Right now I'm backtraining my ME. I've got it up to 30, but I want it up to around where my other weapons are (the 80's). My other combat oriented experience are:

Leather Armor: 55 47% muddled
Parry Ability: 65 60% learning
Multi Opponent: 48 16% muddled
Evasion: 66 88% learning

I've never been able to get my armor or my multi up very high..... My fifth circle barbarian has the same multi as I do..... and here are my stats:

Strength : 19 Reflex : 19
Agility : 21 Charisma : 9
Discipline : 15 Wisdom : 18
Intelligence : 17 Stamina : 17

I like to think I'm pretty well rounded, for the most part. Anyways, what do you all suggest I hunt for the backtraining to get it up to 80 ranks?

I agree with the grass eel suggestion, but would add something else instead of beisswurms (which I never developed a liking for). If you find yourself beaten about by beisswurms, but not learning much (which happened to me), I suggest fighting wind hounds (2 or more gives good multi, and I didn't find them to hit as hard as wurms), but watch out because they swarm unmercifully at times and travel with Faenrae Reavers, which CAN hurt you pretty badly. Might also try bobcats/cougars/jackals out past the Crossing favors area when you reach 60+. Although the gen rate can be slow, I found that bobcats moved my weapons well, and I could usually get two or three cougars/jackals to work multi in the meantime.

_______
Llyldoryn

If you be careful you could hunt dusk ogres, just whack em a few times with your primary weapon, then switch to the one you want to backtrain, use it for the kill. Seems to work okay for me anyway, just my two coppers.


< Moving with grace, you chop a bo stick at a brown bear. A brown bear fails to dodge. The stick lands a strong hit that vaporizes the skull into a fine scarlet mist (Mom would not be pleased!).
Kryllok...poking bears with sticks since 314

Hmm. Tough for me to say since I have the ranger bonus, but maybe bloodwolves? I would think skinning wolves with 2HE or Halberd would work for you.

Just my guess.

-Nyseth

Blood wolves don't teach well, unfortunately. My combats are fine, I normally hunt swains and I can easily kill black leucros and higher. I tried snowbeasts, but my skinning was a little too low to really move well there.

Alternately, are there any mid level mobs that don't take much skinning to skin (like 100-120ish?).

I'll check them out. Thanks for the suggestion.

P.S. If you go with snowblin I'll trade you skinning classes for boxes! ;p

~Ranger Hanryu, Sword of House Calibanor
>However, elements of the Solomon junta still control the hills outside the capital. - Armifer

I say hunt whatever skinnable creature you would regularly hunt and skin it. You'll fail everytime but who cares, skinning learns horribly nomatter what you do (or is this different for other guilds?).

I can not lock skinning by actually skinning the critter. However if I'm quick enough. I can run to a safe place, unload my bundle and skin everything quick and lock it (or come real close).


Gahlron Dragon'Claws
Ranger
~Mors ante dedecum
Nihil ante coffeum~

>If you're not able to lock skinning in combat, hunt something that's tougher to skin - not every critter that's of an equal difficulty to kill is of an equal difficulty to skin.

Yeah, I guess what I was trying to ask is, what is difficult to kill that is relatively easy to skin. Hmm, maybe I should try the barbarian folder.

Greetings fellow Rangers,

I want to bring my other defenses up to be more in line with my evasion. What are the best options available for a Ranger to train shield and parry in the 350 to 400 range? I'd prefer a critter that doesn't have a special attack. Am I destined to a life of hunting bristlebacks?

Thanks!

Bristles are an option. Kinda depends on where your evasion falls, you can always tweak stance so you parry/block enough to lock in just about any critter at your level. I was backtraining around 300 shield in celpz for example, without issues.

>>Evasion is 450ish. I'm looking to narrow the gap between evasion and the rest of my defenses for a bit.

Then do something like bristles. They won't move your evasion, but will do multi/parry/shield to a bit over 400.

Same reason I'm backtraining shield in raiders at the moment... keep evasion from pulling even further ahead. Raiders might also work for you too, they'll move evasion decently to 460-480 and then be super slow for evasion after that. Only issue, town area =)

On a related topic, I seem to have some difficulty training evasion. I swear it doesn't pulse as much as the other survival skills. I just passed a wall rank on and was ready to see the "big number" jumps, but was disappointed.

I also have the issue of leather, parry, shield and multi mind locking with evasion only at concentrating level. I'm currently in vines/creepers were I can perma-evade 2 critters, but not 3.

I'm at a bit of a disadvantage due to just now picking up shield and being far behind in multi. Both are catching up fast though.

Is there a better technique? Or do I just slug it out until the armor/etc quits mind locking?

Multi, hinderance, burden, etc all impact your ability to dodge and thus how many evasion bit's you'll recieve.

Add on top of that the evasion pool is considerably larger than a similarly ranked wearpon/armor pool for us (at the ranks you're looking at anyway).

I also didn't notice if earlier on in the thread you showed your skills; it's quite possible for evasion to be closer to the cap/soft cap of a critter and thus getting a lot less exp than parry/weapon, especially with the small ranges lower critters teach (you go from critters that have a range of 20 ranks at the lowest end, to critters that have a 200+ rank range at higher levels).

There are just a lot of factors that could be playing into why evasion isn't locking. You don't have to get the dodge message to lock evasion though, you just have to succeed enough that it gets plenty of bits. Most of us end up purposely stancing evasion down a bit and other stuff up just so we can lock the other stuff at the same time evasion locks.

Really it comes down to playing with things a bit. I'd assume either hinderance/burden (but you say you dodge a lot, so maybe not) or evasion being a bit ahead is the culprit though.

And there is no question, post walls are way faster than walls. Just don't stare at the numbers, be surprised when it ranks quite a bit faster =)

>Plus, as I mentioned before, I swear it ticks down slower than the other survivals! (Probably just a mental thing in my REAL head!)

Yep, just a mental thing.

>I can dodge 2 vines 99.9% of the time. If a third comes in, I almost never dodge; it diverts to parry/shield. That's not a problem other than they lock too fast and flood my mind state.

Are you using SOP and SOTT? Although ultimately it would probably be good to not worry about mind locking evasion and allow your other defenses to catch up a bit.

>Of them all, multi locks almost instantly it seems. shield moves next, then leather, then parry. They'll all be mind locked when evasion is only at considering.

Looking at your skills, that sounds about right. You could slow down leather by adding in another armor type.

>The best method I've found so far is to quit combat when I get murky. Wait until I'm clear, then wade back in. I hope that as multi and shield build up they'll lock less quickly, and/or I'll be able to handle 3 vines at once and pound on the evasion faster without overloading everything else.

Yep, sounds right to me. Patience.

>>I wear hunting leathers at the moment. No idea where I got em from. I keep meaning to pick up some light chain gloves and head (head/neck/eyes, if it exists), but I truly hate visiting cities so I'm usually just to the bank and out again.

Balaclava for the chain for head/neck/eyes - shard, also believe sold somewhere else now?
Gloves - make sure they are real LC gloves, since the balaclava is neutral, and trains whichever chain is highest.

>I wear hunting leathers at the moment.

When you can afford it, consider tanned armor, it'll help a lot.

>>I was thinking of making my own as well. Leather: 135, Mechlore: 100ish. Any chance if that will allow me to make better than store bought?

Don't think there is a single leather pattern you could complete with those ranks. maybe not even any accessories. let alone make something better than what you can pick up in the store :/

>> Don't think there is a single leather pattern you could complete with those ranks. maybe not even any accessories. let alone make something better than what you can pick up in the store :/

Bummer. Thanks for the honest answer though. What kind of ranks am I shooting for to complete, and make something half-decent.