I just got rid of my archers

[guttahtrash]

I just got rid of my archers and I feel good about it.

1. I don't think they were doing the damage of my fighters.
2. They didn't have the versatility of the mages.

They were just bleh. Now I just sell everything DEX dependent, and everything else is just hand-me-downs for either Str. or Int. Inventory management moves way faster as a result.

My current party is 4 fighters, 2 nature mages, and 2 combat mages. I love running a full 8 member party. Running 4 orbs helps take down the baddies quite a bit. If I'm getting my butt kicked, I put all 4 mages on healing magic, but the orbs are still doing damage. I go through a lot of potions. HA!

I think it's the strongest (full) party I've ever run. Of course, this is the first time playing since the game originally came out so my memory may be off.

Anybody else not feeling the archers anymore?

[Illimitus]

8 Archers is nice becuase they all keep a uniform distance from enemies forcing enemies to chase one archer which, even if it dies can be ressurected by another. Archers that started off with some magic abilities are helpful for that and other support spells and buffs.

[guttahtrash]

See now that's interesting... I haven't messed with dual-class characters. You just have to keep both skills within a few points of each other right?

Also, if an Archer is firing a bow, and also has an orb up, would they progess in both archery and magic at the same time? If so that may be worth doing, you'd get the best of both worlds.

[Illimitus]

The progression for non-damage magic is slower, you have to have goals, for instance heal, rez, or particular buffs, then level you characters to that number

[Applied Mediocrity]

There is a secret in Dark Forest full of bandit archers on an elevated position. I could not get in melee range with them without several PCs dying. Mages always had to get in their range and were getting one-shotted. On the other hand, archers could hit-and-run and took the place easily enough. Admitedly, this is one of the very few places I remember actually necessitating some tactical approach :)

[guttahtrash]

I'm doing an LOA run now, I took the first archer.

My main character is a multi. I'm building all 4 skills evenly with her. (I've never done that.) with an electric orb, and a vile summons, I mainly just have to use sword and bow, because the magics build themselves mostly. As long as I keep them up. I have comparable armor, mana, and health to the rest of the squad.

It's odd though, from an equipment standpoint. I find myself using gear either I didn't know the point of before, or that I just didn't need. Like a lot of the yellow named gear will have bonuses to melee on a bow that requires tons of dex as an example. This gear is awesome for a mulit class! Most of them add bonuses to more than one disipline.

So I have my Main (multi), 1 archer, 3 fighters, 1 nature mage, & 2 combat mages.

I don't think I could do more than one multi character at a time though, it's a lot of micrimanaging to keep everything even. And if I ever play with a multi again, I'll most likely choose one magic to focus on. It's cool to be able to jump to whatever skills would work best though.

[Rose_Eleanor]

Played with several characters, and with them going into each of the 4 combat types, I've found nature magic to be the most fun, but melee gets the best looking weaponary, I miss playing this on my old computer... Going to have to pick it back up as I still have all my saves and play through the whole campaign again

[Ceejay]

I find archers are fun when you start getting guns :)

[guttahtrash]

The guns ARE neat. :)

But I was stuck in this "must have 1 nature mage, 1 combat mage, 2 archers, 4 melee..." mode since the game came out. This was the first time I've broken away from that. It's huge for me! heh.

[Rose_Eleanor]

Normally I play with 3/4 nature mages, 2 tanks/melee classes and have my 6th as ranged if I take that class. Just such a nice feeling while playing as a mage as you can heal/buff/debuff/attack with the same class

[=Ost180=Hoshinohi]

well actually rangers are beasts at start and get a bit mediocre later on however with the right gear you have a big tactical advantage over youre enemys.

If you ever play Dungeon Siege 2 there is an upgrade dualclass path for combat magic + archery and one for meleecombat + nature magic which are both quite strong.

In DS1 however I recommend that you dual class at least as far as you need to be to revive and heal.

While playing on hard difficulty in a new run (nearly 13 years after my first one xD) I had hard times with the spiders and the spiderqueen herself was not fightable by any circumstances during her extreme strong poison aoe. fortunately my main plays archery and combat magic so I could kill her with the firebomb spell during its grenade physic function and that took long enough ( this ♥♥♥♥♥ comes with 480 hp and the spell does roughly 3 points per hit XD) normally you would choose a melee character to get aggression of the enemys and run towars youre archers and mages as the enemy tries to fight the melee the longe range group can safely attack them without beeing attacked.

In total I recommend you to play archers as dual classes with focus on one of the two magic abilitys. As you will have some kind of manaproblems later on switching to bow can be a great help too.

[Rose_Eleanor]

Just an fyi if you haven't played with a high level nature mage your missing out on some great spells that increase health and mana regen, and when you have over 2K mana the regen is real