Early Game Max Damage with Rogue Archer

[Water]

Like the game, but it's feeling like Witcher 2 early game, just holding down R for minutes straight shooting arrow after arrow.

I'm doing the Hinterland missions with the original 4 characters and looking how to increase damage. Just ran into a bear that absolutely mauled my entire team, not doing enough damage.

Suggestions?

[barzai]

Avoid the bears.

Seriously...bears are a minimum of level 8, so if you're getting mauled by them, that's why.

To your original point though...twanger rogues are, as you observe, a notoriously boring class to play. Buff, twang, twangtwangtwang...wash, rinse, repeat ZZZZZZZ...

You want variety as a rangestriker, play a mage. You want to play a rogue and do some interesting stuff in combat...play a stabby rogue. You want to mix it up but are worried about the relative fragility of stabby rogues, play a warrior.

[Water]

Originally posted by barzai:

Avoid the bears.

Seriously...bears are a minimum of level 8, so if you're getting mauled by them, that's why.

To your original point though...twanger rogues are, as you observe, a notoriously boring class to play. Buff, twang, twangtwangtwang...wash, rinse, repeat ZZZZZZZ...

You want variety as a rangestriker, play a mage. You want to play a rogue and do some interesting stuff in combat...play a stabby rogue. You want to mix it up but are worried about the relative fragility of stabby rogues, play a warrior.

I'm planning to go the Assassin route when it's available to me, but need to get there first.

Any way I can do some more damage by acquiring a nice bow, or ways to make my companions stronger?

[barzai]

Originally posted by Water:

Originally posted by barzai:

Avoid the bears.

Seriously...bears are a minimum of level 8, so if you're getting mauled by them, that's why.

To your original point though...twanger rogues are, as you observe, a notoriously boring class to play. Buff, twang, twangtwangtwang...wash, rinse, repeat ZZZZZZZ...

You want variety as a rangestriker, play a mage. You want to play a rogue and do some interesting stuff in combat...play a stabby rogue. You want to mix it up but are worried about the relative fragility of stabby rogues, play a warrior.

I'm planning to go the Assassin route when it's available to me, but need to get there first.

Any way I can do some more damage by acquiring a nice bow, or ways to make my companions stronger?

Yes and yes. Note that at low levels, you do not get access to very good gear, owing to the level restrictions. However, comma...there are no level restrictions for crafted gear, so you may want to see about acquiring some decent bow schematics. Herewith some ideas, which I'll put behind a spoiler tag.

You'll find some along the way, of course, but after you address the Chantry in Val Royeaux, check out the Schematics Merchant--he's all the way at the back, after you pass the little bistro and then go up the steps to the courtyard. Some very nice--mostly Tier 2--schematics, not cheap but not outlandishly costly either.

Don't forget to buy a nice Bow Grip schematic as well, those things help you enormously. In fact all the upgrades are super useful, they are usually the first thing I snap up when I get access to that store.

If you've gotten to Redcliffe Village, there's a dwarf selling schematics, though his are mostly Tier 1. Cheaper and easier to make, but of course, not so powerful. Additionally The Black Emporium sells schematics ranging from Tier 1 to Tier 3.

The real bottleneck for schematics is crafting materials. You'll have access to an arbitrarily large amount of Tier 1 metals--iron, obviously, also onyx and drakestone in the Hinterlands. For leather obviously you can go out hunting, but it's easier to just buy Tier 1 leather from the Crossroads Merchant once you clear the Crossroads.

Cloth is usually the bottleneck at this stage since no one sells it and you only get it as drops from killing human adversaries (and some undead and darkspawn). So try to be aware of that as you select your schematics and focus on items that only require metal and leather.

As to your guys getting better, they level up along with you whether they're Oscar Mike or not. No need to worry about them getting left behind if you don't bring them along. My experience is that they'll either be at your level or one down from you throughout the game: I've never had a teammate who wasn't within one level of me. And at low levels, they keep up, so it's not that hard to make sure everyone is at your level if you're paying attention.

You get XP for killing things, but honestly, in the game's early stages, you get stupidly large amounts of XP from reading lore. And that includes ridiculous things like all the brass nameplates in Val Royeaux: there's over thirty bits of lore there at the time you first visit, and at 50XP a pop, that's easily enough to gain you a level all by itself. Of course you also get XP in large gobs for completing storyline missions and major side missions, but for your day-to-day, it's all about the lore.

Hope this helps.

[Aleddra]

Long shot does more dmg at a distance.
You could look for a crafted bow recipie and a bow grip.
Depending on your difficulty setting, hitting the ground running is a little rough.
Armor and accessories with dexterity or willpower should increase your dmg.
Status effects could help too.

Besides that, just play the game.