There are so many choices. I am thinking of making a fighter/eldritch archer.

Lann is a zen archer. I'm getting some decent mileage out of his kit. For the sake of full disclosure, I will mention that I am only level 3, so I can't yet say how well he performs mid to late game.

I had an ranger with archetype flamethrower in kingmaker and it was super fun with a bow.

Also a hunter wound make a good archer I think. I started with a Bard cause I love Bards since Bards Tale 1 ;)

Then switched ingame to an knight since I wanted to try out the mounted fighting, but got tired of it and switched back to bard. I also play him with a bow.

If you have Lann with you then he is good also, I have him now on Level 10 and he is doing fine with the bow.

Give lann a good bow. In fact, give him the best bow. I have one that curses enemies on crits, and Lann crits all the time. He's a total champ. If we get any expansions where you can bring one companion, I'm taking Lann with me. Now I just need to get to mythic 3 so Ember can ignore fire resistance and immunities.
Otherwise, you can always try a dex fighter and build into bows, that's always a safe choice.

Same I gave him the Entrapping Longbow that entangles on crits. I just reached mythic level 1 and I had no idea what to get as his first mythic feat. I ended up getting Cleaving Shot its been awesome. Seelah draws all enemies toward her in a giant blob, Lann focuses on one kills it and pretty much all of them take damage. He has always been one of my most reliable damge dealers since I recruited him.

I never played a zen archer or any monk type at all before but I really love him.

A dedicated archer is quite similar to a generic melee character. You want a high dex character with a medium access to feats and high BAB. Fighter and Ranger both give you a set of feats that work well with archery, with Fighter being more generic. Ranger will give you more extra stuff and an animal companion, while Fighter will give you more direct damage via weapon specialization and related combat feats. Rogue adds further damage via sneak attacks which work great if you have a dedicated tank or controller for your targets. Hunter is a more mixed package with solid attack and support.

So, what do you want to do?
Dedicated flanking damage dealer with support from other characters - Fighter 12/Rogue 8
Generic ranged damage dealer with some support role - Ranger 20 or Hunter 20
Generic ranged solo attacker (useful for attacking the backline if you have no supporting characters) - Fighter 4 / Ranger 16


I would not recommend Fighter eldritch knight, mostly because you will be spread too thin on attributes (str + dex + int + con), or you'll be spread way too thin on feats (4 fighter + 6 wiz + 10 ek) to support your mixed archery and casting. You can do it no doubt, but you will have to give up some of the comforts that archers or casters normally benefit from.

The truth is that Zen Archer is the best archer class and through extension, Lann will be your best archer. The Zen Archer gets full BAB, Flurry of Blows as an upgrade over everyone else taking Rapid Shot, and it replaces your bow's innate damage for the monk's unarmed strike damage (scaling up to 2d10 per arrow before buffs). Here's a tip, Enlarge Person is usually bad for archers since it reduces their Dexterity and therefore their chance to hit. Lann uses his Wisdom to hit so there's almost no downside to casting it on him, especially since as of level 5 that'll make his bow (whether short or long) do 2d6 base damage.

Most people that resist the noob trap temptation to turn him into a caster discover Lann as one of their top damage dealers pretty early on. And he scales to remain at the top the whole game.

Wenduag, auto build is really good also

she is auto build warrior with bow really top dps to be fair.

She is a competent archer with the auto-build, but she lags drastically behind Lann for all the reasons I mentioned. Instead of a free attack at her highest BAB, she can take Rapid Shot and a -2 penalty to all attacks. Instead of OP arrows that scale with monk damage, she gets regular bow damage. Hell, the main draw of Fighter used to be they were the only ones who could take Weapon Specialization but they gave that to Zen Archer too.

I'd say Wenduag's main strength is that her base class is so lackluster, she's a prime candidate for multiclassing and experimenting, while Lann's class is so OP that any secondary classes you take are just going to hurt him in the long run.

Zen Archer has already been covered, that's really good for Lann.

I've been testing out a Deliverer Slayer that I'm finding to be really good. It comes online a little later than the Zen Archer; but as long as you play Lawful Good by level 10 you are getting +3D6 sneak attack and +2D6 alignment damage (if the target happens to be 2 or more alignment squares away from you: hence why Lawful Good is amazing, anything that isn't LN, LG or NG will be getting blasted).

On top of it you get studied target as a swift action at Level 7 which helps.

I'm not sure if I will go the full 20, some dip into Mutation Warrior might be really good; or this is possibly a good candidate for the Legend Mythic path.

I personally go for this build for Wendu:
5 Levels Fighter
15 levels Slayer (Vanguard)

Feats/Slayer talents

Two Weapon Fighting
Improved Two Weapon Fighting, Outflank
Weapon Focus (Throwing Axe)
Weapon Specialization (Throwing Axe)
Greater Two Weapon Fighting, Improved Critical (Throwing Axe)
Deadly Aim
Weapon Finesse, Slow Reactions
Accomplished Sneak Attacker, Crippling Strike
Critical Focus, Opportunist
Double Slice, Slippery Mind

Not saying it is best build or anything but just for "run her as autolevel up version" is far from what Lan can be in my opinnion. That Outflank for "everyone" is kind of nice touch and save other party members for taking that feat.

I'm no archery expert, but it seems like if you plan on fighting from the open then you will be sacrificing a lot of the advantages of being a ranger; +30 AS & instant hide. From what I've seen, archery is a pretty ridiculous attack form, so if you stick with it you'll probably still crush things either way. Like everyone else said though, set your strength to 100, Agility/Dexterity/Logic at 90, and swing a claim for your first 29 days to grind out those really boring levels.

If you get frustrated with the ranger though, maybe consider a monk. You get a massive amount of dodge, good redux & pseudo heavy armor eventually, and some good stat and dodge boost from Combat Maneuvers (I'm assuming you're not going to be buying silver & won't be able to afford enhances for a while), and a few nice spells to boot. All good stuff to keep you alive in the open.

Given that no one mentioned Monks yet, perhaps I'm missing something and they make rotten archers (checking the TPs it looks like 38PTP/43MTP sets you up decently with 2x CM, ranged, PT, dodge, perc/.5x spells, HP). Ambush is a bit expensive and would probably have to wait a while and Monks don't seem to have much to offer others in terms of buffing others aside from their focus spells, but if you're mostly looking to solo treasure hunt -- it seems like a Monk might fulfill most of your needs. At least on paper.

Mechanics-wise, you could roll a dwarf, join CoL, and be able to tap into all three of your resource pools (stam/mana/spirit), carry a good chunk of loot, mitigate some of your TD deficiency from robes, and also hit a 3 second RT with your bow pretty quickly.

Sort of makes me want to roll up an archer monk now. Good luck & welcome back!