The Ranger of Dark and Darker can be a difficult class to learn; less eager to engage in toe-to-toe battles, and finding themselves a bit easier to kill than other classes, learning the Ranger is one of patience and accuracy. Relying less on trickery and deception than the Rogue, the Ranger still must be acutely aware of their environment in order to extract from the dungeons time and again. It’s a bit easier, mind you, if you have a verbose guide to follow — here’s our Ranger build guide for Dark and Darker.
Related: All maps available in Dark and Darker
Note this guide is updated for the current alpha playtest of Dark and Darker.
The best Ranger perks in Dark and Darker
Even if you have a sword for a secondary weapon to fall back on, the majority of the Ranger work is going to be done with a bow. Thus, we’re going to want to front-load bow and projectile-centric perks to maximize damage. We recommend the following perks, in order of importance or level unlock.
- Sharpshooter
- Sharpshooter increases headshot damage beyond the standard buff by an additional 15%. If you’re using a Crossbow, however, your initial perk should be Crossbow Mastery for the 50% reload speed increase.
- Nimble Hands
- This increases the animation speed for bow firing by 15%, allowing you to send more arrows down range. Hopefully, this will kill your target before they can close the distance and engage you in melee.
- Kinesthesia
- Kinesthesia works best if you’re using a bow, offering a 10% movement speed buff while the bowline is taught — if you’re using a Crossbow, however, use this perk slot for Sharpshooter. This can be removed if you manage to stack movement speed buffs high enough with high-end gear, and Trap Expert is a great alternative if you enjoy setting ambushes.
- Ranged Weapons Expert
- RWE gives a 5% attack power increase while using ranged weapons. This can give a bit more power, but feel free to experiment with this slot if you find you’re pushing out enough damage. Spear Proficiency is helpful if you can’t find a sword or rapier, but Trap Expert is outright silly fun.
Best Ranger gear in Dark and Darker
As we noted, standing toe-to-toe against most other players will be a swift demise for the Ranger, much like the Rogue. Even with high-end armor and weaponry, meaning purples and above, trying to fight in a melee can result in a quick demise. With gear, focus on Agility and Resourcefulness — Agility will increase your movement speed and attack animations while Resourcefulness increases world interaction, from doors to campfires.
Your first item that is focused on, and should likely be the most expensive gear piece, is your ranged weapon. The Ranger doesn’t have many perks or skills that focus on anything aside from ranged weapons, so appropriately splurge to ensure you’re maximizing your damage from a distance. Any bow with 25 or above damage should pay the bills, here, but avoid the Windlass Crossbow in its current form — the reloading of it will force your perspective downwards, causing you to lose all situational awareness no matter how fast you can reload.
Once you have your primary weapon sorted, grab a secondary weapon as well. Rapiers and Arming Swords are easy options, here, but a Ranger will need a weapon to switch to if the fight gets too close for bows. Feel free to skimp on spending heavily on armors that don’t increase your necessary attributes — your playstyle should focus on keeping anything that can kill you away from melee range.
Best Ranger skills for Dark and Darker
Once you get comfortable with the Ranger class, two things become necessary. Survivability, and burst DPS. For this, we recommend the two skills Quickshot and Field Ration. Field Ration gives players three heals for 25 HP, with a brief cooldown between uses. Quickshot allows for three rapid-fire arrows to be shot out. Some may prefer Multishot, but the horizontal spread between the arrows means you’ll have to be close to use it effectively, and at that point you’re already taking sizeable damage.
