General Information

The crossbow ranger is weak early but a powerhouse in the late game. The build uses the crossbow's innate critical bonuses for massive critical strikes on enemies. The crossbow ranger will carry the party after getting at least 5 in the crossbow ability. At this point, the rest of the party should focus on buffing him/her and controlling enemies.

In the early game (basically all/most of Cyseal), you will be using a bow instead of a crossbow (due to the lower AP cost) and heavily relying on special arrows due to their powerful CC effects and 100% accuracy. Make sure to craft many of them. After getting the skills Farseer and Survivor's Karma at level 2 expert marksman, you can hit at very far distances even with ranged power stance active. Critical chance is the most important stat for the crossbow ranger, do as much as possible to increase it.

Important Stats

• Critical chance, perception

Critical hits are where all of your damage comes from, so get as much crit chance as possible. Perception increases crit chance and decreases the accuracy penalty from attacking a long range. You will be using auto-attacks in fights because expert marksman skills cannot crit. So, unlike the bow ranger, you do not need much dexterity (only enough to use key buff spells and to equip higher level gear).

By the end game, you will need 14 dex to equip level 20 crossbows. You can use gear to reach this.

Character Creation

Starting class: Ranger. Choose ranger instead of wayfarer because of the starting items (ranger gets 2 fire arrows, wayfarer gets an oil flask). Because you will be using a bow in the early game, you do not need to take the crossbow ability at the start of the game. If your character is not leveling the below abilities, then there is no harm in leveling crossbow early.

You must decide which of your characters will have leadership , crafting , blacksmithing , and loremaster. Generally you want all these abilities on your two main characters because of traits (with leadership on both main characters). However, it is not always possible because of ability point limitations (unless you are a lone wolf). The crossbow ranger is a good candidate for many of these skills due to the low amount of ability points you need to be effective. However, also remember that they will be a main damage source for your party in the late game and putting more of these abilities on your character will prevent spending those ability points at the homestead to trade for more attributes. It is recommended to level no more than three of the four.

Important talents are Bully, Stench, and Scientist (if this character will be the crafter). This character has a lot of free talents, so pet pal is a possibility. Other options include packmule, glass cannon, all skilled up, bigger and better, and morning person (if honor mode). Remember talents are very flexible, and you will not break the build by deviating from the above suggestions. Avoid elemental ranger and arrow recovery because they are bad and you can always just craft more special arrows.

Starting spells are summon spider, midnight oil, and ricochet. Both of these geomancer spells do not have a intelligence requirement, so there is no penalty even with only 5 int.

Starting attributes are 8 dexterity and 7 speed.

Attribute Priorities

There is no need to level dexterity anymore after character creation. Gear can provide all the dexterity needed to use important spells and equip late game gear (14 dex to equip level 20 crossbows). See Gear Priorities below for more information.

Max perception to 15, dumping any other points into speed or constitution as needed. The crossbow ranger wants as much perception as possible for long range accuracy and critical chance. Speed for more turn AP, and constitution for more max AP.

Ability Priorities

• Increase expert marksman to 4. Main reasoning is for the spell vampiric arrow in case you are stuck in a bad situation. Other important spells are ranged power stance, farseer, survivor's karma. Other spells are the player's choice.
• Increase crossbow to 6 (1 point from gear). No benefit from increasing beyond level 6.
• Leadership to 6 (1 point from trait and 1 point from gear, ideally the helmet).
• If you are leveling loremaster, improve as much as you want. Important breakpoints are 1, 3 and 5. 1 shows resistances, 3 shows bodybuilding and willpower, and 5 shows initiative. A trait gives +1 loremaster.
• If you are leveling crafting and blacksmithing, improve crafting to 1 and blacksmithing to 2. A belt and bracer can both give +1 crafting and blacksmithing. Traits can give +1 crafting. Scientist gives +1 crafting and blacksmithing.
• Geomancer 1 for useful starting spells: summon spider and midnight oil.

Other ability points can be used to trade for attribute points.

Gear Priorities

Crafting can give great bonuses for the crossbow ranger. At level 17 the attributes from crafting gear increase from +1 to +2. Advanced crafting materials appear at vendors at level 8.

Crossbow stat priorities are critical chance and perception. A scope can be used to increase perception on a bow or crossbow, but they are rare so only use it on a level 20 crossbow. At level 14 (unlike other recipes???) the bonus increases to +2 perception.

Important recipes:

• Creepy Eye Helm = magical creepy eye + leather helm -> gives perception. A magical eye can be used instead at lower levels.
• Creepy Eye Amulet = magical creepy eye + thread -> gives perception. A magical eye can be used instead at lower levels.
• Fancy Feather Belt = magical fancy feather + rope -> gives dexterity and initiative. Only 1 more dexterity is needed from gear to hit 10 dex which is required by important adept expert marksman skills.
• Crossbow without bowstring = iron bar + branch
• 2x sinew = strong sinew + knife
• bowstring = sinew + sinew
• Crossbow = crossbow without bowstring + bowstring
• Crossbow with improved damage = crossbow + bowstring
• Crossbow with extra stats = crossbow + tormented soul
• Crossbow with perception = crossbow + scope
• Crossbow with elemental damage = crossbow + elemental essence
• Crossbow with tenebrium damage = crossbow + tenebrium bar

Ideal Teammates

• Some type of warrior with Man at Arms skills to knockdown enemies, allowing bully to do massive damage. A geomancer can also do this with the Earthquake spell, although it comes later in the game and is not as good because it is centered around the caster.
• Support mage to buff the crossbow ranger and to control and debuff enemies. Burn my eyes and oath of desecration are useful spells.

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