Society Advice?

[0zymandius]

Been a long time since I've played (2-3 years), and never played a Ranger before. Currently level 8, should be 10 soon, and starting to wonder about societies.

I'm currently OHE/Shield, but want to switch to Ranged as soon as it's viable. Given that, what society should I be looking at / starting up with?

Warcamps were a blast with my berserking warrior, and with my sorcerer, but not sure how a Ranged Ranger would fare at low levels (assuming I switch soon... not sure when I'm going to do that).

I like the idea of Voln, as I've never done it, but it seems like chasing a bless for a little while would be less than fun, and I'm not sure that there's a huge upside even mastered.

CoL is the standby, but I've done that almost exclusively over the years, and am not sure if I'd be better served in one of the others.

[Soulance]

Voln is nice for rescues (sym return) and for heading out to hunt with the teleport that gets you by certain areas and back quicker. It can give you a bit of a boost for attacking as well, especially against undead. But, at higher levels it can be hard to find good undead depending where you go and favor runs out.

I haven't done Sunfist but have heard others like the warcamp aspect with a Ranger and can solo it quickly as ranged sniper if I recall. I just rolled up a Ranger myself but am already in CoL because it is low maintenance. Might try something different one of these days though.

[Peppwyn]

I went with Voln because of the number of undead bounties I would get. Finding a bless was getting annoying.

[Whirlin]

I went with COL because I don't feel like hunting undead, and still level stupid.

Will likely eventually go GOS, because Ranger Openers seem better than CMAN openers, so I'll have stamina to burn, and I'm not a HUGE fan of the rift/scatter, so Voln isn't as appealing to me. I know a lot of people go GOS from level stupid, but given the high stamina costs, low durations, etc... I find that it's just not sustainable until level 50-60ish.

[droit]

GoS was pretty much made for rangers. Everything about it meshes with ranger play style. As semis, its easy to maintain large stamina and mana pools, especially considering that rangers don't use very many CMANs. I prefer using stamina to power my abilities as it is a much more renewable resource compared to favor or spirit, and it won't penalize your AS/DS like spirit does. Sigil of power is very exploitable for rangers. As archers and casters, sigil of determination allows us to continue to both cast and shoot with wounds that would otherwise end the hunt. Crit weighted arrows kinda rock, too. Also, one thing the ranger profession lacks is an "Oh Shit" button, so Sigil of Escape really fills a much needed niche.

There's the added benefit of having warcamps, and more importantly, sunfist tasks available anywhere at any time. Getting a string of bad bounties doesn't hurt so bad when you can check at the outpost every 15 minutes too. It's kind of unfair that GoS has more access to saturated exp than other societies. Warcamps can take some time to get used to, but when you hit your stride, they become totally rote. Even so, if you don't like warcamps, after you master you never have to step into one ever again.

[BriarFox]

What Droit said.

[Luftstreitkräfte]

If you're a weedmage, CoL for wracking. I like CoL all around but never really dug into GoS on any character.

[0zymandius]

Resisting the urge to start a new thread, but at what age is transitioning to ranged viable?

[Whirlin]

Level 0... I never considered it something that really needed transitioning to. I mean, sure, you could start your 30 days with a claid and just swap at the end, but no magic number required. Ranged Ranger builds are relatively cheap TP wise, unlike something like a TWC build

[Soulance]

Resisting the urge to start a new thread, but at what age is transitioning to ranged viable?
Wasn't someone talking about this not long ago? I thought they said something like in your 30s to change to ranged because you're aiming/hiding/ambush wasn't going to be that good until after that. I'm sure my numbers are off, but it was something like that - maybe even 50s.

I'm doing twc on my Ranger right now and it's a lot of fun. Couple of flairing longswords for the win. A bit of tangleweed to drag em down and jab em for even more fun.

[Peppwyn]

I went ranged around 30 ... at 43 I am still not hitting everything in the eye.

[Drazaan]

Resisting the urge to start a new thread, but at what age is transitioning to ranged viable?

This is a two-tier answer. It wasn't until level 60 that I was able to consistently get eye crit kills. Around level 25-30 was when I was first able to consistently aim for the leg and then follow-up with an eye crit kill. This was for me with any outside spells and without a sighted bow.

As Whirlin noted, you could easily be an archer from the beginning; It is viable from Level 0, but it does not reach it's full potential for a number of levels. If you are interested in some other combat method as a ranger, it's a great time to indulge in that until you reach whichever of those thresholds is acceptable to you as an archer ranger as long as you plan around when you get your next FIXSKILLS. I've always been drawn to THW rangering, but once I drank from the sweet chalice of ranged combat, it makes it hard to go back.

[Maerit]

I went ranged / sniper at 16 on a F2P ranger. It worked perfectly as long as you know the kinds of targets to hunt that have a hard time finding you.

For example, don't bother with animals. They'll sniff you out easily. I didn't bother with undead, but dark shamblers also found me instantly. Dumb creatures like trolls, ogres, and the like were not able to sniff me out before I killed them.

Aiming for the eye from hiding works about 50% of the time at level 20-25 with 1x ambush and 2x perception and 2x stalking/hiding.

I also 1x'd in harness power and was able to use 608 for about 75% of my hunt before I had run out of mana. This greatly improves your chance to succeed as a sniper at lower trains. You won't have sufficient mana to use 608 consistently until around 20ish trains, but once you do it works wonders.

[ctsfinest]

I have been doing open aiming for the left leg and it's worked very well for me. Currently level 20 hunting centaurs outside of Darkstone, no real issues yet. Looks like I'll probably stick with them for a few levels. It takes around 4 arrows for me to kill them just doing open shots. I use 610 to handle "swarms" but I've not fought more than 2 at a time, and my DS is high enough to not worry about getting hit. I use ebladed arrows and am Master of CoL.

I will probably switch to sniping and GoS around 50 trains or so when my eye shots are more reliable.

[Shaps]

I would recommend GoS.

One point no one has made... I would actually reroll your character since only level 10. Join GoS at level 3, use a two hander, and by 15-18 you should be Mastered or nearly so. This would be around when your 30 days are nearing the end. Then switch your stats/skills over to ranged.

Just a recommendation, as each like to play their own way.

To give an example, I did this with one of my characters in Voln.. and mastered Voln by level 13. That was of course with a lot of filled mind hunting (I would only stop when my RT got to high).