Ranger

A bow specialist and woodsman who scouts, marks and shoots at range, keeps animals, and lives off the wild.

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.

It is also the class most at home away from roads. A ranger keeps a beast to fight beside them and a small familiar on their shoulder, rides a mount they tamed themselves, shelters under a lean-to of their own making, and in wild country is stronger, quicker to mend and harder to hit than anywhere else. The wildlife of a country they have spent time in stops treating them as a threat.

The Ranger is a large class: fifty nine skills across four trees, one to a level from 1 to 59, and thirteen passives besides, with five plain commands that need no level at all. Marksmanship carries the bow line, Beast Mastery the animals, Trapping the trap kit and the herbs, and Wilderness a broad body of fieldcraft. Every ranger has the whole kit; there is no path or specialisation to choose.

Joining#

Ranger is a guild you can join from level 10 as an Explorer, and nothing else is asked of you. The guild is the Yewhold, a lodge with no walls in a stand of old yew north of the Mistwood Crossroads. From the crossroads go north to the Hilltop Clearing, where a blazed trail runs northwest under the trees to the Waymark Yew, or type compass set ranger to be walked to the door. join ranger at the yew makes you one. Joining resets you to level 1. Guild ranks run Tracker, Hunter, Warden, Beastmaster and Guildmaster.

You leave with two things in your hands, and they stay with you for as long as you are a ranger. Neither can be dropped, sold or stolen, and both stay with you through death.

The Bone Whistle. look whistle tells you how your beast stands, wherever your beast is. blow whistle brings a beast that is away straight to you, or gives one at your side back a fifth of its health, in a fight or out of one. It will not answer again for five minutes, and it can do nothing for a beast that has fallen.

The Trailbook. read trailbook lists the countries whose wild things have come to know you and those still making up their minds, what walks beside you, and your familiar. It keeps itself.

The Yewhold#

Everything behind the Waymark Yew belongs to the guild. compass set trainer takes a ranger to the butts from anywhere.

Rhoswen Harrow, the Warden, hands out the guild's story a chapter at a time, from your first day to the gates of Valdris Manor. Stand in front of her and she gives you the next one, or tells you the level it opens at. Odo Brack, the Kennelmaster, can do the same. Either of them will train you with advance, and until level 20 Master Toren in the Main Hall will advance a ranger as well, if the Hold is a long walk.

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, reeds and powder, found when you gather in the right terrain and spent on traps, fletching, campfires, Herbcraft and Breathing Reeds. The supplies command shows what is in it and where to find anything you have run out of.

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.

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, a hunting spear cut out of the woods and thrown into the next room, and Lung Shot, the broadhead behind the shoulder. Four passives raise bow damage and critical chance outright.

Beast Mastery#

One animal companion that fights beside you, with taming, feeding, healing, naming and reviving at the bottom of the tree and orders and attack commands above. Alongside it come a familiar, a small wild thing that rides on your person, from level 1, and a tamed steed to ride from level 63.

Wilderness#

Fieldcraft and self preservation: dodging, tracking, weather, camping and cooking, a breathing reed for the water, a lean-to and a bivy bag, climbing for a look at three rooms of country or to take a stand in the branches, camouflage, and two ways of breaking out of a melee you did not want. At the top, leading a party through wild country unprovoked, and going out into the deep country for hours at a time.

Trapping#

Ground you prepare in advance. Snares hold, barbs cripple and bleed, flame and spikes and frostbite punish anything that walks in, Detect Traps reads what someone else buried, and an animal worked into a fury waits for the next stranger through the door. The salves, the antitoxin and the affliction extender live here too.

Skills#

Marksmanship#

Beast Mastery#

Wilderness#

Trapping#

Trap skills cost SP when the build starts and materials from the pouch when it is finished, so an interrupted build costs you the SP and the time and nothing else.

Plain Commands#

These are yours from the day you join, cost nothing and do not appear on powers.

Out in the Wild#

Nature's Grace. From level 8, whenever you stand on wild ground - woods, hills, marsh, snow, sand or open country, not roads and towns - your strength, constitution, agility and intelligence rise by one, and by one more at levels 30, 60 and 90. You mend a quarter faster there, and you are a little harder to hit.

Familiar Presence. From level 15 the wild gets used to you. Spend ten minutes, all told, on the wild ground of an area and its animals learn your sound and your scent: from then on none of them starts a fight with you or your beasts, though anything you attack still fights back. Survey tells you how far along you are. The country forgets you if you stay away for two weeks. Once an area knows you, Wild Guide at 64 extends the same peace to your party for ten minutes, so long as they keep with you.

Familiars. A familiar is not a fighter and nothing can hurt it. You keep one at a time and befriend it slowly, standing still in the right country: a mouse anywhere from level 1, a fox in wild brush and woodland from 12, a falcon on open ground under a wide sky from 20, and an owl in the deep woods at night from 35. The mouse squeaks when you walk into a room where somebody else has laid a trap, and loves cheese. The fox brings you luck, and now and then a coin. The falcon scouts the rooms around you, flies off to another area to see who is out on its open ground, learns its work as it goes until it can tell you who is hurt and who is fighting, and brings you hares. Taken to a spirit grove after dark, the owl calls the old forest spirits, who lend you the strength of the bear, the quickness of the hare or the sight of the owl for half an hour.

Steeds. At 59 you can tame a mount in its own country: a horse on open grass, an elk in the deep woods or snow, a wolf or a bear in the woods and hills. Ride it like any mount. The horse is only a mount; the elk, the wolf and the bear also fight beside you while you are on foot, when your beast is not at your side to do it. You cannot fight from the saddle, but you can open a fight from it: the charge knocks your target off its feet and puts you down beside it, and an elk's ram hits hardest of all. You cannot take a charge once you are fighting.

Shelter. A lean-to at 31 is a camp for the whole party, and a fire beside it is the best camp there is. A bivy bag at 34 is a bed for one: you lie up unseen, mending fast, and can still talk and use channels until you choose to come out.

Camouflage and the tree stand. Among trees, camouflage is quicker and cheaper and holds three times as long, and no one person searching can find you: it takes several searching the same ground together. Climb perch takes you up a tree to stay, out of sight of anything that wanders in below, and every arrow or spear you send down from the branches strikes harder. Both hide you from other players as well as creatures. Your first shot from the tree gives the stand away to anyone looking.

Expeditions and game. At 25 you can go out from wild ground into the deep country for hours, hunting, foraging or cutting timber, safe from everything while you are gone. You can log out and leave yourself out there; the time away counts up to eight hours. You come home to where you left with meat, hides and pelts, herbs, or logs and resin, depending on what you went for and the country you set out from. Wild game sells well in town: Garrick Hale, the butcher in Thorngate Alley in Aurin, buys pelts, hides, fur, antler and horn and game meat.

Standing in a Fight#

You have no shield and no heavy armour, but with a party short of a front line you can hold a fight yourself. Roar brings the fight to you, your feet keep you out of most of it, and your beast steps in front of what gets through.

Roar comes at level 15, two levels after Set Guard. Type roar or guard roar, with your beast at your side, and every hostile creature in the room turns on you for six seconds, whoever has been hurting them, as surely as a warrior's taunt would hold them. It costs 10 SP and has a wait of its own of 12 seconds.

Your feet. Dodge at level 2 lasts five minutes, up to ten at level 100, and takes the weight out of a good share of the blows that reach you, melee and missile alike. Lightning Reflexes at 26 gives you thirty seconds of a real chance to evade a blow completely, and Brambles at 38 hands a share of every melee blow back to whoever landed it.

Your beast. Bare guard sets it to watch you. It stays at your side and will sometimes take a blow meant for you on its own health. Wolfheart at 60 makes it step in more often, and Comfort, feed and the Bone Whistle keep it on its feet. Predator's Bond at 47 turns a share of what it deals into healing for you, and Troll Unguent at 46 goes on working through the fight.

Have Dodge up first, set your beast to guard you, and only then roar.

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 14 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.

Any arrow can land a critical hit, the way any weapon blow can. Your named bow skills - the shots you take a moment to line up - have a second chance of their own, which 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.

Strings do not part on a new ranger. From level 22 any shot at all can part your bowstring, and until you restring it 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 Power Shot at 1, Dodge at 2, a familiar at 3, your first animal companion at 4, Mark Target at 5 and a breathing reed at 7. You can shoot into other rooms as soon as you have Mark Target, and Scout at 14 shows you what is out there. 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. Remember it does not stack with Mark of Death at 58, 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 self-healing in Troll Unguent and Herbcraft and real crowd control in Throw Dirt, Concussion Shot, Pin Down and your traps. Let a warrior or paladin take the front when there is one, and when there is not, see Standing in a Fight above. 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.