The devil is seldom outshot in his own bow.

- Spanish Proverb

Like magery, archery allows you to cause damage to your opponent from a distance. Only downside is, you have to run a lot. Problem with this is, in order to hit your target, you have to stop and shoot. With the reload time before you can fire again, it can get tricky. So always allow plenty of distance between you and your target before you pause to shoot, but be careful not to go too far as the shooting range is fairly limited.

You will need tons and tons of arrows, so I suggest you learn bowcraft / fletching. You will succeed making arrows 99% of the time with only 30% skills. It beats buying arrows especially at the going rate, unless you've got plenty of moolah and cannot be bothered gathering wood and killing harpies for feathers. Some creatures are also good sources of free arrows (mainly the centaurs, ratmen mages and Juka Lords).

Skill	What to Fight
0	Buy Skills from NPC fighter
30	Bulls, Cows, Great Harts, Hinds
40	Skeletons
70	Earth Elementals , Air Elementals
90	Dull Copper Elemental, Rotting Corpses
100	Rotting Corpses

At higher levels Titans and Ogre Lords are also a good way to go. As well are a tinkered Golem.

Ogre lords: keep them busy fighting a blade spirit, then shoot them in peace with your arrows.  Remember to cast another blade spirit from time to time as their strength and duration has greatly diminished with the new patch.

Rotting Corpses: they will do wonders for you but they have the nasty habit to DP.  Their level 5 poison will kill you in 10 seconds.  Fight them at the Humility Shrine in Ilshenar. Lure them near the Ankh by the moongate.  And just double-click the Ankh whenever you get DP'ed.

The Weapons  

Weapon	Damage	Speed
Repeating Bow	10-14	41
Composite Bow	15-20	25
Bow	16-18	25
Crossbow	18-24	24
Heavy Crossbow	19-24	22

For the special attacks that can be performed with each weapon, please consult the Special Moves page under the Q&A