Help, I can't be a stealth archer in 'Elder Scrolls: Blades'

I've been playing Elder Scrolls: Blades for a little under a week and have had a fantastic time with the surprisingly robust mobile title, but now that early access is open to the public there's one little thing I feel OK whining about.

I can't be a stealth archer. Ergo, I'm kind of screwed.

For context, the only Elder Scrolls game I played before Blades is Skyrim, which is one of my all-time favorite RPGs. I've created dozens of new characters in Skyrim, from hardy Nords to scaly Argonians, and every time I've had grand ideas about who and what this character is going to be.

This Imperial comes from a long line of fighters, I'd think as I tweaked my character's face tattoos and nose shape, and she's going to be a brave, stalwart solider in the Imperial Legion. Nothing can stand between her sword and a united Tamriel.

Thirty minutes later, that same character was doing the exact same thing all the other ones did in my previous playthroughs: crouching behind a pillar shooting bandits with arrows until they died, because crowd control is hard and sneaking is fun.

Elder Scrolls: Blades looks incredible on my phone; its visuals are so impressive that when I'm running through dungeons and walking around my player-built town I have flashbacks to Whiterun and Sunderstone Gorge. Unfortunately, those mental callbacks also trigger a "sneak hard, shoot harder" mentality that is completely useless in this game.

All of the combat in Elder Scrolls: Blades is melee-based. While there is an impressive assortment of weapons and spells, bows just aren't a thing in this sector of Tamriel. When I turn a corner in a dungeon and see two goblins hanging out in the next room, I have to fight the Elder Scrolls instincts that tell me to wait until one turns his back to snipe down the other and instead barge in, Steel Hand Axe of Embers–a–blazin', and take them down face to face.

Consequently, I get my ass kicked a lot.

It's not that I'm bad at Blades combat, it's just that once the first 10 levels of easy pickings went by I actually had to attune myself to the mechanics of an Elder Scrolls game that necessitates multiple melee encounters in rapid succession. There's no automatic healing out of combat, no sneaking past enemies to pickpocket their potions, and none of the other workarounds I'm accustomed to using to get through games that look like this.

All in all, I really like Elder Scrolls: Blades. The timers on the loot chest system are annoying (I currently have a backlog of 25 silver chests and am devoting my weekend to opening them three hours at a time) and some in-game resources seem too artificially scarce, but it's a fun way to kill some time in a waiting room or on a subway platform.

But an arrow or two would be nice. I kind of miss aiming for the knees.