Mordhau Archery Guide and Quick Tips for the Longbow

Mordhau released in late April and quickly recruited a million players eager to satiate their thirst for medieval combat. What is essentially a spiritual successor to Chivalry , Mordhau is an excellent game filled with enough semi-strategic swordplay, decapitations and blood-curling battle cries for anyone eager for such elements.

Players can create and customize their own character classes in Mordhau. You can be a mace-wielding maniac, running around in shorts and a farmers hat, or you can immerse yourself in steel armor and equip the biggest sword you can find.

Many players (myself included) choose to play as an archer. Archers can select to use the longbow, the recurve bow or the crossbow. If you want to fully commit to playing as an archer, longbow is the way to go. It does more damage and has more range than the recurve bow, plus it doesn’t lock you into a stationary reload animation like the crossbow does.

With nearly 100 hours spent in Mordhau so far, and playing as a longbow archer for the majority of that time, I put together some Mordhau longbow archer tips for players ready to learn how to wield the best bow in the Mordhau.

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Use the Huntsman Perk

If you want to be the most valuable asset to your team, you’ll constantly be aware of the archers on the other team. Your job is not to target the foot soldiers on the other team. Your job is to keep enemy archers from targeting your own foot soldiers.

A dead enemy archer can’t shoot arrows at your team. The easiest way to dispatch enemy archers is with the help of the Huntsman perk. This perk makes your arrows instantly kill opponents who have quivers. I’ve noticed that the perk sometimes isn’t a one-shot kill, but 9 out of 10 times it will be. My theory is that the times the perk doesn’t work is because someone picked up a bow, rather than spawned in with one, so they technically don’t have a quiver.

Keep your eyes to the edge of the battlefield where other archers lurk, and if it looks like an enemy is bending down to tie his shoe, don’t let him get back up because he’s likely reloading the crossbow. Archers dumb enough to reload their crossbow in plain sight deserve to be one-shot, which brings up my next point.

Stay on the Move

As an archer, your biggest threat is not the giant screaming man in the steel armor with big scary sword running across the field at you. Your biggest threat is other archers.

The danger of other archers (who may be using the Huntsman perk if they’re smart) is so omnipresent that I strongly recommend avoiding using the crossbow altogether. Even if you take a step behind a building or a tree to reload the crossbow, you never know who is watching. It only takes one second to line up and take a shot, and that shot will likely take you out of the battle.

When using the longbow, strafe side to side randomly as you line up your shot. You don’t need to stand still to fire or reload your bow, and you should never stand still as an archer to begin with.

Also, if you feel like you’re attracting too much attention from one spot (i.e., getting lots of kills), relocating to another position is ideal. So after you kill the same knight 3 times in a row, it might be time to move somewhere else or you risk the knight going out of his way to come to your spot and kill you.

Free Refills

When you relocate to a position, consider one that’s near an ammo box. Not too near that you’re that archer who just stands by the ammo box the whole game, but near enough that you can swipe some more arrows in between lulls in the battle.

Ideally you’ll never run out of arrows. An archer with no arrows is essentially a man running around a battlefield in his pajamas with a little knife.

Use your arrows as a gauge to know when it’s time to move to a new location. If you find yourself running out of arrows and you’ve been in the same spot the whole time, it’s probably time to leave the area. Scoop up some more arrows on your way to the new position.

Friendly Reminder on Friendly Fire

Everyone dies to friendly fire at some point in Mordhau. It’s just part of the game, part of the wild chaos. But archers get a bad reputation because they often take shots they have no business taking.

Trying to thread the needle to hit an enemy surrounded by three teammates is a waste of time and you risk fatally wounding one of your teammates. Have faith in your teammates to beat down the unlucky fellow and instead shift your gaze elsewhere. Look for other archers, or other enemies moving in on your group of teammates. Your teammates will thank you when they turn to face an enemy already half dead due to your arrows sticking out of their bodies.

Quick Tips:

• You can shoot through (some of) the the gaps in wooden walls. Easier said than done, so I’ve found that looking through the gaps to spot enemy archers is a better way to locate a target rather than running out into the open and looking around.
• Go with the flow. As you pull back on your bow, your crosshair sways as the arrow is notched and drawn back. As soon as the crosshair appears you can release the arrow, so if you pay attention to how the crosshair sways (it sways the same way every time) you can pull off some quick shots to put an extra arrow or two into nearby enemies.
• Standing next to a skinny tree is better than standing next to no tree. Even the slimmest sapling can screw up an enemy soldier’s wide attacks. Try to play around objects to get any advantage you can in melee combat.
• Arrows point to enemy archers. Not literally, obviously, but when you see a stray arrow fly through the air toward teammates, you should make finding the source of that arrow your priority.
• Aim for the bloody boys. Mordhau indicates sustained damage with visible blood. The bloodier someone’s clothing is, the closer to death they are. You’ll have a better chance killing these weaker enemies with a single shot, and they tend to linger toward the backlines, playing cautiously until their health regenerates.

Mordhau is available on Steam.