Tutorial:Archer Guide

The Archer class is a class within Dungeons that focuses heavily on bows or other non-mage ranged weapons. This class depends heavily on, , and , similar to Berserk. This guide will focus mostly on the playstyle within Dungeons, though many tips are valid outside dungeons.

Recommended Weapons
These are heavily recommended items/weapons to use when playing as the Archer class. The best of these often have requirements such as a high, Slayer, or level. However, cheaper items with lower requirements exist, making archer a viable class in many stages of the game.
 * - 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 different Skeleton Armors for clearing floor 1 of the Catacombs, as these armors provide a buff to damage dealt by arrows.
 * Cost: (Un-enchanted)
 * - It is recommended that an early to midgame archer keeps a copy of this weapon in their inventory, to be able to use it's ability when 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 rooms.
 * Cost:
 * - 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. The same tactic can be used with the Venom's Touch, which has much better base stats.
 * Cost: (Unenchanted)
 * - This dungeon bow's only requirement is completion of Floor 4, and boasts impressive stats. 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.
 * Cost: at least (Un-Enchanted)
 * - 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 10% for each hit up to 50%. 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. This is also very useful for later floors such as The Catacombs - Floor VII, as it can diminish Necron's defense quite quickly if multiple teammates decide to utilize this bow.
 * Cost: at least (Un-Enchanted)
 * - The archers claim to fame. This weapon deals incredibly high damage, despite being a drop from The Catacombs - Floor IV. It is recommended to have more than one of this item, with 4 highly recommended and 5 being slightly overkill but still very useful. This item can deal great damage on its own, but combined with the Edible Mace it outclasses almost all other archer weapons by a long shot. This item is highly sought after, therefore it costs large amounts of coins to buy from the Auction House.
 * Cost: at least 15,000,000 coins (Un-Enchanted)
 * This item, when used in conjunction with Bonemerangs, can rack up very large sums of damage. It's recommended use is to throw all of the Bonemerangs you have, then swap to the mace and either hold down right-click, or spam it. This almost doubles your Bonemerang's damage, which makes it very useful for Archers looking for a damage buff.
 * (Un-Enchanted)
 * - This bow is one of the best bows for dungeons you can find, other than the Bonemerang. It has very high stats, and an ability that boosts damage to most Catacombs mobs by +100%. This item, when properly enchanted, can deal extremely large amounts of damage within dungeons, and can be a cheaper alternative to bonemerangs, or take the place of bonemerangs if you can't afford enough of them.
 * Cost: (Un-Enchanted)
 * - This item is mainly seen as a Tank or Berserk weapon, do to its melee damage emphasis. This item used be very helpful for regenerating health during a dungeon when enchanted with Life Steal or Syphon. This item can also be useful for clearing rooms as an Archer. If this item is seen as too expensive, playing The Catacombs - Floor VI can get you the Ancient Roses, in which you need 9 of to craft.
 * Cost: at least (Un-Enchanted)
 * This item can not only stop powerful mobs in place, allowing you to hit them without fear of being hit, but it also increases the damage dealt to these mobs, making it incredibly useful and powerful when paired with Bonemerangs and the Edible Mace.
 * ,, or - One of the main problem an Archer faces within a dungeon is clearing rooms. When used in conjunction with 3 Necron's Blade Scrolls, these items can be incredibly useful to Archers. Do to the large price these items charge, it is more realistic for earlier Archers to go with alternatives, such as the Flower of Truth.
 * Costs: Various

Recommended Utility Items
Utility items are incredibly useful for all dungeons players, and can improve your experience by a lot.
 * This allows Archers to use their class abilities, which can boost damage and allow them to help their team out more.
 * This item is useful for blowing up weak walls in search of secrets. It can be obtained in bulk from dungeons, and is generally quite cheap on the Auction House.
 * This item is helpful when the player needs to get to another part of the dungeon or to a teammate fast. These drop commonly from most types of secrets.
 * This item allows you to defuse the common traps found within dungeons, and can allow you to safely traverse areas of the dungeon you werent previously able to.
 * ,, , These items allow for quick healing when needed, however the latter 2 have steap prices usually ranging into the tens of millions of coins. These are very useful for fights against dungeons minibosses, and can really give low Effective Health Archers a boost.
 * ,, These items are extremely useful within dungeons, and can make your dungeons experience a lot more enjoyable. They provide health boosts at the cost of mana and a charge. Charges regenerate every couple seconds, allowing the sword's ability to be used again. These swords have varying prices, allowing some version of them to be used at most stages of the game.
 * This item can be used as a replacement to Superboom TNT, as it has a similar effect, by shooting a sheep that explodes on impact. The only downside is that it has a long cooldown, but a Conjuring explodes instantly, rather than taking a few seconds like Superboom TNT.
 * This item is incredibly useful for travelling around, as not only does it teleport you in the direction you are facing but it also grants a speed buff. This is a must-have for most players, but especially Archers as they tend to not have the highest speed out of the classes.
 * This can allow Archers with lots of mana to gain a large temporary speed buff, allowing them to be able to clear rooms and find secrets faster than they would have otherwise. This sword can also boost the ability of the Warden Helmet, which gives 10% base damage for every 25, and the ability stacks.

Recommended Armors
These armor pieces/sets provide bonuses to bow damage and are the standard for anyone who wants to play as an Archer.
 * - This set is similar in damage to the higher tier Skeleton Armors, increasing arrow damage by 20%, but in terms of Effective Health it is much weaker. It is a good set for early game players looking to do Floor 1 of the Catacombs. It requires to use.
 * - 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.
 * - 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.
 * - This is a great overall set 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 or a Skeleton Master Chestplate, which are much cheaper. The former is better for survivability while the latter is better for damage.
 * - This armor is the best armor for archers, boasting 10 more strength and critical damage per piece than Shadow Assassin, as well as a bonus ability. However, it is extremely expensive, costing many millions for a maxed set.
 * - While this armor is worse than Necron's armor, its speed buff could be useful to the archer class, which is generally very slow. It is recommended to swap out one piece of Necron armor with a Maxor piece for high level archers.

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.
 * - 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. This pet can last up to Floor 3, maybe even Floor 4, but begins to fall off at Floor 5 and after, where other pets outdamage it and are better for surviving.
 * - This pet will actually buff damage more than skeleton pet. A tier boosted one is recommended as it is much cheaper than a non tier boosted one. It also buffs Effective Health.
 * - This is the best pet for damage in Floor 7 due to Necron being a wither, and even outside of Floor 7 provides very good DPS if you have the  variant, as the Death's Touch deals a great amount of extra damage, and the pet on its own boasts decent stats.
 * or - These pets are important for higher floors as generally, the archer's EHP is very low. However, these pets allows archers to get a much better effective health than otherwise, allowing them to survive the devastating attacks of later floors.
 * - Specifically if you want to be an archer and grind early dungeon floors, it provides extra, , and most importantly , increasing rare drops, and is also sometimes used by high level archers for getting a massive increase in speed, due to archers being slow and this pet at max level giving 125 Speed.
 * - a pet that provides both defense and offense by offering a chance to reflect attacks while simultaneously causing your 5th attacks to deal massive damage. If done with a Giant's Sword and Death Bow swap strategy, a returning bone proc could deal tens of millions of damage.

Other Weapons
These other ranged weapons are niche as they are often overlooked or underpowered.
 * - 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.
 * - 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.
 * - 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).
 * - (This is talking about an upgraded venom's touch). A somewhat cheap bow that is fairly useful. It's stats are slightly better than a Death Bow and yields similar results until the Death Bow can be used. Venom's Touch is perfect for a newer dungeons archer player with a good budget.

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.


 * Power - This is easily the most required enchant a bow can have. Even when available from the Enchantment Table, this enchant buffs arrows by 40% and by up to 56% when obtained from the Dark Auction. This is, by a long shot, the most powerful globally usable damage buffing enchantment.


 * 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. However, do your best to avoid this enchant on the Spirit Bow, as the weapon has a bug that causes it to deal double damage without the effect of the Infinite Quiver enchantment. If you cannot remove Infinite Quiver from your Spirit Bow, sneak to nullify the effect of said enchant.
 * 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. THIS ENCHANTMENT IS YOUR TOP-PRIORITY.
 * 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
The ultimate enchant you want depends on which weapon it is, and what you use it for. Remember that Ultimate Enchants, unlike regular enchants, have a minimum enchantment level requirement.


 * Rend - This enchant is typically applied to either the Hurricane Bow or Machine Gun Bow, as they fire a ridiculous number of arrows and Rend is based per arrow in the target.
 * Soul Eater - Soul Eater will clone the damage of a previously killed mob and apply it to your next hit. Each soul collected is single-use. The best souls to obtain from this weapon are Deathmite (Although this will not be worth it, as it takes a ridiculously long time to kill a Deathmite, and it will only apply on the next hit anyways) souls or Shadow Assassin souls, as these mobs have the some of the highest strength stats of any mob, however be careful as using the weapon will remove the soul.
 * Swarm - This enchant is fairly useless outside dungeons, but is ridiculously powerful inside of dungeons as the damage buff is dependent on the number of mobs around you, with up to a 6.25% damage bonus. This is especially useful in all bossfights from Floor IV and above, due to all 4 bossfights flooding you with between 9 and several hundred enemies.
 * Chimera - This enchantment is far from worth getting, due to the massive price tag, and since Chimera no longer scales with Catacombs levels, it is not worth it. This is severely impractical due to Archer having between 4 and 7 main weapons that they are constantly swapping between. All in all, it is not worth to get this enchantment, due to the cost, and how it won't be effective at all.

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. However, it DOES NOT work on bonemerangs.
 * Spiritual - This reforge is a better version of Rapid with the added bonus of occasionally spawning Spirit Decoys on a kill. This is generally considered the best reforge for Archer.

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.
 * Due to the insane damage increase the enchant Overload gives, it is recommended to have a 200% inside of Dungeons to consistently deal loads of damage.
 * Because the SkyBlock menu only shows up to 100%, it is recommended to join a Dungeon, disconnect while holding your bow of choice, then checking your  in sky.shiiyu.moe, as it shows  above 100%.

Strategies in Dungeons
Aside from having weapons and armor, one also needs to know how to use the said weapons as well. Here's some tips on how to effectively master the use of archer weapons.

Explosive Shot is a useful ability that could clear out mob swarms or destroy weak walls. But it comes with a very long cooldown, and as such, requires to be used wisely. It also scales with your highest bow damage in the last minute. For maximum damage, Fire a returning bone to a mob with a very low defense(such as Crypt Lurker) for maximum damage for your Explosive Shot.

An advanced archer strategy involves sword swapping. due to bone mechanics, it's damage modifier inherits your currently held weapon. This is where Giant's Sword comes into play. with it's very high base damage when combined with One For all utimate enchant, it could cause a returning bone to inherit the Giant Sword's high damage. This strategy can be improved even more by using an Edible Mace. This is pulled off by holding the Giant's Sword, then firing 4 bones, then spamming the Edible Mace's ME SMASH HEAD ability. While it may be hard to pull off, this strategy could one shot any non-boss mob if done correctly, and rip through bosses like Master - Sadan.