Introduction
Welcome to our Dark and Darker Ranger guide for beginners. In this guide we’ll be covering all the basics you need to know to get your adventure started in Dark and Darker. The Ranger is a strong ranged class with the ability to choose some melee options also. The Ranger focuses on using various types of Bows to deal incredible damage from afar and can utility traps to control an area.
Pros
- Ranged damage and good vs PvE
- Strong baseline skills to select
- Access to Spear usage
- Great starting gear (Traps)
Cons
- Very low base health pool and armor
- High skill ceiling
- Takes time to learn range drop off from arrows
Skills
Skills in Dark and Darker are the core abilities each class has unique access to. Currently, you can select two of the following skills to complement the playstyle or build choice you prefer:
- Quickshot
- Multishot
- Field Ration
- Quick Fire
- True Shot
- Forceful Shot
- Penetrating Shot
Quickshot
Quickshot allows you to load and then fire arrows based on the type of bow you equip in rapid succession with a single button press. Overall an incredibly powerful skill.
Multishot
Multishot essentially works like a shotgun-type skill. When used the Multishot will fire 5 arrows outward in a cone, dealing immense burst damage when used close up.
Field Ration
Field Ration is a fantastic source of sustain allowing you to gain 25 health back upon quick usage. Another powerful part of Field Ration is that it is usable up to 3 times per dungeon run.
Quick Fire
Quick Fire is a stat steroid-type skill that buffs your attack speed by 50% when using the bow. This allows you to fire off quite a lot of arrows in a 5-second window.
True Shot
True Shot is a skill that when activated increases the projectile speed of arrows. The skill might have some use cases but ultimate is fairly low-powered as of now.
Forceful Shot
Hitting an enemy with a ranged weapon during the 8 seconds knocks the target back.
Penetrating Shot
Ignores 50% of opponents’ projectile defense for the duration.
Skill Recommendations
For starting out and the foreseeable future, we recommend using Quickshot and Field Ration. Quickshot is too powerful of a DPS tool to give up and can easily clear PvE mobs and net you some juicy PvP kills. Field Ration however is such a simple to use skill but highly effective at keeping you topped up health wise and as a result, is the perfect tool to sustain.
Perks
Perks in Dark and Darker serve as unique passive traits. Each class can slot up to 4 perks once they reach max level:
- Sharpshooter, 15% higher headshot damage
- Enhanced Hearing, allows you to better hear close by enemies
- Kinesthesia, 10% faster movement when the bowstring is drawn
- Spear Proficiency, allows access to use spears and +10 Strength
- Crossbow Mastery, 50% faster reload speed and movement speed while reloading crossbows, +5% damage increase
- Ranged Weapons Expert, +5% damage dealt with ranged weapons
- Trap Mastery – allows you to set traps faster
- Nimble Hands, +15% faster shooting with a bow
- Chase – Detect recent enemy footsteps
- Crippling Shot – Hitting the target’s leg reduces their movement speed bonus by an additional 35% for 2 seconds.
- Quick Reload – Increases reload speed by 50% when reloading bow-type weapons.
Perk Recommendations
Currently, we recommend taking Nimble Hands, Sharpshooter, Kinesthesia and Spear Proficiency. However, when starting out in your adventure and you are leveling your Ranger, we suggest starting with Nimble Hands.
Spells
Currently in our Dark and Darker Ranger guide, the Ranger has no access to spells, but this could change with the addition of artifacts or scrolls. Check back here in future updates!
Weapons
The Ranger can utilize a fair few weapons within the game, allowing multiple playstyles to form:
- Survival Bow
- Recurve bow
- Longbow
- Spear (with Spear Proficiency)
- Crossbow
- Arming Sword
- Rapier
- Short Sword
Starting out, we recommend taking the standard recurve bow and an arming sword as a melee back-up. The longbow however as you scale up with gear and better bows is undoubtedly the best bow to pick. Another trait of the longbow is that its notoriously slowly to draw and shoot, with the positive tradeoff being that it deals more damage.
As soon as you have Spear Proficiency equipped and find yourself a spear, we recommend using a spear over any other melee weapon. This is due to the spear being one of the best melee weapons in the game due to range and the decent damage it deals.
It should be noted too that the Ranger class can actually use the Pavise shield!
Stat Priority
Different stats in Dark and Darker have different properties, as a result we recommend prioritizing the following stats on gear:
- +All Attributes
- Agility
- Strength
- Additional Physical Damage
+All Attributes is a no-brainer, allowing you additional stat points in every stat is a huge value. We recommend Agility as a priority as a result of increasing your movement speed and attack speed. Strength and other increases are nice but not the highest priority. Additional Physical Damage is a raw damage increase and should be picked up wherever possible.
How To Play Ranger
In this Dark and Darker Ranger Guide, we will focus on the fundamentals. Ultimately as a Ranger you will provide heavy ranged damage assistance to teammates, or be a menace solo. Dark and Darker is a very brutal and unforgiving game, as a result mechanics such as friendly fire is on. This means as a Ranger you have to be careful when shooting arrows.
PvE
When dealing with PvE mobs throughout your dungeon run most mobs can be taken down fairly easily with your standard arrow shots. However bigger mobs can be dealt with using Quickshot or even Multishot. As a Ranger you should always be able to keep a good amount of space between you and the mobs.
Another little trick you can do should you find a Pavise shield or bring one into the dungeon with you, is that you can put down the Pavise shield! Once the Pavise shield is set-up on the ground it can block doorways, or even help you to jump up onto torches or door frames. This will help you avoid mobs you might have trouble with or give you the drop on some unsuspecting dungeon divers.
PvP
Fighting with teammates versus another trio can get hectic quickly, with the Ranger use this opportunity to move fast and reposition between shots. Doing so can give you favorable angles to take out players. However should you be playing with teammates, remember to be vocal with them and let them know which way to move or where you are shooting from – this will prevent teamkills! Using Quickshot at the right time and distance can easily drop a player at the start of the fight too so make sure to find the perfect moment! Finally, Quickshot as a tool can be useful too as it will automatically reload your bow and fire three shots. Keep this is mind so you can expend your arrows into a Quickshot and keep the arrows coming!
Solo
When you are playing solo however, you get a very powerful option to control an area and take advantage of fights, the use of traps. Traps in Dark and Darker are a very powerful tool usable only by the Ranger class. To use a Trap simply equip it to your character, bring out the trap to your hands and begin to lay it where you please! The standard location to place a trap is usually in doorways and then closing the door. In 1v1 scenarios or even 3v3 this can easily catch players out and net you a free opening kill, due to the fact that players have to look down and interact with the trap to disarm it!
Finally, keep your distance at all times, reposition where possible and always remember you have Field Rations at your disposal to quickly rejoin fights. It is incredibly important that you keep an eye on your arrow count; needing to reload mid-fight can be an awkward situation. Should you have a spear equipped it is good to note that you can win even your melee match-ups with the right amount of spacing and disengaging due to the spears range.
We hope you enjoyed our comprehensive Dark and Darker Ranger Guide for beginners! To check out other class guides and more, click here.
Dark and Darker’s next Playtest is coming 6th February, with many potential changes and additions discussed in our Q&A Recap.