Scout Guide
The English/Welsh Longbowmen
The historical English/Welsh longbowmen were considered members of the standing army, as both archer and infantry within the military structure. They were trained as hard as any armsman, and were in just as good physical condition.
Their bows did require that they wear lighter armor, which was a liability in close quarters combat, but longbowmen generally were still very skilled with a sword. The time training in the use of the bow did not take them away from practicing their swordplay, just from practicing close quarters drill that the regular armsman learned. So longbowman didn't lack in melee skills, just melee tactics.
One very good reason that longbowmen practiced sword use was that they would do so in order to be harder to recognize as a longbowman! If a battle was going bad longbowman fearing capture would drop their bows and fight with swords as a melee. Why? Captured prisoners of war that were thought of being possible longbowman were usually ransomed back to their kingdom, but not after having both of their draw fingers cut off. A bowman who could use a sword adeptly, came back home with all his digits intact. That was enough to assure that they learned to be proficient in the sword so they could playoff of as being nothing more than "light infantry" if captured.
If you are interested in more information about the historical longbowmen and their weapon, take a look at The Longbow on The Beckoning, Archery Articles from the Journal of the Society of Archer-Antiquaries, and La Belle Compagnie (a recreation troupe).
Scouts in Dark Age of Camelot
The quick, stealthy Scout is modeled after the historical English/Welsh longbowman. As such, he is very proficient with the most deadly ranged weapon prior to the introduction of firearms. He is also skilled in melee combat, though not able to stand toe-to-toe in the infantry line next to his heavily armored shieldmates.
When hunting solo, Scouts often perform the duties of a forester, using tracking to locate prey, stealth to get close to it, and then their bow skills to kill it. If the arrows don’t strike true, they are able to dispatch the wounded beast with their sword.
When hunting with a group, Scouts serve as an advance scout, and bait for ambushes. After finding their prey, the scout helps in the fight either by standing back with the healers and casters and shooting arrows though the melee, or by entering melee with agile, directed blows from their sword. Very often they are assigned the duties of protecting the healers and casters should their prey turn from the main battle line and charge the supporting divisions.
In the wars, Scouts use all these skills practiced in peacetime to perform as advanced scouts for the army and snipers. Their role is to locate the enemy while remaining undetected, accurately report back to their commanders the size, composition, command-and-control structures, and artillery (siege engines and magic) of the enemy, and cause what disruption they can. They are also expected to participate in battle by reducing enemy numbers with massed archery, disruption of artillery, and defense of the support classes.
Strengths of the Scout
1) The longbow has the single greatest range of any any attack in the
game and does the most damage, followed closely by the ranger's recurve bow
and the hunter's composite bow.
2) Archery is indeed our primary weapon, being useful not only as initial
attacks, but anytime the scout is not in direct melee.
3) While scouts’ melee combat skills are not as good as that of the
fighter class and its guilds, we are proficient enough to be able to hold
our own for short periods of time. This is useful in solo hunting and when
fighting in cramped quarters.
4) Scouts are trained to avoid attacks, either through dodging or blocking
with a shield, reducing the number of times they are hit in melee combat.
We can also use our shield to guard others, bash our opponents, or go into a
purely defensive mode where we keep our opponent's attention on us without
taking much damage.
5) Scouts are trained in perception, for spotting and accurately counting
troops at a distance, finding hidden enemy scouts, and detecting ambushes. Not
implemented yet.
6) Tracking is also a byproduct of our increased perception. By noticing
subtle signs, they can determine which creatures have passed by recently. Not
implemented yet.
7) Stealthy movement is essential when hunting; be it game for the table,
renegade monsters, or enemy forces. Scouts receive the best training there
is to offer in this skill.
8) Climbing trees and inaccessible cliffs and observing and sniping from there is a preferred
technique when hunting dangerous game. It also comes in useful when trying
to protect Infiltrators as they sneak into enemy keeps to open the gates. Not
implemented yet.
Weaknesses of the Scout
1) Scouts don't have access to training with polearms and two-handed weapons
that paladins and armsmen have, and they don’t learn to dual wield weapons
like most mercenaries do. So, a scout’s melee damage output will always be
less than any of the other warriors on the battlefield.
2) Melee specialization is capped at one half our level (rounded up), so
scouts get combat styles half as frequently as armsmen/mercenaries/paladins.
This reduction of melee strategy is the cost for neglecting training in
formation in favor of training in the longbow.
3) Scouts are restricted to using padded, leather, or studded leather type
armors because of their bow. While this armor is flexible and unencumbering,
it doesn’t have the sheer protective value of the heavier armors
available.
4) Scouts usually come from peasant stock, and, while hardy, they cannot
match the ability to shrug off pain and wounds of those trained to warfare
from birth.
5) Scouts prefer roving hunts through areas not often hunted by others. This
heightens the natural perception of the effective scout, but also leads to
longer times between fights. This is somewhat countered by learning more
from each combat in these roving hunts.
6) Scouts, with their chosen hunting patterns, are often alone in hostile
territory, even when scouting around for prey for a group. Scouts are
exposed to higher danger as they find prey, and often have angry creatures
attempting to kill them while being led to the ambush. Many creatures bring
friends with them to the ambush and they must be dealt with before they
decide to attack the healers and casters. Healers are reluctant to heal us
on incoming, because of that calls attention to themselves. This decreases
the lifespan of the average scout significantly, which leads to constitution
restoration donations to the church eating up significant amounts of loot.
7) Scouts must buy arrows, at a significant cost, in order to be effective
against their foes. No other class must pay for each use of their weapon.
This also ties them down to their supply lines more than any other class.
Most scouts spend any free time they have making their own arrows, to help
reduce this cost, especially those who fire into melee combat.
8) A sufficient supply of arrows for a hunting trip with a group weighs
enough to make anyone consider hiring a porter. Unfortunately, those porters
willing to go on such dangerous trips are rare, and often assigned to the
Lord of the area for carrying his wine and feasts around. So, scouts often
have to make do with periodic runs to merchants who sell arrows.
9) Elementalists and other ranged classes are able to cause significantly
more damage at nearly the same range as a good longbowman. Of course, the
best longbowmen are able to extend their range when targeting an area rather
than a specific creature, but they can’t be sure of exactly which creature
in the area will get hit.
Starting As a Rogue
Scouts begin their career as rogues. Dexterity and quickness are of primary importance to a scout, followed closely by strength. Constitution, with its increase in health, is also considered important, although not a primary requirement for being accepted into the Defenders of Albion as a scout. Note that as a scout, you never want your starting strength to be less than 50 because of encumbrance issues later on. In fact, I recommend 60 or 70 points of strength. Strength is also a factor in how hard you hit with slash weapons. Strength and Dexterity are both factors in determining how hard you hit with thrusting weapons. Dexterity is a factor in how hard you hit with your bow. Dexterity also factors into your success or failure at evading enemies, blocking with your shield, and successfully using stealthy movement. Quickness has a direct effect on melee attack speed and the draw times for normal and critical shots with your longbow. A higher constitution increases the chances for getting a higher increase to health each time you level, though it doesn't seem to have a direct effect on starting health. Note that starting at 6th level, your dexterity will increase by one point every level, your quickness one point every other level, and your strength one point every three levels.
You will always wear leather or studded leather armors, and rely on your knowledge of the terrain and creatures about to see you through safely, while leading your foes into ambush after ambush. You rely upon your bow to do significant damage to your foes from afar, but expect to need to use melee skills to finish them off.
Wizards and Theurgists will be able to outdamage you consistently at range, and your heavily armored brothers in the Defenders of Albion will be able to do more damage consistently at melee. However, the casters are not able to readily survive ambushes or if their opponent closes to melee range, and your heavily armored brothers cannot attack well at range. You fill a niche that supports both well, and rounds out the skills of your party.
One of the first things to do upon embarking upon your career is to find your rogue trainer. Talk to this individual, and then follow his directions -- that is, go out into the world and hunt. You want to start your training by hunting those mobs that con blue to you. That is, their name appears in blue in the combat status box. For the duration of your time as a rogue, I would suggest fighting only blue- or green-con mobs, with more focus upon the green-con mobs to earn as much cash as you can.
Upon attaining second level, return to your trainer and you can begin specializing in several skills. Note that your skills in all areas will advance to be level appropriate, and specialization enhances certain skills. Saving your skill points is possible also, though I usually put the specialization points for attaining levels two and four into stealth. At level 3 you should decide if you would rather use thrusting weapons or slashing weapons and train in that skill. Do be aware that you are not primarily a warrior, so you can only specialize in your melee skills at the odd levels, and you are limited to a specialization level of half of your level, rounded up. You should also pay attention to the requests that your trainer has for you. Those tasks are easy, but will give you a good feel for the lay of the land and the policies of the Defenders.
I also recommend not buying a weapon at first, instead concentrate on purchasing or finding armor while you use your training dagger. Tattered leather armor drops off puny skeletons and sprigarrans, which are surprisingly abundant this close to civilization. You can also purchase leather armor from the merchants or crafters, but I don't recommend it at this level. Upon attaining third level, you should probably go talk to the stonemason in the village, and find what he needs to build you a flint weapon. This weapon is excellent for use until you are quite a bit older, by which time you should have all of your armor and have enough cash to purchase a rapier or longsword.
It is also highly recommended that you talk to all of the people in the villages around you, as quite a few have tasks that you can complete now, or in the future. Become acquainted with the layout of the towns, and look for shortcuts overland between villages. There are lots of landmarks, and cutting overland is usually much faster, if not quite as safe, as following the roads. As a future scout, you are expected to be familiar with the shortcuts between places, so begin looking for those shortcuts now.
Once you attain your fifth level, your rogue trainer will have taught you all he knows. Go find him one last time, and follow his directions to find the scout recruiter and trainer. It is this individual who will train you in the use of the famed Briton longbow, and continue your training in stealth, climbing, slashing weapons, and thrusting weapons.
I also recommend that after getting some starting capital, you go find Acey Dalston in the arrow shop near the Guild of Shadows in Camelot city, and begin to practice fletching. Fletching your own arrows can save you one-third of the price of arrows, and if you only keep up your woodworking and metal working skills, you will be asked to fletch arrows for consignment tasks too. Do all of your FedEX or Kill tasks first though, or your consignment tasks will count toward that quota. Arrow consignments are not as cash producing as bow consignments, but they are quicker and you will naturally be using all of the end products.
Archery
Archery is discussed in detail in the Archery Guide, so it suffices to say here that using your longbow is your primary skill, and all other skills serve to support your devotion to it. This skill should be kept as fully specialized as you can; at a minimum, keep it at two-thirds of your level rounded up. Use any extra skill points to specialize in your other skills.
Train in the use of the longbow until you are familiar with its range, and its damage capabilities. Practice shots from the walls of keeps, from behind the cover of bushes, and uphill. Learn the timing, the flow of drawing, nocking, aiming, and loosing arrow after arrow until you can do it effortlessly and without conscious thought. Train also with other scouts to follow the directions of your commander, so that you can coordinate your fire when with other scouts and do incredible amounts of damage to your opponents. Practice all this on the animals and monsters of the realm, so that you can slay the beasts from Midgard and Hibernia intent upon the slaughter of our families and livestock.
Also train in being able to swap stacks of arrows when you reach 8th level or so, and want to start using store-bought or fletched arrows rather than the freebies the scout trainers will pass out. This will let you use flight arrows for maximum range, but cheaper arrows when the mob is close and you don't need that range.
The first special archery ability you gain is Critical Shot I when you have specialized in longbow three times. Thereafter, at every three additional levels of specialization in longbow, you receive an upgrade to your Critical Shot skill which reduces the aiming time, and increases the damage of this spectacular strike. This shot, although it takes longer to set up and is only effective against targets which are not charging, does intense damage as you place the arrow precisely in the most vulnerable parts of your foe.
Eventually we will also attain the Longshot skill and the Volley skill. These have not been implemented yet.
Scouts can use three of the five types of ranged weapons in Albion. We cannot use shortbow or crossbows, but wouldn't really want to due to their lesser damage and decreased range. The three we can use are hunter's bows, bows, and longbows. All three use the longbow specialization to determine effectiveness and have the same damage per second rating, but differ in their draw times. The hunter's bows have the shortest draw times, and hence the lowest damage per hit which means these bows ideally suited to interrupting casters or enemy archers. The longbow has the longest draw time, but does the most damage per hit, making it ideally suited to sniper type attacks. The bow has a medium draw time and medium damage and would make a great all around weapon except for consideration. The longbow is the only one of these three to have increased range. The hunter's bow and bow both have the same range as the Midgardian bows and two of the Hibernian bows.
Again, all of these are discussed in detail in the Archery Guide.
Slashing and Thrusting Weapons
It is suggested that you focus on keeping either one of these maximized by receiving specialized training in it every odd level, if not more often. You may fully specialize in a melee weapon, though I don't recommend it. Specialization in melee skills will close the range of damage you inflict toward the higher end, and decreasing the number of low damage hits is vital for the survival of the scout in the field. Keep in mind that almost all of your combats will involve melee as well as archery when deciding what specialized training to get.
As you train in your melee skills, you will learn advanced techniques, but usually not as quickly as armsmen, paladins, and mercenaries who specialize in close combat as our combat specialty is the longbow. These special combat styles have varying effects, and the choice of slashing specialization or thrust specialization can be made based on the scout's preference for what styles to get. Remember that strength is a damage modifier to slashing melee attacks while both strength and dexterity are modifiers for thrusting melee attacks. Please also note that these skills have nothing to do with arrow attacks despite blunt and bodkin arrows being listed as thrust damage and broadheads being listed as slash damage for the sake of attack-type vs armor-type damage modifiers; so do not consider this when trying to determine which type of melee weapons to focus on.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Staff
It is possible to use a staff instead of a sword. Like all Albanians, we receive basic training in the peasant's weapon as a youngling, but the military does not train us in more advanced use of this weapon. That training is reserved for the friars in the Church who use the quarterstaff to defend themselves on their journeys.
Shield
Scouts may opt to receive advanced training in their small round shields, learning ways to use the shield to bash opponents and stun them momentarily during melee. It is possible to fully specialize in shield, but most choose to specialize to
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Guard: Guard 1 is gained at 5 levels of specialization and using it allows us to defend another character who is not actively in combat (they don't have autoattack on) if you are in close proximity to them by using your shield to block attacks aimed at either one of you. That makes it a useful skill for a scout only if you are shooting from the party's ambush site. If you must run out to get a good bead on your target, you would need to reset Guard when you got back. While Guard works in RvR, because of the more chaotic nature of player movements and stuff, it may as well not be used there.
Engage: Shield users also have an Engage skill that is obtained at 7 levels of shield specialization which only works in PvE. You must have the mob's attention in order for Engage to do any good, but with it you will block almost all of the time. The trade off is that you may not attack while thus concentrating on keeping the mob busy and blocking all its attacks. This is a crowd control ability, and is good to use when your initial target decides to bring a friend. You can put an arrow into the friend and then use Engage to keep it out of the rest of the battle while the rest of your party takes out your initial target. Note that you want to use a normal arrow shot to get its attention also, or you might have angered it so much that it powers past your guard for the first few attacks.
Shield Types: The type of shield being used determines the delay of the attack and the damage done. So a small shield is very fast to attack but does not do nearly as much damage as the slow heater shield. Note that scouts can only use small shields, but this is an important distinction between us and the heavy line fighters. But sometimes (like RvR) it's nice to have the quick shield to get in a stun when it's really needed. Also note that the shield size determines the number of attackers that can be blocked at the same time.
Strategy: If you're in a fight that's going sour and you want to get away, do a shield stun, turn off autoattack (so not to break the stun with another weapon swing) and then run straight through them (so you don't waste time doing a turn). Usually this allows you to get enough distance that eventually your opponent will give up the chase as long as you're not slowed down and it isn't normally faster than you.
Blocking Arrows: You can use your shield to block arrows to. You need to be in combat mode and facing the archer, but don't have to be stationary. For increased chances, have the archer targeted and hit Engage. Note that you can't do anything other than defend yourself and move when trying to Engage, and that includes guarding others or conning others.
Stealth
In the home realms, stealth is mostly useful for keeping creatures from noticing you as you heal up after fights. It does have some usefulness for getting closer to mobs without attracting their attention while attempting to line up a shot, but this seems to be of very limited use against creatures. Against the raiders from the other realms, this skill is likely to be highly useful.
It is no longer possible to draw and fire an arrow while hidden, as you come out of stealth-mode when you nock an arrow. However, the creatures in the area won't attack you unless they are close enough and usually would agro on you. Once you shoot, the creature you shot at will know where you are and most likely will point you out to any friends. Note that your movement speed is very low while being stealthy, so if you need to run, just drop out of stealth mode and go for it. It is also impossible to fight stealthily, so make sure that other creatures aren't close enough to come running when they see you attacking one of their own.
The counter to stealth is Detect Hidden. It allows us to spot those moving stealthily through our frontiers, scouting out invasion routes. The thief classes get this skill, not other archers, but we do get the normal chances to detect hidden characters that all characters have.
Tracking & Climbing
Tracking and climbing are not yet implemented, so I can't tell you that much about them. It has been suggested that these and other skills will be earned with stealth specialization, but this hasn't been announced yet, nor has how they will work been announced.
Equipment
Scouts can make use of many of the quests in Albion, including the many for armor and weapons that begin in Black Mountains South and Camelot Hills. Be sure to take the time to talk to those living in the villages and castles as you go up in levels. Don't neglect to talk to the guards either. There is, in particular, a minstrel in Cotswald that you will want to talk to. Quests are constantly changing though, so there is no guide providing the particular quests you will want to do.
The Scout Guide is maintained by Oakleif
For the best viewing of this page, download these fonts and copy them to C:\Windows\Fonts.
Graphics courtesy of Celtic Web Art
This page was last updated on November 12, 2001.
