Stealth archer is the stronkest, melee is garbage. Change my mind

[Hauw2x]

I platinum'ed dark souls 3, beat the sh8t out of Midir, and for the love of God, having a lot of trouble in 1 vs many combat

I even got rekt by peasants
Heinrich was on his merry way after killing everyone in Pribislavitz. Saw a peasant in the road, I said, why not? I changed my attire into cuman and melee'ed that peasant, and to my surprise 3 hidden attackers ganked on Heinrich with no armor and trash weapon like bludgeon, wood cutter axe

Heinrich was stagger locked, and went down from 100% health to 20% real fast, Heinrich ran, but it was too late. Heinrich died

Never switched back from bow to anything else again, unless it's 1v1 melee

Furthermore, to assert dominance, I had Teresa kill every cuman in Skalitz
With the bow. To my surprise, it was ez n np 👌🏻👌🏻

[T9]

I don't get how this is a surprise for you.

Skilled archers were feared throughout and it makes sense.

[Hauw2x]

Originally posted by t9:

I don't get how this is a surprise for you.

Skilled archers were feared throughout and it makes sense.

Yes, but as Teresa?
Never thought it was possible

Oh and also

Originally posted by t9:

I don't get how this is a surprise for you.

Skilled archers were feared throughout and it makes sense.

I forgot her bow level but I got to like 7-8 agility at the end of the DLC

[The Murdering Angel]

So...two things. One, the bludgeon is a blunt weapon - and blunt weapons do great damage to most armor. Axes do a mix of blunt and slashing, so again work ok on armored dudes.

Secondly, 1 vs many is ALWAYS super dangerous - which is realistic. As soon as you run out of stamina, you start taking extra health damage(stamina acts as a sort of buffer, and without that buffer you're toast). The only way to handle these fights is to be patient use all of the skills/tips that Bernard teaches you - most importantly, riposte.

When you riposte, you don't use stamina, take no damage AND hurt somebody in a way they can't block. It's hard to pull off, but once you get good at it riposte turns you into a human lawnmower. 6 bandits in armor? No problem. Equip a shield and mace, then turn those asshats into hamburger.

However, positioning is important - you can't riposte people behind you, so you need to be constantly moving, watching your peripheral vision, dance around or block people who try to flank you etc. If someone surprises you, it's 99% because you weren't looking and got tunnel vision with the guy in front of you. Which happens to the best of us!

Melee in this game is heavily divisive, because it's very hard - and very good. It's crunchy, satisfying and has a unique cadence that does a good job of blending realism, historically-accurate swordplay/fencing techniques and game-iness. Level up your stats enough to give you that extra edge, or go hunt treasure to get the weapons which give you a much-needed buff.

Good luck, and have fun being Henry the Murderpeasant!

[Hauw2x]

Originally posted by The Murdering Angel:

Melee in this game is heavily divisive, because it's very hard - and very good.

Level up your stats enough to give you that extra edge, or go hunt treasure to get the weapons which give you a much-needed buff.

Good luck, and have fun being Henry the Murderpeasant!

Thanks for the response!

I'm already level 20, and the "git gud" part is lackluster, you don't really get more perks except some combos
Some combos are obviously better than others, especially the 3 move knockdown, that you don't need other combos

Furthermore, melee is weak, it's so terrible that no words can adequately describe and only math/comparing facts does
- 2-3 better piercing arrows will kill armored targets
- unarmored head shot is always instant kill, I could be wrong, but I had like 70 head shots and so far no one survives unless it's full helmet
- mounted archer can kite
- stealth archer can do hit and run
- doesn't need armor
- doesn't need repair kit
- you can't riposte arrows
- melee can't hunt

Every single thing that a melee build do, it does worse than an archer

It's also unrewarding, the moment you get your riposte moves from Bernard, melee is peaked, whereas archery only keep getting stronger and stronger until 20

And one more point. Gear wise, the strongest bow (in terms of DPS) is acquired even before you get riposte, it's Capon's hunting bow. Shortest draw time
I still use sinew/yew for long distance stealth kill though

So the way I see it, there's literally no reason to go melee. Except for the thrills, which I admit that I occasionally do

[carl.wear]

I don't understand why everyone keeps going on about how wonderful archery is. Even with archery at lvl 6, Idiot Henry couldn't hit anything in front of him. Doing the archery range, its more luck if you actually hit the damn target let alone the bullseye. Archery in Skyrim and 7 days to die is way easier than this game.

[Hauw2x]

Originally posted by carl.wear:

Doing the archery range, its more luck if you actually hit the damn target let alone the bullseye. Archery in Skyrim and 7 days to die is way easier than this game.

You have to figure out how archery hit box works. After that it will only gets easier
The trick is that your last split-second shaking before loosing the arrow massively affects the trajectory of the arrow

If your hand shakes to the bottom left, tilt the mouse slightly to the upper right, and vice versa, that's how you get smoother trajectory

Once you get higher archery level it will only get better. Less shaking, bigger zoom

[Echolecter]

Playing as Henry there is really nothing that's easier as wearing stealth clothing and use a bow. With right perks and clothing you can actually make yourself invisible to most enemies. You kill one, the others haven't got a clue who killed them, if seen simply move away and they lose sight again. Besides that you're light and can outrun most NPCs in case it's needed. If you have access to hunter' chest in Talmberg you can pickup free arrows whenever you run out. Or get hundreds if not thousands from a Cuman or bandit, there are some that carry an unlimited amount of arrows.

Depending on the bow and arrows you're using you can literally one shot most enemies, with or without armor. If you're having problems with aim, turn on the marker. You only need to time your shots, but sometimes the aiming is working against you. The game likes to cheat as well at times so you're unable to actually hit someone. The only thing you need to make sure is get the right bow, I prefer Cuman bow at level 74, because it doesn't require higher levels on other skills.

[carl.wear]

Originally posted by Echolecter:

Playing as Henry there is really nothing that's easier as wearing stealth clothing and use a bow. With right perks and clothing you can actually make yourself invisible to most enemies. You kill one, the others haven't got a clue who killed them, if seen simply move away and they lose sight again. Besides that you're light and can outrun most NPCs in case it's needed. If you have access to hunter' chest in Talmberg you can pickup free arrows whenever you run out. Or get hundreds if not thousands from a Cuman or bandit, there are some that carry an unlimited amount of arrows.

Depending on the bow and arrows you're using you can literally one shot most enemies, with or without armor. If you're having problems with aim, turn on the marker. You only need to time your shots, but sometimes the aiming is working against you. The game likes to cheat as well at times so you're unable to actually hit someone. The only thing you need to make sure is get the right bow, I prefer Cuman bow at level 74, because it doesn't require higher levels on other skills.

There is a marker?

[cookie]

nothing like a longsword fight in full armour or one hitting enemies from horsback as you ride by , i love my plated axe too- slices and dices after denting your helmet
great thing about the game is you can take all that armour off and go bow hunting too - i am the master huntsman
just doing bow does miss some cool fights - you cant fight Zoul with a bow can you ? i guess you could but pretty dumb

[Hauw2x]

Originally posted by carl.wear:

There is a marker?

There's a mod that lets you turn on cross hair but I never needed it, because

Originally posted by Echolecter:

Playing as Henry there is really nothing that's easier as wearing stealth clothing and use a bow. With right perks and clothing you can actually make yourself invisible to most enemies. You kill one, the others haven't got a clue who killed them, if seen simply move away and they lose sight again. Besides that you're light and can outrun most NPCs in case it's needed.

This is exactly my play style. At night, stealth archer
At day, mounted archer

[Echolecter]

Originally posted by carl.wear:

There is a marker?

You can create an autoexec.cfg file and place it in KCD root folder. In the file you can add 'wh_pl_showfirecursor 1' and the yellow dot will also be displayed while using bow so you can see where your arrows are going, roughly. You can also enter the code in the console window, top left char ` on keyboard. Using file automatically enables it when starting, no need for mods, just create the file, it's basically what mods do.

[Echolecter]

Originally posted by cookie:

... just doing bow does miss some cool fights - you cant fight Zoul with a bow can you ? i guess you could but pretty dumb

Well that's not exactly what you're doing all the time, is it? That is only one fight and there is so much more to do in the game. If you spent time leveling up your skills, Rant is taken down with single shot in the head. Besides that I don't consider spamming master strikes all the time being that 'cool' during fights. AI is pretty dumb anyway so walking up behind them, go stealth and use the dagger is also an option. Fortunately there are many options so each and everyone can have their own preferred ways how to play the game.

[Hauw2x]

Originally posted by Echolecter:

Fortunately there are many options so each and everyone can have their own preferred ways how to play the game.

Exactly my point. I play hardcore when I was still pirating my games. With all the debuffs. After Pribislavitz I was barely level 12 bow or something, despite almost exclusively using bow. Not only that Heinrich levels twice slower, not being able to save spam early from quests forced Heinrich to play with less risks

If it was that annoying even with stealth archer, then it's going to be torture as melee build