Wildermyth – How to Use Bow-Wielding Characters

A look at Archer’s archetypes: the skills, bows, and themes that work best for different builds, including Ember Cannons from the Ember Rail Cannon team style covered in my very first guide, the Ember Rail Cannon guide. I’m writing this to address some of the nuances of these builds that people sometimes struggle with and that shouldn’t be added to an already huge and somewhat disorganized guide.

Disclaimer and Warning

THIS GUIDE CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS! I don’t have any big main campaign spoilers, and I mostly don’t touch on how you get things, so use your head and think about how pristine YOU want the game to be. Probably not too pristine because you’re looking up guides?

If anyone has feedback, I’d love to hear it! There will always be a few mistakes, plus some of my theoretical stuff is really educated guessing (praise the wiki), so hearing from people who’ve tried things is great!

Anything marked with (Th) of (Theoretical) is something I haven’t specifically tried on a particular build, though I may have experience with it otherwise, and in many cases am relying on the knowledge and experience of others who have tried it.

This guide is medium length (3.8k words including intro and titles).

This guide was written during the 1.13+477 Niyati hotfix and finished just after the 1.14 Elona Rib was released – I will list any patch updates it receives here.

Verklarende woordenlijst

Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in the jargon, so I’ve made a list to help you out.

• -lijn – how close to the enemy this character should be: often a good indicator of tankiness
• Backline – in the safest position, with the team between you and the enemies, often far away from the enemies.
• Midline – in between the enemy and the squishiest characters, and expected to be able to take a hit, but behind the actual tanks.
• Frontline – closest to danger, expected to tank all hits and come out relatively unscathed
• Adjacent – both orthogonal AND diagonal
• Alphastrike – The damage you can deal on your first turn/first attack.
• AoE – Van kracht (you can hit multiple targets)
• Bow Hunter – a hunter who uses a bow (so has no transformed arms and 7.6 naar 9.6 max range)
• Clutch – Changing the game from loss to win at a critical moment
• ERC – Ember Rail Cannon: a team strategy that turns a Bow Hunter into a Gatling Gun with Spiritblade Mystics.
• DoT – Damage Over Time. What it says on the tin, bijv. Quellingmoss.
• OTK – One Turn Kill. Basically what happens when their Health is lower than your Alphastrike.
• Power curve – the increase in power over time in a build – ideally this wants to be as front-loaded as possible without compromising late game power.
• Proc – “triggers” of “effect happens”, bijv. “killing an enemy procs Rogue, putting you in Greyplane” of “Quellingmoss procs at the end of the turn, so it procs more if you can slow them down”.

A Note on Armour

I don’t have the exciting new armor DLC. That means I do not feel qualified to talk about the best armor, except to say that you always want the Grey/Thornbark line over Travel/Ghosttraff for archery. The doubled flat defense is crucial, and you don’t need the speed because you have a bow and can shoot the stars from anywhere.

Archetypes

• Baseren: What makes it tick?
• Control: Slow them down for easy pickings
• Potency: Emphasize high potency stacking
• Reactive: Attack on the enemy’s turn

Basic Bow Prioritization

• Sentinel – de +1 range is pretty awesome if you’re not paying for it with an ability (and that feels awesome with Sniper – if you can see it, you can shoot it (most of the time)), en de +5 stunt damage can be clutch.
• Bone Bow – this can pump out the highest damage numbers because with +3 free potency at max rank, it turbocharges abilities that turn potency into damage. It also has an upgrade event, which I’ve never personally seen, to make it a stone bow as well (though this does not persist through legacy).
• Leaf/Stone Bow – extra security is always strong. Even a backline hero can benefit from temporary health (has saved my heroes before), and the whole team benefits from pin/shred, though the range is a bit small.
• Fire Bow – solid damage, but only really shines when you have a high enough stunt chance to see it multiple times on a semi-regular through shot, which feels very powerful but takes some building around.
• Water Bow – stop booing me, I know everyone feels cool using the water bow. I even recommend it in my original guide. But it’s extra damage or mobility in most cases, and since it can only proc once, it’s only an unreliable 9% naar 20% [2] increase in damage, depending on how high your stunt chance is and how many attacks you’re getting from, inspraak, Spirit Blade (more attacks increase reliability but decrease value) Is that a lot? Zeker, but if you stunt once, it becomes useless and you’re better off switching to another bow, which increases the material cost of the hunter’s upgrades and… Ja, just sad really, especially since it’s less than I said because the stunt damage is reduced for water weapons. Ja. In an unlucky moment, you might see a 0% damage increase because you have to target the same enemy again when they would have died to any other stunt and gotten you some other effect [2], all assuming a 20% stunt chance and ignoring the reduced stunt damage: de 9% is when you’re throwing out 7 attacks at base (3 Spiritblade+ Mystic) and can get the water bonus action 80% of the time for 14% Meer schade, de 20% when you have 1 attack for double damage.

Basisprincipes: What Works in all Archetypes

Some abilities can appear in every archetype – what are they and why? Goed, they’re very powerful, to the point where having 3 of these 4 is a decent benchmark for what makes an Ember Cannon. In order, they should be prioritized (for a character starting at low levels, with an eye towards maintaining a decent power curve):

Sluipschutter

This ability is huge at low levels, and it scales well. In my general ability guide, I rated it 4.25 uit 5, the highest rating of any general ability. This is because of how well it starts and how well it scales, especially with bows:

• +1 schade: on a bow, this is a damage increase between 25% (1st level with a farm bow) and 3.3ish% (assuming a max level well-built hunter with some useful augments and a bone bow against a 9+ armor foe), met 5% naar 10% more typical
• +1 bereik: extremely powerful. It can mean an extra attack (by having another target in range with an ERC team, or an extra target in an attack (with Throughshot+), which can be up to a 20% damage increase in some common situations.
• No minimum range on bows: This is mostly a nice quality of life buff, but it does mean that you don’t need to max level a second weapon (usually a crossbow) and sometimes get an extra target in a Throughshot attack, increasing damage as above.

Algemeen: Erg, very solid, especially on lower level characters, and scales nicely, though the upgrade is not worth it (alleen +1 bereik). And the reason you prioritize this over our next contender is because it’s from the general pool – harder to get for how strong it is. It’s better in the early game, but later on Throughshot will beat it for strength, and it’s fair to bump this down to 2nd.

Through Shot+.

This is a great ability for ranged hunters. The base version (which adds 1 extra target in a line) doesn’t quite double the damage (since each subsequent hit deals -1 schade), but it can, and the ability to hit an unlimited number of enemies (with progressively reduced damage) is extremely powerful. In the late game, with other abilities supporting it, this is the Hunter’s strongest ability.

Piercing Shots

Decent early as the flat 1 pierce is good, and scaling up with potency in the late game, this reliably bypasses armor or gets within a few points. And now I have to talk about Rogue. Why is it not here? It completely bypasses! And look, I get it. Rogue is good. And it comes with the attractive hidden vibe – you get so much edge you could chop vegetables with it! But the problem is the “must kill to proc”, when one of the following situations happens, your damage drops through the floor:

• Your hero sneezes and misses that nice 90% hit chance.
• You don’t have enough damage to kill
• The small/low-health enemy you lined up for a through shot dodges.
• The enemy is a huge boss with no small/low-health enemies to line up and/or you don’t have a thorough shot.

So no, the rogue is not better. You are an archer. You do not need the safety of Greyplane, you should be in the backline safely away from enemies, or intentionally up with the tanky hunter armor walling with your best friend [1] the warrior.

[1] because friendship is an extra dodge.

The upgrade isn’t really worth it; you don’t really need 1 shred when you’re already dodging, especially since you can get that in our next ability.

Ember Arrows

You’d think the titular ability for Ember Cannons would be a higher priority, but frankly, it’s a little lackluster early on. A level 4+ hero should choose this over piercing shots if they have a reliable source of on-demand fire (an offhand torch, a warrior with a raider, a mystic with Ignite, a fire chicken pet). But what does it do? When adjacent to a fire:

• Add potency to damage: extremely strong, but can be 0 if you’re level 1 of 2 without augments or the bone bow
• 1 shred: Goed, but not enough on its own. Needs at least 1 damage from the first point for the ability to pull its weight.

The upgrade gives a quick action move to fire, dat is leuk, but not nice for all archetypes.

Control: Slow them Down for Easy Pickings

The core of this archetype is Crippling Strikes (apply Hobble on hit), it’s as strong as any of the basic 4, and plays well with Sharpshooter and Throughshot, since ideally you want to hobble multiple enemies from a distance. Quellingmoss is also solid here, as they’ll take more turns to reach you and thus take more damage from poison. The Crippling Strikes upgrade is fine (Th), but I wouldn’t call it necessary – the problem is that you only get the damage boost after you hit them. Ook, some enemies are immune (not a problem for the base version since you still have other abilities, can target other enemies, and/or can focus fire to OTK them).

Core:

• Crippling Strikes
• Through Shot

Aanbevolen:

• Spring Moss
• Core Archetype Skills: This is how we go brr

Bow prioritization:

• Vigilkeeper – the further away they are, the better.
• Stone Bow – Gefeliciteerd, you just recreated Frostfang as a non-crossbow xD
• Leaf Bow – enemies can build up a bit, so safety is good
• Water Bow – a little stronger here as it can be an extra stack of Hobble
• Bone Bow – still good (probably 2nd on the list in absolute terms, assuming you grab Ember Arrows or Piercing Shots), but it has better archetypesFire Bow – Kind of unnecessary, although if the stunt fireballs were applied to Hobble, it would be 2nd behind Guardian (even ahead of Bone Bow).

Playstyle:

Careful distance plays to keep enemies out of range of you and your team whenever possible. Wall when possible, stay close. If you have a Vigilance Warrior or Shardskin, you can leave them in range of some enemies to get their damage.

Voorbeeld: Gale Clerksy. After suggesting Crippling Strikes in my ERC guide, I wanted to try it out. My last run with Gales was where I got that chance (she’s actually the thumbnail for the ERC guide, just before that run). I took a through shot of the + on this run, and it’s safe to say I was pleased with the results.

Potency: They Must Die

This is pretty simple; you want all the potency you can find – this is a strong contender for “best build when you’ve found a Bone Bow”. Through Shot is still great and recommended, but you’re going to get some AoE from the Quellingmoss single action (which is why you want the quick action of Ember Arrows+), so it’s not essential, even though it’s crazy powerful. When using ERC, you can sometimes find that using both actions on Quellingmoss and your Swift on movement, while the Spirit Blade Mystics make you use bow attacks to be optimal, depending on the number and arrangement of enemies.

“But Quellingmoss is a DoT, you can’t use it to OTK!” Ik kan, I will, and I have. If you use 8 billion [3] vergif, you can OTK whatever you want.

[3] possible exaggeration

Core:

• Ember Arrows(+)
• Quelling Moss
• Piercing Shots

Aanbevolen:

• Basic Archetype Skills

Since your positioning is effectively frontline, I’d suggest some tankiness like Endurance, Maar… look, if you do this right, they’re all dead anyway.

Bow prioritization:

• Bone Bow: The others aren’t even close in power on this one. Effectively doubles the base damage of the bow and makes Quellingmoss hit like a truck.
• Leaf/Stone/Fire Bow
• Water Bow
• Guardian: You want to be a little closer than normal to throw out Quellingmoss bombs.

Play Style:

Front/midline positioning, wall with allies if you can, but the point is to see no enemies survive if possible. Much easier with ERC

Voorbeeld: Roymere Reds. A surprise catch, Roymere was recruited in the Hero Worship event, but became incredibly important when the main Ember Cannon from that run retired at the end of Chapter 4 (door 1 jaar <screams>) – you’ll notice he’s the youngest of my examples, and only level 2. Lad earned his promotion by pioneering a whole new style of Ember Cannon, de “quick action move, Quellingmoss, loose arrow” style.

Reactie: Attacking the Enemy Turn

Archery is the only way to reliably get more attacks with your bow without using Spirit Blade. A powerful ability with a high cost, since you have to be attacked first. But since that’s basically unavoidable anyway, it’s an easy choice.

Core:

• Archery: De + is bad, but the base ability IS the build.
• Through Shot (+): This allows you to retaliate even if enemies are hiding behind their allies.

Aanbevolen:

• Weerstand: It’s best to be able to frontline or at least midline with this build. Extra armor and Ward really help.
• Basic Archetype Skills: This is how we go brr
• Hinderlaag (Th): A bit niche, but gives you a bit more flexibility, especially with Vost (don’t get the + with Vost)

Bow prioritization:

• Leaf Bow: Since you have to risk taking hits, safety is a big deal.
• Vost: Pretend to be a knockback warrior if you have an ambush.
• Sentinel
• Bone bow
• Stone Bow
• Fire Bow
• Water bow

Playstyle:

Position aggressively, adjacent to all allies if possible – if not, focus on those likely to be targeted by ranged attacks. You should be close to at least 1 ally for walling and ideally the Friendship Dodge buff, and target melee enemies before ranged enemies (unless there’s a priority target like a Redcloak with a channeled fireball), as these ranged attacks increase your damage per turn.

Voorbeeld: Keliel Nockmust was actually my first bowhunter, back before I used Spirit Blade to go brr. She lacks many of the core skills, but by combining Throughshot with Archery and Quellingmoss+ (which you can think of as a flat +2 damage in many cases), she was able to carry her team through the grueling MutM final. Not perfect, but good enough for a beleaguered WL run with inexperienced Warriors on the final team – herinneren, all we need is good enough.

Combining Archetypes

Since a lot of abilities are shared between archetypes, they fit together pretty well: they all tend to be defined by one ability and then amplified by the basics (or just several basics in a trenchcoat), Dus 2 together works fine (ik bedoel, half of my examples are technically hybrids (see below for the last one)). 3 might be a bit of a stretch, but if you can pull it off? Go wild dudes [4]

[4] Non-gendered. Etymologically means “fashionable”.

Transformations (Including Pets)

So obviously (I hope) you should never transform your arms – that’s a completely different style, though sometimes one that uses all the same skills (usually without Ember Arrows, since it’s only +1 schade, no doubling potency). That means we’re looking at heads, legs, and pets.

Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

General notes:

This list is alphabetical and only includes topics I think are good. If you don’t understand why a theme is not on this list, leave a comment and I might add a “not so good” sectie. But really, as long as you’re not transforming arms, you should be fine with most themes.

It can be worth leaving 1 leg untransformed so the hero can pick up leg-based augments, as that’s one of the best ways to stack stats.

Standard themes:

Celestial can be pretty awesome with the Blind in the Hair, especially in control/reaction builds that are more likely to take hits, but the legs are bad. Do not give up armor for speed. You need armor, you don’t need speed. The path effect is also pretty meh, mainly because it’s so unreliable.

Crowtouched is solid, if only because the wings are free stats (especially dodge), and the legs trading 0.2 health for 0.6 warding is pretty solid. I’d avoid the head, since even a frontline archer shouldn’t be orthogonal to enemies, but if you like your life that way, ga ervoor.

Crystalline is basically the gold (gem?) standard here. De +6 stun chance on the head can be huge, regardless of weapon. The legs are good too, as the +5 block is well worth a relative -0.1 snelheid. You might be tempted to take a crossbow and get the +6 stunt from the shield as well, but it’s probably not worth it. Maybe an archery build could do it, but you will feel the range loss.

Elmsoul’s legs are a decent trade at 0.4 speed for 0.6 pantser, and the hairpiece doesn’t actually take up the head slot if I remember correctly, so it’s a decent pickup. Does block some other themes though

Sylvan, which gives +5 retirement age, is not to be underestimated, although the legs are a bad trade (-5 block for +0.5 snelheid), and that blocks some good options.

Special themes:

Foxish is probably the best tail theme, just add the stats: 0.4 snelheid, 4 stunt chance, 4 dodge. The upgrade is more of the same, so it’s not bad to have in the pool.

Mark of the Horn (Th) met +0.5 Warding, +5 Charisma, en +10 Toughness is free stats again, though it’s not the best option and blocks some other good options.

Pets

While pet ability upgrades are generally not worth picking up in an already tight build, the pets themselves are. While no pet will ruin the build, and most will add something, er zijn 3 clear winners (in addition to Drauven Bird and the temporary pets):

Critter is the undisputed champion, as accuracy is one of the most valuable stats for this build, making good chances guaranteed and bad chances possible.

Avenger (Golden Bunny) (Th) is probably a respectable if distant second, since 1 damage is 1 schade, although there is a completely different build (Avenging Hunter) that uses the upgrade (and it’s rare to get Golden Bunny on a Hunter for reasons I won’t go into here).

Fire Chicken (Th): Pairs well with Ember Arrows, but honestly better put on another ally since torches exist and you should have enough Warding to get through fires if you need to. Especially avoid the Covering Fire upgrade in a reaction build.

Voorbeeld: Glenlow Prickleharp with her pet rat – not a pet I recommend, but that’s basically the point; pick the pet you want and at least one archetype will still work, and work well. The pet rat works well with archery because the small dodge boost helps you stay safe (even if the duck is actually better). Some pets may just be an aesthetic choice in some builds: bijv. Shadowcat in an Ember Arrows+ & Quellingmoss build competes for the fast action.