There is a setting to have them use melee or distance weapons bows. You may tweak follow distance beyond that remove their melee weapon. I have never experimented with archerâs this way.
I set mine to Stand and Defend. Otherwise, they tend to run all over the place. If they are on a roof, they will mysteriously make their way to the ground sometimes. These I donât give melee weapons, and I set them to prioritze range weapons.
Very correct.
I place their attack range to maximum too. @Rollotomozi useless pets are no useless at all, place one or two to take damage and trigger archers to fire .
I think folks might be misunderstanding my initial question, I apologize if I was unclear.
What I would like to do is take an Archer as my follower while I am exploring, or entering a dungeon.
When I engage an enemy, I would like this Archer to stay at a distance, shooting arrows at the enemy I am currently engaged with.
The usual experience that I have is that after I engage an enemy, my Archer Follower will shoot one or two arrows, then run in and start melee attacks.
Ahhh. YeahâŠno. They will always go to melee. If you donât give them a melee weapon, it will be fists. I havenât been able to get them to do differently.
I made the Legolas challenge very successfully, In this challenge you must share daggers and bows only with your thrall. We couldnât use the same weapons, if I had the daggers then my thrall would have the bow, or the other way. For this reason I placed following distance on my thrall 30 meters and it had only a bow in his hands. It never came close to fist fight. The nasty point is that he was missing a lot, the job was always mine . Last but not least, guard me not attack all enemies. First you clean the area and then the boss, it makes his life easier
I found setting the follow range to ~20m and tactics to Guard Me tends to keep the archer out of the way and shooting arrows. Of course, that means that I have to tank the enemies.
Attack All Enemies tends to be an⊠interesting choice with archer thralls.
Yup, it takes some time to get used to how the commands and the thrall settings interact with each other.
For what you want try:
Attack Distance 50M.
Chase Distance 50M.
Ranged Priority,
Stand and defend.
Guard Me or Attack All Enemies. (depending if you want him to initiate the fight or not).
Then all you need to do is make sure to command the thrall to move if the boss or mobs focus aggro on him or her. Do NOT take away itâs melee weapon though - thatâs how to get your thrall killed. Give it something nice like a Feroxic 2H sword, 2H Hammer, or Pike (a lot of folks swear by maces). If your thrall gets rushed thatâs his only way to survive it until you can order him away and either take aggro yourself or dispatch with the mobs with whatever weapons youâre using.
One thing to consider when commanding a thrall with those weapons and attributes is: They move faster forward than they do in reverse. So if you need to have the thrall change positions because they are about to take some hits, try and aim him them a travel direction which moves them in the forward (facing) direction - and if youâre aware of the attack patterns of the boss or whatever, you can time the commands accordingly as well - often even needed.
PS: I dunno if it makes a difference but I always select âRanged Priorityâ and then change it to âStand And Defendâ because Iâm suspicious of how priorities work and how deeply they are tiered. You may want to try just selecting âStand And Defendâ alone if youâre bothered by setting that one twice.
If you set Prioritize Ranged alone the thrall will exhibit the very behavior you said you DO NOT want and will rush into the fight if the boss get too close. Basically the settings I suggest here turns your thrall into a placeable turret with self defense capabilities.
Thatâs what heâs asking for. He doesnât want them to run into battle. So, with this setting they stand within range and fire arrows endlessly. They move if you mover farther than the follow distance. And they move if you tell them too. And if you want them to whip out their sword and take aggro then just kite the boss over to them or tell them to move in close enough.
But arenât you the guy who swears he canât control his thralls? So, maybe this is a good time to learn something?
And that is exactly what my settings create. Iâm very surprised you donât know this. And itâs rather odd that youâre arguing from a place of ignorance. Oh well, tomorrow is another day!
You definitely want âstand and defendâ for the players that rely on their thrall, especially those that donât mind the run back to the thrall if the player is killed. It works. Just needs the right amour.
Thatâs exactly what he said he does NOT want. I dunno if he said exactly what he meant but you demonstrated the opposite of what he said. Good job! LOL
If this is something not attainable, we should request it be added to the Follower feature set. Many other competitive games get it right. Iâm asking a specific question of the OP, to confirm whether he wishes to âplantâ an archer and have them stay in place and shoot.
@Marcospt
thank you for the guidance
using your tips, I now have an Archer that:
follows at a distance
continues shooting arrows at a distance when I engage an enemy
only switches to melee when an enemy approaches them directly, switching back to ranged once the enemyâs attention turns back to me.
I still need to tweak follow, attack, and chase distances, but overall the Thrall is performing as I would like.
.
So, maybe this is a good time to learn something?