How to ranger

Part 3 - Where the blasphemy is consummated

Congratulations, the hard part is over.

Wait, what?

Yeah! You've done it! It's all clear sailing from here. I know we've had some adventures, and it took a goddamn while, but you finally managed to roll up a character with a cool sdesc, a less cool name (that you'll never actually use in play, as you'll immediately assume a much cooler nom du guerre as an alias), and most importantly, some bitching stats. I know it was a rough road. There was that one character you poured your heart and soul into a beautiful background and description for, who ended up with below average in everything. It was hard to 'accidentally' walk him off the shield wall.

There were a couple disasters as well, and there was that hideous awkward waiting time of pretending to not be trying to suicide, while very much intending to suicide. There was that time you rolled a shitty character, and then died a legitimate death without expecting it, and were incredibly grateful.

Now, the character you're playing is probably not the best background you ever wrote, or the best description. He might even have been a joke character, thinking that you'd tempt fate by giving you great stats on something weird, like apping a female character for the first time. But it doesn't matter if the AI gods strike while you're apping Bertha the Six-Titted Lass, a notoriously filthy cocksucker. You're just grateful for the stats. 

From here on, it's just a matter of willpower. So I'll be providing a couple off-ramps, since I know that not all men are created equal.

I didn't suicide, and I don't care about my stats

Then this guide isn't for you. Go ask on the GDB, where people actually fall for that masturbatory mantra. This guide isn't going to help you become a better solo emoter.

Because let me tell you: Building a twink ranger carries with it a considerable investment in time and energy, and you're only going to be relentlessly unhappy and disappointed, if 30 days in you start feeling weird about having an above average strength or 99 HPs.

If such things truly don't matter to you, I'll give you a moment to close the page and move on with your life. You don't need a guide. Just find a clan, find some friends, and be yourself. You might not be the best, or the strongest, or the most useful to have around, but you'll have a fulfilling time being someone's lover, sidekick, burden or comic relief. Or a corpse. But in the end, all that matters is the journey, right? And if you're really pitiful, you'll probably end up with karma for a whiran or mindbender or something, and then people will REALLY like you.

....


...

All right. If you're still reading, we can get down to brass tacks.

Brass tacks

I'm going to assume you started in Luirs. You get the carru boots, a little extra spending money, and start reasonably close to the grasslands without Utep's cock tattooed on your face. The only reason to start in the south is easier access to a war beetle, but you don't even want a mount right now.

A mount will only hold you back, and maybe even get you killed. If you're hellbent on doing the Red Storm/tailor thing, then be my guest. You're meta enough to know the risks.

Your first order of business is to sell most of your clothes, excepting your carru boots, and pick up just enough gear in the Luir's marketplace to not look like an obvious newbie. I like the little flint kit that goes around the neck, and a nice cloak. Don't worry about armor. You don't need it. If anything, you want to be hurt. Don't worry about weapons. Just get a couple shitty weapons. I suggest something piercing, and a chopper or bludgeon to start. Piercing and bludgeoning are the best to skill up first, as they're the most common weapons used against you. But slashing and choppers will probably be what you end up using 'full time'. 

Because of this, I'm not going to give elaborate advice on your choice of weapon. You need to get all of them to advanced or master. But I personally, liked spears for speed and penetration, and swords for the slight added parry boost.  I was never a fan of clubs and axes owing to the parry/defense malus and lack of warrior parry/shield. But I still got them as high as I could. PvP is all about saltworm tooth knives laced with peraine.

There's another thread on this forum which goes into people's opinions of the best available store-bought items. It's invaluable.

Once you've done all this, don't look like a newbie, and have at least ~500 sids remaining...You'll be ready to move on to Phase One.

A possibility, at this stage, is to buy a Luir's erdlu. Solely for working your riding, and getting you to Tuluk. Once you get to Tuluk, it'll need to be stabled and only taken out for practicing riding, but the stabling fees might be too much. I simply wouldn't bother, because of all things, riding is the easiest to raise by far, and charge isn't far behind. 

Make sure you get a sling, no matter what.

Phase One

Familiarize yourself with the excel map ahead of time. You don't want the first character you got with decent stats to die to something completely stupid. Assume what you see on there is common knowledge. It is to those who might want to hurt you. There's not a single high karma player who hasn't made extensive use of it.

You'll be on foot, but it won't matter too much. It'll be a tiny bit dangerous, owing to the possibility of carru and gortoks. But you should be able to move out of a room before they even attack, and just run run run. While you're travelling to Tuluk, use the hunt, listen and scan commands a lot. Hunt will go easy, but I'm not gonna lie: Listen and scan will be a bitch and a half. They changed listen and scan, years ago, to make it much more difficult to train up. You will also be living off the land. 

I'll address the skills you are primarily concerned with in this phase:

Forage up stones to use as ammunition for your sling. Shoot stuff with the sling a few times (around ~5-10 times), then move in and fight it. Slings work off archery, which will eventually branch throw and fletchery.

Skin everything you kill.  Skinning will branch tanning.

Practice barrier, raising and lowering it. Do this all the time. Contact will eventually get up there on its own accord. Especially if you ever join a clan (more on that later). Someday, in a surprisingly long while, you will branch expel.

You need to be scanning, looking around and listening constantly. It's a super pain in the pass. And it's the one viable reason for maybe starting in Red Storm, for all the hiding people there. But you SHOULD be able to get scan up from looking around the north road, where critters are often hiding, and listen from standing outside pubs or near chattering NPCs. But there's no question that these skills are a massive pain in the ass to increase. Much more so than they used to be. But at least it's still one failure per raise. In the old days, scan and listen could get maxed out in like 2 days.

Scan will branch hiding and blindfighting. Listen branches sneak. 


You want to forage incessantly. Forage for rocks, forage for roots. Eat the roots, use the rocks for ammo, or the other way around if you like. You'll find tubers with water in them. But might be better off hugging the far northern cliff face and following it east until you find water. Watch out for bahamet. Hunt constantly. It branches climb, poisoning and brew.

Combat

This is easy enough. You've got your two chosen weapons. A piercing and a bludgeoning, one in each hand, perhaps. Once you've gotten ~20 misses with the one, switch to the other. This'll probably be quite easy to start. Your main prey will be verrin hawks. Fortunately, they're plentiful. Avoid cilops for now, as they can poison you. Even if you wanted to go two-handed, you couldn't. Parry branches off dual wield, and it takes a very high dual wield to get there.

Phase One Advice

Whatever you do, don't make friends. A ranger's first few days of play time can be extremely busy. If you want to hit each of these once an hour, you'll be in a state of constant motion. You might even be trying to throw in ride or cooking. But you have to buckle down and do this. Until you complete phase one, you are worthless to everyone. The worst thing you can do is get tied down in some clan dealing with people. 

Just put your head down, avoid contact with anyone, and get it done. Phase one might last as long as 5-6 days of playing time. It doesn't matter. Keep your hood up. If someone tries to start a conversation, speak bendune. Or run away and log off. Don't make friends in the wilderness.

There's several nice places to rest and relax in the grasslands. The grasslands is busy, by Arm standards, but Arm being Arm, I've still gone days without ever meeting anyone. Keep to yourself. Save flint for arrowheads.

The biggest danger is getting hurt below your regen level, and needing to sleep. This is always a balls tightening moment. Do it somewhere out of the way. Make sure your stamina is full beforehand. Wake up the moment you can regen again. Your HP will rocket up in the grasslands, but it's still a scary moment. I used to wait till night. In fact, the grasslands at night is quite safe and peaceful.

Graduating from Phase One

You will know you have graduated from Phase One, when you have branched hide and sneak, as well as climb, brewing and poisoning. Listen and scan being the bitch they are these days, you might even branch fletchery and throwing off archery first. Branching into tanning is fairly easy, too.

Phase Two

You're still doing all of the above, because even though they're branched, they're not maxed. But now you need to toss sneaking, hiding and climbing into the mix. These aren't terribly difficult. Most people can find somewhere to climb, and keep going up and down until they fail once. Sneaking and hiding go up easily as well, just from using them everywhere.

New Skills

Now might be the time to dabble in brewing as well. There'll be more on this later, but suffice to say, you won't be touching poisoning until you've nearly maxed out of brewing. You'll have plenty of materials from foraging around the grasslands (all of which sells for decent sids too), and it can be something to do along with tanning during downtime. I used to set up a little camp in the copse of trees. I even solo-emoted, but of course, no one ever saw. Fletchery is neat as well. I wouldn't bother wasting time on chopping wood, or carrying around a lumber axe, though.

Look in this thread for the details on brewing, and what makes each tint and what they cure.

Bandages were too dangerous to screw around with before, but you're no longer a complete pushover. You should find some cloth stuff, salvage it down into scraps of cloth, and use that for bandages. Use it on yourself as needed. You'll branch bandagemaking eventually.

Combat

Verrin hawks are rapidly becoming too easy. Easy enough to where even, if you switched to completely different weapons, they'd still die fast. That's the hidden off/def and vs critters stat at work. They'll remain good for archery and throw. But not much else. Although, I'd keep killing hawks until you could not get a single miss. 

Fortunately, now that you have sneak, you can start taking on stilt lizards. Hiding beforehand and then sneaking into a stilt lizard's room will raise both. Stilts are awesome. They do incredibly weak damage, and have a very high agility. DON'T killl them. Get your ~20 misses with each weapon, (maybe even with chopping and slashing as well), and then flee away. Try and remember where the stilt was. Not only does this make finding your lizard sparring buddy easier, but the more you fight it, the more dangerous it will become. NPC critters improve their off/def as well, and seemingly much faster than a player.

You can eke out a little use from hawks, for a couple days longer, by only attacking them when unarmed. This solely works your Offense.

Is this enough?

This is the first off-ramp. All this stuff I mentioned before? It's a bit inconvenient, but not difficult to do it while in a clan. I wouldn't advise it. You've still got so much to do, and clans are big distractions from stilt lizards. But you're not worthless any longer. You could go join a clan and be a real contributor. You'll be the average shitty ranger, but whatever. You might be bored to tears lone wolfing it and avoiding all contact. I think the best course is still to stay off everyone's radar. Do you really want some clan staffer or honcho checking up on you, or feeling even the slightest pang of curiosity at your doings?

Staying the course 

I'm not going to lie. Phase two is a long and lonely road. There will be times when you question the validity of your doing. Fight those feelings. You're going to be badly tempted to seek out any kind of human contact. The loving touch of a woman will be a distant memory. You'll have plenty of sids, and it will be fun, after a while, to start taking an erdlu out into the grasses, and charging at cilops or gyzhkas and such. It'll be a pain in the ass, but it won't matter much. By the time you have red tablets coming out of your ears, you'll be specifically hunting cilops to extract their glands. Might as well get some ride and charge practice.

I personally wait until my sneak, hide and climbing are near maxed before bothering with a mount...But guess what? You'll max sneak, hide and climbing long before you branch parry.

So it will be a lonely existence. Perhaps rewarding in its own way. Like a mountain man from days of yore. Grizzled and laconic. Avoiding civilization (and anywhere outside the north road or the grasslands). Eventually, you'll probably feel confident enough to kill a carru or fight a pack of gortoks. But even four on one toks won't challenge you much, and you'll realize stilts are still easiest and best. The hardest part might be letting the stilt still hit you until you're barely above the regen mark. 

You have probably tamed and stabled a few wild inixes, or even erdlus.

The heart of phase two usually stretches from the ~5-7 day mark (depending on how lucky/unlucky you were with listen/scan) and runs to roughly the ~17-20 day mark. I once finished by the ~14 day mark, and that was considered impressive.

Graduating to Phase Three

You will only know that Phase Two is over, when parry is branched from dual wield. It will be a wonderful and magical moment. By the time it happens you will be a good distance into all four weapon skills. Most of your ranger skills should be maxed...the hardest ones were listen and scan, and those had to be near-maxed to even get sneak, hide and climb which is a cinch. Ride will go up incredibly fast, and charge does too. You will have certainly finished off archery, branched bandagemaking.

If you haven't legitimately wondered at least once if staff were somehow screwing with you or arbitrarily lowering your skills to make branching parry take longer, or your character was bugged somehow...Then you haven't been at it nearly long enough. Getting to conspiracy theory point is more like the halfway mark. But not as bad now that you can see skill progress. In the old days, it could be torture.

The second off-ramp

Parry will make a big difference in your confidence level. You'll start to feel like a warrior, even. Having taken so long to attain, it'll max in a day or two at most. Now you're really getting antsy. You've done so much, and would probably, very much like to 'show off' what you're capable of. Maybe, against your best designs, you've forged some kind of reluctant relationship with people. That's okay in Phase Three, and really, a much of Phase Three, and even the second half of Phase Two, is highly dependent on the clan you join. The T'zai Byn is not a good choice. I love the Byn, and its hilarious to show up as a ranger vastly better than everyone else. A year as a runner will test your pride, but you're a shoo-in for sergeant someday. But the Byn is probably the only clan you can join as an independent and actually have quality of life get worse. And it's not like you have a burning need to practice bash, disarm or kick.

I once had to buy an expensive apartment in Allanak to store all my possessions and loot, to have a place to keep them while I went through life as a runner. Sergeants were not as amused by it as you might think.

Moving on

Then again, you might find yourself in a Northern Salarr unit where screwing about doing your own thing is practically the rule. Whatever the case, I'd resist the urge to go South, and stay where the stilts are. Stilt lizards will be getting harder to skill up on. Back when, you could weigh yourself down severely, get your misses and be fine. It's not so simple as that. I'd rock a high encumbrance at all times, but I wouldn't go into the extreme range, like I used to. Around <advanced> all weapon skills simply become a pain in the ass owing to Offense getting so high by then. Two-handed? You can kiss that goodbye. You'll never get the needed misses with a two-handed weapon. Anyways, the extra parry from dual wielding is better.

What's actually of higher importance now, is the hidden modifier for killing humanoids or critters. So I'd start finding reasons for riding around the tablelands and butchering Gith. This is sometimes better accomplished in a clan. But it will depend on the clan. But this is also when you can start to branch out and get inevitably drawn into relationships and hijinks. And finding a clan locker around this time will be very attractive.

This stage is more about the long-term than anything else. Kill and fighting humanoids, mostly gith. Starting to actively spar players. It's when I first start having fun, and it's when I first start drifting into a clan. If the second off-ramp is right after branching parry, the final destination is to spend a little while polishing off stilts and butchering tons of gith, exploring and having a little fun before getting tied down with relationships and responsibilities.

Eventually, you'll get to a stage where stilts are only good for raising Offense, by attacking them unarmed. Also, when you sneak into a room to attack a stilt, keep an eye on your mount the room over. Since you'll likely be riding full time now.

PvP

Stay mounted. Scan constantly. Charge at shadows. Carry salt worm knives dipped in peraine. Also, stay mounted. Get good with the bow, and firing on the move. This is hard to teach. But what's not hard to teach is to learn how to charge people with poisoned knives. Carry a couple extra in case someone gets disarm happy.

Archery is an extremely valuable skill, especially when countering mages, but I mostly just chased people down and charged them. Eventually, I got good enough to actually attack their mounts to keep them from getting away. But you'll know when you're there.

Also, stay mounted.

I discovered over time, that the stealth and shoot ploy is more a delf gimmick. It's not worth getting charged or bashed over. And you probably won't have the delf stamina to flee. So stay on your beetle, and get those poisoned knives ready.

That said, a couple rangers working in tandem with maxed archery and poisoned arrows is exceptionally dangerous to mages.

End game

End game for a ranger typically revolves around having the best bandages at all times, the best gear sids can buy (get to know the local Salarri and Kuraci merchants), and finding some kind of home. You'll want kuraci camos most likely, and should have your pick of any gear you like. I didn't touch on making sids, but that's the easy part. Once you can tame animals, anything you lead down to the Allanak butcher is a sizable payday. There's no reason for a ~20 day+ ranger to not have the best gear available.

You'll still make a point of to seek out and kill lots of things, and work your off/def, but that won't be so hard. Offense is easily raised from brawling. You'll know your Offense is good when you can knock out dwarven warriors and half-giants in the circle, and defeat warriors with your fists who have even branched advanced weapon skills (while they're unarmed as well, of course). Defense is simply a matter of taking damage and recuperating from damage. Ranger bandages means they can take a lot of risks, and edge below the regen mark, then bandage themselves to health. Most warriors have to go find a place to sleep.

In some ways, even at ~20 days plus, you have only begun. The hidden variables take a long time to raise, but remain extremely noticeable.

You'll want to get your relationship to the earth increased. This isn't the place to go into it, but it revolves around pouring water onto the ground, (a lot) and gradually improves your regen rates.

You'll need to make friends and allies which will be easy. Everyone will want you. You might have been a loner the first ~20 days, but that served its purpose. No one has any preconceived notions of you. There's no one for you to be beholden to. No one with memories of kicking your ass in the sparring circle or saving your bacon. You'll be someone who people initially expect very little of, then shock them with your incredible competence. You could make Corporal or Sergeant in any clan you felt like. Your services will be in high demand. Your contact will soon max out from everyone in your head.

Eventually, you'll get ball and chained to some organization, and start doing your real exploration with some minions following you around. The South won't seem so scary when you can wipe out tarantulas from beetleback - and getting a war beetle should be your next mount upgrade from the inix, which becomes butcher fodder.

I liked working for the merchant houses. There was freedom to go north and south. The city guard and noble houses had a lot of baggage. But you can make yourself indispensable to just about anyone you please.

Eventually, many days of playtime later, you'll get tired of even the mildest clan restrictions, and will want to go forge out on your own again, going independent or running your own crew or building an outpost. You will have lovers, faithful companions and cherished memories of departed friends. You will have seen quite a few hairy things. 

That time spent grebbing and keeping to yourself on the grasslands will seem a distant, halycon memory. You might smile with a touch of ruefulness at what a silly twink you were back then. Because it's probably been six months+ since you needed to concern yourself with skills, and the general course of your duties could fill the Silt Sea with corpses.

Then you will die, and go back to suiciding characters until you get a set of stats worth investing in.

Or just app a gicker. After the ~20 day investment required to even branch parry, maxing out a mage in 4-5 days will feel surreal. But you'll still have less fun than you did with that ranger.

I don't think it can never be "salvaged" you can always get someone to use teach on you for whatever.

RE: two-handed weapons

That's good to know. I wonder if that's recent, or has always been that way? Most of my best characters were prior to skills being shown, and after that, I don't remember ever bothering with two-handed. It's easy without the skill levels being shown to put down any possible benefit to just your higher Offense.

Anyhow. I wouldn't waste my life betting on staff to proactively grant me parry, because if two-handeds check is that simple, it would make it super attractive to raise over DW. Perhaps at some point, a staff pet or staff alt wanted to go fully two-handed on their ranger, and staff had to somehow address it? I just wouldn't expect special treatment.

More likely, you'd send in a request about it, and just get a confused response and a demand to know exactly where you heard it from, and then something about staff never doing that, and to go raise your dual wield.

RE: Weapon Skills

Weapon skills are rough. And they're one of those things which have been tweaked many times to be made more difficult. While mages of course, are maxing out as easily as they did before 9/11. There is a great deal of frustration involved. Expect 15-20 days playing time as a minimum. But it is doable, and is certainly easier if you have a great sparring buddy. At any given time in the game world, there are 2-3 players with a maxed defense that can stand around while even warriors with branched weapons swing at them. That's often your best bet.

A couple staff pets, (read templars) have bypassed the dirty, filthy business of raising their skills like the rest of us, and just sent in rp-logs of them solo emoting to receive a significant boost.

Since the nerf to fighting while encumbered, and the nerf to fighting while drunk, and I'm sure nerfs I haven't even heard of, they just keep making it more and more difficult, and require even harder twinking, to make a viable mundane. 

I don't think an advanced weapon skill has ever been mastered without either abusing a code bug, or receiving a boost from staff.

RE: Offense and other weapons

It can hurt. Teach for example, will never raise you past Apprentice, IIRC. But you're in no real danger of never being able to get to 60+ all the standard weapons, given enough time. It will be more difficult, sure. But doable. It's only the advanced weapon skills that are truly impossible.

RE: Ranger pitfalls

I'll have to think about this some more before giving a good answer, or let someone else answer in the meanwhile. There's so much. But a lot of such pitfalls affect every class.

The biggest pitfall is getting too popular too soon. Try and put off joining a clan and getting on everyone's radar as long as possible.

glad u found that, i had to correct someone else on here by mentioning that morg himself was the one that said u could do it. rare as fuck aint it lol

and i can vouch on my own exp as well as from at least two other ppl that twohanded most def doesnt need misses to raise and it goes up at a fairly decent rate if u fight regularly with it

Part 3 is one of the funniest things I have ever read about a game. Awesome!

Amen brother,

Pickpockets are awesome. And you don't have to wait 20 days played to branch parry. You could do it in 1 or 2.