Chapter 1 Archer I: Basics

1.1 The archer class

There are three classes in KAG: the archer, the builder and the knight. While the archer isn't as strong as the knight class, it's a very fun fun class to play in TDM and is viable support in CTF if played well. Good archers can play aggressively while getting as many kills as knights. A good team in Capture The Flag (CTF) or Take The Halls (TTH) should have at least 2-3 archers (if your team isn't lacking knights, of course).

As an archer in CTF and TTH, your role is to support your team by being an annoyance to enemy knights or using special arrows, but before we get to that part, let's talk about the combat mechanics first.

1.2 Mechanics

As an archer, you have a bow with a limited amount of arrows and a grappling hook which gives archers superior mobility.

1.2.1 Full shot

Charging a bow to do what is known as a 'full shot' takes a full second (30 ticks). The cursor isn't exactly accurate -- you can do a fullshot on 90% of cursor charge (final yellow dot before full charge).

A fullshot deals 1 heart of damage and stuns the enemy for a short while if done in a close distance (if it's a shielding knight, it will stun them but not damage them). Fullshots don't stun the enemy if they're 6 or more blocks away.

Fullshots are obviously also used at longer distances that halfshots wouldn't reach.

You can use fullshots to, for example, stun gliding knights to make them fall into a pit.

1.2.2 Half shot

Half shot requires charging for slightly more than half of the cursor -- the final red dot, as seen in the gif below.

Quick halfshots are a significant amount of any good archer's kills, especially if fighting against other enemy archers at a mid range distance. They don't stun on close distance like full shots, have a lower velocity and travel less distance, but they do the same amount of damage -- 1 heart. You should use them at mid-range fights when supporting your knights as well -- they're the most useful shots most of the time.

Some examples of using halfshots below:

There are also certain situations where a halfshot can hit someone when a fullshot wouldn't -- due to smaller velocity of a half hot, they can start falling down sooner than fullshots and do arc shots.

In some situations if you shoot a half shot and it hits the enemy that was far away, it can to lose some velocity along the way and do 0.5 heart of damage instead, like in the gif below. This is because damage of arrows is dependent on their velocity when they hit somebody. This usually happens whenever you halfshot an archer camping with significant height advantage (arrows have the lowest velocity when they reach the highest point they can get to before starting to fall down and gain velocity again).

This can happen to full shots too.

1.2.3 Quarter shot

A quarter shot is the quickest shot. You need to charge it for only a short while (1/3 of a second) -- you can release when the cursor reaches the first red dot. It does 0.5 heart of damage. Keep in mind that you can't just spam them by rapidly clicking left click -- your bow won't shoot anything until the cursor reaches the first red dot.

If the arrow has time to gain velocity and you have a bit of height advantage, it can also do 1 heart of damage. It's a good tactic to spam quarter shots from your tower in CTF when there are lots of enemies below. In the gif below, I kill the blue archer with quarter shots that gain enough velocity to do 1 heart of damage each.

Quartershots can be used to finish low-health enemies as well.

1.2.4 Triple shot

Triple shot is the strongest attack. Requires charging for 2 seconds, shoots 3 arrows on release. The top and bottom arrows decay after a second or so, while the middle one has the velocity of a full charged shot and does not decay.

If you triple shot a shielding knight from close distance, the middle arrow will stun them and the other arrows will do a heart of damage each, dealing a total of 2 hearts of damage, as well as do a slight knockback.

It can kill full-health archers or builders instantly if all the arrows hit (or just 2 for enemy archers).

Triple shots can often be charged while behind cover (for example team doors), and then only be shot after peeking out with a full or almost full charge.

Triple shot accelerates enemy kegs:

1.2.5 Mixing different shots

Good archers are able to freely use different shots depending on the situation and distance between you and the enemy. Use fullshots for close-range stuns, halfshots for midrange, and fullshots again for long range. Try to be fast in order to surprise your enemy.

Use the terrain to your advantage -- you have lots of time to charge your bow when behind cover.

1.2.6 Aiming into the direction you move

You should almost always aim in the direction you're moving to -- all classes in KAG move faster when moving towards the way they're looking at (the cursor's direction, either left or right). When retreating, you shouldn't move backwards while shooting the other direction -- this is one of the most common mistakes for new archer players. Don't do this -- just look away from the enemy while escaping, and then look back at them only when your bow is already charged.

1.2.7 Climbing trees

You're able to climb trees as an archer (knights or builders can't do that). To do that, you must hold W when in front of a tree. When you're on a tree, you don't have to hold any keys, but pressing S will make you fall off the tree until you start holding W again.

1.2.8 Fletching arrows from wood

Aiming at a log, a stack of wood or at a tree and clicking right mouse button will fletch a single arrow. Hold the button to fletch more arrows. Keep in mind that you have to aim exactly at the wooden thing you're fletching arrows from, or else you will just release your grappling hook.

1.2.9 Grappling, mobility

Mobility is one of the most important aspects of playing against other players -- using the grappling hook is a must.

The grappling hook gives archer the most mobility out of all three classes, making archer the most mobile class in combat situations. It can give you speed that can be used in many situations, like stealing the flag, someones dropped items, climbing a tower and harassing the enemy builder, or just going through the map fast. The mobility you have thanks to the grappling hook is a major reason why archer is the most fun class to play for majority of its main players.

As you can see in the gif above, you should move back slightly every time after throwing your grappling hook on ground. This will cause the grapple to throw you further when you'll start moving forward. Jumping at the right time also gives you additional velocity. All of this is done instinctively by experienced archers -- just keep practicing grappling until it feels natural to you.

1.2.9.1 Grappling through trees

While throwing yourself through trees with the grappling hook, you shouldn't hold W in order to not slow yourself down by climbing the trees. First flick attempt in the gif below is done with holding W during the flick, second attempt -- without.

You can use trees to get a lot of velocity as well. One thing you can do is do a long jump: jump off a tree (as far away from it as possible, but still in grapple range), grapple the top while falling then after hitting the ground jump to get additional velocity (press W) and throw yourself. Make sure that the grappling hook hits the tree right before you fall on the ground and jump. You should practice this in solo sandbox on trees.

1.2.9.2 Grappling to climb enemy wall

The grappling hook relies on momentum, meaning the more momentum you have, the faster you will go forward, this is why spamming your grappling hook to climb the enemy wall will be more of a disadvantage than advantage. Proper way to climb is shown below. As you can see, we grapple as far as possible while falling down. Right after the grappling hook hits the wall, we do a walljump to get additional velocity and go upwards faster.

Another gif showing climbing with grappling hook:

1.2.9.3 Grappling to dodge danger

You can often dodge enemy bombs, arrows, or avoid enemies themselves by using your grappling hook.

1.2.9.4 You can't grapple while charging arrows

However, you should keep in mind that you can't throw your grappling hook while charging your bow. You can only first grapple, and then start charging an arrow, but you can't re-grapple while charging.

1.2.10 Stomping

You can stomp enemies by falling on top of them, which stuns them and does damage depending on your velocity (1 heart or 2 hearts). The grappling hook helps you to gain velocity you wouldn't have by normally jumping, this gets nullified at bigger fall distances as you will not have time to grapple down at the ground to get that extra momentum, because the grapple falls slower than yourself.

You can also grapple to a wall/tower/tree while stomping someone so you don't completely touch the ground and you are safe from other enemy knights, this can also give you momentum to immediately get back up.

You can't stomp a knight that is shielding up, regardless of velocity.

Stomping is a good way to gain extra damage in TDM aswell, as the combat is much more compact than in CTF. There will be more about stomping in the next chapter.

1.3 Items

Archer has three special arrow types - water arrow, fire arrow and bomb arrow. Each arrow has a different role.

You can swap arrows by holding F and selecting them in the menu, but the quickest way is just to tap F, which will swap to the next arrow. This also works when you're in the middle of charging a shot.

1.3.1 Water arrows

Water arrows can extinguish fires (both on teammates or enemies) or stun enemies (they don't stun teammates) for a while to gain extra time or make enemies defenseless against your teammates.

As you can see in the gif above, you can extinguish a fire arrow before the fire even starts spreading (first water arrow I use).

Stunning enemies:

A good tactic when using water is to stun enemies and then quickly halfshot or fullshot them before they get unstunned and can react. Can also use a fire or a bomb arrow instead of a normal halfshot.

Water arrows can also be combined with stomps.

Using water arrows on knights that hold a bomb in their hand will make them unable to throw the bomb while stunned -- it will explode in their hand and deal 3 hearts of damage.

Water arrows' stun can go through blocks -- up to 2 layers of blocks, although it's much more common to stun through one layer of blocks, like in the gif above.

You can stun enemies through walls to make them fall from ladders and die to fall damage.

Keep in mind that the stun lasts less (half of original duration) if the enemy had their shield up and even less if they had a sponge in inventory (1/3 of original duration).

Shield up:

Sponge:

Both (even shorter stun):

1.3.2 Fire arrows

Fire arrows can burn wooden structures or enemy players to make them run towards their cursors' direction. This means that the shot will deal them 1 heart of damage, and the fire will deal them 0.25 hearts of damage each second for 4 seconds (so up to 2 hearts). Keep in mind: A close fullshot of a fire arrow doesn't stun the enemy like a normal arrow would. Whenever somebody is on fire, their character always moves forward in the direction they're looking (have their cursor).

Using a fire arrow on an enemy archer will often kill them (as long as they don't have water or any way to heal themselves).

Fire arrows shot at enemy kegs (or enemy players holding kegs) will make them catch fire which will ignite them. Lit kegs can be extinguished with a water bucket only, so be careful if your team has kegs stored up in a spot accessible for enemy archers in CTF.

This also happens if wooden background, wooden blocks, or just grass or bushes next to the keg start burning.

In the gif below, I put a keg on a spot where my teammate shot a fire arrow. The fire on the bush/grass causes it to get lit, so I take it and kill an enemy knight with it.

If you shoot a fire arrow at an enemy standing in wooden doors, both the enemy will catch on fire as well as the doors.

1.3.3 Bomb arrows

Bomb arrows can do significant damage on impact, 3 hearts of damage at most. They instantly kill enemy builders and archers. They're also very good to be used against enemy structures as they will destroy 3 blocks facing opposite of the bomb arrows tip, they also do have some area of damage around the impact, which can break backwalls, which makes them excellent at collapsing enemy towers and opening enemy flagrooms, although they obviously don't hit backwalls themselves.

Keep in mind: A close fullshot of a bomb arrow doesn't stun the enemy like a normal arrow would.

First, some gifs demonstrating using bomb arrows against enemy archers in TDM:

Bomb arrows do the same amount of damage regardless of whether they were shot as a quartershot, halfshot or a fullshot.

If bomb arrows are shot as a triple shot, only the middle one will be a bomb arrow. This applies to water and fire arrows as well.

After using bomb arrows on knights, you can try finishing them with a fullshot or a halfshot to take the last heart.

The explosion from bomb arrows is strong enough to stop enemy knights from being able to wallclimb.

Using bomb arrows to collapse structures on enemies:

Using bomb arrows to damage enemy structures in CTF:

One bomb arrow destroys a catapult, and two bomb arrows destroy a ballista, so whenever you see enemy siege vehicles, you should bomb arrow them -- this will significantly help your team.

If you're unsure if your bomb arrow will hit (especially if you have to do an arc shot), you can first shoot normal arrows at the enemy vehicle, and once you know where to shoot so that it hits, you can shoot bomb arrows.

Bomb arrows are also very good for damaging spike traps -- they destroy a lot of spikes in one shot. Trap bridges are weak against bomb arrows as well.

As you can see, platforms are a bit more resistant to bomb arrows than other blocks.

However, if you shoot a bomb arrow at a stone wall, with platforms behind that wall, they also get slightly damaged:

You destroy much more enemy doors if there's an enemy standing in them. For example, if someone is holding 3 layers of doors open like in the gif below, shooting a bomb arrow at them would destroy all 3 layers of doors plus one more layer behind.

1.3.4 Boulder

Aside from arrows, a good archer item is the boulder. Boulders can be used very effectively as archer in TDM, not so much in CTF though (due to them costing stone in the builder shop, rather than coins). You can instakill anyone if you manage to hit them with enough momentum, although this is very risky as you will need to get close with a lot of velocity. This is hard to do consistently due to maps not being smooth and boulders not very reliable, plus the fact that boulders also make you move slower.

Many people don't know that in TDM, bought boulders will never do damage to the team of the player who bought it. This causes many people to use the boulder and cripple themselves. This mechanic works like that only in TDM though, boulders in CTF will damage your team if the last person holding it was an enemy.

Boulders can do 0.5, 1.5 and full health of damage, depending on the boulder's velocity. They sometimes bounce twice on an enemy head, which will add at least half a heart of damage. Below are some gifs demonstrating how boulders can be used in TDM. Notice that we're using the grappling hook to gain additional velocity most of the time.

1.3.5 Shooting mines

You can shoot enemy mines to make them explode.

1.3.6 Shooting grain

If you shoot at the block grain is growing on, you will be able to pick up the grain (It's a food item, similar to a burger -- use it whenever on low health)

1.4 Learning & playing as a beginner

What you should focus on learning as a beginner is the various shots, mobility and aim. You should charge triple, full and half shots as fast as possible - in some cases, being faster than your opponent is what will decide the outcome of an archer duel. You should also be able to move freely around the map with your grappling hook, as well as during combat. Being able to aim (while doing various shots) is also what you should focus on at this level.

Some more things to keep in mind are:

Breaking your rhythm when fighting other archers is an important thing to do, most of the time it lets you get in at least 1 extra shot. By this we mean not moving too predictably (mind games).

Changing your targets at the last second works too, or just changing if you know you can't hit your original target.

It's easy to setup kills for your teammates as an archer, like using fullshots to stun and stall enemy movement. Don't get too close, because sometimes teammates ignore the free kill/assist, and you are alone in a close combat situation with an enemy knight for an example.

Also basic things like constantly shooting enemies with halfshots/fullshots from a distance to keep pressure on them, are very helpful for your team.

Attacking the most important targets like builders instead of knights or archers, evaluate the situation and go for the most important enemy, even if it means you die.