Macroing Archery

[Einstein]

I notice that this topic appears to not have been well covered on the forums, based on a few quick searches.

The wiki has this information:

Macroing Archery

* Blade Spirits - requires a house and a mage to cast BS into the a cornor of the house that has been boxed off. thus simply record a macro to cast a blade spirit in this corner after the duration of a blade spirit and on your archer set a target macro running. dont forget to have scavenger running also to save those fallen arrows.

* Order Guard - This method is similar to above but requires a healer instead of a mage; thus simply box the order guard in your house and fire away! The Order Guard will heal him/herself.

* Monster Spawn - This method requires only one account and knowledge of the UO world. Basically round up as many monsters are you can find and use the cliffs and ledges to separate them from yourself. When you are in a safe location and the monsters keep growling at you, run a target macro that: targets closest grey npc/attack target/wait for 7 seconds. You will need to keep an eye on this one for when its finished and that you haven't been PK'd...but it requires less attention than dungeon crawling so you can play another account at the same time.

I've heard this bladespirit thing mentioned before, but I have a question: are there better summons than a bladespirit to raise archery on? In other words, are earth elementals, EVs, deamons, etc. better? Is the reagent cost significantly higher? Do those summons last longer/survive better? I'm assuming a main or alt with 100 magery, in any case.

Also, I assume you would want to use a light hitting, fast weapon, is there any difference between a newbified starting bow and a store-bought one?

What is the best/easiest method for getting the thousands of arrows GMing requires?

What are some sample macros people use for auto-target/attacking a summoned creature?

[Hicha]

Grab a boat and goto drake island in T2A, target nearest gray, go afk for 7 hours.

[archaicsubrosa77]

Wyvern Island...
I just used a npc and a scavenger macro for arrows in a house. You will lose many even then. If you have a tamer vet you could use a polar bear or grizzly just make sure to keep it fed.

Crafting arrows is about the best way to get them. You can buy them from a vendor of course but if you develop lumberjacking and bowcraft fletching its cheaper and easier.

Out of all the crafting skills bowcraft/fletching is about the easiest fastest money in my opinion.

[Dagon]

I don't think youd get any better gains from elementals over a blade spirit.. also a GM mage still fails 8th circle spells frequently so that alone would slow down skill gains because of all the fizzles, also you can't target where the elemental would be summoned to.. not a problem youd just have to box yourself off instead of the elemental but then in your macro youd have add attacking the elemental also.. an extra unneeded step.

There's no difference in the speed of a newbie bow or store/gm bow, but the newbie bow will have the least amount of damage, so that's what you want to use if possible.

Arrows - - hit up the fletchers and get the restock timers just like with reagents.

For the macroing... set up your blade spirit box.. position your archer closest to it than any other character .. have the mage behind the archer casting the blade spirit into the box . .blade spirit automatically attacks closest (the archer) .. wait until blade spirit is gone and cast again.. i THINK the amount of time the blade spirit lasts is dependent on the level of magery of the caster so youll have to find your time to wait between casts.. ive had 45 seconds up to 90 seconds or 120 seconds if i recall correctly..

[Mikel123]

BS and EV are better than level 8 summons because they don't hit you with spells.

Wyvern island is a possibility, but there is a drake or two on there who can hit you with firebreath I think.

Almost everyone has a character they could raise magery on, so I used BS when I had a 50-ish magery character I wanted to gain, and EV when trying to GM magery on my tank.

Also, if you have 100 STR, GM Anatomy, and good tactics (I GMed it via Swords, then decided to swap swords for archery), you'll kill the BS pretty quickly. So that's just a small issue with macro efficiency and stuff.

[archaicsubrosa77]

If you can waste arrows, Wyvern Isle does seem like a good place.
Target Closest Grey
Attack Last target

[Ashikata]

I just GM'ed with around 5-6K arrows roughly, used an Order guard in my house. It heals itself so you don't even need a healer.

[st33vo]

For some reason i've killed 3 order guards with this method. How is this possible?

[Caswallon]

A monster AI change recently went in, stopping monsters from healing/curing, I would imagine that also effects order guards and as such this is no longer possible without a 2nd account healer.

[Galm(kB)]

GM archery by shooting guard and having someone gain healing.

[archaicsubrosa77]

I was able to get gains off a npc...are gains better at distance or what? I was right up on the guy.

[Kabal]

Get a grizley bear surrounded by locked down boxes in your house. Then shoot the bear while a tamer heals it and gains veterinary and have a 3rd guy with arrows on scavenger next to the bear.

[migz]

im using an order guard and its stuck at 21.3... why is this?

[tenduil]

Excuse my ignorance but:

How do you get an order guard?

Can you do this is a house and get the same level of skill gain as outdoots?
(ask cause I swear at one point indoors=lower/no skill gain)

[Sixxus]

I gm'd in about 8 hours on bladespirits from 50. Time how long the spirits last and set a macro that casts them at that time. Took about 300 casts.
Archer runs a macro that sets last target by type and attack last.

Only used about 3k arrows. I used a +10 bow until 90.

Oh, and hit 90 tactics too. So if you want to gm that as well expect to use more materials.

Note that around 90 skill you will kill the blade spirit before the time is up, so change your cast time. Skillups remain fast at this level though as almost all shots hit.