Full Immersion [for what it's worth]

I say we agree and ask for a target range for practice. See if you can combine arrow types.

Getting in some practice might be a good idea.

>Explain that you have some sort of amnesia, and ask for further clarification on the dangers of a dragon and what you would be asked to do. Be the roleplayer!

> Practice

> Ask if you're Dovahkiin.
> Accept the quest, but ask if you can get in a bit of practice first.
> If you can, practice increasing the speed at which you can pull your bow back and accurately fire an arrow. This is more a matter of your personal skill than stats (Though it might help improve your Dex). Try to double the speed at which you can fire arrows. This is very critical to making good use of your time arrows!

Well, he could always use mongolian style archery techniques: nocking the arrow on the right side and angling the bow to the left to compensate if he's right handed, and the reverse of that if he's left handed. And yeah, he should probably practice with his bow. If for no other reason, just because no matter how good you are with a bow the first time you use it you will not be accurate. Unless you have a bow with sights on it, you are basically shooting off a reference point. The first time you shoot a bow you do not have a reference point, because each bow throws an arrow differently. Plus you have to learn how the arrows drop at a distance, because it's a ballistic arc and not a straight line, and that requires other points of reference for each milestone of distance.

You might be starting to see why we switched over to firearms, even when they were still much less accurate than bows. When the saying "To make a good archer start with his grandfather" is a thing, you generally want to switch to a much easier platform to teach.

"Well, I think I'm willing to help, but I've never personally seen a dragon myself. On a scale of one to screwed, how bad is this?"
"Well..intel suggests this particular dragon is on the latter side of your scale. Not all dragons are hostile, and not all are powerful, but this one is known to be both. He was put to sleep a long time ago, and it's unclear what woke him up now. But we aren't asking you to do anything crazy here, just some support fire."
"And..how long is it until this thing gets here?"
"About an hour, give or take. Long enough for us to mobilize, but too short for any reinforcements to arrive."
"Okay, cool, I'll help then. Do you mind if I use one of your target ranges to warm up a bit, though?"
She nods. "There's one behind this tower. Someone will come get you when it's getting close."

Jin heads back down the tower and out to the target range. Apparently it consists of a row of trees with bulls-eyes painted on them at various heights. He steps a good ways off from one of the trees and draws his bow and an arrow, thinking of trying to hit that spot. His arms move almost automatically to notch the bow and fire it in an arc, and it doesn't land in the exact center, but it does get inside of the circle. He tries a couple more shots, with similar results.
"Hmm.." He does some mental calculation, draws the arrow back automatically but tries to adjust his trajectory a bit. The effort pays off with an arrow placed exactly where he wanted it. Then he looks up at one of the higher bulls-eyes on the same tree. After all, the dragon is likely to be flying up in the sky, right? He takes a much higher aim and lands an arrow just barely inside of the circle this time. With some more concentration on the next shot, he gets closer to the center, but not quite there. He draws another arrow, keeping his focus on exactly where he wants it to hit and how it'll get there.
He nearly drops the bow when someone clears their throat from next to him, but manages to recover, carefully pulling the arrow back out of the bow without firing it before turning to the source of the sound, who happens to be Janus, crossed arms and all. "You're overcompensating." He points to the upper couple of shots, which are both on the right end of the circle. "Left-handed, but your shots wound up on the right side."
"Uh, oh, yeah. Look at that." Link scratches his head a bit. "I guess I'm more used shooting things with less of a height difference."
"Why would that matter?"
"Well, I'm aiming higher, so I'm trying to be more careful with the whole shot, but then I overdo it."
"Hm. I think at your level, you're better off not thinking about it too much. I wish you could fly," adds the winged man, "you'd have no time to think too hard about your aim in the middle of a dive."


An hour is a long time to narrate this sort of thing. Who should we look in on instead, for the time being?

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SpoilerShow

Oh yeah, Elsword does the "achievement-title" thing too. Really should have remembered that. But somewhere in my conception of how this game works, in a way I can't quite articulate, I do think sudden SP bonuses for collectively having a certain number of achievements makes more sense than them individually behaving as stat-buffing titles. Eh..we'll see.

martialAcademic, I wasn't aware how much you lived up to your username till now. Your concerns are valid, I mean even for someone as ignorant as me it's obvious that it's harder to pick up a bow and start using it accurately than it is to grab a sword and start swinging it at things. However, the game's "passive weapon skills" generally incorporate all cognitive/muscle-memory needs for being able to use the weapon in question. The game also sort of "assumes" that your starting equipment is what you've been using for the last however-long-seems-reasonable, so there might be a need for adjustment for new equipment, but players are generally already decent with default equips. For example, we know how good Louis is with his starting weapon, but it's super light and doesn't seem to be all that great at dealing damage in a single strike. If Louis bought a heavier, more damaging sword that fits his class (i.e., has the same portal-cutting enchantment as his present one), he would take a little time to get used to its balance (less time the higher his passive swordsmanship skill is by then), and probably be a little clumsier during that time, but then he'd be back up to usual speed for the most part later.

All of that being said--there is benefit from practicing with one's weapon, especially around people who are better with it than one is.