Dark and Darker Ranger (Build, Perks, Spear, Trap & Weapons)

“The Ranger is an excellent survivalist. With a keen eye and quick hands, the Ranger tracks his enemies, sets traps, and ambushes unsuspecting prey.”

Rangers are one of the ranged classes in Dark and Darker that focus on ranged attacks with minimal melee fighting as a backup.

While they are mostly built for ranged fighting, they can still be altered to use melee weapons when needed or built to wield a Spear.

The hunters are excellent for fighting from a distance and can easily find, trap and kill players who have let their guard down.

Best Weapons For Ranger

Rangers are adept at ranged fighting and have lower damage when equipped with melee weapons, making it better to use a Bow or a Crossbow.

When it comes to being efficient, having a Bow for regular fighting is advised, and a Crossbow for sniping enemies.

An alternative to a Crossbow and Bow would be a Bow and a melee weapon since they can be quite vulnerable when an enemy closes in on them.

A Spear is the best choice of a melee weapon since the Ranger has the Spear Proficiency Perk, providing them with 10 Bonus Strength with a Spear.

Bows seem to be the best bet when it comes to fighting since they can use some of the best of the Ranger’s Skills to deal better damage.

Ranger Pros and Cons

Pros

• Attacks quickly when using a bow
• Can track down other players
• Has the ability to set up traps
• Can set up a campfire quickly

Cons

• Unable to wield most melee weapons
• Has low melee damage

Ranger Stats

The Ranger has a fair amount of health and is more focused on dealing ranged damage as they suffer from a penalty to melee attacks.

The following are their stats below:

Ranger Perks

The Ranger’s perks focus on hunting enemies, using ranged weapons as well as giving him the upper hand in certain situations.

The following are the Ranger’s available perks:

1) Crossbow Mastery

Improves the Ranger’s performance with a Crossbow, providing them with a 5% bonus in physical damage as well as 50% reload speed and movement speed while reloading.

2) Enhanced Hearing

The Ranger’s senses become sharper, allowing them to hear enemy footsteps from a further distance to figure out where the enemy is walking or running.

3) Kinesthesia

Increases the Ranger’s movement speed by 10% whenever you are aiming the bow with the bowstring drawn and are about to release an arrow.

4) Nimble Hands

Default shooting animation is increased when you are using a bow, allowing you to fire arrows 15% faster than you usually can.

5) Ranged Weapons Expert

This perk increases the Ranger’s physical attack power by 5% when a ranged weapon such as a Bow or Crossbow is equipped.

6) Sharpshooter

The damage dealt by headshots when the Ranger attacks are increased by 15% whenever they are using a long-ranged weapon.

7) Spear Proficiency

Improves the effectiveness of a Ranger who is using a Spear, providing him with 10 additional physical strength.

8) Tracking

Activating this will allow the Ranger to detect enemy footsteps, showing where they have been and may be going.

9) Trap Expert

The time it takes for the Ranger to set up trap-type items, allows him to quickly prepare for an ambush on other players.

Ranger Skills

1) Field Ration

This causes the Ranger to search for an emergency Field Ration and consume it, which restores 25 HP but this can only be used 3 times per match.

2) Multishot

Activating this skill will cause the Ranger to prepare 5 arrows at the same time, allowing him to fire them all at once in a spread shot.

3) Quickfire

When using a Bow-type weapon, the Ranger will gain a 50% boost in action speed, allowing him to fire arrows quickly for a short duration.

4) Quickshot

Allows the Ranger to ready up 3 arrows to be shot in quick succession, allowing him to deal more damage in a short period.

5) True Shot

For a short period, your projectile flight speed will be increased when you shoot and in addition to this, you will also have a 5% increased physical attack power.

Ranger Weapons

The following are the weapons that the Ranger can equip but keep in mind that they have a penalty for melee weapons and are best suited for using long-range ones.

Swords

• Arming Sword
• Rapier

Ranged Weapons

• Recurve Bow
• Long Bow
• Survival Bow
• Crossbow
• Windlass Crossbow

Polearm

• Spear (Require Spear Proficiency Perk)

Ranger Builds

1) Ranger Bow and Spear Build

This build requires that your main weapon is a Bow, which you will use when engaging enemies from afar until they get close to you.

Once an enemy is close to you, the Spear you have can be used to fight back until they retreat, allowing you to switch back to your Bow to finish them off.

• Skills: Quickshot, Field Ration
• Perks: Nimble Hands, Ranged Weapons Expert, Sharpshooter, Spear Proficiency

2) Ranger Bow and Crossbow Build

Using a Bow and Crossbow can be risky as you do not have much protection when an enemy appears you will likely have a disadvantage.

This build is best used for when you are in a team so that you can focus on dealing ranged shots with the Crossbow and swap to Bow afterward.

• Skills: Quickshot, Field Ration
• Perks: Nimble Hands, Ranged Weapons Expert, Sharpshooter, Crossbow Mastery

3) Ranger Spear and Crossbow Build

The build focuses heavily on using the Spear rather than using a ranged weapon and allows the Ranger to get close and personal with enemies.

You can deal damage from afar using the Crossbow before closing in on your enemies to stab them with your Spear.

• Skills: Trueshot, Field Ration
• Perks: Nimble Hands, Ranged Weapons Expert, Sharpshooter, Crossbow Mastery

4) Ranger Bow Build

The Bow Build simply provides you with two bows, which is mainly one that fires quickly such as the Recurve Bow as well as one that deals a lot of damage like the Long Bow.

Your main bow will allow you to fire at enemies during fights while the Long Bow will allow you to dish out high amounts of damage from afar.

• Skills: Quickshot, Field Ration
• Perks: Nimble Hands, Ranged Weapons Expert, Sharpshooter, Tracking

5) Ranger Hunter Build

This build focuses mainly on tracking and trapping your opponents, allowing you to utilize your traps and set enemies up to get killed.

A Bow is necessary for this build and a Spear would be ideal for getting up to enemies that are trapped but you can always choose a Crossbow and Spear as well.

• Skills: Quickshot, Field Ration
• Perks: Enhanced Hearing, Tracking, Trap Expert, Sharpshooter

Also read our other guides related to Dark and Darker:

• How To Get Ancient Scroll
• How To Heal
• Escape Portal Guide
• Character Creation Guide
• How To Block Attacks
• How To Revive
• How to Get Heart Candy
• Campfire Kit Guide
• Lockpick Guide

Ranger Arrows

Rangers have an unlimited amount of arrows but can only have a few readied at a time, which requires that you take time to reload.

Once the Ranger is out of arrows, they will not be allowed to fire more unless using the Quickshot ability which bypasses the arrow count.

The Ranger reload animation will greatly slow your movement speed so this is best timed when enemies are at a distance from you.

Ranger Spear Equipping

The Ranger will at first not be able to equip a Spear but this can be bypassed once you have equipped the Spear Proficiency perk.

This will allow the Ranger to equip Spears and will also provide them with an additional 10 Physical Strength to increase their attack.

With this setup, it can safely be said that the spear is the best melee weapon for a Ranger due to the Spear Proficiency perk.

Ranger Trap Techniques

Rangers Campfire and Traps will always be free whenever they get a new set of gear after losing their items in a dungeon.

They can set up traps faster and use this to their advantage as once an enemy is trapped, they have to remove it, which takes time and allows you to fire at them.

A good way to set up traps is to place them in front of doors so enemies will not notice them right away or to put out torches to hide them in the dark.

Ranger Best Perks

The best perks for the Ranger are those that will increase their ranged attack and since the bow is the best weapon for the Ranger, the following would be suggested:

• Nimble Hands to shoot arrows faster
• Ranged Weapons Expert to deal more damage
• Sharpshooter to deal insane amounts of headshot damage
• Spear Proficiency to boost your Spear damage when you use it as a backup

Verdict

Rangers are very skilled at fighting from afar, but they tend to require a bit of accuracy since your enemies will tend to move around to dodge your attacks.

Placing down traps before fighting enemies will make quick work of them once they are trapped as you can down them with Quickshot.

They have great survivability due to their Field Ration skill, allowing them to survive on their own often during a Ranger solo dungeon.