Rangers

Guide to Hunting

levels 1-4

Where to hunt:
The training grounds are in adventures guild, go north twice from the entrance and down twice

How to hunt:
If you are using a bow enter one of the rooms and attack, wait for unbalance then retreat, wait for unbalance then attack again, repeat if necessary. If you are using a sword, enter the room and wait for the beast to advance you then attack, wait for unbalance then retreat, and once again repeat if necessary.

Tips:
See if you can find someone to help you get a heavy crossbow, you will find this quite usefull.
Southeast of the entrance to adventures guild is the healing glade. Go there and see if someone will cast some colors on you (be polite)
Colors increase your strength (red), defense (shards) and accuracy (green).
Rangers work best in berserker stance but if you get a good green you can keep your stance in normal.
Stay in the training grounds till you have reached land 4!

By now, you should have experienced a bit of hunting if you have gone through the training grounds in the Adventurers’ Guild. To refresh your memory, there are three basic attacking commands, Attack (a), Charge (ch), and Aim (aim). Since you are a Ranger, you have the benefit of being able to attack from afar with a bow or crossbow. If you have a mount, charging will charge towards the monster and attack it. This would be equivalent to advancing a monster and then attacking it. However, since as a Ranger, your one advantage is the distance attacks that you are able to do. Losing this advantage makes your battles tougher if not sometimes impossible. I strongly urge you not to use the charge command except in rare cases. As for the Aim command, this skill will become especially worthwhile when you reach the higher Subguild portals.

Tips
There’s one technique that I have found extremely useful as a Ranger. Since we can do a long distance attack, it becomes easy to use a two-room-retreating pattern. For example, if you happened to lure too many ogres in the fort, you can attack once, re w, wait for the monsters to follow you, attack again, then re e. By repeating this over and over, you can easily pick off the lower monsters, kobolds, goblins, etc, and then work on killing those nasty ogres.
One of the most powerful combinations of classes is a Ranger/Mage. The Ranger can guard the mage and still be effective in his attacks. The mage can hold, attack, and heal the Ranger. I can attest to how powerful this hunting partnership is. Athanis, a fellow shaman, and I used to hunt pass together when each of us could not hunt it alone. We could easily best any monster there, assuming we didn’t lure too many of them.

Etiquette
Look before you lure. I cannot stress this enough. It only takes a few moments to glance to the rooms you will be luring. And it could save both your life and someone else’s life.
Thou shall not steal. No Ranger should steal gold or items from anyone else. In fact, no Fighter’s Guild member is allowed to steal.
Remember to always be considerate and respectful. The words or actions you do today will be remembered tomorrow.

levels 4-13

At level 4 you should start thinking about entering a guild. I hope you make the right choice and enter Fighters Guild.

Where to hunt:
Catacombs in the Adventurers Guild. By now I should not have to tell you where this area is (solo or group)
Fortress in Moorgate on Immigrent Street (solo or group)
Slavers dungeon in Moorgate on Copper Walk (group)

How to hunt:
check above notes on how

Luring, what is it?
This is how you can get beasts to come to your room so you can kill them. It’s easy enough to accomplish, all you have to do is move out of your room and back to your room a few times. The best way to accomplish this is with a macro, by now you should have heard about them and even use them now, but I will explain just alittle bit.
To set a lure macro if you are in a room that has an east and west exit, you would set a macro to move you say to the west room twice and back like this:

macro 1 w;;e;;w;;e
or
macro 1 w&e&w&e

Remember no more than five multiple commands at once or you will run into what is called a spam filter

Tips :
Now is the time for you to learn how to hunt as a group. Find some friends and start to learn their capabilities and your own in a group style hunt. Rangers are a unique fighter, they have the ability to guard someone plus still to be able to attack anything of their choosing in the room. Which make you as ranger very good of guarding those that are not able to protect themselves all that well, namely mages or another lower level ranger.
As a ranger you have the ability to chose any target in the room with you. So you might want to start killing the smaller beasts off first. This will help the people in your group that have to advance. You can do this by using an attack macro.
There are a few ways of doing this. If you know what the beasts are in the area you can target specifically like

macro 0 a (beast name);;a (beast name);;a

The last "a" being a generic attack command attacking anything in first in the room
Or you can use a macro attack that will attack beasts after the first in the room like

macro 0 a 4;;a 3;;a 2;;a

This will attack the fourth beast in till there are only three, then attack the third till - well you get the idea don't you?
There are items through out Moorgate that can heal you if eaten or drunk. One of these are wyvern wings. Try and keep a few of these on you at all times, you will never know when you will need a quick heal.

levels 13-20

Where to hunt:
Causeway any road outside of Moorgate (group or solo depending on level)
Barh-kul a forest just outside of Moorgate (group or solo)
Ashwood Forest just north of Moorgate of the east causeway (group)
Dark Blizzard Pass along ways north on the east causeway (group)
2nd level of Catacombs (group or solo depending on level)

How to hunt:
This how is starting to get redundant, but now you should start to learn how to retreat rooms. This is very usefull when you are hunting solo. How this is accomplished is with a retreat command. So say you are in a room with exits south, west and east and you are luring towards the west. And you have a few beasts biting and chomping on you. As a ranger you shouldn't just stand there and take all that punishment like a fighter or a barbarian So what you would do is retreat east. This will retreat you from the beasts right to the room to the east of you. The beasts will follow you to that room but they have alittle longer unbalance time than you when changing rooms like that. So this will give you some time to attack them anew without getting damage yourself. Then of course when they advance you again and start to hurt you, retreat back to the west room. This command can be shortened to re (direction). This can also be done if you are guarding someone and they are following you.

Tips :
Always try and target the stunners and web beasts first
Remember your recall ring and or Guild ring
Don't forget something that will heal you
Always respect you betters
When in doubt ask for help
When in trouble activate ring of recall or fighter's guild ring

levels 20 to 26 

Where to hunt
Dark Blizzard Pass (solo or group)
Trolls Caves (group) I won't say solo here but is possible
Ice Pits (group)
2nd level of Ccatacombs (solo or group)

tips
Almost everywhere you will go now you will need to use an attack macro, you will need to target the stunners and magical beasts first or you will be floating around wailing very quickly. Forgrims in Moorgate has a nice array of weapon enchants for you to try out... Nothing like a stun enchanted web arrow bow...
Being able to switch bows quickly is a real advantage now, using macros for changing weapons greatly enhances your performance like

macro 2 pack bow;;unpack ice arrow bow
macro 3 pack bow;;unpack flame arrow bow
macro 4 pack bow;;unpack poison arrow bow

and using your unpack weapons icon as pack bow;;unpack web arrow bow. This will give you a almost constant supply of freshly balanced weapons.
Another very usefull macro is the recall macro which in itself can save your life. Here is my macro that has saved my life countless times

macro 9 g gold;;ctivate fighter's guild ring;;activate ring of recall

See if you ever forget to get a new guild ring and you have a ring of recall this macro will automaticly use this ring without you fumbling for it.
If you are using the F-keys for macros, another - more complicated - possibility for a ring macro would be

pack bow;;activate fighter's guild ring&~~~&w;;w;;withdraw 200;;e;;e&~~&n;;e;;swap;;buy 1;;wear ring;;swap&~&rest&

This will make you use your ring, wait two seconds, get gold for a new one, run to the shop and actually getting a new Guild Ring and finally automatically rest.

Now I didn't really want to mention this but seems I had better. There is this spell called haste which makes you faster than you really are. Wizards cast this spell and sell haste rings. I didn't mention this before now because of the fact of the expense. You have much to buy and spend before now. Using this spell in solo combat greatly increases your chance of not having to use your ring macro.

levels 26 to 31

Where to hunt:
Ice Pits (group, solo)
Spire (group)
Lowly downs (group, solo)
Trolls Caves (group, solo)
Scrub Tower (group)
Side note: I know that there are areas that are some of your most favourite hunting spots that I have not mentioned. But I am just mentioning some of the more prominent areas.

TIPS:
You will have to find some of these areas. Some of them are behind locked doors and some you have to find the entrance through a search command. By now you should be proficient in all forms of ranger hunting and using your macros, and probably have made up a few that I have not mentioned. And at this level you are probably very frustrated that your unbalance time is greater than that of any other fighter. Don't despair, you can prevail. Smart use of the haste spell can greatly help you at these levels

levels 31 to 42

Where to hunt:
Charons (group)
Evermarsh (group)
Trolls Caves (solo or group)
Scrub Tower (solo or group)
Ice Pits (solo or group)

Tips:
Well not much more I can help you with seems that by now you should know how to hunt as effectively as any other.

Now I would just like to mention something on big game hunting.
If you are going after any of those trophy kills Forgrims has this very nice spell for your armor called Harden Armor, costly yes, but if you use it on all your armor you can increase your initial Hit Points as much as 700 hits. This is very effective against some of the bigger trophy kills.
Another thing I would really stress is getting the best colors you possibly can get. If your green is very high you can go to normal stance and with a good shards should be able to dodge alot of those deadly hits.
And enchant one bow, I like to use the web bow with a stun or web enchant and hitting with this bow once and switching to another bow till the stun and/or web runs out. This will help you immensely.