I've decided I may just try a wood elf savage from what I've read. I've been going back and fourth on which race to pick with a savage, and I think wood-elf will be best bet for first time ranger.

My questions are;

1. Is it true that wood elves get a bonus to ambush, entangle, and ranger staff/spear? All three of them?

2. If I pick a wood elf savage, does that mean that my ambush bonus from being a wood elf would be even stronger if I choose to become a savage? I think someone said savages get a bonus to ambush as well. So, in theory, would that kind of be 2x the ambush as a wood elf savage?

3. It's also said that a wood elf savage/swamp ranger would be able to put plague on a staff? Is this only if I choose the terrain of swamps? Can I only do this to my staff if it's in the swamps? Can you put poison and plague on your staff as a woodelf?

4. I dont know much of swamps, but my skills will only be effective within a swamp? Meaning, outside of a swamp, but still in the woods my skills are going to suck? If so, do you think it's better for me to pick another terrain expertise? Or, maybe the one where I dont get a bonus to attacks, but I am good in all terrains?

5. Wood elves are vulnerable to iron, and iron is a metal. So, if i'm a savage with protection from metals does that negate the vulnerability of being an elf?

6. My RP as a wood elf savage would be to attack all that do not belong in the woods, and maybe be weirded out or scared of each creature that enters the woods, and attack them on sight just because I feel threatened within the woods from them. Kind of like I attack them before they get the chance to attack me. That's just off the top of my head. But, a wood elf is a neutral. IF an imm thinks that I'm not being "neutral" and he decides to change me to evil, or however they do it, would I lose skills for that?

7. Regarding question #6; I've never RP'd a neutral, nor played an outlander before, but I kind of get the jist of it, but want to pk, and actually have with with with the game but do you think it'd be wise for me to pick an evil race just to be forsure that I dont break the role of a neutral?

p.s. I'm learning alot from the answers you are giving me, but I dont have all the help files to look up stuff. So, i'm just driven to ask these questions. Thanks for the help.

Everything you hoping for about wood-elf Savages in your post is true. They rock, your biggest enemy will be unavoidable big damage. Otherwise you will do well.

I think the "Kill everything that doesn't belong in the woods" angle is lame, even for outlanders.

>1. Is it true that wood elves get a bonus to ambush, entangle,
>and ranger staff/spear? All three of them?

I believe so, yes.

That being said (not to talk you out of playing this, but giving you more of the whole picture), does the extra damage a wood-elf gets on ambush outweigh the extra damage a cloud giant essentially gets over the wood-elf because they're stronger? Probably not. Does a wood-elf's ranger staff advantages outweigh the advantage of being able to claw while wielding a staff as a felar? Probably not. Etc.

It's complicated. :)

>2. If I pick a wood elf savage, does that mean that my ambush
>bonus from being a wood elf would be even stronger if I choose
>to become a savage? I think someone said savages get a bonus
>to ambush as well. So, in theory, would that kind of be 2x the
>ambush as a wood elf savage?

They're different kinds of ambush benefits, but yes when relevant they stack.

>3. It's also said that a wood elf savage/swamp ranger would be
>able to put plague on a staff? Is this only if I choose the
>terrain of swamps? Can I only do this to my staff if it's in
>the swamps? Can you put poison and plague on your staff as a
>woodelf?

Swampdweller ranger staves have a special ability that other rangers' ranger staves do not. Being a wood elf or not isn't relevant in this case.

>4. I dont know much of swamps, but my skills will only be
>effective within a swamp? Meaning, outside of a swamp, but
>still in the woods my skills are going to suck? If so, do you
>think it's better for me to pick another terrain expertise?
>Or, maybe the one where I dont get a bonus to attacks, but I
>am good in all terrains?

Outside of a swamp/jungle, your swampdweller-specific skills are mostly not relevant.

>5. Wood elves are vulnerable to iron, and iron is a metal. So,
>if i'm a savage with protection from metals does that negate
>the vulnerability of being an elf?

If you have protection from metals up, it comes out about even.

>6. My RP as a wood elf savage would be to attack all that do
>not belong in the woods, and maybe be weirded out or scared of
>each creature that enters the woods, and attack them on sight
>just because I feel threatened within the woods from them.
>Kind of like I attack them before they get the chance to
>attack me. That's just off the top of my head. But, a wood elf
>is a neutral. IF an imm thinks that I'm not being "neutral"
>and he decides to change me to evil, or however they do it,
>would I lose skills for that?

If you change alignment, yeah that's bad for you. I believe there's a helpfile on alignment change for further details.

>7. Regarding question #6; I've never RP'd a neutral, nor
>played an outlander before, but I kind of get the jist of it,
>but want to pk, and actually have with with with the game but
>do you think it'd be wise for me to pick an evil race just to
>be forsure that I dont break the role of a neutral?

My question would be, what qualifies as 'all who don't belong in the woods' to you? If that's "basically everyone" then, yeah, your character is probably evil.

You make a good point though, but from the sounds of it, woodelf is just awesome, but has to stay within the neutral role, which might be tough.

I just have all these questions, and not alot of help files to help me out, so i'm just clicking and trying to read as much as I can. I really want to play a felar just for the claw attacks, but like others have said, the low strength is tough.

But it's just the swamp terrain that can learn to poison, or plague the staff. It's not woodelves in general who can do that.

You could just check the helpfiles on the other forum. It's all in there.

Look for stuff about rangers, and then focus on terrain and type of ranger.

:(

>3. It's also said that a wood elf savage/swamp ranger would be
>able to put plague on a staff? Is this only if I choose the
>terrain of swamps? Can I only do this to my staff if it's in
>the swamps? Can you put poison and plague on your staff as a
>woodelf?

Swampdweller ranger staves have a special ability that other rangers' ranger staves do not. Being a wood elf or not isn't relevant in this case.

You can poison any ranger staff with a certain item. With any terrain choice, any race, any ethos. But yeah, if you want a plaguing ranger staff, need to be a swampdweller.

Or does it work within any kind of wilderness, or any kind of terrain...ie swamp/cave/forrest?

It also in some cases works even in civilized areas. Check the helpfile for more information!

With both rangers and non rangers my impresion of the wilderness fam bonus that rangers get vs shifters either (for the purpose of this post assuming a ranger vs an in form shifter fighting in a civilized room)

a.) Does not work at all
b.) Is a bonus but significantly lower then the bonus for being in wilderness
c.) There is a bonus but is outweighed by the fact that shifters who are ment to hit a lot just have such a big bonus to bypassing defenses it doesn't get noticed and forms that don't hit through defenses well still don't hit through defenses well. (this is really just a restatement of 2 I guess in that the bonus is not easily noted)

That said in the wilderness vs shifters is pretty lopsided for the ranger you can take on fully prepped scions with really not much at all.

Unprepped rangers are not good against offensive shifters as is, and when night walkers are tossed in, it's over. Run or die.

I don't have a hard time 'winning' (that is, they have to run away and most of the time things don't line up so I can stop them) that fight from the ranger side with little or no prepping.

YMMV.

As mastered defenses aren't enough and damaging a prepped shifter is troublesome to say the least.

Probably there are a lot of things that you and I do differently, but off the top of my head:

1) Hit and run tactics in some cases; one thing that I've noticed in watching rangers that I thought were yours is that you use ambush much, much less than I do. Obviously I don't see all of your fights and I've probably missed a number of your rangers entirely so that may not be accurate but take it for what it's worth.

2) Just due to the nature of the ranger class and how good camo is for being able to pick your fights, I die much less often playing ranger than almost anything else, generally about one PK death for every 100-200+ hours of play. As a result I tend to be able to maintain a very high standard of gear relative to other kinds of characters I play. A fight with a shifter can look pretty different if you're still hitting for MUTILATES or so through full A/B/S+stoneskin.

When you land a really good one people flee and quaff. So I like to open with dirt, or a crippling ambush, or ambush disarm, then go for the boom toward the end.

I only recently came up with some newer tactics, that I'm sure half the game knew but I never considered. When I play a ranger again, we shall see.

>When you land a really good one people flee and quaff. So I
>like to open with dirt, or a crippling ambush, or ambush
>disarm, then go for the boom toward the end.

It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish, I think. If it's "I want the shifter to run instead of me dying.", then you just managed that.

But, yeah. We'll see what you manage next time around if you've got something different planned.

Firstly, if you snare someone and waylay, you'll get the first attack after, which could be bearcharge. If you time your attack and snare well (i.e. they are not expecting it), you can take them out because they are not well protected (as Isildur did to me).

Secondly, your ambushes should often be timed for when people are already hurt.

You have camo, so you need to leverage it so taht your ambushes are going to count.

My latest ranger was a wood-elf hunter/bedouin and at rank 43/44 I was being pursued by Lirad or whoever the vulture/Rhino guy was and I was besting him significantly with bows and with normal melee weapons. You just got unlucky or something because I never used any preps either and I had stone skin and haste on my person.

It works in any terrain. My impression though, is that you defend yourself better overall in your home terrain. Particularly if you go swampdweller (since you swampmire), or caverndweller (since you shadowstride). Plus a caverndweller hits back most of the time when he dodges in a cave, which is nice since you dodge all the time.

As a ranger, you should be able to handle yourself in pretty much any terrain that is wild. In your home terrain, you should really be killing almost anyone that you come across.