Stealth ARCANE ARCHER Fighter Build in Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 8

Summary

In this video, Jay Dunna presents a build guide for an Arcane Archer fighter in Baldur's Gate 3, Patch 8. The build focuses on maximizing damage output while maintaining survivability through strategic use of stealth and advantageous positioning. By prioritizing dexterity and intelligence, and utilizing potent weapons and armor, this build ensures high critical hit rates and substantial attack advantages. Key elements include the use of different arcane arrows, strategic feat choices like sharpshooter, and leveraging gear boosts for damage output. The video concludes with a showcase of the build in action, demonstrating its effectiveness in taking down multiple targets quickly.

Highlights

• Use gear and strategic positioning to transform into a powerhouse Arcane Archer! 🏹
• The Arcane arrow options add versatility, whether it's blinding enemies with shadow arrows or blasting them with bursting arrows! 💥
• Achieving high critical hit rates with gear that reduces crit roll needs and adds extra damage bonuses! 🎲
• Sharpshooter is a must for those who dare to deal massive damage, even with a penalty! 📉
• The combination of War Cleric adds bonus action attacks, making your character a melee and ranged powerhouse! ⚔️

Key Takeaways

• Embrace the stealthy power of the Arcane Archer, combining high dexterity and intelligence for devastating effects on the battlefield! 🎯
• Sharpshooter feat is a double-edged sword - embrace the penalty for unmatched damage boosts at lower levels! 🚀
• Clever use of darkness and positioning keeps you elusive and deadly, striking from the shadows with precision! 🌑
• Gear is crucial - prioritize items that enhance critical hits and damage bonuses to maximize lethality! 🗡️
• Mix and match your gear to fit your playstyle; whether it's extra fire damage or critical hit advantage, customize for maximum fun! 🔥

Overview

Jay Dunna takes us through an exciting Arcane Archer fighter build for Baldur's Gate 3, highlighting the strategic use of dexterity and intelligence to maximize damage output while maintaining survivability. This guide is all about hitting hard and fast with precise shots, employing the stealthy nature of the Arcane Archer to strike from the shadows. With an emphasis on dexterity and intelligence, you're set to unleash powerful arcane arrows with high accuracy and increased critical hit chances.

The build is meticulously crafted to use feats like sharpshooter to turn the Arcane Archer into a monstrous damage dealer early in the game. By leveraging action surges and extra attack opportunities, it ensures that you deliver one-hit wonders to your enemies. The instruction is clear on choosing gear pieces that amplify critical hits and enhance damage, ensuring that every shot counts, with added bonuses from items like the Titan string bow and the Knife of the Undermount King.

Towards the end, Jay showcases the build's capabilities in real-time, illustrating how effective the Arcane Archer becomes by employing clever positioning and strategic use of gear and abilities. From laying down patches of darkness for stealth attacks to maximizing damage with powerful melee and ranged capabilities, this guide inspires exciting gameplay for those wanting to dominate the battlefield as a stealthy powerhouse.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Overview In the introduction of the Arcane Archer Fighter build guide for Baldur's Gate 3, the speaker outlines how to construct a powerful character. The guide begins with selecting the fighter as the class and choosing the archery fighting style to enhance hit chance. This is beneficial when opting for the sharpshooter ability later. The speaker advises on ability scores, suggesting 16 dexterity while ignoring strength, although using a Titan string bow with strength potions can maximize damage. The focus is primarily on creating an effective build around these parameters.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Level 2: Action Surge In this chapter, the focus is on character attributes and optimizing them for better gameplay. The key attributes discussed are Dexterity (16), Constitution (14), Intelligence (16), with Wisdom and Charisma both being 10. These statistics affect the save DC for arcane arrows. An update from patch 8 significantly enhances gameplay by fixing the 'knife of the undermount king,' which now provides an advantage on bow attacks. The chapter also explores the potential of using Action Surge effectively at level 2.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Level 3: Arcane Archer Subclass and Cantrips In this chapter, the focus is on selecting the Arcane Archer subclass and cantrips at level three. The chapter advises players to choose their cantrips wisely, recommending 'guidance' as a beneficial option to have within a party while cautioning against selecting 'true strike.' The Arcane Archer subclass offers special arrow shots that are particularly effective in the early game. Notably, the 'shadow arrow' can blind targets, giving them a disadvantage on attack rolls and providing the archer with an advantage. Another effective attack mentioned is the 'piercing arrow,' which is useful if targets are aligned, allowing for a piercing shot through multiple enemies.
• 02:30 - 03:30: Level 4: Feat Choice - Sharpshooter or Dexterity Improvement In this chapter, the focus is on a key decision at level four in the game: whether to choose the 'Sharpshooter' feat or to improve Dexterity. The chapter discusses the benefits and drawbacks of each choice. The 'Sharpshooter' feat offers a significant advantage in damage output by adding +10 damage to attacks but imposes a -5 penalty on attack rolls. Alternatively, improving Dexterity enhances overall character agility and effectiveness in various actions, including attack rolls without incurring penalties. The chapter also briefly mentions additional options such as the 'bursting arrow,' which acts like a fireball with a large explosion, and the 'seeking arrow,' similar to a magic missile that automatically finds targets and can apply 'fairy fire,' granting advantage on attack rolls against the target.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Level 5: Extra Attack In this chapter, the focus is on reaching Level 5 in character progression, specifically highlighting the benefits and strategies around the "Extra Attack" feature. The discussion includes the pros and cons of prioritizing different upgrades, such as the immediate advantage of increasing a character's dexterity for better armor class and attack rolls versus the powerful option of the Sharpshooter feat, which allows for high damage output despite reducing attack accuracy. The chapter emphasizes the significance of the power spike at Level 5 due to the extra attack capability and touches upon choices available at Level 6, where the Sharpshooter feat can play a pivotal role by mitigating its attack roll penalty through the archery modifier and providing substantial additional damage.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Level 6: Feat Choice - Sharpshooter Feat and Magic Arrow In Chapter 6, the focus is on the new abilities and choices available to characters, specifically the Sharpshooter Feat and the Magic Arrow ability. The Sharpshooter Feat allows players to toggle off penalties from high ground rules, offering tactical advantages. Additionally, the Magic Arrow enables overcoming resistance to physical damage types, and if a magical ranged arrow attack misses, a bonus action allows attacking the next closest target. The chapter also introduces the Bursting Arrow for Arcane Shots, creating a fireball-like effect.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Level 8: Feat Choice - Dexterity Increase or Crossbow Expert In this chapter, the transcript discusses the choices available at level eight in a game. Players have the option to either increase their dexterity score to a maximum of 20 or choose the 'Crossbow Expert' feat. Increasing dexterity enhances overall agility, while 'Crossbow Expert' allows players using hand crossbows to avoid disadvantages in close-range attacks and inflict 'gaping wounds' for a longer duration. The chapter highlights the strategic advantages of each option and suggests that players can effectively utilize ballist armor when getting close to opponents.
• 06:00 - 06:30: Level 9: Indomitable In 'Level 9: Indomitable', the chapter discusses various strategic decisions for maximizing damage in a game scenario. It highlights the use of ballist armor that increases the vulnerability of targets to piercing damage, providing a damage boost. This boost doesn't apply to arrow attacks but to other ranged attacks or even dagger stabs. An important strategy involves improving ability scores, with the potential of raising dexterity to 20 for maximizing damage. The chapter also outlines that at level nine, players acquire the 'Indomitable' feature, allowing them to reroll failed saving throws. Additionally, the anticipation of gaining another arcane ability at level ten is mentioned.
• 06:30 - 07:30: Level 10: Additional Arcane Arrow This chapter discusses advanced techniques for using arcane arrows at level 10, focusing on the additional capabilities these arrows can provide. It explores the use of banishing arrows to send targets to another plane and charmed arrows that inflict half damage on opponents executing strength throws. It further details the effects of grasping arrows, which reduce movement speed and cause damage upon movement, akin to casting a booming blade. The recommendation is to select between the banishing arrow or the grasping arrow based on personal utility, with a personal note favoring the latter for its practical advantages in combat scenarios.
• 07:30 - 08:30: Level 11: Extra Attack and War Cleric Addition In Level 11: Extra Attack and War Cleric Addition, the characters receive an important power spike with the introduction of the Extra Attack ability. While there's an option to boost Dexterity to 20 by improving the ability score, incorporating the War Cleric class offers an appealing alternative. This addition allows for three bonus action attacks, enhancing combat capabilities. Additionally, gaining access to a choice of cantrip adds versatility, though the save DC won't be very high due to reliance on Wisdom for casting. Options include fun cantrips like Bursting Senue or Toll the Dead, making blade attacks more interesting.
• 08:30 - 10:30: Gear and Equipment This chapter focuses on gear and equipment choices in combat scenarios. The discussion highlights several options, like starting with orthury if anticipating combat, using spells like Crater or Create Destroy Water for strategic advantages, healing word for reviving downed allies, and Sanctuary for protection. It also mentions the benefits of the war cleric's extra attacks, allowing for multiple attacks per round. Overall, the chapter suggests considering the context and team composition when deciding on gear and equipment.
• 10:30 - 12:30: Combat Strategy and Gameplay Tips This chapter focuses on combat strategy and gameplay tips, particularly around enhancing critical hit damage. Key gear includes the Knife of the Under Mountain King, which reduces the roll needed for a critical hit. The chapter also discusses the use of Shadow Blade, which grants advantage on attack rolls against obscured targets and applies to bow attacks. Additionally, Domaris provides an extra seven damage on critical hits. Combined with the Ballist Armor, which offers 14 extra damage, these strategies quickly become powerful.
• 12:30 - 13:00: Conclusion and Call to Action The conclusion and call to action chapter summarizes strategies for optimizing weapon and armor combinations for maximizing damage output with a bow in a game. The focus is on increasing piercing damage and enhancing initiative for effective combat. The chapter reviews different glove options available throughout the game stages, such as the 'dark justice gauntlets' for mid-game and 'gloves of dexterity' or 'gloves of the balanced hand' for other stages. The primary advice centers on choosing equipment that amplifies piercing and fire damage to gain advantages in battle.

Stealth ARCANE ARCHER Fighter Build in Baldur's Gate 3 Patch 8 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hello everyone In this video I'll be showing you an arcane archer fighter build guide in Boulders Gate 3 Using some gear we can make this actually extremely powerful and I'll be showing you exactly how So we're starting off as the fighter and we're going to be taking the archery fighting style to give us ourselves a higher critical or a higher hit chance which is going to help out when we take sharpshooter later on For ability scores we're going 16 dexterity We're going to dump strength If you really want to you can use a Titan string bow alongside strength potions for maximum amounts of damage but we're mainly going to be built around
• 00:30 - 01:00 dexterity here with 14 constitution and 16 intelligent as this is the the save DC for the uh arcane arrows that we get Um it doesn't really state that very well but that is what we're going to be using So 16 decks 14 constitution 16 intelligence 10 wisdom and charisma So we'll roll with that there This is actually very powerful and I'll show you guys how to make this extremely strong with the newly powerful uh knife of the undermount king which has been fixed in patch 8 and now works properly which will give us advantage on our bow attacks So at level two action surge you
• 01:00 - 01:30 know the deal an extra action to blast away with your arrows Now at level three we get to choose the arcane archer subclass We also get a choice of cantrip guidance is kind of nice to have but someone should should have it in your party late or don't ever take true strike Now for our arcane arrow shots there's some really good ones early game These are actually pretty effective in the early game Uh shadow arrow makes the target blinded which gives disadvantage on attack rolls and you get advantage on your attack rolls This can be very very effective Uh piercing arrow is also quite nice If you have arrows or targets lined up you can do a piercing arrow
• 01:30 - 02:00 through all of them And in addition to this I also like to go with the either bursting arrow It's kind of like a fireball with a large explosion or the seeking arrow which is like magic missile It'll find targets So sometimes you just can't hit a target Sometimes you can hit it with the seeking arrow So this is a good one to have It can also potentially apply fairy fire which will give you advantage on your attack roles against the target At level four we get to choose a feat Now we could go with the ability score improvement to take up our dexterity There's also the option of just going with sharpshooter This will give you a minus five penalty attack rolls but plus 10 damage which at level
• 02:00 - 02:30 four is substantial That's going to let you one-shot a lot of enemies Um but you can also wait to take it and go with a dexterity improvement for better armor class and uh attack rolls with your bow It's entirely up to you Sharpshooter will make you very strong though Level five extra attack Enough said It's a nice power spike At level six we get ourselves another uh choice in feat And at this point you could go with the sharpshooter feed The minus five to attack rolls is offset by the archery So it's like a minus three And then uh this will deal additional 10 damage which is
• 02:30 - 03:00 actually crazy If your hood chance is really low you can toggle this off But we also don't get penalties from high ground rules either So that's pretty pretty nice Um we also get the magic arrow which will overcome resistance to u physical damage types And whenever you miss an attack with your magical range arrow you can use a bonus action to attack the next closest target with the same attack Very cool So if you miss you can hit somebody else Arcane shots We'll be going with the bursting arrow now which will create a kind of fireball like attack Now the
• 03:00 - 03:30 arrows are very powerful early game They do scale down in terms of their effectiveness but they're still plenty strong So at level eight we get to choose another fee tier So we can go with a either dexterity increase to take it up to 20 there Now there's also another thing we can go with So crossbow expert If we're using hand crossbows whenever we do um our melee attacks or whenever we do close-range attacks we don't have disadvantage and we'd apply gaping wounds for twice as long This is an interesting way uh because we can get in close use the ballist armor in late
• 03:30 - 04:00 game The ballist armor makes targets vulnerable to piercing damage that plus 10 damage that we got then turns into a plus 20 And uh this doesn't actually apply properly to the uh arrow attacks but it'll apply to your ranged attacks You can also just stab with a dagger That's another choice Uh but an ability score improvement to take up to dexterity to 20 also works nice This is for maximum damage which I'll show off but you could obviously just go with the increase of dexterity Level nine we get indominal reroll our saving throws that we fail Level 10 gives us another arcane
• 04:00 - 04:30 arrow and another choice in one Um banishing arrow can be kind of nice to take out a target to another plane of existence Uh charmed arrows Okay Uh same with infeeblement It makes the target do half damage from strength uh throws This is okay though So this reduces movement speed and it makes them take damage when they move It's almost like a booming blade for your bow Um so go with either the banishing arrow or the grasping arrow Whichever one of these you find more useful I found personally the extra
• 04:30 - 05:00 damage is nice Level 11 we get the extra attack That's always a good uh good power spike Now we could go with an ability score improvement to take up our dexterity to 20 However we can also go ahead with adding in the war cleric for bonus action attacks With the the war cleric this gives us three bonus action attacks which is actually pretty nice We also get a choice of cantrip So you can get some fun ones like bursting senue uh told the dead You're not going to have a high save DC on these because you using wisdom for a casting So even like blade
• 05:00 - 05:30 ward could be okay if you know you're getting into combat You can start off with that orthury It's really your choice there Nothing super spectacular that we want to have Crater destroy water is also nice because you can set up for any casters that you may have on your team or you can just use healing word if you got a downed ally This is going to be kind of like a uh way to pick them up Sanctuary is also not bad but we're going to be attacking a lot So it's it's really just those choices there that you can go with The war cleric extra attacks are really nice the three bonus action attacks making us be able to attack normally four times So
• 05:30 - 06:00 the war priest extra charges there Now for our gear we're going all about the critical hit damage So with this we got the knife of the under mountain king number you need to roll to hit a critical hits reduced by one And we also get shadow blade which shadow blade applies to our bow attacks too So we have advantage on attack rolls against lightly or heavily obscure targets while using this blade Also the domaris here which will give us additional seven damage when we hit a critically hit And uh with the ballist armor that's 14 extra damage Uh so yeah that becomes really strong really quickly This also
• 06:00 - 06:30 applies to our bow attack So both these weapons will buff up our bow Now we're going to want to have the ballist armor equipped because this is going to give us the uh vulner give enemies vulnerability to piercing damage They take double piercing damage and a plus two to initiative We can also go with a few different gloves Um like mid game the dark justice is sier gauntlets are great Early game if you want to just dump dexterity and take the gloves dexterity that can work well LS gloves will give us fire damage under attacks that's probably going to be the best choice Or gloves of the balance hand When we do our offh hand attack we can add our
• 06:30 - 07:00 ability modifier to the damage of the attack rolls there So that can also be quite nice Um so you can go with whichever one of these that here that you prefer And um I I personally think best damage is going to be the held gloves So we're going to roll with that But the crater flesh gloves is nice too cuz we get additional force damage when we hit criticals which we want to hit because we're going to use the shade slayer cloak here which increase critical hit chance by one Cloak protection is always a good choice So we'll put our armor class at 21 Uh we have a lower armor class here as a fighter but we're a damage powerhouse We got 147
• 07:00 - 07:30 health with the amate greater health Uh go with the killer sweetheart here for that free crit because the extra damage that we get on critical hits is actually monumental ring of protection for better armor class but we can also go with like the ring of free action to give ourselves the ability to not get slowed down by difficult terrain So we can move around quite freely which is something we want cuz we're about positioning Now I'm also using Titan string bow because this will give us the uh extra strength damage on our bow attacks However since we're going to be using um the crossbow expert feat I'm going to go with these two here So the
• 07:30 - 08:00 fire stoer and the hellfire hand crossbow This will give us extra damage when we're hiding or invisible which if you got that the death Soccer mantle actually works very well for these as well So if you want a higher crit chance slade slayer cloak this gives you a plus 5% critical hit chance But with these items together we actually become very powerful Alternatively another helmet that we could go with is actually the Steel Watcher helmet Uh this is a media armor but we can't be blinded And this gives advantage of constitution same throw Not a big deal but the can't be blinded is actually massive because then
• 08:00 - 08:30 we can use arrows of darkness and hide out in them And that just gives us a lot of extra damage and mobility just a lot of overall usefulness from taking something like that So what we could do is literally have one of our u one of our characters here go ahead with an arrow of darkness to set up darkness for us So just like this we'll do an arrow of darkness to create a patch of darkness And then what we can do is we can have our own character go and hide out in it So this gives us some useful survivability as we're kind of a stealthy archer We uh have a lot of
• 08:30 - 09:00 tools at our disposal So being able to see in the in the darkness is really nice cuz then you can just go into here We'll get advantage on our attacks cuz this heavily obscured target You can see there we got advantage and then we can literally just do crossbow attacks Um I would recommend turning off your dual wielding so that you don't do the bonus action attacks Um that's it's you got options of what you want to do but we also got like piercing arrow here which can hit a lot of targets if we line this up correctly So piercing arrows are really strong Um you can see that there
• 09:00 - 09:30 We're going to hit four targets with that So it actually hit really really powerfully and that was good Good We add the additional damage riders onto our attacks and then we can also do just a melee attack Although our crossbow attacks do more damage so it's better for us to do a crossbow attack That'll take him out no problem Exactly And we're free to camp out We also now have uh with a handfire hell crossbow Anytime we do a normal weapon attack we'll invisible We're going to add in additional um we're going to burn the target and then we can hit them with the offhand attack and then they'll also get
• 09:30 - 10:00 extra damage taking So that can be a really nice way to just spice up overall damage But uh we do have a lot of different arrows here Like we do a bursting arrow which has a very large area of effect So we can go ahead with that Blasting away with it We rolled a critically critical hit Perfect And that did the extra damage on the target and applied force damage to everyone around it and actually took out one of the targets that we want to remove Uh so then we can follow up with since there's not really a use for doing a a seeking arrow or anything else we could just do a normal range weapon attack We can also
• 10:00 - 10:30 if we see a target with a lot of health we can apply the um this attack here which will Oh I should probably not do that We took them out That's fine We're using the uh grasping arrow can actually create like a bit of a difficulty for them to move So that's really nice I'm going to use it on that target over there So I'm not going to react We'll apply the grasping arrow so they'll take damage next time that they move And then we have an offhand attack or we used we could use our war priest charge as well to do another type of attack Um with this also we got action surge So you
• 10:30 - 11:00 always want to be bursting down It's an action economy The more targets you can remove the better So we'll move into close range of this target Now they have the aura of murder So we can go ahead with our bow attack there And uh this should hopefully do enough damage to take them out Oh it it did 40 Yeah You can see there sharpshooter becomes deadly with this So then we can go ahead and take out this target here That'll definitely do enough to remove them Yeah this you can see is actually pretty overpowered And then there's targets back here We don't have enough movement speed to be able to hit them But um yeah
• 11:00 - 11:30 we don't have enough movement speed unfortunately But we could hit this target again So we may as well just do that for the extra damage that it'll give off And then um that removed them That's perfect So I don't think we could hit this target here with our bonus But you can see there we deleted so many targets It's actually crazy Ideally we move back into the darkness and be fine but uh we don't have anything else we can do So what we can do is add divine favor or shield of faith here just to give ourselves some extra I guess Um this is a concentration but this will
• 11:30 - 12:00 give us extra radiant damage or attacks May as well take it So this is perfect We're invisible now We have a target running right up on us So what we can do is we can jump out of this and attack them with our hand crossbow there Get ourselves a little extra damage I wasn't in close enough range to give them the vulnerability of piercing damage So now we'll take them out with that Perfect 60 damage That's crazy for a single arrow And Minsk is in the way of me doing a bursting arrow So I guess I can always just move him out of the way And uh I
• 12:00 - 12:30 guess that's not ideal But we'll do the opportunity attack any or yeah we'll get him out of the way so that I can use a proper attack and do something like a u bursting arrow or something along the lines of that Uh the seeking arrow is nice but we also have like the um the piercing arrow as option too So this won't hit any of our teammates so that's the perfect decision to go with for right now 22 damage Not a whole lot but we can also just get in close and then go with another option like the um I guess we'll go to the side of them and
• 12:30 - 13:00 do a piercing arrow through both of them there to hopefully take out both in one shot Booyah That almost took out that other one there That was actually a good amount of damage And then the final one we'll just blast them right there 40 damage Yeah as you can see it actually hits very hard So that's the Arcane Archer in Balders's Gate 3 Uh very fun subass If you got any questions or comments leave them in the comments below And I'll see you all in the next video Hit the subscribe if you enjoyed Have yourself a great day