Archers, gather around! There’s a massive adventure awaiting for you in the lands of Bow Land, the latest mobile romp available both on Android and iOS-powered devices. Fight and explore, crush mini and maxi bosses, build up your character and have a lot of fun in this unique, amazing game!
Learn how to play Bow Land with our Bow Land tips, cheats and guide. We’ll take you through all the basics, include some more advanced tips and mix them all with some personal recommendations based on my own experience playing the game, so that you can become a better archer and complete all stages. You’ll see that these are some tips and tricks you don’t want to miss!
1. Hold onto your gems to unlock better heroes
If you are a f2p player and you don’t want or can’t spend real money to buy gems, you won’t have an easy road ahead of you when it comes to unlocking new characters. Each costs a lot of money so your best bet is saving enough to unlock the best you can afford under the circumstances.
It is up for you to decide how much you’re willing to wait until you get one of the better characters, but the truth is that the starting one, Robin, is pretty good since she’s focused on survivability.
But to help you decide which are the best characters in Bow Land, I am ranking them below from best to worst so that you know exactly what to expect from them. Remember that some characters, like Bonny are good in particular situations only. He makes minions “bleed” money when you hit them so you get fortunes easily, but as a downside, you will not get any damage boosts or anything else, meaning that beating new stages will be a bit more difficult.
These are the best heroes, from top to worst:
- Xavi – every 4th shot in a row does double damage
- Stella – protected by 5 orbiting stars that explode when they hit enemies
- Robin – the starting Hero, gains a 20% heal boost
- Bonny – becomes much more useful if you need to collect money, but otherwise not that great in battle
- Orius – Charges staff with energy to blast nearby enemies
2. Complete those challenges!
Did you know that there is more than the regular story/campaign to play through? It took me a long time to realize that there’s also a thing called “Challenge” in the game. In order to activate it, you have to tap the button to the left of “Select World” on the main screen.
Challenges are more difficult stages that you can tackle at any given time. They reward you nicely for trying them and the farther you go, the higher the rewards. Prepare for a real challenge, though and don’t focus on these early on when you haven’t upgraded your starting Hero too much because it will be too difficult.
But once you have your Hero amped up a little, with some nice items equipped, try it a few times and see how far you can go. You will earn massive, extremely useful rewards in the process!
3. Explore each stage entirely
No matter if you play the campaign or a Challenge mission, make sure that you explore all areas before you move to a new stage. This means going through all the shrubs and mushrooms that you can find – they will sometimes hold valuable items, like healing hearts or coins.
In some stages, you will also have multiple routes to follow. You can find them if you explore everything and usually the “hidden” route gives you some sort of an advantage in the next stage. I wasn’t able to find alternative routes in all missions, so don’t obsess over finding them in each and every world.
4. Use the existing decor as cover
Things will start getting extremely crowded as you go up the stages, with more and more enemies filling the screen with lots of projectiles and chaos. But you can avoid some of all that trouble by using existing decor as cover to catch your breath and prepare your next move.
The best for the job are large rocks scattered around the area, or trees or whatever elements there are in your stage, but you can use anything as long as it doesn’t let the enemy’s projectiles pass. You won’t always have the luxury of existing decor to take advantage of, but make sure that whenever you have it, you hide behind it!
5. What level-up skills to pick as Bow Land rewards?
Every time you level up during your adventure, you will be able to choose one skill out of three that are randomly offered for that particular level. Being able to choose the best and most useful for your current situation can make the difference between an easy win and a loss.
Generally, you should focus on improving your damage and weapon proficiency in the early stages and only upgrade your health or get other sorts of boosts when and if needed.
So far, I can say that I definitely prefer to get the ricochet skill whenever I have it, as it is extremely useful since this way, your shots bounce to one or more enemies, depending on how many you have picked up.
The same goes with the attack speed booster and attack damage increase: these are always good to have. I prefer the straight shot multiplier instead of the one that splits your projectiles as I found the latter more difficult to use in battle. I’m all about focusing damage in a specific direction to easily take out enemies.
In the end, it will all depend on the choices that you have each time you level up. Sometimes, you will have to pick the best from the worst options possible, but generally there will be an easy win in all cases. Just test them all out below and see which suits your play style like a glove. Or use my recommended ones above, as they are tested and work well!
6. Always get the damage boost before the boss fight
Now, I am as much upset by ads as every other mobile gamer out there, but in the case of Bow Land, the truth is that this particular boost is extremely useful.
Every time before starting the final boss fight, you will meet the fairy which will offer a 35% increase in damage if you pay here 20 (or is it 30?) gems or if you watch a video ad. In my opinion, the latter is the better choice even if you are a premium player spending real money in the game. Also make it a habit to choose it every time you play a new stage because it will help a lot!
7. Keep the distance and learn attack patterns of enemies
Staying away from enemies makes it a lot easier to dodge their incoming attacks. This means that you always have to be on the move, because they will constantly move as well. Since you are a specialized archer, keeping the distance means getting the upper hand in battle.
All opponents that you will meet in the game, including minibosses and final stage bosses, will follow some pre-defined attack patterns that are easy to learn. In most cases, you won’t even have to learn these as you will have red markers announcing where and how they will attack.
Do put this information to good use! This means that you should move away from incoming attacks and dodge incoming projectiles. As you will see for yourself, a hit will generally cause a lot of damage and you can’t afford to be hit too often. Instead, keep the distance and know your enemies and how they attack in order to get the upper hand in battle.
8. What mod to get from the wizard?
Each weapon that you can equip in the game has various mods that are unique to that particular weapon. You will use just one, which will be rewarded by the wizard each time you start a new adventure.
Some are better than others, so you should spend some time experimenting to see which works best for you. In the case of your starting weapon, the Crossbow, I consider the Ice Arrows to be the best choice out of them all as they can freeze opponents, giving you a massive advantage.
Next would be the fire and poison darts (basically doing the same thing – damage over time) and lightning bolts. I am not a big fan of the heavy arrows and spear thrower so I always try to pick anything else if either is being offered. I never got the unwanted chance to be forced to choose from the two, but if I had to make a choice, I’d go with Heavy Arrows.
9. Make your game run faster by changing graphics settings
If your game is sluggish and it’s difficult to dodge incoming projectiles because of that, you can speed it up significantly by changing the quality of the graphics from the game’s settings.
You can access these from the main adventure menu by clicking the cogwheel in the corner of the screen. From there, switch the graphics quality from High to Low. The game won’t look as good, but not bad either, but most importantly, it will provide a much smoother experience.
10. Capture the treasure goblin!
Every now and then, during your adventures, you will stumble upon the treasure goblin, which is a special type of minion. It won’t attack you, on the contrary: it will run away from you and if you don’t destroy it sooner rather than later, it will escape.
Whenever the goblin appears, I recommend ignoring all other enemies and focusing on taking it out as fast as possible. He holds massive treasures and it would be a shame to let them go to waste by not destroying an otherwise easy to kill opponent.
11. Invest money in Perks
In the main screen, if you tap the Blue Shield icon, you are taken to your Perks screen. In order to level them up, you have to spend regular coins and each new upgrade costs more than the previous one.
While the game itself doesn’t make it clear regarding the actual boost that you get from each new Perk level, you are told what each one does, like higher attack, more HP, better attack speed and so on.
I prefer to invest in the Perks every now and then, when I have extra money on hand and no equipment bits to level up instead. The main reason why I don’t focus on Perks too much and I don’t recommend you to do it either, especially early on, is that they are rewarded randomly and you don’t really know how much of an effect they have.
With equipment, you choose what to upgrade and you know before doing it what the effects of such an upgrade will be. So prioritize these, but don’t forget about perks because they add up in the long run and are permanent boosts, as opposed to the equipment which you might be forced to change when you find rarer items along the way.
12. Get the height advantage when possible
In some special but oh, so nice moments, you will get the chance to climb on a hill or anything similar during a stage. Whenever that option is available, take advantage of it and go up high. Something like this:
You will be able to shoot most enemies from your higher grounds, with most of them unable to strike back. Pure gold but have in mind that your opponents can get up there as well. If that is the case, make it your priority to take them out first.
13. Watch ads for various rewards
We already discussed about the fairy before each final boss, but you should know that there are other opportunities that you have to watch ads – you can take them or leave them, that’s all up for you to decide.
But if you meet a villager carrying a backpack during your adventures, he will have some nice bits of equipment to trade for watching an ad. Depending on what they offer, it might be worth your time!
Also, you can usually watch an ad after being killed in battle to return with full health and carry on. This is usually useful if you’re in the final stages of an adventure, maybe during a boss fight, as it will give you the final push you need to win.
14. Select the best weapon for the job
Although I grew fond of the starting crossbow, mainly because I used it almost exclusively during my adventures, you should know that there other weapons in the game as well. Their rarity is usually an indicator of how good they are – the rarer, the better.
For example, I unlocked the spell book as my second weapon and I found it less useful than the crossbow since it dealt less damage and had less powerful mods and skills when leveling up.
Keep this in mind and only spend money on upgrading weapons that you are going to use, otherwise it’s a waste of resources.
Put these tips and tricks to good use and become a better archer in the game, have more fun and blast away more enemies! You know have all the knowledge you need to get this going.