nord arrow. Nobody can see you in your fully enchanted fancy bright white heavy dragon bone armor and gold diamond jewelries... I dont have much time to play games by now but I remember it very well. Let's all thank Faendal for his very handy free archery boost in the very first hour of the game as well as Ralof for his dedication helping you with your sneak skill!
Things I learned from this video:
1: Fisting in Skyrim is not fun
2: Fisting in Dark Souls is fun
3:Magic doesn't involve fisting in Skyrim.
4:Archers CAN fist, but it's not usually necessary.
Did I miss anything? 😋
"Which is kind of funny, because that's how you use a bow."
I'm. lmfao
Your analysis was very valuable to me. The connection between a good game feature and a *lack* of "game design" is even more interesting. I hope some devs get the point here.
I was playing this cute game called Bloody West. Nice pixel-art horror aesthetic. A reanimated outlaw chasing evils off.
Before I realized it, I was a stealth archer once again, even though firearms are available.
Todd scored once again that day.
Honestly Skyrim conditioned me so much that bows were good that I end up wanting to use the bow in every game that has that option.
@@SeraphimKnight My experience with Crysis 3 in a nutshell too lol
I just find it so funny that every time I try to play a stealth archer I always go back to two-handed bonker
Probably because you have the difficulty too low. Jack the difficulty up to legendary and you’ll go right back to stealth archering real quick.
@@mushyroom9569 That kind of "difficulty" is just so boring tho
@@mushyroom9569nah, two handed weapons are good at higher difficulties too. The extra range helps keep you out of attack range
@@yourface2464 If you’re just going to kite, then why not go full archer?
@@mushyroom9569 archers have lower DPS and a much harder time staggering, as well as not being able to 100% stagger bash power attacks or break blocks. Two handed weapons can outrange anything melee other than themselves, which is the majority of the game. Archery doesn't handle well in close quarters. So you usually just take the bow for help against dragons.
Something missed in this video is the bow’s “weight” which affects draw speed and range. This encourages using a variety of bows depending on location such as open fields or in a dungeon and make consider which bows will give a tactical advantage.
also unmentioned: among the warrior/thief/mage archetypes, there's a crafting tree for each. They're all busted and exploitable, but the thief's alchemy is arguably better for stealth archers than smithing is for warriors or enchanting for mages, even without exploits. Poisons start as just an extra little bonus damage for the annoyance of extra menuing, but eventually, being able to paralyze an enemy with a sniper shot is huge.
Playing as an archer in VR Skyrim is OP as hell. You basically just get to be Legolas.
max out illusion, sneak, and one-handed. illusion assassin was my favorite build, just as EZ mode as stealth archer but was a breath of fresh air and a fun new way to play.
I had a modded build once that was indeed a stealth archer, but still very cool. He used a crossbow, which is very loud, so I had to use it as a last resort, but with a multitude of bolts ranging from paralyzing to explosive effects, it was very effective. Most of the time I used illusion magic to avoid or instigate combat.
Enjoyed your technical breakdown ❤
drawback joke got me. glad to see the fellow weird archery kid rep
It's ironic that we only see an archer once. Or maybe it isn't, because an archer is the last thing you never see.
I'm surprised you didn't compare Skyrim's systems to Cyberpunk 2077: you could stealth revolver people a LOT in 2077, even without perks. And the system was so unsatisfying to CDPR they ordered a full combat overhaul in patch 2.0.
Oh, and if you really like archery/ melee combat? Pick up Kingdom Come: Deliverance. You can get a Royal Edition on sale, and it'll knock your socks off.
So I ended up cutting some explanation because it didn't fit the vibe well, but I've gotten some critique in the past for comparing Skyrim to more modern games. I think those comparisons are perfectly valid, as Skyrim is still the most up-to-date Elder Scrolls game, but for this video Dark Souls was perfect because it was a contemporary, released in the same time, with different takes on the same combat systems.
Although I will say I can't believe I missed the chance to say there was a stealth archer in every clip of the trailer lol
did try KCD because everyone compared it to Skyrim a lot but it felt so clunky and mechanical that i ended up droppin it after only a few hours. Maybe i played it with the wrong state of mind but it did not seem fun at all.
@@mygetawayartKCD really isn’t an action game like DS or Skyrim. Most of the quests are not combat related. You kind of have to approach it in the mindset of being an actual illiterate peasant with a real fear of death, that direct combat without actually giving yourself advantages is a very bad idea. Late game you can become pretty OP though.
@@mygetawayartalso as you become more proficient and trained in combat fighting becomes more fluid, but it is ultimately a somewhat clunky game for combat. You are supposed to start as a literal mommy’s boy who has no experience whatsoever with combat and that is reflected early on
Kingdom Come is an amazing game but archery in that game is just atrocious and hardly gets any better as you level it up unlike melee
The best part of Stealth Archery builds is how well it goes with so much of the magic system. Conjuration, Traps, illusions, etc
Correction @10:40: Something to note for new mage players: it is possible to increase Flames damage (novice spell) naturally in the game. The Illusion perk that increases Fear effects by 10 levels also increases Flames damage by 10 points, making it do 18 points per second as base damage! Then if you take the perk that increases your Fire damage (Augmented Flames) by 50%, it’s even more! Not bad for a cheap cost spell. The reason it does this is because the last perk in the Fire tree makes targets on Fire flee in fear when their health is low, so Fire spells are also typed as fear effects because of the programming, hence why that Illusion perk increases ALL Fire spell damage!
Wait.... Dark Souls came out BEFORE Skyrim? Damm I feel old now....