Foot Archer

Foot archers are a decent PvE class. For PvP, they can be utilized to damage mounted characters from a distance. They also do decent damage versus mages. Unfortunately as a class, they are not very viable for PvP.

Skillcap: Medium
Main races: Thursar Khurite, Khurite
Main stats: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution
Weapons: Bows that are tailored to your characters strength. Exceptional Blunt Arrows do the most damage.
Armor: 9 weight armor is recommended for stamina regeneration, but it is not unheard of to see a mounted archer wear plated steel.
Advantages: Ranged damage. Most archer builds have room for a melee weapon as well, and this character could easily double as a fighter. Using incendiary arrows, they do good damage to structures.
Disadvantages: Their damage is not exceptional, and they are unable to parry.
Special builds: None that I know of.
Excels at: Keep enemy mounteds at bay.

PvP video: Youtube Link

Introduction

This guide is what I recommend for newer players who want to build a mounted archer, whether for pve, pvp, or both. It should also be useful for more established players to powerlevel up a new alt. It does not cover basic game mechanics and controls, but should give some insight into how the game works, and speed up the process of building a viable combat character.

In the current state of the game, for both solo pvp and pve, I recommend creating an archer/melee hybrid. Other builds become are equally (and more) viable in group situations, but surviving on your own requires mobility, and the ability to quickly take down hostile mounts in order to escape. This guide will give you the tools to survive on your own, and be useful in group situations as well.

As of patch 1.31.01.09, I recommend getting Mounted Combat and Mounted Charge instead of Mounted Archery, and focusing on melee rather than archery for pvp. This guide will still guide you through the Mounted Archery path though, as it was my original intent.


Bows and Arrows

In Mortal Online, there are 3 main classes of bows: shortbows, longbows, and asymmetrical bows. In general, shortbows have the fastest draw time and shortest range. Longbows are medium draw-time and medium range. Asymmetricals have the longest draw-time and longest range. These ranges and draw-times, as well as damage, depend greatly on the materials used to craft the weapons, and the skill of the crafter. For a pure archer, it's nice to have the right bow for the right situations.

Broadhead Arrows cost 50 silver per 100, and are the highest dps arrows in game currently.
Bodkin Arrows cost 20 silver per 100, and do roughly half the damage of a Broadhead.

Bodkins are more cost effective if you only consider arrow cost per damage. However, if you also consider the durability hit per shot that your bow takes, the extra time it takes to kill each mob, and any pvp situation where you need to fight back, Broadheads are what you should be using. While skilling up, Bodkins are really fine if you want to save some money. After you get 90+ in Archery and Mounted Archery though, I would never use a Bodkin again!


How to Shoot

The Targeting Reticule
The targeting reticle is a white circle that appears when you begin to draw your bow. It starts out large and gets smaller the longer you continue your draw, until fully drawn and the reticule disappears into your crosshair. While moving, however, this reticle will never disappear! The reticle represents the area in which your arrow will fly. The larger the reticle, the higher the possibility to miss your target. The arrow can go in any direction confined by the reticle!

Draw Times
The full draw time of a bow is the time from when you begin your pull, until the time that the targeting reticle disappears. If a bow has a full draw time of 2.0 seconds, then if you release your left mouse button after that 2.0 seconds, the arrow should fly in a predictable trajectory every time. You do not always have to use full draws, but must always pull back the bow about 2/3 of its full draw time (give or take a few tenths of a second) or your shot will be cancelled. Faster draws do not lower the damage that your shots deal, only their accuracy.

Environmental Effects
Wind, rain, and gravity all affect the trajectory of your arrows. Gravity causes the arrow to arch downwards, and you will have to get used to the trajectories of the various bows you will use. Rain intensifies the downward arch. Wind is supposed to also affect trajectories as expected in real life, but there is no easy way to tell what direction the wind is blowing! You can fire a test shot to get an idea of the wind direction, but it isn't very informative, and the wind changes direction without any indication to the archer. The combination of these 3 environmental effects, as well as human aiming error, make hitting targets at range much more difficult than close up.

Client-Side Hit Detection
Because Mortal Online uses client-side hit detection, this means that if the shot on your screen would hit the target, then it does! This may seem obvious, but it has some important effects on gameplay. The most important one is that as soon as your arrow is fired, it either hits or misses without giving your opponents the opportunity to avoid it during flight. If your aim is true and respects all environmental factors, even the wind, then the arrow will instantly hit your target with zero travel time. You do not need to lead targets as in some other games, and you don't need to predict enemy movement and launch arrows ahead of them hoping that they continue in that direction and get hit. You simply release the bow when your target is at a position to be hit at that instant.

Start Shooting!
Equip your bow and fill up your quiver. You can right-click the items in your inventory, or hotkey them. Press your keybind for Unsheathe Weapon (default is X). Press your fire keybind (default is left mouse button) and hold it down. Release your fire keybind after the bow is at least half drawn to fire the arrow.

Character Creation

Stats
Str contributes to your physical damage bonus, gives you more stamina, and is required to be at certain limits to effectively use different bows. It increases melee damage linearly, and allows you to wear heavier armor.

Dex is only known to increase movement speed and give a little stamina right now, which is important, but there are also unconfirmed reports of it affecting the frequency of weakspot hits.

Con is mostly to give you health, but also slightly increases movement speed, and allows you to wear heavier armor.

Size gives you health, contributes to your physical damage bonus, and is supposed to slightly affect movement speed (though movement speed may not be properly affected right now).

Int is commonly suspected to decrease a thief's chance of successfully stealing from you (unconfirmed) and increases your mana pool.

Psy gives you a higher chance to resist spell damage and increases your mana pool.

From highest to lowest, I would prioritize your stats as str > size > con > dex and disregard int and psy.

Race and Age
You can make decent archers with other race/age combinations that have high strength, but I recommend a 30 year old Thursar/Khurite because they have the best balance of str, dex, con, and size caps right now.

I recommend that you max out size on creation, and choose the Recruit starting template. Choose Fabernuum as your starting town, but run to Meduli or Vadda for easier access to farming spawns.


Goal Template

Skills
Mortal Online uses a parent-child system for skills. The parent must be learned in order to learn the child, and the child skill is restricted by the parent skill.

There are also primary skills that take away from your 1000 primary skill point cap. Secondary skills do not consume your primary skill point limit, and there are no drawbacks to learning secondary skills.

Lastly, some skills are actively leveled, while some are passively leveled. Actively leveled skills are raised through use, while passively leveled skills require you to read books. Reading can be done offline, but is completed more quickly while logged in. The last hour of a book will not complete while you are offline.

Template
Maxed size, str, con, dex, and extra points in int. 100 each in Archery, Mounted Archery, Defensive Stance, Combat Maneuvering, Anatomy, Agility, Riding. These are all required. From here you can max out 3-4 more skills. This guide will have you max out Endurance, Aggressive Stance, Swords, and 91 points into a primary of your choice. I personally got 91 Endurance and 100 Creature Control since I have another character and friends to tame for me. Taming, Survival, and Balance are all fine choices as well. Max out every secondary skill under these primaries for a "complete" character. If you customize this template

I recommend saving Endurance and your "extra" skill for last to skill up, and allocating those points into Mental Training and Reading until everything else is complete.


Skilling Up

If you have friends who can loan you some silver to get started, you can get your character to a combat-viable state very quickly. Otherwise, you will have to kill Pigs, then Springboks, and finally Wisents and Gaurs to make the silver to buy the skills that you need. Start out meleeing with your noobie sword until you can get a nice crafter to give or sell you some cheap training shortbows. As soon as possible, start killing mobs with archery instead of melee, using bodkins early on. Don't forget to make macros to command, bandage, and feed your pets!

Once archery is skilled up, start skilling up melee. Once you learn Aggressive Stance and Overhead Swing, you can skill up both of these and your main melee skill at the same time. It is your choice which weapon to use, but I chose swords because I feel they compliment archery the best due to weight considerations and my personal playstyle. With a more melee focused build, especially one with mounted combat, other weapon choices are probably better.

In your skill tree, put everything to minus that isn't in your final template except for Mental Training and Reading. Put your primary skills in the template to plus (+), except for Endurance and your "extra" skill when you get them. This way you can keep points in Mental Training and Reading to get your character maxed out faster. When you are ready to skill these up, put Mental Training and Reading to minus (-).

First, get all of the actively leveled skills that you can afford, so that you can begin learning your passive skills next. You always need to buy the parent skill first in order to learn the child skill. As soon as possible, you should buy the following books, and read then cancel all of them:

*As soon as you can get armor, go find a big spawn of bush pigs, aggro them, and block unarmed until your str, con, and dex are capped. Until your defensive stance reaches about 60 they will do damage to you, and you must break away to bandage and rest. After that, get as many as you can on you to skill up, because they will be doing 0 damage. You need to be wearing armor to take 0 damage.
1. Ranged Combat (10s), Archery (10s)
2. Combat Movement (50s)
3. Aggressive Stance (250s) - requires 30 combat techniques
4. Overhead Swing (10s?) - Sold in GK, and I believe it requires 30 skill in aggressive stance to learn.


If you can't afford to buy all of these skills right away, you can start reading cheaper passively leveled skills like Mental Training I, Footspeed, and Swift Riding. Try to always be reading a book!

*There is a bug/oversight that requires you to read Mental Training I to get up to 25 points in Mental Training to unlock your Concentration skill, which is a prereq for reading. After active skills are learned, buy this book from the library for 10s and read it until your Reading skill becomes active! Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Once you are finished purchasing your actively leveled skills, you can start on the rest of the passively leveled skills in the following order:

1. Swift Riding and Controlled Riding. You need to be able to run from PKers early on, so max out your riding skills first. I needed to read Swift Riding I once, and II twice, so plan on 30s here. Controlled riding takes 3 books that cost 200s each. You can buy these from the Tutor.
2. Anatomy I (250s), Feint I (200s), Combat Balance I (250s), Momentum I (200s), Breathing Technique I (250s).
* By this point you are "pvp viable" and should feel pretty confident in most pvp situations.
3. Anatomy II (250s), Feint II and III (200s each), Combat Balance II (250s), Momentum II and III (200s each), Breathing Technique II (250s)
* Now set Mental Training and Reading to -, Endurance to +, and your "extra" skill to +

4. Passive Regeneration I and II (10s each)
* At this point your build will hold it's own with the best pvpers. From here on you are getting "luxury skills" that are far from required.
5. Damage Assessment I and II (2500s each) - Very expensive and not very important, but you can get it if you want to.

While reading all of these books, be actively skilling up all of your combat and movement skills as much as possible. As soon as you reach 30 archery and 35 riding, mount up and start leveling Mounted Archery and Archery at the same time!

Librarians are in every starter town for most books. Tutors are in Vadda, Moh-ki, and Bakti. The Fisherman is in Meduli. The Hermit is in the mountains south of Moh-ki, and the Veteran is in Gaul-Kor.


How to Farm

1. Be paranoid! Keep checking your surroundings, and expect anyone who pops up on your screen to be aggressive. Keep your stamina and health high, and quiver fully loaded after each kill.
2. While skilling up, try to be close to non-threatening targets and use fast shots to skill up faster without missing.
3. Use a longer range bow against harder mobs. If you shoot them from far enough away, they often won't even attack you back.
4. Try to find places to farm where you are least likely to be attacked, and have an escape route planned. Steep hills and bodies of water will help you survive against reds who are coming to kill you and take your loot.
5. Learn when to fight, when to run away, and when to drop someone's mount and then run away. This mostly comes with experience, but often you can survive an attack if you kill the guy's mount or at least knock him off it, then take off.
6. During pvp primetimes, bank early and often if you are poor. When the risk is lower, you can farm up to your max weight (121 or so) and still ride your mount back to town. This is more risky than stopping at 60 weight, but comes with more reward.
7. While skilling up everything, ride to the spawns at max speed until your horse is out of stamina, dismount, say "follow me", and then sprint until you are out of stamina. Remount and repeat. This is not only the fastest way to travel, but it also helps you skill up Riding, Sprinting, and Endurance. Once your bags are full I would try not to let your mount drop below 75% stamina, and stay on it so you can make a quick getaway.
8. Kill 2-3 mobs while mounted, then loot all of the bags. Loot everything, even bone tissue, and delete what you don't want to keep. Lootbags on the ground will make it obvious that there is a victim in the area for PKers.


How to PvP

This is completely situational, but in general for a mounted archer with a shortbow, here are some basic tips to get you started:

vs Mounted Melee:
These guys hurt bad now, and it seems they have a better chance at knocking you down than you do. Try to drag them to a mountainside, a pile of rocks, or a tree, dismount, and make them engage you on foot. If they try to run from you, chase them and try to kill their mount. Either way, the first goal is to avoid getting knocked down, either by melee damage on your mount or a direct mount knockdown. Use the terrain!

Before they dismount, make sure you hit them a few times before they engage you on foot. Either you will knock them off their mount, they will dismount and come at you on foot, or they will run away at this point. If they run away, it's your call whether or not to chase them. If they get knocked down, depending on their distance, you should either plug them with a few arrows or switch to melee and get a free hit in. If they dismount far enough away, you can even mount up once they are getting closer, swing around behind him and kill his mount before he can run back on foot to it. You can shoot him down if you get him low enough before he reaches you, but unless you have a huge hp advantage, I would make sure to switch to melee and have a swing charged up before you fight face-to-face.

vs Mounted Archers:
A lot of this comes down to equipment, luck, and who has the best aim. Get in close, and try to win the dps race. Whoever takes out the other's mount first, knocks them off their mount first, or simply gets the first shot, is usually going to win. If I know the guy is going to stay and fight, I usually dismount and shoot him from the ground just to avoid the possible knockdown disadvantage that can happen if you are unlucky. You will need to stay mounted against runners though, especially if you don't have a faster mount than they do. If you both have very high hp mounts, killing the rider instead of his mount is perfectly viable.

vs Mages:
A mounted mage isn't a threat. I wouldn't even bother with killing their mount much until they try to run. If they are on foot, just be patient. When you come at them, they will have one pre-loaded nuke ready, so you can pre-bandage as you come in and then keep hitting them fast to try to interrupt other spells. If they have a terrain advantage though, it could be impossible to kill them, as most mages will run faster than you. Just remember, they can kill you, but not your mount. If you have a bullhorse or molva beast, you can knock them down before shooting, and it's game over for most mages.


Conclusion and Disclaimer

I am a min-maxing powergamer, so consider this when taking my suggestions. The beauty of Mortal Online is that you can customize your character as you wish, but this guide is aimed at creating a very powerful archer with maximal effectiveness in game, and disregards aesthetic and role-play preferences.

I know much of this information obvious to the veterans, but hopefully it helps out a few people who may have started the game recently, or even some older players who are thinking about making a new archer. All suggestions given above are simply that - suggestions - to try to help some noobs out. If things are missing that you think should be added, or any corrections should be made, speak up!