Great idea Sepher and I will be happy to contribute. As we're all fond of saying, you really can't mess up a ranger, but I think it'd be great to put the collective ranger community's knowledge out there for new rangers.

Keith/Brinret/Shiun

Be nice to Wyrom or I will cut you!

>I like this idea too, although I'm not a fan of rolling up the "perfect" character. I've never looked at GS as being a "cookie-cutter" kind of game -Radeek

I absolutely agree. Like I said, I want to put the basics in there, but stress that you can be your own ideal, for lack of a better term.

>I'd very much like to see something in this guide dealing with RP as well. -Radeek

I really like this idea. I have my own thoughts on the matter, but what sorts of things would you say about RP that would fit within the scope of such a guide? And would you be interested in writing this section of the guide? I can do it if you're not interested, but I'd rather this be a cooperative effort.

~Brian, Sepher's player

Brian,

I am glad you're taking the lead on this. I know Keith is also passionate about the game, as well. And Radeek, well, he's awesome. lol.

Here's my take on rangers. There's 3 general paths you can take with a ranger, being a semi class. And, as noted, you can't really mess it up. But, how you do things, how you train, and where you hunt, and what the expectations are, shift a bit depending on the path the player chooses.

Basically, to me, it's always been defined as spells known per level:

1) Spiritual/Druid/Heavy Magic (basically putting all extra TP's into spells or lores until certain thresholds are achieved).
2) Balanced, True Semi (1x spells per level)
3) Heavy Physical / Rogue-ish build. (roughly .75x-.8x, which is painful in the beginning, but less meaningful after 640/120 threshold reached)

So, Turinrond, for instance, is a heavy physical, light magic build. Kortirion, on the other hand, is a pure archer, and is more balanced in his training (true Semi). The tactics I used in training and hunting with the one are not the same as with the other.

Having said that, I do think there's some overlap. It's generally suggested to train up the 600 series first, and squeeze in the 100 series as able, once (and this is where opinions may vary) X spell is learned, but I'd say 107/640 is pretty solid before 50 trainings, then push towards 120/640 by 60 trainings.

It used to be that 630/120 by 50 was solid, but 640 is just too good of a spell to ignore, and changes things.

I think, also, it's very important to point out how relatively ineffective that hiding and sniping is in the beginning. Not only due to skill level, but also due to relative statistical growth which contribute to the reduction of AIM/AMBUSH RT's.

I point these things out, because those are the things that seem to me would be the most discouraging for a new player. I'm a ranger, "I want to hide in front of everything before I kill it, and kill from the shadows!" That's going to happen, dear newbie, but it will take some time.

My pure archer, right around 30 trainings, is finally able to decently hide, stalk and snipe around GOS warcamps and stay hidden and have some spells to control the swarms (yay, 610!) etc. But, he's not nearly as good as he will be, and he gets killed, too, pretty easily. I know that I'm pushing expectations for him.

I'm sharing this to suggest that a newbie guide needs to point out realistic expectations of success and reasonable thresholds for getting killed a lot. I'm pushing it with him, but there's plenty of areas he could go and do much better.

Last but not least, the terrain bonus is how I advanced Turinrond so quickly during GS3/GS4. I hunted him almost exclusively in outdoor, forested areas, to take advantage of the ranger hiding bonus in those areas. When you're min/maxing, every little bit helps. A guide should include the best hunting areas for a ranger for every 10 levels. I'd be happy to contribute, or we can discuss that in this thread.

It's late, I'm tired, and that's just off the top of my head. Love that you're doing this, I hope some of this makes sense.

---

~ Bill, Coyote.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
~ Voltaire

>I point these things out, because those are the things that seem to me would be the most discouraging for a new player. I'm a ranger, "I want to hide in front of everything before I kill it, and kill from the shadows!" That's going to happen, dear newbie, but it will take some time.

This last character I started is a ranger that I took to level 20. At level 20, it hadn't happened yet, it wasn't just about to happen, but progress was starting to be noticeable. (mace/shield so rather more dependent on ambush than a star or falchion user, but ambush was the system I wanted to explore so I used the best weapon for it)

The other thing I'd add is how horribly tight mana is at those levels. Wizards before the last big boost they got to spell duration were in a similar situation, but otherwise I find rangers require twice as long as other classes waiting for mana for their buffs between hunts at this sort of level.

>Bill's post

You make some excellent points that it had not occurred to me to note. That's also part of the reason I wanted to get others' input; this game has been in development for something like 25 years, and while my brain knows the great majority of ranger-related stuff, I would likely forget I knew at least half of it.

>If anything maybe someone can take the notes and add it to their contributions to the wiki. -Pup

I'll definitely take your notes and make sure you get credit for it. I'll make sure Scribes knows who was involved, since I don't think it's very reasonable to expect everyone make major edits themselves to a cooperative project (that would be a disaster). Frankly, I'd prefer one person handle the overall editing, anyway (though from my experience on the forums, I'd trust Nuadjha/Turin/Radeek's editing hands).

>The other thing I'd add is how horribly tight mana is at those levels. Wizards before the last big boost they got to spell duration were in a similar situation, but otherwise I find rangers require twice as long as other classes waiting for mana for their buffs between hunts at this sort of level. -Rathboner

Good stuff.

>At level 20, as an archer ranger, I did not have trouble, that I remember, staying hidden and sniping, except against animals and undead. 2x hide, 1x ranger spells until 640. -Kithus

That last part is probably the question I get most about rangers. What order should I train spells? LoL. I am going to address the hell out of that. Like if there's only one question people could ask, that's always it. The other statement I'll get is essentially "can't you just do everything for me?" Sometimes i's pretty entertaining.

By the way, does someone who knows a lot about stats want to put together some info? How certain stats effect skills/hunting/etc? Maybe throw together a few examples and say why they're set up that way? Kithus -- are you interested in that sort of thing?

~Brian, Sepher's player

Looks like Nuadjha beat me to it!

Keith/Brinret/Shiun

Be nice to Wyrom or I will cut you!

<Having said that, I do think there's some overlap. It's generally suggested to train up the 600 series first, and squeeze in the 100 series as able, once (and this is where opinions may vary) X spell is learned, but I'd say 107/640 is pretty solid before 50 trainings, then push towards 120/640 by 60 trainings.

I did some thinking on this and realized that a lot of things have changed since I had to make a decision on which circle of spell I wanted to learn. I know that my own personal training plan was extremely unorthodox, rather a bit like Turinronds in terms of doing things a LOT differently. I've always played Rad as a physical ranger, sword and board until ranged was released, spells have always been for back-up or set-up. Back then we had to brawl as well if we wanted any sort of defense as a ranged user, so TP's could get extremely tight for an archer.

My spell goals were set up differently. I trained to brig as soon as I could, which he was in before ranged came out. I trained in the basics, ranged, perception, ambush, mana, and brawling. We didn't have CMAN's then so training in HP was only until you got up to your max health (for the most part). I dumped EVERYTHING else into spells.

I have pretty much solo hunted my entire GS career, unless I was doing something with the Northern Fury or, later, The Drakes Vanguard, so defensive spells like 120 and 140 meant a lot to me and I wanted them ASAP. I was VERY close to 2x in spells until I got 140/650. I then backed WAY off the spells and started picked up everything else I had sacrificed to get those spells, armor up to hauberk, MIU and AS to be even more self sufficient, all those little things I wanted to be able to do... and guess what? It seems to have worked.

I think what I'm trying to say here, in my rambling way, is that we are all different, which is sort of the bane of all semi's, but it seems to be worse with Rangers. So that being said, how detailed should this guide be? I know the possibilities for rangers are nearly endless and to a certain extent we're all mutants, in one way or another. Should we show as much as we can, or should it be very general and basic. I'm afraid if it's too basic we might lose some of that "flavor" that I like with rangers, but I also know that if it's too detailed we'll bore the pants off whoever is making use of it. It's just something to consider I suppose.

General Radeek Andoran
Drakes Vanguard
Defender of Wehnimer's Landing
Black Raider of the Mir'Sheq

Empires exist through conquest, they live on by exercising total control of the conquered.

Only the dead have seen the end of war - Plato

I usually recommend three paths for spells.

The path i took for pup was 640 then up to 120 then ranger for life. Thanks to the bowels i did fixskill and went to 130 because out of my party i usually lived and had to fog people out of the bowels. So i would say stop 120 for voln and 130 for other societies. When i state this path i make mention that getting blues and powerful look tend to be the easiest since there are many professions to ask or get potions made.

If the person wants to be self spell only then i recommend 601 and 101 right off. Then go up to 618 for mobiles then 107 then back to 640 then 120. This is still mostly 1x spells but i believe gets the most useful defense spells in a reasonable time.

The last option is like radeeks idea of 2x until 620/120 then go back to 1x until 640 then eval your training to fill in needed gaps.

One thing not touched on yet is the lores talk. I have pup at .5x summoning and first seed at blessing. Lores is not needed but getting the first seed of blessing for defense and same for summoning for the vine and thorn poison is nice. Depending on each will also help guide the spell path due to TP cost.

I know that when I was getting started in GS, I was all "Aelotoi seem fun! Rangers seem fun! Archery seems fun!" so I rolled up an Aelotoi ranged ranger. The first time I died, the person who rescued me took it upon themselves to tell me that I shouldn't be doing ranged until level 20 and that Aelotoi are only good at being empaths so I should really just re-roll entirely.

I didn't reroll and I'm happy I didn't because I enjoy playing Astru, but I also don't think that it's a great impression for someone who's relatively new to the game and someone is telling you that even your racial/profession selection was lousy.

So I think that, in a guide for beginners, it's useful to point out that you can be a viable ranger without fitting into some specific pattern. I'm pretty sure that ranger is a versatile enough class that any race can do it (as long as your stats and training path aren't totally stupid... a little stupid is fine though).

>With that said I hope that disclaimer is not just on the ranger guide but all newbie/profession/race/what ever guides.

Indeed. I think that DAID mentioned he'll be including something about this on the sorc guide as well (there's a lot of "only dark elves should be sorcs!" sentiment, apparently), but this is maybe something to look out for in general as the guides all start to take shape.

Oh, and I've been working on a general guide to buff spells. Scribes suggested incorporating some of that information onto the individual profession pages (e.g. "here are the buff spells you can learn as a ranger, these are the ones you want running all the time once you know them") so I'll probably be putting a small section on that into the ranger guide eventually (announcing it here to avoid duplication of effort).

Today I should have plenty of free time by myself, so I plan to start writing and hopefully knock a big chunk out of what I want to see in there.

Also consider that this guide need not cover absolutely everything, but instead should aim directly at its goal of being the best damn good newbie guide it can be. I haven't seen anything I wouldn't want to include suggested; I say this because I want to refucus the goal and make sure we try to stick to that. I think we all agree and have generally the same feelings about trying to protect new players/rangers from people trying to "win" the game and pigeonhole others into their mold, so fear not, because I think this is something we can all be happy with.

Hopefully I can compel the thoughts out of my head into a cogent and elegant guide (or most of one) today. I'll post later for review. I'll leave the things out people mentioned wanting to work on (ohe/shield section, I still want lvl 0 stat suggestions) for implementation later. I want to try and get the skeleton of the guide built so we can start to see what it'll look like.

~Brian, Sepher's player

So I was far less productive than I wanted to be this weekend with sick kids and other errands, but I did write up a little intro tonight. I'll shove it in tomorrow with more, including the basic structure of the guide.

Here's what I've got so far. Any editorial comments are appreciated. Hopefully I've not missed the mark of what we're all trying to see included.

---

Intro:

The purpose of this guide is to assist inexperienced players understand and easily surmount the challenges of rolling up a new ranger from the ground up. It focuses on the entire process of character creation and slightly beyond into the beginning of a ranger's life, including choosing initial stat placement, designing a skill training plan, and basic hunting strategies to bring those skill sets to life.

That said, the character building strategies described within this guide are meant to be only that – a simple guide – and are not to be taken as the only viable methods for doing so. The player is encouraged to take these generalities and build their character into the living, breathing person they envision. Gemstone IV provides an extremely vibrant and expansive world in which nearly anything a player can think up may be done.

Roleplaying and Character Development:

To begin the process of character building, it is highly recommended that new players take some time familiarizing themselves with some of the game's lore found on the main website and within this wiki. Basic knowledge of the game's lore is invaluable in helping a player decide what they want their character to become, or at least start them on the path to discovery. Will they be a half-elven pariah, exiled from some remote city in the Turamzzyrian Empire or a giantman from the Grishknel Wolf Clan, a scout for her nomadic village? Getting to know even the littlest bits about the world of Elanthia will put a player leaps and bounds ahead into deciding who they want their character to be. Of course, a player may decide to eschew this process initially and get right into playing. Many players decide who they want their characters throughout their journey.

I might add more to this segment, but other things are calling at the moment. I threw in a couple examples above to take advantage of other linked articles within the wiki related to RP to hopefully spur players into world-discovery.

Glad to be at least started on it.

~Brian, Sepher's player

For a min max type yes stats need to be perfect. But this goes back to what a few of us have said. We dont want cookie cutter rangers. Perfect stats are not a must. Pup is a perfect example of that. He doesnt have 100 stats across the board and does just fine.

As for lores i do agree we need to give the benefits of both. As mentioned in the header these are guidelines not a guide for this is the only way. The lore section should read about how both effect rangers with training examples including not even having any as lores are nice but not needed

Well if that is the case they really need to buff up Blessing lore because Summoning rocks it.

Daemon Ranger

<<Like I asked of people earlier in this thread: if someone has editorial suggestions (which I am happy to hear and would greatly appreciate), that they should place them here, or in the discussion page of the wiki. An author's article, whether this one or any other, can have no success when everyone thinks they can do whatever they want to it.

<<This project is a guide for rangers by rangers. I don't see any participation from either of you in this topic, so why do you feel like your opinions matter? I don't understand.

https://gswiki.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Player_Guide_Contest

Q: I have no idea how to edit a wiki, can I participate?

A: Yup. Plain text submission is acceptable as long as it's a substantial edit. We encourage you to learn how to stylize a wiki -- it's quite easy! -- but it's not a requirement.

I fail to see where it says all your posts are belong to us.

I don't know you. I don't know the other individual. I do have the ability to form opinions and find that the vitriol in your posts is out of line enough that you've undermined the legitimacy of your point.

I am appreciative of your effort and was curious to see how the page was shaping up, though now I've lost interest and most certainly will not participate.

>Brian, I'm sure you can see Mark was just trying to help and there's no reason to be calling anyone an idiot. We can all discuss this calmly and civilly. -Kithus

That sort of thing is just a pet peeve of mine. I'm not, and never was, angry. I just feel that sometimes you have to be stern and a little harsh so that people understand you the first time (or the second time, in this case).

I don't feel that at this point anything is lost. Those I've chastised didn't have anything to do with this in the first place. To everyone else who has contributed, I very much appreciate the cooperative effort and will always accept constructive criticism. I'm certainly not the greatest writer, so I hope someone with a keen eye can help me critique a few things.

~Brian, Sepher's player

>I, for one, am very happy when Mark reviews/edits "my" pages.

Me too.

>I'm saying that it should be done in an organized manner.

that's what the talk pages are for.

That sort of thing is just a pet peeve of mine. I'm not, and never was, angry. I just feel that sometimes you have to be stern and a little harsh so that people understand you the first time (or the second time, in this case).

~Brian, Sepher's player

No I think you were totally justified Brian. I was trying to keep it civil but it's pretty obvious some of the old KP mods think they still rule the roost when it comes to the wiki and a few of them are pretty obviously butt hurt that they are no longer the gatekeepers. It isn't too much to ask that they not make random changes to your work when we are very clearly collaborating here on the ranger forums.

Either way let's get back to the guide and if anyone wants to continue this discussion about wiki etiquette we can have it out on the wiki topic.

Keith/Brinret/Shiun

Be nice to Wyrom or I will cut you!

>I was trying to keep it civil but it's pretty obvious some of the old KP mods think they still rule the roost when it comes to the wiki and a few of them are pretty obviously butt hurt that they are no longer the gatekeepers

lol by all means please jump in and be a "gatekeeper"