Question about archer and master archer skills

[Mattressi]

I'm new to Gothic 3 and I'm just wondering what the 'archer and 'master archer' skills do. I've seen everyone saying that an archer character should get them but I can't see a reason to. The descriptions are extremely vague and don't tell me what they do. I tried shooting a wolf with a fully drawn bow, noted its health and then reloaded the save. Then, I got the archer skill, shot the same wolf with a fully drawn bow and noted its health. I did this a few times (the damage dealt doesn't seem to be constant) and I couldn't notice any difference in damage dealt. I also tried looking up bow requirements (thinking that higher tier bows would require those skills) but couldn't find anything.

Does anyone happen to know exactly what these skills do? Also, is there somewhere that I can find information like this (like damage formulas)? I'm having a lot of trouble finding out random things about the game.

Oh, and I'm using the 1.74 community patch, in case that matters.

Thanks very much :)

Edit: Also, what are the "bonus" skills on some bows? Do they add a further bonus if you already have that skill? Or does the second best bow (Rune Bow) really just give you Master Archer if you don't have it and nothing if you already have it? If it doesn't stack, is there really any reason to get Master Archer if I just get a Rune Bow instead? (I have no idea how difficult it is to get a Rune Bow, lol)

[Lobedan]

The damage calculation of Gothic 3 is very complex. There aren't some easy rules but complex formulas. So it could be difficult to see some small differences between an attack with and without these skills.
Archer and Master Archer give you a damage bonus of 25. You can't get any of these bonuses more than one times. If you have a skill and one of your items gives that to you as bonus, you get only one bonus, not two.

Game Hunter doubles your damage against deer, boars, bison and rhinos.
Big Game Hunter doubles your damage against minecrawler, scavengers, wolfs, saberteeth, shadow runner, ripper, (swamp) lurker, (fire) lizards, snapper, alligator, blood fly, pig and cow.
Orc Hunter gives a damage bonus of 25 against orcs.

[Mattressi]

Awesome, thanks for all that - that's exactly what I wanted to know :)

[andorian22]

Improve projectile magic,a lot;) better than bows, which sux