Tutorial:Archer Guide

Archers are a class in SkyBlock Dungeons. This class depends heavily on, , and. This guide will focus mostly on Dungeons, although many of these optimizations translate well to fights outside of Dungeons such as the Ender Dragon.

Recommended Weapons
These weapons are required or heavily recommended when playing as an Archer. The best of these often have requirements such as a high, Slayer, or level. However, there are cheaper alternatives with lower requirements that will work quite well on the first few floors, so Archer is a viable class for any stage of the game.
 * Magma Bow - This is both an affordable and high damage bow for early to mid game as it does double damage if the player keeps magma cream in their quiver or inventory. The double damage is applied after the total damage calculation, so a Magma Bow that has been well-enchanted works extremely well with Skeleton Armors for clearing floor 1 of the Catacombs.
 * Machine Gun Bow - It is recommended that an archer keeps an extra of this weapon in their hotbar to use its ability as needed. You can start the ability with this bow and then switch to another to effectively gain a second ability, an extremely useful perk for fighting minibosses and clearing areas.
 * Hurricane Bow - Outside of dungeons, this is a viable early/midgame weapon with a low price tag and high damage at short range. Inside of dungeons, it is recommended an Archer keep one of these enchanted with Punch as a crowd control weapon. Once in later mid-game, the player should put rend on this bow, as this bow can be spammed, allowing the player to deal massive damage with rend.
 * Spirit Bow - This dungeon bow's only requirement is completion of Floor 4, so a player looking to do Floors 2 or 3 could likely pay for a carry to use this devastating weapon. Not only does this bow boast the fourth highest base stats of any non-magic ranged weapon outside of dungeons; the player can continue to use this weapon even when dead as it is a spirit item. This means even a dead archer player can reasonably kill minibosses ahead of their party.
 * Last Breath - Tied with the Bonemerang for the highest base stats of any bow, the Last Breath is obtainable from Floor 5 of the Catacombs. This bow has the ability, Last Breath, which means that shots on the same target reduce the target's defense by up to -100 defense. The Last Breath ability makes the Last Breath bow extremely powerful against high defense enemies such as the Angry Archaeologist. It also is almost half as expensive as the bonemerang, making it great for archers on a budget.
 * Bonemerang - This weapon deals incredibly high damage, but only works at short range. This weapon is especially useful in dungeons for minibosses or if an Archer finds themself surrounded as it works like a boomerang, piercing up to 10 enemies. This weapon is the strongest bow as an archer can swap between multiple bonemerangs therefore removing the cooldown making you able to spam them.
 * Mosquito Bow - The Mosquito bow requires Spider Slayer 7 to use and requires as a dungeon item, but if used a dungeon item deals the most damage out of any bow currently in the game (as of Floor 7). This bow is also very strong outside of dungeons, a little bit stronger than the last breath. It is not recommended to buy this bow just for dungeons unless you are super high catacombs level and can convert the item.

Recommended Armors
These armor pieces/sets provide massive bonuses to bow damage and are the standard for anyone who wants to play as an Archer.
 * Skeleton Grunt Armor - This set is similar in damage to the higher tier Skeleton Armors, increasing arrow damage by 20%, but it is extremely fragile. It is a good set for early or mid game players looking to do Floor 1 of the Catacombs. It requires to use.
 * Skeleton Soldier Armor - A more durable set than Skeleton Grunt, Skeleton Soldier Armor has a set bonus which increases damage dealt with arrows by a further 25%, for a total 45% arrow damage increase. The variant of this set is recommended for Floor 1 or 2 and requires  to use. It is recommended to get the legendary variant of this armor, as it is not that much more expensive than the epic tier, and much stronger. The legendary variant should get you up to floor 3, but you should stay back as you will be a little bit on the fragile side.
 * Skeleton Master Armor - This is currently the best Archer set for damage output, offering the same percent increase as Skeleton Soldier but with a higher base . It is important for a player who uses Archer as their primary class to acquire the variant of this set, dropped from Floor 5 or 6, to deal the most damage possible while in dungeons. The set requires  to use. It is great for archers doing floors 3-4, but on floor 4 you should stay back as you will be a glass cannon.
 * Shadow Assassin Armor - This armor is the best current armor for archer. While skeleton master armor outclasses it in damage, this armor has quite high Effective Health, so it can survive floors 5 and 6. If the player does not have lots of coins to spend on the chestplate, you should use a Zombie Knight chestplate, as it is much cheaper and has decent effective health and damage.

Recommended Pets
As the Archer class is entirely focused on bow damage, a high level Skeleton Pet will consistently outclass any other pet in terms of pure damage. Other pets may be substituted for grinding lower floors or for optimizing ehp.
 * Skeleton Pet - Both inexpensive and invaluable for any archer build, this pet provides a direct increase to ranged attack damage as well as granting additional . This extra is very helpful when paired with the Overload enchantment. The  variant's Skeletal Defense ability can prove useful when fighting fast moving mobs such as Shadow Assassins.
 * Black Cat Pet - Specifically if you want to be an archer and grind early dungeon floors, it provides extra, , and most importantly , increasing rare drops.

Other Weapons
These other ranged weapons are niche as they are often overlooked or underpowered.
 * Runaan's Bow - Unless dungeonified, this is a weak bow for dungeons, but it is an effective bow for fighting Dragons as all three of its arrows are affected by Aiming. However, a Mosquito Bow or Last Breath in the hands of a player with good aim will deal significantly more damage.
 * Scorpion Bow - With the potential for incredibly high damage output due to the weapon's ability. This bow has potential in dungeons, but it deals low damage on its initial shot, potentially leaving the player open to be hit before their enemy is dead. This bow only fills a niche role for use against minibosses or other single targets and only to be used at the onset of an engagement with one of these enemies. It also deals massive damage to dragons.
 * End Stone Bow - Useful for the early game, this weapon's ability can deal decent damage, but this bow is effectively useless in dungeons compared even to the Soulstealer Bow (which has been wholly omitted from this guide).

Enchantments
Given that dealing significant damage with bows is regularly much harder than dealing large amounts of damage with a melee weapon, the enchants that a prospective Archer puts on their weapons is extremely important.
 * Aiming - This enchantment is disabled in Dungeons, but it is strongly recommended to have this enchantment on any weapon that is to be used for Dragon fights or Slayer bosses. You should not put this on an explosive bow, as the bow will often aim to an Obsidian Defender or Watcher in the dragons nest, instead of zealots.
 * Infinite Quiver - This is, other than perhaps Power, the most important Enchantment for any bow. If a bow has Infinite Quiver applied to it, it will not consume arrows, saving thousands of coins between Dungeons and Dragon fights.
 * Overload - An enchantment obtained solely from Dungeons, the enchantment can be quite expensive. However, it adds base and  to your bow and gives players with over 100% Crit Chance the ability to deal a Mega Critical Hit, dealing an extra 10% damage per Overload level.
 * Snipe - Given that Archer is a ranged class, an enchantment that rewards playing defensively. This enchantment can make a major difference during the onset of an attack, especially with Shadow Assassins, Lost Adventurers, and Dragons.
 * Piercing - While it is reportedly broken on the Runaan's Bow, this enchantment is useful to have on any other bows, proving extremely useful for clearing dense rooms of enemies in dungeons. This can pair with the bouncy arrows perk on archer, making you able to clear rooms with tons of mobs with only a couple shots.
 * Punch - Similar to Knockback, it is not generally recommended to put this enchantment on any bow, but it does serve a niche use on the Hurricane Bow, effectively creating a shotgun for Dungeons. This is also useful for dungeon bows, as the archer is a fragile class, and will want to stand back. This helps keep minibosses back if your archer ultimate is on cooldown.
 * Dragon Hunter - This enchantment is necessary to anyone hoping to fight Dragons with a ranged weapon, increasing damage dealt up to 40% at . This enchantment is not recommended for new or casual players as it cost 16 million coins in the End Shop.
 * Impaling - Ranged weapons cannot hit Sea Creatures, so this seems like a useless enchantment, but it may be slightly useful for anyone struggling with the boss fight on Floor 3 of the Catacombs, with the only non-fished Guardian mobs in the game.
 * Cubism - This currently is only especially useful for the Magma Cube Boss, but players that want to regularly fight the boss will have an easier time using Ability Damage items such as the Frozen Scythe.

Ultimate Enchants

 * At the moment, is the only Ultimate Enchantment available for bows. This enchantment is extremely useful when paired with the Machine Gun Bow or Rapid Fire abilities as it deals more damage based on the amount of arrows already in an enemy.
 * It used to be possible to pre-fire and then effectively one shot the Endstone Protector with either a Runaan's or Hurricane enchanted with Rend, but this strategy was a bug and fixed in Update 0.9.5.

Reforges

 * Rapid - This reforge grants the largest damage increase of any blacksmith reforge to ranged weapons, and it is only outclassed by the Precise reforge passive ability.
 * Unreal - An alternative to Rapid, this reforge grants more at the cost of strength.
 * Precise - With the same reforge stats as Unreal, this reforge is often overlooked, but its added passive ability makes this the best damage reforge to put on a bow so long as the user can get headshots with some consistency. As archer is a high damage class, +10% damage in dungeons can be very strong.
 * Spiritual - This reforge is similar to Rapid with the added bonus of occasionally spawning Spirit Decoys on a kill.

Tips

 * Reforging all your talismans to provides a massive  boost which balances well with the high  bonuses from Skeleton Armors and the Skeleton Pet.,  or  are alternatives if you want to optimize the Skeletal Defense Ability or the effect of the Overload enchantment.

Strategies in Dungeons
Aside from gear, there is a lot of strategy needed to play the archer class well. The class has a variety of bows and abilities, so this section will teach you how to handle dungeons effectively.

The explosive shot dungeon stone ability is very strong for this class. It can be used to clear rooms with lots of mobs, as it has large AOE damage. When going into a crowd of mobs, you should try to snipe off mobs that will deal large ranged damage, such as crypt dreadlords, soulstealers, and withermancers. Crypt Lurkers can also deal high damage with their bones. Once you pick those off, then walk into the area and combat the melee damage mobs.

When dealing with a miniboss, archers can be very powerful. Using the archers ultimate, or the machine gun bow, they can keep the miniboss back while doing significant damage. Then, they can use their main damage bow to keep depleting the miniboss' health. This will prevent the miniboss from melee attacking you. If you are dealing with a shadow assassin, then you should use your rend ability on a hurricane bow to deal with its high mobility.