Ranger Advice
Buckle up, this is gonna take a while...
First and foremost:
- Plan your engagements, you can't go in blindly and expect to win, thats for barbarians.
2.- Focus your gear towards these stats: STR/DEX, Headshot damage bonus, action speed, movement speed, true physical damage.
3.- Be prepared, bring in enough health, protection, magic protection, surgical kits for pvp.
4.- Be silent and get learn some "game awareness", focus on what you can hear, recognize the sound effects, know whats behind you at all times (monsters, wall,door, crate, the void, etc).
Now for gear building, for your starter set I recommend these for your squire kit mostly if you are struggling against melee:
Helmet: Trapper Hat - why? because it gives you Headshot Damage Bonus, starts at 2.5% and cap´s at 4% by rarity.
Chest: Padded Tunic - Best option for STR, decent armor rating, not so bad speed penalty.
Legs: Trunk Hose - Same as the above.
Hands: Prowler/Onyx Gloves - Headshot Damage Bonus starts at 2.5% and caps at 4% by rarity. AGI or STR
Boots: Lightfoot Boots - Movement speed, a still Ranger is a Dead Ranger.
Now this should leave you around the next main stat values:
STR 18/20 - +5% Physical Power Bonus, 20 Physical Power
VIG 10 - 110 HP, -15% Health Recovery Bonus
AGI 20 - 302 base movement speed, 304 with prowler gloves.
DEX 18 - +4.4 action speed, +9% manual dexterity
WIL 10 - +12.4% Debuff duration.
KNO 12 - +13% cooldown reduction.
RES 23 - +45.8% regular interaction speed.
Physical Damage Reduction around 20-25% from poor to common rarity.
Why get Headshot damage bonus at all? - Because since updates we have to build this way to counter for Headshot damage reduction before we even have to deal with Physical Damage Reduction, the Head gear that gives the most Headshot damage reduction is the Great Helm which caps at 23%, with "poor" squire gear you get 5% Headshot damage bonus.
Why Strength? - All physical damage calculations are based on it, if you have below 15 STR you get negative Physical Power values, meaning you hit that much % less.
Why action speed? - Action speed means attack speed.
Why true physical damage? - The flat value gets added after all damage reduction calculations are made.
Now regarding Perks, this are my recommendations:
**1. Chase:**Detect recent enemy footsteps within 5.5m and can hear enemy footstep sounds from farther away.
If you surprise them you can almost always get a risk free shot, hearing them before they hear you gives you both time to plan (open doors, set traps, use protection potions, etc) before you engage.
**2. Sharpshooter:**When attacking with a ranged (bow/crossbow) weapon, gain 15% Physical Headshot Hit Location Bonus.
This basicly negates the helmet Headshot damage reduction, you need it, since with this perk and the squire kit I recommended you hit 20% Headshot Damage bonus, meaning if you headshot someone with a Unique Great Helm you deal at most 3% less before damage reduction calculations.
3. Quick Reload: When reloading a bow-type weapon, gain 50% Action Speed.
It is a must, bet you have already died a couple times reloading.
4. Now here we have a few branching options:
4A. Spear Proficiency: Gain the ability to equip spears.
Self explanatory, HOWEVER if you use this you MUST also use it with the active skill:
Back Step: Quickly retreats 4m in 0.2s. It can also be used in the air.
This combo is mainly for gap closing when chasing someone running away, and also for ledge jumping, learn how to gain a bit of height when jumping by crouching at max height, then use Back Step, you obviously have to be facing at 180 degree angle of where you want to land. And no, looking down will not make you jump 4m into the air, plus you can't use the skill and then jump to mimic the rogue's double jump, you gotta jump first.
4B. Trap Mastery: When installing traps, gain 1000% Regular Interaction Speed and retrieve them back when disarmed.
Instant trap placement, towards the direction you are facing so dont do it when running away. Regarding traps, time to prepare is ideal, low light is also ideal. But you won't get such luck at most use the terrain to cover for it, bushes, boxes, natural dark spots, run towards the trap and try to keep a straight line between them and the trap, run in circles if needed.
How do traps actually work? - Basicly they get rooted in place for 7 seconds or until they disarm it, the damage depends on their quality and they get extra damage if they move while trapped. They can still move in a radius of around more or less a rapier's lenght. Best way to use this time is to set down another trap and do headshots at them, also throw any explosive bottles or oil lantherns if you get the chance, the extra magic damage is worth it and fire damage freaks out most unexperienced players so they will try to run away and get hit more by the trap.
4C. Nimble Hands: When using a bow, increases the animation's base draw speed by 15%.
It basicly adds 15% action speed when DRAWING the bow's string, so you shoot "faster". This is usually the bread and butter of most builds, since it reduces the time you get the movement speed penalty when taking the attack action, which are these for the each bow (movement speed values are based of the recommended squire kit, add 2 points if you prefer prowler gloves):
SURVIVAL BOW: Primary Attack 1 Always: 75% Reload Always: 60% QuickShot Always: 75% MultiShot Always: 75%. Which translates with squire gear to (302 basic barehanded speed, 272 with survival bow out, 204 movement speed when shooting and using Quickshot, Multishot, and 163.2ms when reloading.
RECURVE BOW:Primary Attack 1 Always: 65% Reload Always: 50% QuickShot Always: 65% MultiShot Always: 65%. Which translates with squire gear to (302 basic barehanded speed, 262 with recurve bow out, 170.3 movement speed when shooting and using Quickshot, Multishot, and 151ms when reloading.
LONGBOW: Primary Attack 1 Always: 55% Reload Always: 40% QuickShot Always: 55% MultiShot Always: 55%. Which translates with squire gear to (302 basic barehanded speed, 252 with longbow out, 138.6 movement speed when shooting and using Quickshot, Multishot, and 100.8ms when reloading.
Now we have Projectile Fall off:
All thrown attack actions have this formula, except torches. Its too damn complex for me to properly explain, and I might have made some mistakes based off the wiki, so this is my interpretation. Basicly if your intended target gets hit by your arrow within the first 250 miliseconds of projectile flight time there is no penalty, if 500 miliseconds pass before it its, damage is reduced by 30%, 50% after 1 whole second, all the way down to 4 seconds when your damage gets reduced by 97.5%. So yeah they look like pin cushions because the farther you shoot, there more you tickle rather than hurt them. I don't know why its designed this way, maybe it was too OP so they came up with this convoluted nerf.
And NOW we have Physical Damage Reduction, which is based off their gear, I think it is now capped at something around 70 to 75% now, so taking in all those factors if you shoot them from too far away you are basicly spitting them.
How to counter all this?:
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Stay Mid range, within 1 second of flight time, to reduce Projectile Fall off.
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Keep moving, everytime you shoot, use skills and reload you move slower! so you need to gain distance as much as possible, try to use verticality to escape when possible.
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Gap Closing, due to Projectile Fall off your skills will do A LOT more damage if you shoot point blank rather than from across the room, however only do this if they start acting hurt.
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Plan ahead, like I said earlier listen to skill and weapon sound effects to know who you are about to face, take protection potions when you are certain the engage is inevitable, the chase perk will allow you to know their general location, footstep marks last at least 20 seconds.
Now these perks are only for PVE:
1. Camp Mastery: Gain 1500% Regular Interaction Speed while setting up Campfires and increases the duration to 2x.
Poor man's health recovery option. If you set down a campfire in solo, be mentally prepared to get rogued or boked by a barbarian/cleric twice before you can even move away.
2. Kinesthesia: When moving with the bowstring drawn, receive a movement multiplier of 115%.
Learn to disengage, stop drawing the bow while running away, this perk is worthless.
3. Ranged Weapon Mastery: When attacking with a ranged (bow/crossbow) weapon, gain 5% Physical Power Bonus.
This won't even set off the Damage Fall off penalty, dont even consider it, unles you know, you enjoy 2 shotting skeletons with a unique crossbow in Adventure mode.
Perks for Duos/Trios:
**1. Purge Shot:**Removes a random magical Buffs from a target on each successful hit with a ranged weapon. When a buff is removed, you additionally deal 3 Neutral True Magical Base Damage.
Per buff you delete, this would be even better if it didn't make your hands glow, its good against any type of shield since it basicly erases it.
2. Crossbow Mastery: While using a crossbow, gain 5% Physical Power Bonus and an additional 50% Action Speed while reloading.
Very situational, like when your party is holding the line or someone fell into a trap, mostly useless otherwise.
Active Skills:
1. Back Step: like explained earlier this is useful for gap closing, extra distancing or jumping on to some vertical surfaces. Very dependant on your "game awareness" and "gaming skills".
2. Multishot: When using a bow-type weapon, fire 5 arrows at once in cone shaped dispersion.
All 5 arrows deal 100% damage.
The so called "shotgun", use it point blank for maximum damage.
3. Quickshot: Fire arrows in a quick succession. Each bow-type will fire a different amount of arrows. (2 for Longbow, 3 for Recurve Bow, 4 for Survival Bow).
A decent burst damage option, best used in mid range since you cant actually time the shots, dependant on your gaming accuracy.
Multishot and Quickshot are your standard newbie ranger skills for burst damage. But are generally useful.
4. Quick Fire: Gain an additional 50% Action Speed for 8s while using bow-type weapons.
5. True Shot: he next projectile within 8s is no longer affected by gravity and gains 8% Physical Power Bonus.
Quick fire and True shot are your sniper play style skills, since true shot NEGATES Damage fall off, very dependant on your accuracy, experienced rangers will use this to bait in trios, pull you in and get rogued.
6. Penetrating Shot: Gain 50% Physical Headshot Penetration, 25% Armor Penetration, and projectiles pierce targets for 8s. Limited to ranged (bow/crossbow) weapons.
Very effective in combination with True Shot. Use said combo with survival bow for more shots.
7. Forceful Shot: When using a bow-type weapon, gain the ability to knock targets back for 10s.
Used to be peak with Quick Fire and survival bow, but then Iron mace gave indomitable will to barbarians and reduced the buff time, only usefull if you can get at least 290 movement speed with survival bow out for kiting (hit and run).
8. Field Ration: Forage food and recover 40 Physical Base Healing.(2 uses, Can be Recharged as a tier 2 skill).
Scales off VIGOR, your poor man's combo with Campfire Mastery for those rat playstyle runs.
Bear in mind this is based off my experience and that the game constantly changes, so this might not hold true in the future.
SOURCE: darkanddarker.wiki.spellsandguns
Posted Nov 5, 2025, 11:39 PM UTC