Just a quick question about rangers. Would an explorer specced ranger be any good for doing just that? I take great interest in exploring areas, more so than anything else. How badly would I be hampered in my reliance on the wilderness, would I miss out greatly on the better areas by avoiding civilization? And lastly which terrain should I pick to maximize survivability and versatility? PK being of little or no consequence to me.

I love my explorer ranger for doing just that exploring.

1) You can see just about everything outdoors and have interesting scanning abilities...
2) Tend wounds is one of my favorite skills, dragon bites and boneshatters, not all that troublesome.
3) I just LOVE not having to eat and drink as much as I did with other characters.
4) With scrolls and talismans, you have lots of flexibility and room to be creative, damage reduction/pass door/faerie fog/haste... (many of these you can also get as pills/potions, but you can brandish in combat)
5) Ranger staff/spear healing, or you can always just go sword and shield, herbs and camp...

This is probably the big one for most people...

6) As far as combat goes, I have not noticed a problem when going from civilized back to wilderness and not dodging etc... The only comment I have is on the mysterious "fast camo and fast creep", as far as I can tell, they dont exist for explorers. Being as I didn't pick an explorer for pking, its not an issue for me.

Just my random thoughts, more will probably come to me as I think about it... If you have a specific question, fire away and I'll see what I can do.

Good luck

Well my main question would simply be what terrain slection do you suggest? I made an explorer/forester to see what skill sets they would get but it seems unless you are forester/survivalist you do not get those skills. Namely imbue staff. I'm thinking I'll be going explorer/cavern dweller, as it seems one or two of the cavern skills might work simply indoors. And I figure caves are probably the next biggest terrain feature next to forests. But obviously I'm not well versed in the world of Thera as of yet.

Imbue weapon is a spell, not a skill. Explorer/forester does have it, as explorers don't lose fashion/imbue weapon.

The skill sets for all combos can be seen from the class page. Every ranger has the forester/survivalist kit, from which they lose all the skills their terrain/expertise choises lose and gain all the skills their terrain/expertise choises give them.

Oh jeez I'm an idiot. I didn't even think to look at the spells list. Thanks for your answers. Look forward to playing with you all soon. If you can abide by my newbieness heh.

I'll list some newbie(and other) mistakes

-One common mistake newbie rangers do is sitting in civilized terrain doing nothing. A ranger is wilderness class and should spend all it's idle time in wilderness, preferably camouflaged. Your wilderness time will directly affect your characters performance. This affects explorers as well, but their performance in wilderness doesn't go all the way down to bad.

-Stay camouflaged(or hidden for thief/assassin) if you don't need to be visible. If someone jumps on you when you are visible, it's your own fault.

-When the more experienced players(probably magi in this case) flee from the fight you are tanking in, you are probably going to lose the fight. Flee and camouflage in this situation. Not knowing when or how to flee is a common reason for a newbie to get killed.

So, when your group flees, you'll flee too but after your groupmates are safe(tell them to get out if in good time if you are the tank and think that you are going to lose, the mob can be quite deadly to lowbie magi). Most mobs/players don't see camouflaged enemies, so camouflage and make sure that hunger/thirst/poison/bleeding isn't bringing you out on tick, as the mob will try to hunt you down in most of the cases.

-Don't hesitate asking questions from your group or other players in general instead of doing nothing when you are with a group. Ask if you don't know something and are thus hesitating. Don't be afraid to admit that you don't know the foes and ask for the tactical plan to fight them. Overly slow reacting to everything irritates people.

-Don't go AFK for an extended period of time. The small exeption to this is a quick trip to bathroom. If you are with a group, inform them that you'll "meditate for a moment" or something like this, but don't be gone more than 5 minutes. If you'll need to be away longer than that, go somewhere where you can quit the game or drop the link by disconnecting if it's an emergency(but don't make dropping the link a habit. If you know you'll have to go, give yourself enough time to go where you can quit the game).

There's a few pointers for newbie situations. See you in the fields.

Just be warned that cave ranger still have a lot of bugs.

Personally, I say if you need to go AFK for more than about 10 seconds, log out and then log back in when you get back. Of course, having died once from AFKing for less than a minute may have put me a touch on the paranoid side. :)

Forest is probably the most common wilderness terrain type, with caves being the second (just my overall impression no real facts to back this up).

If you want to explore the whole game, I'd go with forest. Being the most comon and most "generic" terrain (in my opinion) this gives you the most versatility.

If you have a specific area group that you want to explore, I'd consider that. Say you want to learn the underdark and its related areas, caves may be an option.

If you have a certain rp angle you want to work with, you can choose just about any terrain and I dont think you'll have a real problem. This would be the most decisive factor to me as a player.

And don't worry about your "newbieness" we were all there once, many of us are not that far from it even though others think we are... Without new blood, CF would wither...

Thanks for joining the most addictive game I've ever played...

Forest is probably the most versatile terrain just because so much of the world is forest.

I could comment on explorers, but I haven't played one yet and I'd rather let someone who has answer if I can.