In this Lords of the Fallen Bow Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you my Blackfeather Ranger or Blackfeather Archer Build. This is an Archer Dual or Hybrid Build that leans more and more toward the archery side of things the further you get into the game. It also uses dual-wield as a backup in case you need to melee.

Lords of the Fallen Blackfeather Archer Build – Bow Build Guide

Before we get into the exact Build itself, I want to talk a bit about how to play an Archer in Lords of the Fallen and just so you guys can get some fundamental information about how ammo and this sort of thing works. 

Lords of the Fallen Blackfeather Archer Build – Character Creation

So at the beginning of the game, I recommend picking the Blackfeather Ranger Class because this starts with the Bow and it also starts with Oak Arrows, allowing you to become familiar with the playstyle. Each time you fire one of these arrows, it’s going to cost you one ammo and remember that you have an ammo gauge under your character’s stamina gauge. Now, the amount of ammo that you have is determined by your Vitality and Endurance so the more of these you have, the more ammo you gain. So you’ll want to have decent amounts of these Attributes.

So the way you’re going to get back that ammo is by either resting in a vestige, which isn’t ideal if you’re trying to clear an area, or by using an Ammunition Pouch.  These are consumable items you can purchase at Skyrest. I highly recommend that you take your extra Vigor and stock up on these because you’ll need them particularly early on in the game. And then you’re drawing back your bow. You can either fire like a quick shot or you can hold it for a second, wait for it to flash, and then you’ll do what’s called a charged shot that deals more damage. 

Ideally, you’re going to be doing charge shots more than regular shots because they deal more damage and since you have limited ammo, you’re trying to get the most bang for your buck. Now that’s not always possible depending on how combat goes but that’s what you’re going to be aiming for. 

Lords of the Fallen Blackfeather Archer Build – Gameplay and Equipment

The next thing you’re going to want to take a look at is your Bow. The scaling of the Blackfeather Ranger Bow has Strength and Agility although it has much better Agility scaling than Strength. Every Bow in Lords of the Fallen either has Strength and Agility scaling or Agility scaling so you’re going to need to focus on at least one of those two Stats.

Something else you want to notice when you’re taking a look at your Bows is whether they have status effects like bleed, poison, or frost point buildup. Also, you’ll see numbers under physical damage, specifically under attack power for Holy Fire and Wither. This tells you if you’re using arrows of that specific type so if you’re using Radiant, Cinder, or Wither Arrows.  

For instance, if your Bow says it does 35 Holy and another says 50 Holy, that Bow is going to do better with Holy Arrows than the one that has 35 and of course, the same is true for physical. If you’re using Physical Arrows and the Bow you have has more physical attack power than the Bow you’re looking at then you know that that Bow is going to do better with physical arrows like your Precision Arrows and your regular Oak Arrows.

Bow of the Convert

At the start of the game, you’re going to be using the Black Feather Ranger Bow because there aren’t too many available early on. The next likely Bow that you’ll be able to acquire is the Bow of the Convert, which is much better. 

It has better Agility scaling, it does bleed, burn, and poison buildup with each shot although you don’t tend to use it all that much in this game because you’re trying to go for one shot one kill against regular and tough-to-kill enemies. You’ll want to kill them in two to four shots so this would be much better for a Boss but not necessarily great out on the landscape although the base damage will be higher. So you’ll probably want to switch to this.

Udirangr Shaman Bow

The next bow that you’re going to be able to pick up is the Udirangr Shaman Bow. This is a quality Bow, meaning, that it scales about the same with Strength and Agility so you could push both of those Stats and get damage out of this. It also scales pretty well with fire so you’ll gain an advantage when using Cinder Arrows. 

Bow of the Mutilated

Not much further than that, you’ll get the Bow of the Mutilated anyway, which is a Bow that I’m using in my gameplay footage. What I like about the Bow of the Mutilated is it doesn’t have any status effect buildup, which you really don’t need. It has decent Agility scaling, some Strength scaling but it has higher physical, holy, fire, and wither than all the Bows I just mentioned so it’s really good with basically any arrows you’re going to use up to this point of the game. And I highly recommend switching over to it. You’ll notice a damage increase immediately once you get it upgraded.

Arrows

The arrows that I’m using for this Lords of the Fallen Blackfeather Archer Build are Cinder, Poison, and Precision Arrows. There are other ones available further into the game. You also have access to Oak Arrows, which is what you’ll start with. But you’ll sub those out when you have the three arrows I’ve talked about. So Cinder Arrows will replace Oak Arrows and you’ll gain Poison Arrows almost immediately after entering Forsaken Fen. You’ll then gain Precision Arrows on the backside of the same location after the Hushed Saint Boss fight. 

You won’t use Poison Arrows all that often but they’re good against tough-to-kill enemies to rip off some damage over time with poison like against Bosses. If you’re co-oping something, they’re not a bad option but they do cost two ammo. Don’t think it’s worth it for regular ammo on the landscape or on the other side of things. 

Precision Arrows in Lords of the Fallen are much better for trash mobs because they’re going to give you extra damage when you use charged shot. You also deal more damage than the Oak Arrows natively anyway and they still only cost two ammo. So you’re going to be using Oak Arrows for a huge portion of the game until you gain your Cinder Arrows in order to try and kill things in one hit or to deal as much damage as possible with one shot by charging up your Bow. You’ll gain these at Lower Calrath and these things hit like an absolute truck. 

And again, you want to use a Bow with these like the one we’re using that does significant damage with Fire Arrows because it’s essentially what we’re using. This does a lot of physical and fire damage and costs three ammo per shot so you don’t want to waste them on trash enemies. But you definitely want to use it on your hard-to-kill enemies such as Sorceresses, Ruiners, or Naga Archers or the ones with crossbows since they are really a pain in the ass. I cannot stress enough how much of a game-changer these Cinder Arrows are so you’re absolutely going to want to get them. 

Armor and Rings

If you look at our Armor, you’ll notice I’m only wearing a chest piece here, specifically the Blackfeather Ranger Armor. This is because I want to keep our equip weight low since we’re using the Princess’ Sting Pendant, which increases your damage the lower your equip load is. So the less you have equipped on your character, the more damage you’re going to do. This also applies to your Bows and Crossbows to further boost your range and melee damage. 

On top of that, I have the Blackfeather Ranger Ring, which increases your damage with the same two Weapons. You’ll gain this after you give the first rune tablet to the blacksmith. If you rest, go back, and talk to her, you should be able to purchase this ring from her. This will further boost your range damage, which is great.

And then I also have Mineowner’s Ring. This is good for stamina and stamina regeneration. You use a lot of stamina with this Blackfeather Archer Build with your Bow as you fire arrows. The same is true when you’re dual-wielding and use a lot of dodging. You can sub this one out for anything you like. Really, the other two are the ones I super recommend for this Bow Build. 

Weapons

If you look at the Weapons, I’m using two Hallowed Praise because they have bleed buildup and they scale very well with Agility, which works fantastically for this Build. You can only get one in a playthrough but if another player drops you one, you can get it. This is dropped in Pilgrim’s Perch. 

If you don’t have someone to drop you one, you could also use Hallowed Condemnation, which is available in the very beginning area of the game in the Abandoned Redcopse. Now, Hallowed Condemnation is arguably better for what we’re trying to do in the long run although it’s worse earlier and that’s because it has a Strength Rune Slot for its second rune slot and I’ll talk a little bit about why rune slots are important for this particular Build.

There is a really good Strength Rune called Aelstrix, which essentially once slotted into your Weapon, increases the damage of Ranged and Throwable Weapons. This will apply to your Bows and Crossbows. Unfortunately, the Hallowed Praise Weapon does not have a Strength Rune Slot whereas the Hallowed Condemnation does on the second slot but you won’t be able to get that for quite a ways into Lords of the Fallen so it’s not super important early on.

Once you’re able to slot runes into your Hallowed Knight Sword, you could theoretically slot one in each of your swords, getting you 2x the increase in the damage dealt by Ranged and Throwable Weapons. Now the problem with this is that your melee damage will suffer and the reason is that both Hallowed Praise and Hallowed Condemnation, have bleeding on them. 

Bleeding not only deals extra damage to the enemy but also makes them vulnerable to physical damage so as you continue to strike them with your physical attacks, they’re going to continue to take more and more damage, which is really, really nice. And then you can keep retriggering bleed. But going back, you’ll have weaker melee if you go with a double Hallowed Knight Sword setup. 

If you’re more ranged-focused where you engage in co-op sessions to help players with their Bosses and you just want to hang back and range them down with your Bow, then this setup is best for you. If you’re playing alone though, you’ll have to melee sometimes so it can be a problem. Your melee will suffer if you don’t have one of those two Weapons or a Weapon that has bleed on it.

What I really like about the Hallowed Knight Sword is that it also has Strength for its third slot so eventually, you’ll be able to four-stack these if you get four of them. You’ll be able to have even more ranged damage so again, your melee will suffer but your ranged damage will be even higher. Remember that it’s not that important at this point in the game because we only have one rune slot but you would be able to get two of them if you use two Hallowed Knight Swords.

As you progress in Lords of the Fallen and you’re able to get more rune slots, the Hallowed Condemnation becomes better than the Hallowed Praise because that second slot is a Strength Sllot that you can drop these into. You can still have bleed on your Weapons and be able to use two of these and that’s even better than using the Hallowed Praise.

Lords of the Fallen Blackfeather Archer Build – Attributes

So if you look at our Stats for this Lords of the Fallen Blackfeather Archer Build, I have 13 Strength, 40 Agility, 26 Endurance, 22 Vitality, and 8 Radiance and Inferno so obviously, we don’t need Radiance and Inferno anymore since we’re not casting Spells. Strength is there to meet the requirements for the Bow since it has a 13 Strength requirement as most Bows do.

And then we cranked Agility with this Bow because it scales really well with Agility but if you were using a different Bow like the quality one I mentioned earlier, which is the Udirangr Shaman Bow, you could split this between Strength and Agility to get better damage. Next, Endurance and Vitality are important. If you’re playing a predominantly Ranged Build, Vitality is not as important as with a Melee Build but you do get extra ammo from this Attribute so it’s worth putting points into. It also helps keep you alive. 

Endurance not only gives you more ammo but also increases your stamina, which is great since you use a lot of this resource. It’ll also increase your equip load and since we’re using a necklace that ups your damage the lower the equip load is, you have that double whammy. So you’re going to get more ammo out of it and you’re also going to increase your damage because of the pendant we’re using.

So if you’re playing this Lords of the Fallen Blackfeather Archer Build at a lower level, I’d probably take some points out of Agility by bumping this down to 30 and spread out my points between Agility, Endurance, and Vitality. And then, when I’m confident with my survivability, I’d start cranking up Agility to get my damage up to where you’re one-shotting regular trash and two or three-shotting difficult enemies with Cinder Arrows. So that’s your measure for success. You want to be able to one-shot regular ranged enemies and then maybe two or three-shot some of the tougher melee targets.

Final Thoughts

So that wraps up my Blackfeather Ranger Archer Build, I hope you guys found this useful and gave you some information about how to play an Archer in this game. There are obviously better Bows and arrow types you can get later on, and eventually, you’ll actually be able to get an Umbral Eye, which makes it so that instead of using ammo, you take wither damage when you shoot with your Bow so you won’t have ammo problems further on into the game once you have this. 

So for this stretch of the game, you’ll have to use consumables like an Ammo Satcher or something similar so it’s a good idea to help a couple of players to stock up on extra Vigor and then buy a bunch of these. 

As always, if you have tips for other players or questions, please leave them in the comments. I’ll try and get to them as soon as I can. We do have more Build Guides coming for Lords of the Fallen so stay tuned for that.