Last Updated on by Samuel Franklin
Idleon Bowman Build Guide (Damage & Catching)
Create the strongest bowman possible with this bowman build guide to the advanced archer class that specialises in catching bugs and obtaining high levels of speed. While not possessing the potent raw damage output of their hunter counterpart initially the bowman is still an important contributor to your Legends of Idleon account and is unique that they can acquire damage by investing in speed talents that in time will allow them to outpace the hunter by a large margin.
Given their specialisation in the W2 catching skill they should also be your first advancement from the archer class for your account where you’ll use them to catch the various unique bugs that Legends of Idleon has to offer given they are an important ingredient for many crafts and alchemy upgrades. This also ties into the bowman being the only class that can obtain bonuses from the ‘Ol Reliable’ statues that boost catching should you invest in the associated talent.
In this build guide to the bowman class we’ll cover the common build path based on speed to maximise your afk and active gains with a foundation designed to be applicable to the majority of the player base given every Idleon player account and upgrades are different. Guides for all other classes and skills are available on our Idleon builds page.
Idleon Bowman Build – Damage Build Guide
All builds in Idleon have some slight variation based on your account wide bonuses and the bowman is no exception to this rule. In fact this is even more pronounced on the bowman given their primary build for both active and afk play relies on hitting key movement speed milestones for the SpeedNA talent build. Reaching this and exploiting the strength of this talent often requires careful balance across your talents, potions and statues for maximum efficiency.
When in doubt experimenting with different bowman build options within your own account is the best option given the ease of gaining talent reset potions. What this guide does offer though is a starting point for the majority of players and details of why certain skills are effective to utilise in creating your own build.
In choosing where to spend your talent points for a bowman build you’ll be basing it around the following skills:
- Homing Arrows and Magic Shortbow: Unlocking two new attack skills for your ranged fighter these will see the majority of your investment early after your bowman job advancement for the boost they provide to AFK gains. Levelling these up evenly is the way forward with level 30 a good initial objective before moving onto SpeedNA and returning to these attack talents after.
- Extendo Rangeo: Worthy of a single point investment as a way to acquire a little extra accuracy and range that means you can save some points invested into STR in your first archer talent tab or push a map slightly earlier than you might otherwise. Beyond a single point though will come significantly later as you want to start focusing on SpeedNA.
- SpeedNA: The core of your bowman damage and build with this skill boosting your damage based on your movement speed. For every 15% movement speed gained you’ll have your damage boosted based on the number of points invested although there are diminishing returns at play with this skill. At level 100 you’ll earn yourself a ~34% boost with only 50 skill points giving you the bulk of the benefit with a ~27% boost as an example. Early on you should make 115% your goal, then as you acquire more talent points aim for 130% and 145% (and beyond) with the assistance of account sources of movement speed (such as statues) and potions where possible. Otherwise reaching these milestones is centred around Featherweight (tab 1 talent) and Strafe (tab 2 talent) as core talents. The most efficient method to acquire your first 15% is 18 Featherweight points and 8 Strafe points as a starting point with very few talent points required to achieve. From that point onwards simply place points into Strafe as it is more efficient per point and does not have diminishing returns like Featherweight does. If you reach max (100) Strafe then you can place more points into Featherweight or if you have unlocked the talent library look to push SpeedNA and Strage talents over 100 instead.
- Shwifty Statues: Once again leaning into your speed theme investment in this talent will allow your speed statues to go further. The effectiveness of this talent is of course highly dependent on how much focus you have placed into farming these vital speed statues from monsters so consider your own account progress as the below talents may be better suited to your current progression.
- Velocity Vessels: As your access to talent points grow being able to increase your maximum Featherweight level provides a place to boost movement speed further although given you need to have decent levels in the Archer or Bust bubble, spend points on this talent and spend points on Featherweight it is a talent that only shines after some account progression.
- AGI Again: Given agility is not as potent as the raw speed boosting talents above it is a lower priority for the bowman damage but still an important contributor as your talent point pool grows. Keep in mind that this only increases the max level of Quickness Boots so don’t forget to spend points on this new maximum level.
- Previous Points: Utilising this skill as required to reach thresholds of movement speed for SpeedNA can be worth some talent points as it allows you to move your tab 3 talent points into tab 2 Strafe instead or other useful previous talents and using this will be highly account specific.
Idleon Bowman Build – Catching Build Guide
As a second preset build option the bowman can run a catching build to help you catch everything from fly in W2 to flycicle in W3 and beyond. While not a full Idleon catching guide the below setup will be sufficient to give you the necessary foundation to farm the bugs you need for gear progression and quests. Mechanically bug catching has similarities to the basic skilling talents of W1 like mining and woodcutting with your goal to maximise your efficiency to reach higher tier bugs. In addition to this build you’ll want to equip bug catching efficiency equipment.
While the bowman only has tab 3 skills that directly impact catching your tab 1 and tab 2 skills are still important and provide some small boosts. These beginner and archer tabs should be invested in as follows on your catching build preset to maximise your catching efficiency if you find yourself maxed on all of these talents then you can place any leftovers in smithing talents.
Tab 1 build talents: Elusive Efficiency > Quickness Boots > Broken Time > Lucky Clover
Tab 2 build talents: Sanic Speed > Garb Of Un’AGI’ing Quality > Focused Soul
With the above in place it’s time to build the core of the catching build using your bowman talents as follows:
- Sunset On The Hives: Boosting your AFK catching gains this is an obvious first choice to help you acquire your first few bugs easily to reinvest into a better catching net and larger bug capacity bag. Like similar skills on other classes beyond level 50 you’ll see a serious drop off in benefit so I recommend starting with 50 and then going to 100 after you’ve maxed Teleki’net’ic Logs and Briar Patch Runner following the order below.
- Teleki’net’ic Logs: Boosted by oak logs which are the easiest chopping resource to acquire this is likely to offer you a bigger gain that Briar Patch Runner which relies on agility and should be maxed next. Getting your mage to farm oak logs up to 10k, 100k or even 1 million can be a worthwhile investment when you max this skill for a large boost to catching.
- Briar Patch Runner: With all the agility you’ll likely have at this point of your progression through talents and other means (like alchemy) it’s time to turn that into catching benefits by maxing this skill which has no diminishing returns per point spent.
- Bug Enthusiast: if you need experience in catching to push higher equipment or to earn more talent points you can look to invest in bug enthusiast at this point. If experience isn’t valuable to your Bowman right now though then consider skipping this entirely and using those talent points on other options to increase bug gains.
- Shwifty Statues / Previous Points / AGI Again: Any remaining points for your catching build can be invested here based on whichever of these is going to give you the best agility or catching gain for your specific account setup and progress. If you have a healthy amount of statues it’s likely to be Shwifty Statues otherwise opt for the agility options instead.
