Blovski

I think the Endless Paths kinda suffers from being too easy after the level 3 difficulty hump until about level 9-10 where suddenly all the tough enemies are out to play.

Reasonably tough on Hard, though difficulfty varies a lot. XP rewards are ludicrous and they do have some very good item drops.

1. High, high attack speed, and I wanted to use bows because I like them. I've never had a problem with the DR output, generally frequent crits make up against high DR enemies and with Persistence's Damaging 3 and Lenas Er's 3 DR bypass it's worked fine for me. 2. Didn't know if you could stack the two. Certainly worthwhile if you can. 3. Eh, 30s stuck is really strong and I liked the ranger having something else to do. I do think having someone indefinitely stuck is way better than them being hobbled. 4. Interesting idea, might be worth taking, certainly, though I don't think it works like that. Yeah, I know Rogues are the optimal, bestest ranged class. I just find them so dry as to be flavourless in PoE, so I'd rather not have them. Multi-gun-switching is kind of a chore for me and I'm not convinced that the high damage is better than frequent granular damage against the squishies your backline needs to mop up quickly. Also, if you want to take advantage of Stunning Shot, you want very frequent attacks rather than guns.

^ It's a perfectly fine skill but I don't actually find it that useful in practise just because of the casting time and single target application. In tough fights I'd rather spend the casting time on Binding Roots, an AOE scroll or a Spellbind or just shooting more. The exceptions, I guess, are things like Dragon fights and the final boss, which it is useful for.

The most ranged of Rangers. Principles: A ranger that hits as consistently as possible and reasonably hard, taking advantage of the class's high accuracy. Difficulty: I'm playing on Hard with Trial of Iron and a rather odd half-custom party. I expect it'd scale well to Path of the Damned simply because your accuracy is very reliable and you don't want to be taking hits anyway. Part one: Race Optimal: Wood Elf is probably your optimal choice for the better ranged accuracy and consistency. Also gives you a little defence against ranged enemies. Interesting: Island Aumaua (open the fight with an Arquebus or Blunderbuss for a high-damage single target shot, or have more weapon-bound spells available to you) Death Godlike (x1.2 damage against injured opponents. Still probably not a match to Wood Elf but at least interesting) Hearth Orlan (more crits) Boreal Dwarf (higher might, bonuses vs. some tough enemies) Honourable Mention: Pale Elf (resistance to fire and cold will help you not get thumped too hard by backline return fire and also help against tough enemies such as Shades throughout the game). Stats Initial Stats - I'm not much of a minmaxer. You can exaggerate these by dropping Con and Res further if you are or tweak them to your own preferences if you're not. Might 16/Con 8/Dex 19/Per 15/Int 12/Res 8. High might and Dex and acceptable Int and Per are your key choices. Perception will give you a lot more survivability at range and interrupt. I picked up Gift From The Machine, a Constitution bonus from Blood Sacrifice and Perception from Song of the Heavens in my run. None of these are really essential for the build working. Finished with effective stats of Might 19/Con 9/Dex 21/Per 17/Int 12/Res 10. Animal Companion Choice I think whatever you're interested in can work for you, as you're not hugely reliant on the animal companion. I went with the Antelope for better defences. Bear (Higher DR), Lion (AOE Debuff) and Wolf (Takedown) could all be valuable. Stag and Boar would probably fit less with this build, as engaging multiple enemies or being below 50% endurance are not things you really want your animal companion to do if you're reliant on dealing damage at range. Talents/Abilities Essential: Vicious Aim: Better damage, more accuracy; you want this. Penetrating Shot: Completely essential for an archer build - with the way DR works in this game, this will add a huge percentagAe to damage with bows. Driving Flight: hit a second target with every shot. Obviously good. Very Highly recommended talents - Binding Roots: Having any melee enemy stuck for 30 seconds is a huge deal, even ranged enemies and spellcasters can be taken out of the fight with this if you then pull your party away and deal with them separately. Stunning Shot - Allows the ranger to keep a single target they can reliably hit and that their Animal Companion can reach permanently stunlocked. Weapon Focus: Peasant (Hunting Bow) or Weapon Focus: Adventurer (War Bow) - My preference is for Hunting Bows, given there are several excellent ones available and the very fast rate of attack emphasises the ranger's reliability. War Bows are potentially also a great option with higher damage but lower rate of fire, with the early Borresaine giving you stunning on crits. Adventurer comes with the best selection of two handers in the game but Peasant comes with Accuracy (Spear) and Deflection (Hatchet) melee options and Staffs (which often have reach enchantments). Marksman - More Accuracy is more reliability. This is a good thing. Envenomed Strike - Raw damage bypasses DR altogether, which is extremely valuable against enemies with high damage resistances. Curiosities: After you've filled the above list out, Defensive talents are helpful if uninspiring (escape disengagement, resist charm, better reflex, the ranger's dodge arrows ability). I don't know how Quick Aim and Vicious Aim interact, so don't ask me. Marked Prey is a little underwhelming, animal companion knockdown could help you out occasionally. Shot On The Run kinda contradicts the point of the build, and I'm not sure whether you can get real, meaningful speed boosting powers early enough to try a hit-and-run archer out as a build. Skills/Background These are not hugely important for a Ranger (or anyone with a full party). Stealth will let you scout a little and steal things and do a couple of quests a little differently. Someone in your party needs mechanics and traps are great. You need some Athletics just to not get tired all the time. Survival gives you better consumable use, which is nice for potions of Eldritch aim, Vital Essence or War Paint, which you should be chugging for difficult fights after reaching Twin Elms. All of these are somewhat useful. HOWEVER, Lore is probably your most valuable skill, as rangers have very high accuracy (higher than any of the spellcaster classes) and the Rangerer is going to be specced with high damage, fast recovery time and decent intelligence. I believe a lot of the ranged accuracy talents and racials affect accuracy for spells as well. Having your ranger able to obliterate stuff with a blob of fan of flames crits or buff with protection will prove really clutch and gives you a much better arsenal against high Pierce resistance foes. Gear Your choice for primary weapons is between Hunting Bows and War Bows. With regards to hunting bows, there are four uniques, Persistence from level 4 of the Endless Paths is a very strong weapon and will easily carry you up until the Northweald. If you aren't stopping at the endless paths you can pick up the Exceptional Crooked Bee Bow from the Club of Refined and Prestigious Gentlemen in Ondra's Pearl. Once you hit the Northweald there are two options - the first is the ranger unique (Preymaker) which you get from asking for a weapon off the Glanfathan hunters. It's really very disappointing and probably not an upgrade on Persistence. Much better is Lenas Er which you get from siding with Arthwyn in the Hunter, Brother Quest and which will carry you to the end of the game. Lenas Er has an inbuilt 3 DR, which makes a lot of difference given how quickly you're firing, is Superb quality and has a couple of other good enchantments. You have just enough enchantment space left to slap Vessel Bane onto it to help you work on Adra Animats and Thaos's mooks. I didn't run with Warbows but there's an excellent one (Borresaine) available in the Market in the Copperstone District and another off a ranger in the Woodend Plains from one of the third tier of bounties. For your melee weapon, I'd take a slightly counterintuitive approach and suggest a weapon such as The White Spire which gives you a spellbound AOE effect, that, similar to Lore, makes your ranger a lot more flexible and dangerous in big fights and takes advantage of your might, accuracy and intellect. If you're not into launching giant damaging spell effects (how very strange of you...), there are plenty of decent hatchets, clubs, staffs and spears around. War bow rangers can take advantage of Drake's Bell or The Blade of the Endless Paths or a Pollaxe for crushing damage. My recommendation is to detour down to the Endless Paths level 4 to pick up Rundl's Finery (enchant it to Exceptional when you hit level 8 ), Persistence (and Lawran's Stick, Resolution and a couple of other items) relatively early as that gear will carry your Ranger easily up until Twin Elms. Once you're at Twin Elms you can pick between the Starlit Garb and Rundl's Finery and pick up Lenas Er for the best possible hunting bow. If you feel like doing the last level of Bounties, the Vithrack Exarch drops Gwisk Glas, a robe which provides Second Wind, which makes it the best clothing in the game. With regards to accessories, honestly, these aren't terribly important. Find stuff that buffs up your might and dex and ideally anything that provides you with another per rest spell to cast (such as the Sunbeam amulet). Notes on playing Your ranger should not be in melee combat, ever, if at all avoidable. If enemies slip past your tanks, immobilise them with binding roots or block them with your companion. Many players will not realise that Animal Companions are not only affected by fatigue but also have no Athletics (almost certainly an oversight). You can check this by looking at your character page. This has a huge impact on the AC's survivability, so make certain to rest before challenging fights even if you otherwise wouldn't need to. Be careful with the Animal Companion as them going down reduces your accuracy and stats. Binding Roots from Stealth on the most powerful enemy followed by running away a little is a great way to open fights. Much as I recommend spellbind weapons above they are a bit dodgy in practise, and occasionally bug out not restoring charges properly or displaying when they should. Chug War Paint in difficult fights, remember your watcher abilities, since you have the accuracy to use them and get your other characters to focus on any effect which increases your damage or decreases enemy DR. The high rate of fire really strongly rewards these effects.

The main problem with the main quest in PoE is that there is a horrible disconnect (I didn't realize this until it was pointed out to me) -- there is no logical connection between "I've gained my stronghold" and "Now I'm in Defiance Bay and investigating the activities of a mysterious organization" (spoilers omitted). I overlooked this lack of connection because I considered "investigating the mysterious organization" as "just another side quest in the dozens that I had within minutes of arriving in Defiance Bay", but... Honestly, it really doesn't make any sense that you even be in Defiance Bay other than "Well, you don't have anywhere else to go". The main story line quests in BG1 and DAO might be simple or cliched, but at least they didn't have any gaps like this. On build diversity -- I consider the presence of multi/dual class options to be /part of/ build diversity, not an "extra". If you limit the discussion in BG1 to only the basic classes, then yeah, PoE has better build diversity, but that's unfairly penalizing BG1 -- where else are you going to give BG1 credit for including mult/dual classes? On the companions in DAO -- I tend to agree that they were weak in comparison to some other Bioware games, but I'm not trying to evaluate them on some absolute scale or anything -- just against the PoE companions. And by that standard, the PoE companions are very inferior. The basic flow of it all made sense but the game is terrible at making you understand that the Maerwald thing is something that *will* happen to you so you need to sort it out. Also the Stronghold as whole just makes zero sense. Think it's a taste thing, I'd rather have something ambitious with gaps than something lacklustre with consistency. I dunno, even with BG's dual classes (and with 1 duals were a lot more limited because of the level cap) stat distribution in those games is really always either great or terrible, and rerolling until you get enough for whatever trickshot you're going for. Avenger/Fighter Duals were a lot of fun, though. I suppose what I like about PoE is that you can build things differently without them being plainly worse. The most fun I ever had in Icewindale playthroughs was with a quasi pen and paper random stats party because it generated unique characters and made me adapt my playstyle in a way that using the IE engine never otherwise did. @Toaster, BG 2 did have way better encounters. I can't really think of many quests with real multiple solutions off the top of my head, excepting the occsaional one where you can do an extra job for someone to avoid a fight or the occasional one you can bypass with pickpocketing? Yeah, scouting in BG 2 is glorious. Eora is a deliberately subverted cliché world, which works for me. It's the Frozen RPG. Wizards are far less out of line than in BG 2 where a battle would invariably devolve into countering a wizard's enormously specific defences and hoping that if they froze time they would use symbol fear instead of Horrid Wilting. @Psychevore... really... with Kai Leng? and the Rachni decision from the first game not mattering because Bioware were too cheap/too busy making The Old Republic to copy paste another bunch of their generic enemies onto it? And the blatant meaningless emotional manipulation kid? A flat Carth Onasi and a dull, rude, smug, compulsory, wildly inconsistent, very self-consciously liberated prat. Both of whom you can make fall in love with you by dragdropping random bits of jewellery onto their portraits. Ick.

I'm increasingly convinced that the AI is the problem. It doesn't risk disengaging, isn't great at focussing fire and rarely either buffs or debuffs meaningfully A lot of the tough fights involve mass AOE raw damage druids or Charm/Confusion because they break your confidence in your squishies/tanks dichotomy.

I had to stealth it up to the last group of elves to avoid violence.

I think Llawrn's Stick is from the room you unlock with the Defiance Sabre in level 3 of the Endless Paths. WRT Armour, the Sanguine Plate is a drop in the quest given by the Vaillian Embassy and the Coat of Ill Payment or whatever it's called (another retaliation armour) is from the Priest of Eothas bounty.

I kind of think PoE's main quest's issues are that it takes a while to get rolling and isn't great at motivating you in the way BG 1 was. It's probably meatier than either of those games thematically and in terms of content, in my view. Combat in BG 1 is probably a little more varied overall and the AI of the BG games is slightly better at providing meaningful challenges though still cheeseable to hell. I really don't get people holding up BG 1 as an example of build diversity - building a fighter that doesn't have 18/18/18 STR/DEX/CON is always suboptimal, and the curve for stats in AD&D meant that the more you diverged from that the more suboptimal you were. 2 had some but that was from the range of kits and really wide variety of items rather than actually in the character building stage. Dual and multi classes are really important for the replayability precisely because the single classes of AD&D games are really monotonous in their design. DAO - I really liked DAO's choice and consequence. I think the companions for it are probably the weakest of any of Bioware's modern games, though, and linked to that dreadful gifting system. Oghren is the only one I really liked. And the Dog.

With regards to the hunting bows - Persistence is in Level 4 (I think) of Od Nua. IIRC, it drops from an enemy. The Prey Maker is a unique Ranger bow (and really very disappointing for when you get it) is a reward from the Glanfathans in the Northweald if you kill the looters. Lenas Er, which is probably the best one, is a reward from the Hunter, Brother quest if you side with Arthwyn. I suspect the Crooked Bee Bow is a purchase but I can't remember for sure. The spear Danulya is in the room in Od Nua with the stupid chains of death traps. Some of the figurines: Ivory Wurm Figurine is dropped in the Xaurip bounty. Shade Figurine is in a locked chest in the Vaillian Embassy in First Fires. Wood Beetle Figurine is in a hidden thing by the Theatre in Copperlane.

Do a quest or two. I've never seen a companion die on a mission.

No reason not to go for 6, really. Level cap's low enough you'll more than hit it with 6.

The lack of Athletics is a huge problem, I think, especially as I, playing as a ranger, wouldn't have ever found out about it without the forum.

I think I saw someone saying Envenomed Strikes don't interact with every shot of a Blunderbuss. I like the Lenas Er hunting bow with vicious aim, penetrating shot etc. Fast attack speed, extremely consistent damage dealing.

Well, even just getting a +1-3 appropriate resistance for every elemental chained would be lovely. Fiddle with the dialogue to make it clearer that this is a choice. Your item idea is also great... some otherwise doubtful item with a binding for Minor Blights might also be nice.

^ rather

Yeah, the Stronghold makes little to no sense from a story perspective. Literally add two three-line generic NPCs as a taxman (explaining you're getting taxes from the merchants) and a head of the guard, a couple of small conversations in Defiance Bay and it'll make sense.

Hello, I'm interested in making a little flavour mod to add a ton more minor event-based and class/event interaction perks (so, Priest perks for doing Magran and Eothas thingies and so on) - does anyone know if there's anywhere I can find out more stuff about modding PoE - what's possible, what's not, how involved it is, how to get started etc?

^ Read it on the wiki, which might be out of date. Here

^ woah that's a ludicrously big deal... interesting. @Bugged Wolf - um, gift from the machine I don't think you need cruel disposition for. I think you do for Blood Legacy.

I need to make some sort of perk mod that gives you little amounts of cool **** for doing this ****.

I really don't agree that rangers are useless, though I think they are kinda limited in their good build options and if pets are affected by athletics/fatigue they really shouldn't be. Rangers are really fantastic archers (with a +15 ranged accuracy bonus, loads of really sound ranged talents). Companions just are not durable enough later in the game for higher difficulties right now imo, though the use of the pet is as a second line blocker rather than a frontline fighter. The ranger has one of the best active talents in the game in the form of binding roots... keep the toughest enemy in a group stuck for 30 seconds with 5 uses per rest, and the ranged bonus makes them really good scroll/spellsfromitems users. What I'd like to see is the companion talents *all* adding some durability to the companion and the companion's unique abilities scaling with level so you have a meaningful choice between boosting your companion and increasing your archery and whatever else. As far as talent additions go, I'd really like something like Vampiric Bond - Timed duration, X/day. The Ranger and Companion heal each other (as with a Draining effect) when they deal damage. Bonded Grief would be fine if the pet was a bit more durable and the ranger had meaningful ways to preserve their pet.

Depends on difficulty and how willing you are to go with some things that are not the greatest things ever. I think it's much less systematically limited than the old IE and Black Isles games were (BG games by the equipment being the only really big choices for most classes and the optimal stat layouts for any class, IWD 2 and Fallout by prerequisite stats and perks requiring foreknowledge to make halfway decent characters.

Does anyone understand the bit in Cliaban Rilag where you have the choice between picking the door or going left. It seems like when you go left you can either pick up the key and go back or just go in through the open left side of the centre room and there's no meaningful difference/you don't avoid anything by doing so. Really curious as to what the design rationale behind this is? Some cuts late in the process or something? Also, IIRC there are unavoidable traps on the left, which you need mechanics to take out and obviously picking the door requires mechanics so it's not even a meaningful build decision. Just struck me as really bizarre if the design's intentional rather than a relic of the development process.