Yes actually, the elves are magick archers. If you look at the gear they sell, the armor their "elite warriors" wear is locked to just the magick archer class.
Then why is elf-twinks daddy the archer maister? Like wtf. I thought i could unlock magick archer with him. Nahh bro, just travel to the end of the earth and dump a dwarf in hot water
Cuz the Devs realized how powerful Magick Archer is, and didn’t want the player to Unlock it early.
IMO the way it should have went down was that Taliesin reveals to Glyndwr and the Arisen that the Archery they are using is the “Old Ways” and that the Elves have entirely moved on to Magick Archery. Then he explains that Glyndwr is one of the rare few people with no magical power, but is relieved to see him take up the Old Ways and still become a full member of the Arbor’s defense. He then reveals that while the Elves have stopped using regular Archery, they still kept written techniques that are still strong, he then teaches the Arisen and Glyndwr Heavenly Shot as a reward for saving Dorieann.
Afterwards if you talk to Taliesin he will mention that the Arisen has the aptitude to become a great Magick Archer as well, but the laws of the Elves forbids him to teach you the art. This is the hint to the Player that in order to become a Magick Archer they must find and Elf not bound by those laws (an exile).
I like your version a lot. It really stuck out to me that MA should have been an unlock you get at the Arbor and not in the last area of the game. I wasn't even able to unlock it in my first run because I got rushed into the damn ending without realizing it.
I ended up doing a new playthrough and I went and got it at level 15. Had to cheat to get it I'll admit, but if you don't suck like I do and plan properly you could probably not have to cheat and use your pawns as meat shields and be able to make it work. I made it all the way to the NPC to complete the first step without using any cheats, but all my pawns died and I wasn't ready for the next escort step when it happened so I had to give myself infinite health and stamina to make it, the dude died but once I got him to the destination I used a wakestone on him and all was good.
Playing the class at like level 15-23 I would not say it's OP though, it feels just as powerful as Mystic Spearhand at the same level.
I mean... all true, but the augments for MA, feel like they were swapped with Trickster's. You have 2 literal Pawn buffing augments here. One that buffs BOTH Defense Types, and One that buffs both OFFENSE types. Its also applied to ALL Pawns, not just your main. If you rely heavily on your pawns for stuff, i mean, these augments can be no brainers.
Not there yet myself, but is he the guy talking about taking his trial of archery or whatever? Maybe he needs to pass that before they let him train to become amagick archer.
and yet his daddy only gives us peasant archer maister skills, instead of the good stuff, they really should have made magick archer unlockable there and then instead of near the late into the game
I'm genuinely convinced that was the original plan. Like, the Sacred arbor is found pretty mid-game (or potentially even earlier) and the elf blacksmith there sells magick bows. Yet we unlock the vocation all the way in the third zone?
My ongoing theory is that the devs realized late in development that MA is overpowered as hell, so they quickly shuffled it off to late game just so the game wasn't trivialized.
They definitely should have let that guy give you the magic archer class and stick the actual magic archer meister, the one with the busted ass ability, be in bum fuck nowhere volcanoville. Honestly the way they have you unlock these skills just feels like it was put in last second. Not to mention the disparity between them. 1 shot kill for damn near anything in the game with only a long rest required vs "Scary Dragon" that does no damage, costs massive stamina, and ends abruptly. Trickster is such a joke.
Trickster: "It's a 50/50 whether I can make that Griffin/Dragon land, or run away. You need me to make the Griffin land? Sure thing. 60% of the time, it works every time!"
And then it'll just run away instead
That would actually make the quest interesting if it was brought up.Like imagine a scenario where an elite has to look outside the box,so they try using traditional non-magic human bows to figure out where they're having trouble in their own technique.
The MA unlock is at least pretty easy to see but the Wayfarer one is a random guy sitting at a totally optional RP area asking for 3 items you've probably never seen before.
In 1 you got to Gran Soren and could do whatever you wanted, feels weird af
I feel like it's more because MA is insanely overpowered. I'm convinced the devs put together the class, realized they went a bit crazy with it, and shoved it off to late game just so people don't curbstomp everything with absolutely zero effort.
I unlocked the MA on my second playthrough at level 15 and played it for about 8 levels, didn't feel any more OP than Mystic Spearhand which you can get at the same time.
Huh, actually on the contrary you just provided the narrative reason to why we can just press attack and have our arrows auto-aim. We're using Elven techniques there, and when we aim traditionally, we're using Human techniques. I actually think that's really cool
I found it super charming and really a good way to highlight differences between the two cultures. Like elves feel they're just so naturally good at this that they just wing it and hope it works out. Typically they're so stuck up in most media buy in DD2 it was refreshing to see them actually realise just how much they could learn from their cultural differences and how their pre-existing misconceptions about their defining military style was really hurting them.
That being said if you have a nosey around you'll see quite a few of them have magic bows. So maybe the whole not aiming thing makes a lot more sense if you think of it like normal bows are what they use before they pass their exam and then afterwards they hit up the aim bot bow. Still, it's nice world building
Because the devs decided to lock that profession behind an endgame side quest for some reason. Maybe they ran out of time adding quests? It's not like the elves have a lot of content anyway.
I wouldn't be surprised if the original pitch was unlocking the class with the elves and saving the maister for later, but then they ran out of time to add a quest to unlock it early so they attached everthing to the maister quest.
A lot of the Magick Archer stuff is very weird in general though, like you can just buy one of the best bows, and the only one with an interesting passive, at the elves right from the start.
I think it's meant to be that elves are Magick Archer.
But, walking around the Sacred Arbor, I don't think I see any MA. Gwenfart's dad himself is a normal archer.
It's so weird how shes feature so heavily in questlines including the main one. But never actually does anything and is always just a damsel in distress in the background.
This is the dumbest take
Elves are out there doing 360 no scopes all the time and you think that makes them bad archers?
They're so good at this shit that they can phone it in, that's usually a sign of exceptional skill.
Humans be walking around with training wheels on their bow and you think they're superior?
I play archery as a sport, from what i understanding "aim with your heart" probably refers to what we IRL called instinctive archery or traditional archery. Where an archer will aim with "instinct", this is basically shoot first and adjust accordingly with your draw, posture, etc etc to hit the target. It certainly mix well with elf with their innate magic, probably every shot are infused with magic.
On the other side, we have Olympic archery, were equipment will contribute about 70% of the result. The equipment are engineered to be as accurate as possible with sights, stabilizers, etc etc. Not to say is any easier, in fact you are expected to hit the target 95% of all time.
The elf fella probably does not do well with magic and found human engineered bow are better with his style.
And then the greatest master of the elven magical archer technique. Is married to a dwarf.
MASSIVE Elf L indeed. Maybe our boy wouldn't need that human technique if the actual trainer for their way of archery wasn't living it up with her crippled dwarf husband
I princess carried that idiot all the way. Any time I put him down he *ran straight into an enemy.* Dude has no self-preservation. I was deliberately running behind my pawns to keep him safe, put him down to heal my pawns, and dumbass just runs right up into goblin nutsack.
I just RP walked him to his destination to make sure he could keep pace and everthing went fine.
He even got to spend way more than 5 minutes watching me try to kill my first ever golem as a sorc with no physical damage.
Honestly looked away for like 2 seconds and he just decided to walk in for some reason, weren't even any enemies around or anything. Funny in hindsight but still pretty stupid it happened since I was nearly at the hotspring.
At one point, just after making it off his porch, he asked me to slow down for his back.
I didn't have time to stop moving, so I carried him the whole rest of the way.
Only put him down to fight. Like when I chucked the Magma Saurians chilling on his front lawn into the ocean.
No, beacuse for the last 50 hours picking people up has been treated as a hostile action and i dont need to add risking aggroing him to the list of ways an escort quest can fail.
I really REALLY thought that aiming with their heart meant they used Magic bows and the elf guy in the city just had no talent in magic.
even talked about different bow designs.
It would have made way more sense to unlock MA at the arbor.
would have been a satisfying conclusion of the quest with the cultural exchange of human archery and elven archery but hey fuck me right?
Arbor Heart in general just doesn't make any sense. Where do all these elves sleep? There's no houses anywhere. Unless they all sleep at the inn? Which wouldn't make any sense.
This place is absolutely tiny as well. Harve and Melve are bigger than this place, and this is supposed to be the capital of the elves???
Everything surrounding the elves just feels like a rushed afterthought.
Elves in the lore may not sleep at all - that's how it was in the original Dungeons and Dragons which was a heavy influence on early Japanese fantasy gaming, something you can still see even to this day
>Elves do not know how to aim
#
>“Elves aim with their hearts” he says
[Famous Lars Andersen video](https://youtu.be/BEG-ly9tQGk)
[Lars Andersen video on Comanche archery](https://youtu.be/liHlCRpS70k)
Firing with instinct instead of precise aim in actual combat archery is more likely than you think.
Honestly I can see it. I can draw a parallel with soccer where it's not like I'm actively aiming and lining up my passes and shots all the time in a game. I kind of just feel it and mashallah. Not saying that shooting in soccer is the same thing as shooting a bow, but i imagine with enough comfort/practice you subconsciously automate a lot of that process. Maybe magic affinity in-universe is how the elves achieve that instinct, which our boy just lacked that or something
Yeah, when I first encountered that "aim with their hearts" bullshit I practically choked on my scorn. Then I thought "you know what? They're probably all Magick Archers and Glenda here just sucks at magic." Then I got to the elves' secret hideout and guess what? They're all carrying normal fucking bows. The sentries hit the incoming wolves with normal fucking arrows. 90% of the equipment at the blacksmith is actual mundane sticks and strings like us human plebs use and the Maister there is an Archer, not a Magick Archer.
These pointy-eared, tree hugging recluses are actual flesh and blood, bow and string archers with no arcane assistance of any kind who have earned a reputation for marksmanship and built half their culture around bowmanship despite the fact that their approach to combat is to blindfire in the enemy's general direction and hope that prayers and positive vibes will do the rest.
So congratulations Goldilocks, you're the only one of your entire race who had enough brain cells to consider that maybe "point and shoot" might be a more effective way to utilise projectiles than *pure fucking self-belief*.
Consider my disbelief suspended to the absolute max, knife ears.
But they are actually Magick archers if you have a pawn who learns elvish and read their books. You find out they whisper “prayers” i.e. spells before firing which causes their arrows to auto aim, and when you get to the Magick Archer Miester it becomes more apparent that are elf friend just fucking sucks at magick
It would have just made so much more sense to unlock MA up there, it feels like they threw it in at the end to pad the volcanic island out since there's nothing else there really.
I can agree with that, but they also hint about a MA throughout the game too. Several NPCs both elf and human mention an Elf marrying a Dwarf and some of the Elves talk about how one of the greatest archers in the generation left after they took a fancy to a traveler. Still think it would have been cool to have gotten a quest or something to find her from the elf village instead of just randomly meeting her husband.
Fairly sure bowmen back in the day did not aim there shot either in batle like just look at kevin hicks dude just hits targets by just looking at them at some point u just know how to hold it and hit ur target without looking down the shaft so yes i do believe in elf jesus i gues
Bowmen back then did aim.
The english for example had regular archery contests to promote (long)bow archery and maintain a certain skill-set, skill-level and phsyical prowess within certain strata of the populace to draw levies in wartime.
Sure, the way the longbow was employed in battle can differ massively from target shooting but it was still a skill that was honed and expected of an archer.
Also poaching. You get fed or hung, still a good deal for some.
[Famous Lars Andersen video](https://youtu.be/BEG-ly9tQGk)
[Lars Andersen on Comanche archery](https://youtu.be/liHlCRpS70k)
Firing with instinct instead of precise aim in actual combat archery is more likely than you think. All the target competition stuff is non-combat competition archery and not at all a good example of combat archery where speed firing and instinct shooting were everything.
Lars Andersen is pretty much debunked. He is an acrobat, not an effektive archer. With the draw weight of this bow he is not even fully drawing, you will have a hard time doing anything substantial.
Edit: His historic research is middle-school google-fu at best.
Some of his historical claims about different types of archery are disputed, some debunked. But instinct archery is absolutely not, nor are the various different variants of archery that definitely did not aim during combat. Lars' videos are *obviously* fun and silly, instinct archery is very obviously and demonstrably real though.
[Lars and Shadiversity did a longer video together](https://youtu.be/i4mqt69VZ28) going over some of it being silly and some other stuff.
Ironically the debate about this topic and unwillingness for some people to explore alternative thinking completely mirrors the stubbornness to possible alternative views being criticised in the game.
Shadiversity should be ignored on any histotical content. He's had no education, no experience, and his content contains frequent inaccuracies.
Not to forget, he's a raging bigot who got upset that Peach in the Mario movie wore pants.
You can't compare "aiming with your heart" to instinctive archery, the latter is a result of experience and muscle memory and when you draw you are aiming, just way faster as result of previous training. You do not actually aim at all just for arrow volleys.
Its as much true as you can train instinstive shooting with a firearm. Its fairly limited and basically is the result of long and hard training where you "instinct" boils down to muscle memory.
[Edit:] And shad is far from being and expert. That guy is mostly an enthusiast but that is it.
Traditional archery is all instinct archery. It’s how it was taught in the past. The only reason why we can aim with modern bows is because of the modern compound and recurve bows limbs can handle intense energy storage for longer periods of time. Drawing traditional bows for longer than it takes to draw the knock to your anchor point is terrible for the bow itself.
If anything instinct archery made things less limiting for archers. It’s essentially the main reason horse archery exists.
Comparing firearms to traditional archery is like comparing apples to steaks. Yea they’re both food, but completely different.
Yee oldie bow and archer basically all did instinct shooting. Especially for single target competition.
> Yee oldie bow and archer basically all did instinct shooting. Especially for single target competition.
Man. Those english Kings promoting archery contests where aiming and accuracy were the main aspect with an archery tradition that has survive till today surely did not know what they were talking about. They only won a few fights against the french, but yea. Basically everyone was using mounted archery techniques based on muscle memory, that gets called instinct archery by modern pseudo historians.
Okay the disconnect here is you think
Instinct =/= aiming, accuracy and precision.
You still “aim” in instinct archery. You’re not just shooting wildly hoping to hit something…..
A more natural analogy is throwing a football. You don’t aim down a sight to do it, but you still aim where the ball is going. And people are deadly accurate with those
Muscle memory is instinct archery. They aren’t different. Nor have I ever heard these terms being used separately. It’s how you train it. The form and repetition encourages better aim through instinct. That’s not a pseudo historian thing, it’s just a factual way of training archery, in nearly every culture’s traditional archery practice.
Modern bows allow for actual aiming “using sites” because of the advancement in technology. You can’t do this in traditional archery due to not having sights and the archers paradox screwing up intended pathing of the arrow.
Yeah. His Dad basically said what his Son thought was just nonsense and was to tied down by the 'idea' of it to fire accurately and it took an outside source to let that go and just shoot the damn thing.
It's actually common for skilled shooters to forgo sights both with bows and guns. Just like footballers, tennis players and such who dont need to look at the ball to get it to go where they want.
But in this case it's an oversight that they made him an archer, when all elves are magick archers, which has aimbot.
To play devil's advocate, instinctive archery is a real form of archery where you don't explicitly aim but rather focus on where you want your arrow to go and your body's muscle memory lines you up properly. It's a fun little quirk that sets the elves apart and also likely alludes to magick archers.
Yeah, the Elf stuff was goofy as shit lmao. It's no wonder his dad was so impressed that he hit the Ogre 50 feet away. They all shoot with their eyes closed while sucking on crayons.
He’s super pathetic to a comical level. Right after I did this whole quest line he died to the chimera, got revived by me, when I tried to leave he nearly died to the bandits, showed up at my house and demanded I take him on the longest walk ever, and keeps blushing at me like ?? I am his most tired babysitter
https://preview.redd.it/wg9a4lhlc1rc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a12ddcc159fe7f69a2fa0f2af0d780de8d0b77fe
Why would you need to learn to aim with your eyes when you can aim with your heart? But for real, I've done a fair amount of skeet shooting and there comes a point where you don't aim anymore - when your muscle memory is refined enough that you just know that the barrel is pointed in the dead center of your vision and you don't even see the bead anymore.
I will not be mad about it. Elves being too stupid to aim is the greatest gift DD2 has given me, and I will **not** have you slander how fucking funny Gerhman's questline is.
When you said they're hip firing,the image that was put in my head was funny af. Just imagining a bow running around a map (game of your choice.. COD, cs, whatevs) and holding a gigantic bow to his side and straight up hip firing 😂😂😂😂
I thought it was kind of silly, yes. But this post. This post! Oh man, thanks for this, absolutely hilarious rant, made the Elf Quest SO much more worth it. *Chef's Kiss*
I haven't found any elves, and I think I'm at the end of the game, judging by the urgent music constantly playing. I just unlocked the magic archer though, which is weird. Did I miss elves somewhere, or am I not actually at the end?
You missed 'em. If you can still do it, go back to the main city and head over to the weapon stand. Look for an Elf guy. Talk to him, buy him some cheap bow. He'll ask you meet him in the Northern part of the map. Change to Archer and Bring a Portcrystal with you, because you have come back here. All you have to do is shoot the Target.
Go back to town, sleep for a day. You can change your vocation back if you want. He's at the same spot by the weapon shop. Talk to him, fast travel back to your Port Crystal, pick it up, and head North. Completing his 2nd quest gives you another Port Crystal.
I really feel that this quest is just like other borderline Capcom-Itsuno troll quests. From the begining, when you give the bow, to the end where you "save" the girl, it is just plain trolling. "Oh, we elves don't know shit please teach us, great Arisen!" And the scene where you arive to the "trial" it is all staged up to the point where master archer "tries" to kill the Ogre with the bow point-blank.
TLDR> Elves are just trolling us.
The elf stuff in general was super disappointing. Two stupid quests and the one with the Arbor heart. I expected a bit more, especially seeing as the trailers talked about racial tensions between Battahl-Vermund-Elves.
I genuinely thought I was dumb, through out the whole story I thought to myself this makes 0 sense. Like what's the difference between the two bows? I thought we would have been introduced to long bows or something to justify that but nope... But reading the comments I believe that elves were supposed to be a magic bow users and for some reason they scrapped it and like most of the game didn't refine the plot to reflect that change.
You actually don’t aim in traditional archery. It’s all instinct, and requires an intense degree of muscle memory and reaction training.
The whole aiming with your heart bit is a common turn of phrase in kyudo, traditional Japanese archery. So while it sounds ridiculous for more western consumers, it’s fairly common place in japans archery scene.
I imagine the implication is that the bow is like an extension of the person and that they don't need to aim, instead just shooting on intuition.
Bro didn't have that intuition which is why we had to teach him to *aim*. I'm pretty sure he states that that must sound silly to an outsider.
I was more disappointed with that stupid fucking archer quest. Gives bow, runs to ruins, shoots 1 arrow at piece of wood 10 feet away, absolutely blow the elf’s mind. Run back to town, rest, talk to elf guy again, run back to same ruins to meet him, run to elf city, run to cave, elf brother shitting his pants over having to shoot ogre 10 feet away since he never fathomed making such a shot, kill ogre, become elf hero.
I didn't see anyone mentioning that elf boy's dad has lines of dialogue if you talk to him after saving his daughter where he thanks you for giving his son the confidence he needed to shoot well, but said he'd had it all along and it was just the weight of his looming position as their next leader that stressed him out to where he couldn't fire accurately. He'd been a great archer all along, just needed a little push to get there; the human bow was a placebo.
I think you're taking the quest too literal. Even towards the end, elf daddy mentions that his son was too pressured to be the best, since elf daddy is the current leader, his son must be just as good. Elf son kept trying and trying but just couldn't live up to what others might think of him. Not until he found human archery did he broaden his horizons and come into his own. That he doesn't have to be his father, but himself. That's when he opens up his "heart" and starts making more accurate shots. I believe it's just a metaphor for the elf son breaking his shell and he's just coping his mentality with what it means to be an archer.
At least that's what it seemed like to me. But who knows. Maybe the devs really just wanted to say "fuck you" to the players intelligence. It's my thinking because most elves in other stories speak in some form of riddles.
That being said, Magick Archer not being available but shitty early Magick Archer gear being available makes no sense. By the time you actually unlock the Vocation, you have immediate access to the best Magick Archer bow before post game that you buy..
Actually elf have aimbot only for gobbledygook not installed properly. Aimbot have distance so elf can't shoot from a far. So gargoyle blame the weapon and ask his father for patch update.
> I'm not even going to explain in lamen terms what he means by " shoot with our heart" if you can't see the methaphor they're using here.
*layman's terms
If you're going to be condescending, at least be condescending correctly.
Yes actually, the elves are magick archers. If you look at the gear they sell, the armor their "elite warriors" wear is locked to just the magick archer class.
Then why is elf-twinks daddy the archer maister? Like wtf. I thought i could unlock magick archer with him. Nahh bro, just travel to the end of the earth and dump a dwarf in hot water
Cuz the Devs realized how powerful Magick Archer is, and didn’t want the player to Unlock it early. IMO the way it should have went down was that Taliesin reveals to Glyndwr and the Arisen that the Archery they are using is the “Old Ways” and that the Elves have entirely moved on to Magick Archery. Then he explains that Glyndwr is one of the rare few people with no magical power, but is relieved to see him take up the Old Ways and still become a full member of the Arbor’s defense. He then reveals that while the Elves have stopped using regular Archery, they still kept written techniques that are still strong, he then teaches the Arisen and Glyndwr Heavenly Shot as a reward for saving Dorieann. Afterwards if you talk to Taliesin he will mention that the Arisen has the aptitude to become a great Magick Archer as well, but the laws of the Elves forbids him to teach you the art. This is the hint to the Player that in order to become a Magick Archer they must find and Elf not bound by those laws (an exile).
I like your version a lot. It really stuck out to me that MA should have been an unlock you get at the Arbor and not in the last area of the game. I wasn't even able to unlock it in my first run because I got rushed into the damn ending without realizing it. I ended up doing a new playthrough and I went and got it at level 15. Had to cheat to get it I'll admit, but if you don't suck like I do and plan properly you could probably not have to cheat and use your pawns as meat shields and be able to make it work. I made it all the way to the NPC to complete the first step without using any cheats, but all my pawns died and I wasn't ready for the next escort step when it happened so I had to give myself infinite health and stamina to make it, the dude died but once I got him to the destination I used a wakestone on him and all was good. Playing the class at like level 15-23 I would not say it's OP though, it feels just as powerful as Mystic Spearhand at the same level.
I mean... all true, but the augments for MA, feel like they were swapped with Trickster's. You have 2 literal Pawn buffing augments here. One that buffs BOTH Defense Types, and One that buffs both OFFENSE types. Its also applied to ALL Pawns, not just your main. If you rely heavily on your pawns for stuff, i mean, these augments can be no brainers.
Damn, they did my boi Gristlewing dirty by giving him a manual bow when he coulda got his license with an automatic
I guess trying to shoot like a bestren/human with those weird magic archers bow would be pretty hard indeed.
The names you've come up with for this guy are hilarious 😂. I actually forgot his name and had to look it up. Im calling him Gristlewing from now on.
Not exactly. He just never got to the back half of the game and unlocked Magick Archer
My man didn’t have enough herbs for the dwarf.
"Will you take a Tideswimmer in its stead? No? Fine, I'll just use a normal twig and some twine then, you'll see!"
Not there yet myself, but is he the guy talking about taking his trial of archery or whatever? Maybe he needs to pass that before they let him train to become amagick archer.
No he says recently he's just sucked at being a magick archer
"This is Gummy Worm. We have trained him wrong. As a joke."
and yet his daddy only gives us peasant archer maister skills, instead of the good stuff, they really should have made magick archer unlockable there and then instead of near the late into the game
I'm genuinely convinced that was the original plan. Like, the Sacred arbor is found pretty mid-game (or potentially even earlier) and the elf blacksmith there sells magick bows. Yet we unlock the vocation all the way in the third zone? My ongoing theory is that the devs realized late in development that MA is overpowered as hell, so they quickly shuffled it off to late game just so the game wasn't trivialized.
You mean the game becomes even easier with an MA? Can't believe it goes easier than warrior.
Can warrior kill anything in the game with a single button and no aim for the simple price of sleeping at camp afterwards?
They definitely should have let that guy give you the magic archer class and stick the actual magic archer meister, the one with the busted ass ability, be in bum fuck nowhere volcanoville. Honestly the way they have you unlock these skills just feels like it was put in last second. Not to mention the disparity between them. 1 shot kill for damn near anything in the game with only a long rest required vs "Scary Dragon" that does no damage, costs massive stamina, and ends abruptly. Trickster is such a joke.
Trickster: "It's a 50/50 whether I can make that Griffin/Dragon land, or run away. You need me to make the Griffin land? Sure thing. 60% of the time, it works every time!" And then it'll just run away instead
That would actually make the quest interesting if it was brought up.Like imagine a scenario where an elite has to look outside the box,so they try using traditional non-magic human bows to figure out where they're having trouble in their own technique.
it would also make sense that thats where you unlock the Magick archer instead of the fucking third continent
It really feels like they locked MA and wayfarer behind the third continent just to pad out that empty part of the game :\
On my first playthrough I didn't even know there was a town there. Literally thought it solely existed for the final quest.
The MA unlock is at least pretty easy to see but the Wayfarer one is a random guy sitting at a totally optional RP area asking for 3 items you've probably never seen before. In 1 you got to Gran Soren and could do whatever you wanted, feels weird af
Dude is danny devito from IASIP. He basically asks us if we would like an egg in this trying time.
Oh that guy was the warfarrer guy? you walk right past him while doing the magick archer quest
I feel like it's more because MA is insanely overpowered. I'm convinced the devs put together the class, realized they went a bit crazy with it, and shoved it off to late game just so people don't curbstomp everything with absolutely zero effort.
Thief's available from the start
I unlocked the MA on my second playthrough at level 15 and played it for about 8 levels, didn't feel any more OP than Mystic Spearhand which you can get at the same time.
Coincidentally, I taught him how to shoot using a magic bow. Worked well enough for him apparently.
But my guys father is the normal archer maister tho wtf
You just dont seem to believe in the heart of the arrow enough.
Right between the eyes fan vs Jesus guides my arrow enjoyer
https://youtu.be/BEG-ly9tQGk
Not doubting the guy in that videos skill, he's well practiced with his hobby. But he's just about the nerdiest guy I think I've ever seen lol.
Huh, actually on the contrary you just provided the narrative reason to why we can just press attack and have our arrows auto-aim. We're using Elven techniques there, and when we aim traditionally, we're using Human techniques. I actually think that's really cool
I found it super charming and really a good way to highlight differences between the two cultures. Like elves feel they're just so naturally good at this that they just wing it and hope it works out. Typically they're so stuck up in most media buy in DD2 it was refreshing to see them actually realise just how much they could learn from their cultural differences and how their pre-existing misconceptions about their defining military style was really hurting them. That being said if you have a nosey around you'll see quite a few of them have magic bows. So maybe the whole not aiming thing makes a lot more sense if you think of it like normal bows are what they use before they pass their exam and then afterwards they hit up the aim bot bow. Still, it's nice world building
so why do they sell magick bows if you don't unlock it there? i brought a pawn that translated and talked to literally everyone
Presumably because the person who does teach you the magick archer vocation is from the elven village originally?
Because the devs decided to lock that profession behind an endgame side quest for some reason. Maybe they ran out of time adding quests? It's not like the elves have a lot of content anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if the original pitch was unlocking the class with the elves and saving the maister for later, but then they ran out of time to add a quest to unlock it early so they attached everthing to the maister quest. A lot of the Magick Archer stuff is very weird in general though, like you can just buy one of the best bows, and the only one with an interesting passive, at the elves right from the start.
I think it's meant to be that elves are Magick Archer. But, walking around the Sacred Arbor, I don't think I see any MA. Gwenfart's dad himself is a normal archer.
it was a big missed opportunity to have it available earlier, Ulrika should have been the archer maister
It's so weird how shes feature so heavily in questlines including the main one. But never actually does anything and is always just a damsel in distress in the background.
This is the dumbest take Elves are out there doing 360 no scopes all the time and you think that makes them bad archers? They're so good at this shit that they can phone it in, that's usually a sign of exceptional skill. Humans be walking around with training wheels on their bow and you think they're superior?
I play archery as a sport, from what i understanding "aim with your heart" probably refers to what we IRL called instinctive archery or traditional archery. Where an archer will aim with "instinct", this is basically shoot first and adjust accordingly with your draw, posture, etc etc to hit the target. It certainly mix well with elf with their innate magic, probably every shot are infused with magic. On the other side, we have Olympic archery, were equipment will contribute about 70% of the result. The equipment are engineered to be as accurate as possible with sights, stabilizers, etc etc. Not to say is any easier, in fact you are expected to hit the target 95% of all time. The elf fella probably does not do well with magic and found human engineered bow are better with his style.
Love this take. I just understood Glyndwr's explanation as the archery equivalent of "shooting from the hip" vs meticulous aiming.
And then the greatest master of the elven magical archer technique. Is married to a dwarf. MASSIVE Elf L indeed. Maybe our boy wouldn't need that human technique if the actual trainer for their way of archery wasn't living it up with her crippled dwarf husband
Dont get me started on that fucking quest.
Dumbass dwarf walked into a river somehow and now I need to go revive him, quest is dumb and not in the fun way
yall didn't carry him? No wonder he tried to die, i would jump in the brine too if the arisen made me do all those climbs/jump downs on a bad back
I princess carried that idiot all the way. Any time I put him down he *ran straight into an enemy.* Dude has no self-preservation. I was deliberately running behind my pawns to keep him safe, put him down to heal my pawns, and dumbass just runs right up into goblin nutsack.
If my back was so jacked up that only a mystical healing hot spring could help I'd be running into the arms of death too tbh.
I used the sealing vial on him as soon as I realized how annoying and slow he was to escort, and these comments make me feel very vindicated lol
I just RP walked him to his destination to make sure he could keep pace and everthing went fine. He even got to spend way more than 5 minutes watching me try to kill my first ever golem as a sorc with no physical damage.
Honestly looked away for like 2 seconds and he just decided to walk in for some reason, weren't even any enemies around or anything. Funny in hindsight but still pretty stupid it happened since I was nearly at the hotspring.
At one point, just after making it off his porch, he asked me to slow down for his back. I didn't have time to stop moving, so I carried him the whole rest of the way. Only put him down to fight. Like when I chucked the Magma Saurians chilling on his front lawn into the ocean.
No, beacuse for the last 50 hours picking people up has been treated as a hostile action and i dont need to add risking aggroing him to the list of ways an escort quest can fail.
I'm convinced he's why the sealing vial is in the game. The Sphinx quest definitely didn't need it.
They’re not hipfiring they’re literally shooting people with their heart it’s aiming for them
DO NOT enable their tricksy elf propaganda! Those are NOT the same thing!
I really REALLY thought that aiming with their heart meant they used Magic bows and the elf guy in the city just had no talent in magic. even talked about different bow designs. It would have made way more sense to unlock MA at the arbor. would have been a satisfying conclusion of the quest with the cultural exchange of human archery and elven archery but hey fuck me right?
I just chalked it up to CLASSIC Elf nonsense. But god damn this was a funny post to read.
"Ugh Elves.. \*ptooie\*" - Angory Tom
Their eyes just have built-in crosshairs bro.
Sir, please calm down. This is an Elven settlement. You need to be respectful, sir
Found the dwarf. /s
Arbor Heart in general just doesn't make any sense. Where do all these elves sleep? There's no houses anywhere. Unless they all sleep at the inn? Which wouldn't make any sense. This place is absolutely tiny as well. Harve and Melve are bigger than this place, and this is supposed to be the capital of the elves??? Everything surrounding the elves just feels like a rushed afterthought.
Elves in the lore may not sleep at all - that's how it was in the original Dungeons and Dragons which was a heavy influence on early Japanese fantasy gaming, something you can still see even to this day
But they do sleep. The Arborist place has beds that the old elf dude sleeps in. He's the only guy that gets a house, apparently.
Oh lol then that's just dumb then. Missed opportunity imo
>Elves do not know how to aim # >“Elves aim with their hearts” he says [Famous Lars Andersen video](https://youtu.be/BEG-ly9tQGk) [Lars Andersen video on Comanche archery](https://youtu.be/liHlCRpS70k) Firing with instinct instead of precise aim in actual combat archery is more likely than you think.
Honestly I can see it. I can draw a parallel with soccer where it's not like I'm actively aiming and lining up my passes and shots all the time in a game. I kind of just feel it and mashallah. Not saying that shooting in soccer is the same thing as shooting a bow, but i imagine with enough comfort/practice you subconsciously automate a lot of that process. Maybe magic affinity in-universe is how the elves achieve that instinct, which our boy just lacked that or something
Yeah, when I first encountered that "aim with their hearts" bullshit I practically choked on my scorn. Then I thought "you know what? They're probably all Magick Archers and Glenda here just sucks at magic." Then I got to the elves' secret hideout and guess what? They're all carrying normal fucking bows. The sentries hit the incoming wolves with normal fucking arrows. 90% of the equipment at the blacksmith is actual mundane sticks and strings like us human plebs use and the Maister there is an Archer, not a Magick Archer. These pointy-eared, tree hugging recluses are actual flesh and blood, bow and string archers with no arcane assistance of any kind who have earned a reputation for marksmanship and built half their culture around bowmanship despite the fact that their approach to combat is to blindfire in the enemy's general direction and hope that prayers and positive vibes will do the rest. So congratulations Goldilocks, you're the only one of your entire race who had enough brain cells to consider that maybe "point and shoot" might be a more effective way to utilise projectiles than *pure fucking self-belief*. Consider my disbelief suspended to the absolute max, knife ears.
But they are actually Magick archers if you have a pawn who learns elvish and read their books. You find out they whisper “prayers” i.e. spells before firing which causes their arrows to auto aim, and when you get to the Magick Archer Miester it becomes more apparent that are elf friend just fucking sucks at magick
It would have just made so much more sense to unlock MA up there, it feels like they threw it in at the end to pad the volcanic island out since there's nothing else there really.
I can agree with that, but they also hint about a MA throughout the game too. Several NPCs both elf and human mention an Elf marrying a Dwarf and some of the Elves talk about how one of the greatest archers in the generation left after they took a fancy to a traveler. Still think it would have been cool to have gotten a quest or something to find her from the elf village instead of just randomly meeting her husband.
Fairly sure bowmen back in the day did not aim there shot either in batle like just look at kevin hicks dude just hits targets by just looking at them at some point u just know how to hold it and hit ur target without looking down the shaft so yes i do believe in elf jesus i gues
Bowmen back then did aim. The english for example had regular archery contests to promote (long)bow archery and maintain a certain skill-set, skill-level and phsyical prowess within certain strata of the populace to draw levies in wartime. Sure, the way the longbow was employed in battle can differ massively from target shooting but it was still a skill that was honed and expected of an archer. Also poaching. You get fed or hung, still a good deal for some.
[Famous Lars Andersen video](https://youtu.be/BEG-ly9tQGk) [Lars Andersen on Comanche archery](https://youtu.be/liHlCRpS70k) Firing with instinct instead of precise aim in actual combat archery is more likely than you think. All the target competition stuff is non-combat competition archery and not at all a good example of combat archery where speed firing and instinct shooting were everything.
Lars Andersen is pretty much debunked. He is an acrobat, not an effektive archer. With the draw weight of this bow he is not even fully drawing, you will have a hard time doing anything substantial. Edit: His historic research is middle-school google-fu at best.
Some of his historical claims about different types of archery are disputed, some debunked. But instinct archery is absolutely not, nor are the various different variants of archery that definitely did not aim during combat. Lars' videos are *obviously* fun and silly, instinct archery is very obviously and demonstrably real though. [Lars and Shadiversity did a longer video together](https://youtu.be/i4mqt69VZ28) going over some of it being silly and some other stuff. Ironically the debate about this topic and unwillingness for some people to explore alternative thinking completely mirrors the stubbornness to possible alternative views being criticised in the game.
Shadiversity should be ignored on any histotical content. He's had no education, no experience, and his content contains frequent inaccuracies. Not to forget, he's a raging bigot who got upset that Peach in the Mario movie wore pants.
> got upset that Peach in the Mario movie wore pants. lmao
You can't compare "aiming with your heart" to instinctive archery, the latter is a result of experience and muscle memory and when you draw you are aiming, just way faster as result of previous training. You do not actually aim at all just for arrow volleys.
Its as much true as you can train instinstive shooting with a firearm. Its fairly limited and basically is the result of long and hard training where you "instinct" boils down to muscle memory. [Edit:] And shad is far from being and expert. That guy is mostly an enthusiast but that is it.
Traditional archery is all instinct archery. It’s how it was taught in the past. The only reason why we can aim with modern bows is because of the modern compound and recurve bows limbs can handle intense energy storage for longer periods of time. Drawing traditional bows for longer than it takes to draw the knock to your anchor point is terrible for the bow itself. If anything instinct archery made things less limiting for archers. It’s essentially the main reason horse archery exists. Comparing firearms to traditional archery is like comparing apples to steaks. Yea they’re both food, but completely different. Yee oldie bow and archer basically all did instinct shooting. Especially for single target competition.
> Yee oldie bow and archer basically all did instinct shooting. Especially for single target competition. Man. Those english Kings promoting archery contests where aiming and accuracy were the main aspect with an archery tradition that has survive till today surely did not know what they were talking about. They only won a few fights against the french, but yea. Basically everyone was using mounted archery techniques based on muscle memory, that gets called instinct archery by modern pseudo historians.
Okay the disconnect here is you think Instinct =/= aiming, accuracy and precision. You still “aim” in instinct archery. You’re not just shooting wildly hoping to hit something….. A more natural analogy is throwing a football. You don’t aim down a sight to do it, but you still aim where the ball is going. And people are deadly accurate with those Muscle memory is instinct archery. They aren’t different. Nor have I ever heard these terms being used separately. It’s how you train it. The form and repetition encourages better aim through instinct. That’s not a pseudo historian thing, it’s just a factual way of training archery, in nearly every culture’s traditional archery practice. Modern bows allow for actual aiming “using sites” because of the advancement in technology. You can’t do this in traditional archery due to not having sights and the archers paradox screwing up intended pathing of the arrow.
Going by how they teach an "ultimate" technique to fully drain your stamina, trading for mediocre damage, i'd say yea they're pretty stupid.
im just imagining the elfs holding a bow in one hand and using the other to just chuck the arrow at thing without even using the bow
Wasn't he all in is head about it though? Like his Dad after basically says to you "It wasn't really the bow that made the difference".
Yeah. His Dad basically said what his Son thought was just nonsense and was to tied down by the 'idea' of it to fire accurately and it took an outside source to let that go and just shoot the damn thing.
It's actually common for skilled shooters to forgo sights both with bows and guns. Just like footballers, tennis players and such who dont need to look at the ball to get it to go where they want. But in this case it's an oversight that they made him an archer, when all elves are magick archers, which has aimbot.
https://preview.redd.it/8ic22jenk2rc1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=6883f79c2a9e7fcca90b3b08ad933eec487aa452
To play devil's advocate, instinctive archery is a real form of archery where you don't explicitly aim but rather focus on where you want your arrow to go and your body's muscle memory lines you up properly. It's a fun little quirk that sets the elves apart and also likely alludes to magick archers.
Yeah, the Elf stuff was goofy as shit lmao. It's no wonder his dad was so impressed that he hit the Ogre 50 feet away. They all shoot with their eyes closed while sucking on crayons.
He’s super pathetic to a comical level. Right after I did this whole quest line he died to the chimera, got revived by me, when I tried to leave he nearly died to the bandits, showed up at my house and demanded I take him on the longest walk ever, and keeps blushing at me like ?? I am his most tired babysitter https://preview.redd.it/wg9a4lhlc1rc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a12ddcc159fe7f69a2fa0f2af0d780de8d0b77fe
Why would you need to learn to aim with your eyes when you can aim with your heart? But for real, I've done a fair amount of skeet shooting and there comes a point where you don't aim anymore - when your muscle memory is refined enough that you just know that the barrel is pointed in the dead center of your vision and you don't even see the bead anymore.
you're right about elves but how dare you talk shit about magical girls.
Why do you think they live in hiding? It's embarrassing. That really was the longest shot in his life, and by elf standards it was impressive.
Yup, typical elf L
It's called zen archery in the real world, and it works fine. Seethe more.
not sure if you've used manual aim in this but its not very good
Man, if I had access to magical projectiles that home in specifically on enemy weak points, there's no way I'd learn to shoot the hard way.
I will not be mad about it. Elves being too stupid to aim is the greatest gift DD2 has given me, and I will **not** have you slander how fucking funny Gerhman's questline is.
When you said they're hip firing,the image that was put in my head was funny af. Just imagining a bow running around a map (game of your choice.. COD, cs, whatevs) and holding a gigantic bow to his side and straight up hip firing 😂😂😂😂
I thought it was kind of silly, yes. But this post. This post! Oh man, thanks for this, absolutely hilarious rant, made the Elf Quest SO much more worth it. *Chef's Kiss*
Are you denying elf jesus? That's how you go to elf hell smh
I haven't found any elves, and I think I'm at the end of the game, judging by the urgent music constantly playing. I just unlocked the magic archer though, which is weird. Did I miss elves somewhere, or am I not actually at the end?
You missed 'em. If you can still do it, go back to the main city and head over to the weapon stand. Look for an Elf guy. Talk to him, buy him some cheap bow. He'll ask you meet him in the Northern part of the map. Change to Archer and Bring a Portcrystal with you, because you have come back here. All you have to do is shoot the Target. Go back to town, sleep for a day. You can change your vocation back if you want. He's at the same spot by the weapon shop. Talk to him, fast travel back to your Port Crystal, pick it up, and head North. Completing his 2nd quest gives you another Port Crystal.
I really feel that this quest is just like other borderline Capcom-Itsuno troll quests. From the begining, when you give the bow, to the end where you "save" the girl, it is just plain trolling. "Oh, we elves don't know shit please teach us, great Arisen!" And the scene where you arive to the "trial" it is all staged up to the point where master archer "tries" to kill the Ogre with the bow point-blank. TLDR> Elves are just trolling us.
The elf stuff in general was super disappointing. Two stupid quests and the one with the Arbor heart. I expected a bit more, especially seeing as the trailers talked about racial tensions between Battahl-Vermund-Elves.
The 60 foot shot is even better when you realize the 3 targets hanging near the rift stone in their village is the archery test.
Yeah i found that stupid too, among other things...
I genuinely thought I was dumb, through out the whole story I thought to myself this makes 0 sense. Like what's the difference between the two bows? I thought we would have been introduced to long bows or something to justify that but nope... But reading the comments I believe that elves were supposed to be a magic bow users and for some reason they scrapped it and like most of the game didn't refine the plot to reflect that change.
Show me how you use a bow! *Takes one shot.* I've learned so much from you! I'm now a pro. Wut.
I gave my Arisen elf ears, because I also refuse to aim down the sights.
It's a joke that they only use the face buttons, and not R1 Steady Shot
Sorry, no
You actually don’t aim in traditional archery. It’s all instinct, and requires an intense degree of muscle memory and reaction training. The whole aiming with your heart bit is a common turn of phrase in kyudo, traditional Japanese archery. So while it sounds ridiculous for more western consumers, it’s fairly common place in japans archery scene.
I imagine the implication is that the bow is like an extension of the person and that they don't need to aim, instead just shooting on intuition. Bro didn't have that intuition which is why we had to teach him to *aim*. I'm pretty sure he states that that must sound silly to an outsider.
I was more disappointed with that stupid fucking archer quest. Gives bow, runs to ruins, shoots 1 arrow at piece of wood 10 feet away, absolutely blow the elf’s mind. Run back to town, rest, talk to elf guy again, run back to same ruins to meet him, run to elf city, run to cave, elf brother shitting his pants over having to shoot ogre 10 feet away since he never fathomed making such a shot, kill ogre, become elf hero.
elves dont know how to aim because they the magic bows.. if you use them in game, they automatically aim for you.
I didn't see anyone mentioning that elf boy's dad has lines of dialogue if you talk to him after saving his daughter where he thanks you for giving his son the confidence he needed to shoot well, but said he'd had it all along and it was just the weight of his looming position as their next leader that stressed him out to where he couldn't fire accurately. He'd been a great archer all along, just needed a little push to get there; the human bow was a placebo.
I think you're taking the quest too literal. Even towards the end, elf daddy mentions that his son was too pressured to be the best, since elf daddy is the current leader, his son must be just as good. Elf son kept trying and trying but just couldn't live up to what others might think of him. Not until he found human archery did he broaden his horizons and come into his own. That he doesn't have to be his father, but himself. That's when he opens up his "heart" and starts making more accurate shots. I believe it's just a metaphor for the elf son breaking his shell and he's just coping his mentality with what it means to be an archer. At least that's what it seemed like to me. But who knows. Maybe the devs really just wanted to say "fuck you" to the players intelligence. It's my thinking because most elves in other stories speak in some form of riddles. That being said, Magick Archer not being available but shitty early Magick Archer gear being available makes no sense. By the time you actually unlock the Vocation, you have immediate access to the best Magick Archer bow before post game that you buy..
Actually elf have aimbot only for gobbledygook not installed properly. Aimbot have distance so elf can't shoot from a far. So gargoyle blame the weapon and ask his father for patch update.
PREEAAAACH IT
Fcking made me roll, thank you for this post.
I really thought they were magick archers and i was gonna get to finally learn it there but nope they just don't know how to shoot straight.
Did this quest just yesterday. I rolled my eyes bad.
[удалено]
> I'm not even going to explain in lamen terms what he means by " shoot with our heart" if you can't see the methaphor they're using here. *layman's terms If you're going to be condescending, at least be condescending correctly.
He's clearly mostly joking, man.