Ranger

A bow specialist who scouts, marks and shoots at range, including at targets standing in other rooms.

The Ranger is the only class that reliably kills things it is not standing next to. Its bow can reach two rooms away provided the shot runs in a straight line, and the whole kit is built around that reach: scout the corridor ahead, pick a target out of what you find, and put an arrow into something that has not yet worked out where you are. When a marked enemy charges you, the tempo changes and you are racing to land what you can before it arrives. That tension between distance and closing time is the class.

The Ranger is a large class: sixty three skills across four trees. Marksmanship carries the bow line, Beast Mastery an animal companion, Trapping the trap kit and Wilderness a broad body of fieldcraft. Ranger is also a promoted class rather than a starting one. It needs a completed Warrior or a completed Rogue behind it, meaning one taken to level 100, and completions are recorded against your account rather than against a single character, so a Warrior finished on one character unlocks Ranger for another. On top of that you must be level 100 yourself when you join, and a guildmaster has to admit or induct you, since there is no ranger guild entrance to walk into. Joining resets you to level 1. Guild ranks run Tracker, Hunter, Warden, Beastmaster and Guildmaster.

Resources#

SP is one resource. Shooting itself is free: once a target is marked, attacking fires one arrow per two second round on its own. What costs SP are the skills that sharpen the shot, and by the standards of other classes they are cheap. Hunter's Mark is 10 SP at level 10 and Mark of Death 40 SP at level 60.

The other resource is a pouch of gathered materials: feathers, sinew, resin, wire, iron, herbs, mushrooms and powder, foraged out of the wild with gather or forage in the right terrain and spent on traps, on fletching and on restringing a broken bow. There is no command that prints the pouch; stock surfaces when a skill tells you it is short, and Survey tells you what a piece of ground will give up.

You must have a bow wielded to shoot at range. Without one the round simply passes and you wait for the enemy to close.

Rangers wear leather armour. Plate, mail and cloth are barred, and any gear with no category set is open to everyone.

The Path#

At level 20 a ranger commits permanently to one of two paths, Marksman or Beastmaster. Below that level the whole kit is open to everyone. From 20 on, the upper half of Marksmanship is reserved for the Marksman and the upper half of Beast Mastery for the Beastmaster, so every ranger keeps a working bow and a working companion forever and the path decides which of the two reaches its ceiling. Wilderness and Trapping are never path locked.

Talent Trees#

Marksmanship#

The bow line. Power Shot is your first real shot, Hunter's Mark and Mark of Death sharpen your damage on a chosen target, and the arrow preparations - Barbed, Ignite, Poison, and Choking Gas out of Trapping - coat your next several arrows with an effect. Higher up sit the aimed shots that interrupt, cripple, split armour and rake a whole room, and four passives that raise bow damage and critical chance outright.

Beast Mastery#

One animal companion, and only one. Taming, feeding, healing, naming and reviving it sit at the bottom of the tree, with orders and attack commands above.

Wilderness#

Fieldcraft and self preservation: dodging, tracking, weather, camping and cooking, climbing for a look at three rooms of country, camouflage, and two ways of breaking out of a melee you did not want.

Trapping#

Ground you prepare in advance. Snares hold, barbs cripple and bleed, flame and spikes and frostbite punish anything that walks in, and Detect Traps reads what someone else buried. The healing salve and the affliction extender live here too.

Skills#

Marksmanship#

Beast Mastery#

Wilderness#

Trapping#

Trap skills are set from the pouch as well as the SP bar, and their SP costs are held by the trap system rather than the powers list, so what you are charged to set one differs from the figures elsewhere in the class.

Playing a Ranger#

The sequence is scout, mark, then attack: your bow fires itself once a target is marked. Mark Target at 5 lets you commit to something by name or partial name, and Scout at 13 lists what is in the rooms around you with a number for each creature, which Mark also accepts. Once a target is marked it stays marked as it moves, so long as it remains in range, which means you can track something through adjacent rooms and keep shooting at it.

Range works in whole rooms. Your own room is always available, adjacent rooms are always available, and rooms two away only count if the path to them runs dead straight, because arrows do not turn corners. That single rule is the tactical heart of the class. A long corridor is a killing field. A room full of doglegs is nearly useless to you. Learn to fight in the former and to fall back into it when you find yourself in the latter.

Your named bow skills - the shots you take a moment to line up - can land a critical hit, and the chance rises both with your level and with every room of distance between you and the target, so the shot fired from two rooms out is the better one. Very rarely one of those aimed shots finds the heart and ends the fight outright, though never against a boss. Ordinary auto-fired arrows do not crit.

Any shot at all can part your bowstring, and until you use Restring Bow at 22 you cannot shoot. It is quick if you have sinew in the pouch and slow if you do not, and a worn bow parts its string more often than a sound one, so carry sinew and keep the bow repaired.

The opening levels give you Dodge at 2, your first animal companion at 4, Mark Target at 5 and Power Shot at 7, with Scout arriving at 13 to open up shooting into other rooms. Get a bow you are happy with early, because without one wielded there is nothing to shoot with.

From the tens on, Hunter's Mark is the skill that changes fights. A fifth more damage for thirty seconds costs 10 SP and twelve seconds of cooldown, which is cheap enough to open every serious fight with, and the fact that it ignores cover matters more than the damage on awkward ground. Remember it does not stack with Mark of Death at 60, which is a burst tool for a single decisive shot rather than something to keep running.

In a group, treat yourself as backline damage that also does the party's eyes. Nobody else can look two rooms ahead without walking into what is there, so scouting the route is your job and it is a genuinely valuable one. You have a self-heal in Troll Unguent and real crowd control in Throw Dirt and your traps, with Concussion Shot and Pin Down on top if you took the Marksman path, but no tanking tools of your own, so let a warrior or paladin take the front. If something closes on you the auto-fire loop stands down and the fight becomes an ordinary exchange with the bow still in your hands, which is a far worse trade than shooting it on the way in. Open early, and put distance back between you when you can.