Rangers

How to Become a Ranger

Rangers are a subclass of fighters. To become a ranger one must train with the gossamer blade* and complete a few qualifying steps like completing challenges and getting messages to the effect that they're learning the ways of various creatures. After enough gossamer ranks are accumulated and enough "You learn the ways of..." and "shooting star" messages, the fighter may be granted entry into a secret ranger training area and become a ranger.

Rangers study creatures to gain combat bonuses against them. If a ranger continues to study a creature after they get the combat bonus against them, eventually the ranger will be be able to befriend (control) them. With even more study a ranger will eventually be able to take that creature's shape. A side effect of this is that the ranger can also learn how to track learned creatures on snell.

• See a ranger for the exact amount of gossamer blade training needed.

How to Study a Creature's Movements

First, the ranger must pick the creature he or she would like to study by equipping the gossamer and typing /use /study and hitting the creature. The gossamer must be used to learn the creature's movements. To learn a creature's movements the ranger must deliver the killing blow to about a dozen of the exact same creature. (A tie between two people hitting the same creature counts as well.) When the ranger has learned a creatures movements a message appears in the sidebar stating so.

A Ranger can only study 1-4 creatures at a time and must manually switch studies by typing /use /study and hitting the creature they wish to switch to. The second slot is acquired by training with 4 hidden ranger trainers. After that, the more challenges completed*, the more study slots the ranger has up to 4 study slots. If all a ranger's study slots are full a message explaining that the ranger must abandon studies of a creature will appear on the sidebar. A ranger can abandon studying a creature by typing /use /study /abandon <creature name>.

• if you wish to know which challenges are key to adding study slots please ask a ranger.

Which Creatures to Learn

Almost every creature can be studied, and there are very few exceptions. How to choose the right ones to study is a matter of personal preference mainly but there are a few guidelines. First off, unless it is for fun, such as you'd like to be able to control or morph into a rat, stick to creatures that are challenging to you. As you'll see below it's not "free" to study creature's movements, so make every rank count by studying creatures you vanquish or have trouble killing solo. Second, study to morph creatures that give you abilities you would like, such as very fast troilus or faster than normal movement speed.

Duvin Costs of Learning Creatures

Duvin Beastlore is a special ranger trainer that teaches rangers how to learn the movements of creatures. Duvin is used up like currency to study each creature. It "costs" 5 Duvin to learn the first creature of a family of creatures. The next Creature in the same family will cost 4 Duvin, then 3 for the third creature, 2 Duvin for the fourth and finally all other members cost 1 Duvin. Befriending takes 10 duvin and morphing takes 5 duvin on top of the learning requirement. So, to get a morph, it takes up to 20 duvin.

Family Bonus

As a ranger learns each creature in a family he or she gains a 10% Atkus/Darkus bonus against other unlearned family members up to 50%. So, if a ranger learns 3 arachnoids (crimson, pitch and malachite), but hasn't studied a slate arachnoid, he or she will get a 30% bonus against the slate.

About Shapeshifting

While shape-shifted the ranger takes on most, but not all characteristics, of the creature the ranger morphed into. As of storm v481 the characteristics (stats) of the creature the ranger morphed into are based on the basic abilities of the ranger (sans morph). Stats such as Atkus are limited to 1.8 times the rangers natural Atkus. For example: if a ranger naturally has 200 lessons of Atkus, but the monster he/she learned has 600 Atkus, when morphed, he/she will only get 200*1.8 which translates to 360 Atkus. This cap is to prevent rangers from learning creatures way beyond their natural abilities and alway using that form when fighting creatures well above their level.

The cap applies to other stats such as Darkus, Regia and Balthus. Troilus also has a capped multiplier, but it is much higher than the other cap. Histia works differently though. With Histia, the creatures maximum health is the cap, but any additional health the ranger gets as part of the morph is added to the ranger's maximum capacity, not the current health of the ranger. For instance, if a ranger has 100 natural Histia and Morphs into a creature with 200 Histia, the ranger would appear as that creature down to half of its health. The ranger could then be healed or troilus to the 200 Histia limit, but when the ranger reverts back to his or her natural form that extra health is discarded.

The maximum speed at which a shapeshifted ranger moves is either increased or decreased based on the speed of the creature's shape the ranger assumes. So, a ranger morphed into stinging beetle would move faster than his or her natural form: while one morphed into a scavenger bird would move much slower.

However, swing rate is unaffected by shapeshifting. So, even though a giant carnivorous plankton (GCP) swings much faster than an exile can swing, a ranger who obtains this shapeshift would still only be able to swing at his or her natural rate.

Spirit and the Ranger

Spirit energy is used for almost all ranger abilities, so it is very important to understand how and when it is used. With training the ranger can learn to increase his or her spirit pool with one trainer and increase the rate at which spirit energy is replenished with another.

When a ranger hits a learned creature a little bit of energy (the third bar) is used and converted into the atkus bonus and the darkus bonus. The more gossamer training one has the more spirit is used up in each hit.

The use of the Heartwood Charm drains spirit energy as well, but after an initial cost the ranger's energy trickles down slowly while the ranger is running faster. The longer the ranger uses the charm the faster energy is used up.

Morphing using the Belt of the Wild works much the same way as the Heartwood Charm in terms of spirit costs, except instead of using energy faster as the ranger is morphed the spirit drain is a constant trickle.

The Belt of the Wild can also be used to activate the befriend ability which allows the ranger to control one or more creatures he or she has learned to befriend. The tougher the creature the faster energy is used to control it. Also, the more creatures controlled the faster energy is drained as well.

The last ability of the Belt that uses energy is tracking learned creatures, which drains spirit energy at a constant rate as well. (The belt can also be used to check what creatures are being studied, what have been studied, and can also evaluate the progress of a would-be ranger's progress for no energy costs.)

Use of the Shieldstone drains energy the fastest, with most ranger only able to use it a few seconds. Some rangers have trained up this ability to seem to last much longer however.

Ranger Trainers

Duvin Beastlore

"I can teach you to study the ways of various creatures." Duvin is necessary to study creatures.

Respin Verminbane

"I can teach you to channel energy from the world more efficiently." Respin is like Respia for Rangers. He controls the rate at which you regain Spirit.

Splash O'Sul

"I can teach you to store energy channeled from the world around you." Splash is like Sespus for Rangers. He increases your spirit pool.

Bangus Anmash

"I can teach you a balanced combat approach which kills monsters quickly." Bangus is a combo trainer like Evus.*

"•Your combat ability improves."

Farly Buff

"I can toughen you up so you can survive being chewed on." Farly Buff is a combo trainer like Evus.*

* Talk to a ranger for what trainers Bangus and Farly combine.

Atkus conservation and the Gossamer Blade

As of version 618, there will be some changes ot the gossamer blades Atkus bonus. Currently, the blade conserves atkus by only expending enough to hit a creature, and charging the ranger for that balance. However it will be changed to a 3 times charge on balance when you use the extra Atkus a goss gives you, with a slight exception (see below). The following post is from Eldon, a CL GM:

"You should have a /use /nerf command on your goss (it will be undocumented) next update. It turns on a proposed nerf. /use /nerf again will turn it off. The nerf is really pretty simple, and is rather severe, but it feels about "right" to me from limited testing.

How it works: once atkus is conserved, we multiply the amount of atkus bonus you get by three, or set it to the maximum bonus, whichever is lower. (Numbers are subject to change.)

The result of this is things you can already hit without the gossamer will cost the same amount of balance. Things you can barely hit will cost more (and training atkus will actually make those monsters cost less to swing at, since you're spending 3x as much atkus as you actually needed). And things you have trouble hitting will always cost the max bonus of the goss

This is where you're really going to feel it. On things that say, take 200 atkus more than you have, instead of just costing 200 it will end up costing you 600.

By the way, some people felt that they whiffed a little more on creatures they needed the goss bonus to hit. Some theorized atkus conservation might have been taking away a little too much atkus, leaving you with a slightly higher chance to miss. I've never tested if that was true, but if it was the case, this change should stop that entirely."

discussion on this topic is currently here: http://www.vagilemind.com/clanlord/viewtopic.php?p=127204#p127204

Where to go from here

Rangers, particularly those new to the class, can request access to the Clan Lord Rangers yahoogroup for much more information by contacting Ogant.