Champions of Norrath: Realms of EverQuest - Ranger FAQ

Ranger-Building Guide
for: Champions of Norrath, PS2

by: Steve Estes, destes(at)ix.netcom.com


This guide is bare-bones, short and to-the-point, and only focuses on the 
Ranger.  Contributions and questions are welcome.  Everything here is short 
except the Boss details, which aren't as important to read unless you're having 
trouble with a boss.


Low levels:
(may want to save up some points from early levels to put into newly available 
- 1 point in slashing and blunt weapons, 1 point in archery.  order 
- 1 point in ice arrow as soon as available
- as soon as it is available, put at least one point EACH LEVEL into critical 
hit.  crit hit should be maxed first.
- put all spare points into archery, but make sure to get as many points into 
crit hit as possible.

(notes: at low levels, you'll be using melee weapons more than you will later, 
because bows are not nearly as effective at low levels as they will become)

Mid levels:
(you've maxed crit hit then archery)
- I would max Cold Arrow next (you should already have one point in it).  The 
extra damage it does is unspectacular (although kinda nice), but the key is the 
freeze time.  Cold Arrow is a defensive skill as well as an offensive one (to 
break shields and stuff).  When you don't want a boss getting near you or 
turning around as fast as possible, you freeze him, so more time = more 
- While you're maxing archery and cold arrow, any spare points you have should 
go into Endurance.  I would max Endurance after Cold Arrow, or even 
concurrently (get cold arrow to multiples of 3, like lvl 3, 6, 9, 12 etc, 
because those are the levels it bumps by one second in duration - and then put 
spare points into Endurance).  If there's one thing I hate, it's having to go 
to town to sell stuff before I run out of arrows.

High Levels:
(cold arrow and endurance maxed)
- pick one of the following and max it next: Entangle (if you find yourself 
getting rushed too often), Poison Arrow (if you play hit-and-run with enemies a 
lot), Explode Arrow (it's fun but doesn't work well on bosses), or even Dual 
- with a maxed Cold Arrow and something else, I find that maxing Regeneration 
helps you.  You won't use many other skills, so even semi-useless passive 
skills are a small help.  This means you can let fly with a lot more cold 
arrows in convenient places like the Ashen Plain.
- If and only if you decide you can't live without some melee action (and you 
think it's annoying to do "only" 600 damage or so on a critical hit with good 
weapons), then pump Blunt or Slashing at the end.  But you better have the big 
4 (Crit Hit, Archery, Cold Arrow, Endurance) maxed first, or I'm gonna be mad 
at you! :)

(general rules)

- Never use anything that doesn't have at least 2 sockets.  One exception: If 
you find a bow that does a LOT more damage than your current weapon and it only 
has one socket, toss in a misty Globe and just use it.
- Simple way to assess / compare damage: add the low and high damage and 
compare that to other weapons.  It becomes automatic fairly quickly (oh, this 
weapon adds up to 205, my current one is only at 192, i'll take it!), and it 
means less staring at stats and estimating.  Just add the two and move on.
- For armor EXCEPT SHIELDS, put in your best Soul Gem (HPs) and Ghoul Flesh 
- For shields, put in your best Soul Gem, but also put in your best Bull Rune.  
See note below on melee weapons.
- For bows, put your best Misty Globe (Calmed is ok), put a Whetstone if you 
like (I think it stacks with Crit Hit aura, but many people disagree), or some 
more Ghoul Flesh.  
- For melee weapons, put in a Misty Globe but NOT a Calmed one.  Lightning 
speed is still effective but Godly will cause it to miss a lot (it's a bit of a 
bug with the game).  For the 2nd socket, put your best Bull Rune.  Not only 
will this add damage, but when you switch to it, you can carry more items.  So 
when you're using your bow and you get "I Can't Carry Any More!", switch to 
your melee weapon (which hopefully will also give you a shield with lots of 
strength), and then just pick it up, and switch back.  Easy extra space.
- If you have an extra socket in an item, after you've added dex and 
speed/crithit or hit points, then consider either Health Regen (Regen Stone, 
looks like a green star), Stamina (bloodstone), or elemental damage (Storm 
Shards only take 1 slot in weapons, they're my favorite).  Elemental damage 
looks badass on the screen, which is half the appeal of the game anyway :)  My 
choice is usually health regen, since it means I don't use as many health 
potions and can carry around fewer (and thus have more carrying space for other 

- It's much better to have one more useful socket in your armor (i.e. 3-socket 
stuff) than it is to have a little more defense.  I'd say if the difference is 
less than 30% of the defense of the better armor, I'd take the extra socket.
- It's much better to have a little more damage on your bow than an extra 
socket.  I would take a bow that does 20 more total damage (low + high) with 
one less socket over a bow with less damage and another socket.  The reason is 
that the extra socket will just be used to give you Dex, which will increase 
your damage by about that much if you're using +45 Dex ghoul flesh.
- Don't even bother picking up Magic (blue) items unless you need cash.  They 
will never be useful to you except for selling.

- Your general goal is to get the Myrmidon set at the end of the game.  245 
armor is plenty and the 3 sockets are key (Lava Forged is 260 and Darkscale is 
300, but you'll want the extra socket).  Bows sold in the last few acts of 
Champion Difficulty will basically be better than every Unique bow except the 
Bow of the Destroyer or Darkwood Bow.  On the other hand, unique melee weapons 
will probably be better than what you can buy in stores.  Save those uniques, 
they don't weigh much!


- Never, ever put a single point into strength or intelligence.
- At low levels, put one point into Stamina and 2 points into Dex every level.  
Some people will skip the stamina and just pump Dex
- As soon as you have enough HPs (through Soul Gems) that you can take a few 
hits from nastier enemies, then pump only Dex.  It will make a huge difference 
in the damage you deal, especially early on.  Combined with all your ghoul 
flesh in your armor and items, you will be an absolute beast with the bow, 
especially with critical hit and archery maxed.  This is not like Diablo 2, 
there is no such thing as "good enough" for stats, and there is no need to 
balance them.  You'll have enough mana (And str) to get by.  In fact, the 
points you put into Endurance are like getting 15 strength for each one.

(general notes)

- If multiple shielded enemies are coming at you, and they all block when you 
shoot an arrow, use Ice Arrows to break their shield.  They can block again as 
soon as the freeze wears off, so once you hit them with an Ice Arrow, follow 
with a few normal arrows to finish them off.
- If only one or two shielded enemies are coming at you, then shield-lock them 
by firing and making them block, and then walk to their backside and shoot them 
in the back while they're standing there shielding.  The first hit will make 
them get up, but it will take another second or two to turn around, and you 
should be able to kill them there with minimal hassle.
- If you're in a party, but you've followed my equipment guidelines (especially 
about the Soul Gems), then you can probably get closer to the action than a 
wizard normally can.  Maybe even take some melee hacks with the barbarian if 
you're bored of shooting.  You certainly don't have to stand back and just fire 
into the crowd.  Draw the crowd to you, keep your Crit Hit aura near everyone, 
just turn and fire, turn and fire, and you won't be instant dead meat.  Plus 
you can pick up some items, instead of the barb getting all of them.
- Oh yeah... you can also rapid-fire some arrows by holding the button down.  
No need to hit it each time you want to fire, just hold it down to become a 
machine gun.
- The best tip I ever got in this game was, "you're carrying stuff around with 
you between acts, cause you don't want to lose it?  Just drop it in town!  Have 
a big pile somewhere near the merchant, and just pick it all up before you move 
on to the next act."  Great advice, especially when playing alone.  Why carry 
all that stuff with you?  Your game is saved, it's safe on the ground, and you 
could definitely use the extra carrying capacity.


Fighting Bosses as a Ranger generally divide into 2 categories: the tough 
fights, and the easy fights.  Note that the boss names here are somewhat 
fudged, because their actual names change from difficulty to difficulty.

- Black knight (Lesser Faydark)
- Knight of some kind (end of the first big cave)
- the Orc boss (Orc Cave lvl 3)
- the Orc Shaman (Forest Ruins)
- the Skeleton Army (Caverns of the Fallen 2)
- Undead Knight (Caverns of the Fallen 2)
- Lord Vanarhost (V. Castle 2)
- Dark Elves (Water's Edge cave)
- Cyclops (Hidden Shore)
- King Mormaz (Mormaz's Temple)
- Cloud King (Tower of Clouds)
- Greater Minion (Plane of Hate)


Really, all these guys take is a lot of arrows, occasionally some magic, and 
some patience.  For guys who block (Black knight, Orc boss, Undead Knight, King 
Mormaz), what you need is some Cold Arrow lovin.  Cold arrows pierce enemy 
blocks, and stun the enemies - you can follow up with a few normal arrows while 
they're stunned, before they block again.  If you have some mana potions, you 
can keep up the cold arrow barrage for a while, too.  Secondly, most of these 
guys are also painfully slow walking around, so you can usually flank them, run 
behind them, get some cheap shots in, run away before they turn to face you, 
etc.  This is especially true with the Cyclops boss in Act 3, where one or two 
hits by him can kill you, but he's so slow to move that you just have to bounce 
around a lot and plug him full of arrows.  Even if your damage isn't great, 
just have 300+ arrows and some caffeine running through your veins, and you're 

The guys with some speed or more powerful non-melee attacks (Vanarhost, Cloud 
King) can be had very easily by keeping your distance.  Vanarhost especialy - 
you can stun-lock him in the first few seconds after the fight starts, just by 
hitting him with Critical Hit arrows and the occasional Cold Arrow.  His first 
move is always to rush at you if you don't run away, and while he's rushing at 
you, your hits will slow him down hugely.  The Cloud King's attacks are limited 
if you don't get too close to him; you can often kill him without taking a hit 
just by keeping the arrows flowing.

- The bear pets of the black knight (Lesser Faydark), 
- Orc Leader/Pelys (Faydark Ruins 1), 
- Shelox (Faydark Ruins 2), 
- Queen Ant (Anthill 2)
- Arena Boss (Act 4 Arena)
- Innoruuk (Final Boss)


It should go without saying that at any point against these guys, you should 
either be at full health or have a health potion recharging you.  This should 
be automatic, a reflex of yours - get hit, drink potion.

The bosses listed above generally either close distances really quickly, so 
fighting them with arrows from a distance is tough, or just do so much damage 
so quickly that trying to cheese-ball them at the start of the fight or from a 
distance just doesn't work.  There is no shame dying to any of these bosses 
(Although dying to Innoruuk is annoying because you don't restart, it just 
sends you to an epilogue and you have to reload the game).

- Bears: as a low level ranger, you would have no chance against these guys by 
yourself.  If you're in a party, you can have someone tank and run, or block a 
lot, and probably do a number on them.  But solo, the only help you're going to 
get is NPC help, which is precisely what I suggest.  As soon as the cut scene 
ends and the bears come after you, run like hell back towards the other 
sections of Lesser Faydark.  A few screens away should be a bunch of brown elf 
warriors sitting around doing nothing.  Let the bears attack them, and fire 
arrows / swing your sword at the bears while they're otherwise engaged.  The 
important thing is to know when the elves are getting wasted and make sure that 
you don't become the only target again.  Focus exclusively on one bear first, 
then once he's dead the other one will become much, much easier.  The bears 
have around 500 HP on Adventurous difficulty.

- Orc Leader / Pelys: This is the hardest boss in the game, mostly because you 
have so little room to move around.  Even at level 50, with the best equipment 
in the game, he still can kill me about 25% of the time, so don't worry if it 
takes you a few tries.  Step by step:
1) Have critical hit running before you enter the cut scene
2) As soon as the cut scene ends, dodge his charge attack by running to his 
3) Get a few steps away, turn, and fire a cold arrow
4) Follow it up with 2 normal arrows (this pattern will repeat: Cold, normal, 
normal, Cold... one Cold every 3rd arrow)
5) He will start walking towards you.  Make sure he is chilled with a cold 
arrow, and run away again.
6) He will raise his sword and prepare to charge.  Dodge his charge, walk a few 
steps away, freeze him again, hit him again.
7) Repeat that pattern (dodge, freeze him, hit him a bit, run away to make him 
charge) until one of you is dead.
8) Whatever happens, DON'T GET CORNERED.  He can deal huge amounts of damage in 
a short time by trapping you on a wall or in a corner.  If he knocks you down 
with his charge attack, this is often what he tries to do, so make sure you 
don't get squeezed.

- Shelox: This boss is the only one in the game with fearsome enough ranged 
attacks to be a problem.  The Cloud Giant doesn't even come close.  The first 
step is to avoid her initial web attacks by side-stepping the INSTANT the cut 
scene ends.  Otherwise, you get hauled in and bitten, and while you're on the 
ground she hits you with tons of poison, which is what deals the real damage.  
1) Equip as much poison resist jewelery as you can, going into the fight.  If 
you can get over 100% with your 4 items, do it (unless you have a Vermiculated 
Amulet or Ring, which would probably help you more).
2) The instant the battle starts, side-step her web attack and close to about 
half of her body length away from her.  This is the distance you'll want to use 
when trying to flank her (by running around).
3) When you get sufficiently far around her that you have time to shoot, hit 
her with a Cold Arrow and keep running.  If you get TOO far around her, she'll 
jump, which is both good and bad - bad in that she won't keep turning around, 
but good in that for half a second, you can hit her with whatever you want.
4) If you keep running around so she can never fire her web at you, you can 
kill her, in theory, without ever taking a hit.  As usual, the key is to keep 
her chilled so she moves 20% slower.
5) If she grabs you with her web, use the half-second you have before she hits 
you to A) chill her with a Cold arrow, B) switch to your melee weapon, and C) 
block.  Or, C) hit her with melee, if that's your thing.  Unless you get lucky, 
she's going to put a charge into you, and then while you're on the ground, pelt 
you with massive poison damage.  Avoid the poison if you possibly can, but with 
enough resist, it shouldn't be lethal.

Once you get the hang of Shelox, you can beat her without taking more than a 
hit or two, which won't be very damaging.

- Queen Ant: There are 2 strategies here:
1) the Ballsy strategy: first, kill the two big spiders behind you, guarding 
the path out.  Watch her carefully; if she ever charges you, immediately switch 
weapons, and block.  She'll often do 3-6 attacks in a row with her stinger or a 
bite, but if you're blocking in the right direction, none of them will hit.  
Then she'll go off and fly in a circle a little bit.  As soon as she leaves, 
jump backwards from the blocking position (It's some easy button combo, read 
the manual), switch to your bow, and pelt her.  If you're a good shot with the 
bow, you can hit her often, and just wait for her to come back to you.  There's 
a small chance she might wander so far off screen that she forgets to attack 
you, in which case proceed to:
2) The Coward strategy, also known as, Get Her Off Screen, Then Shoot (GHOSTS). 
 Basically, keep her chilled, and try to get her to fly away as quickly as 
possible, WITHOUT going too far towards either end of the cave.  That's 
important, because a bunch of ants run at you if you get anywhere near there, 
and killing them can sometimes be a fatal distraction if the Queen ever comes 
back.  It may take a couple of tries before she wanders far enough, but then 
all you have to do is strafe the screen with arrows until you see that firing 
in one particular direction lowers her life bar.  Then keep firing in that 
direction :)  When she hits about 15% life, she will charge you again (from 
wherever), but if you're on a roll, just Chill her and keep plugging, she'll 
probably die right in front of you.

- Arena Boss: there are 2 keys to beat him - don't get stomped, and KEEP 
MOVING. If you stay to the side or back of the boss and keep him reasonably 
slowed down with cold damage or something, he won't be able to turn to you, 
stomp, and charge.  Using the poles to distract him / dodge and run around him 
is very helpful, but his head can still attack you while there, so don't let 
him get too far in.  He can't stomp / kick you though, which is nice. Also, if 
you need a few seconds to let your healing potions recharge you, run around the 
perimeter of the arena, outside the posts. He has a very hard time getting to a 
running target in there, but you also have a hard time hitting him.

You can also be somewhat bolder, staying to his side at all times (not the 
back, and CERTAINLY not his front) and just plugging him with arrows from a 
close distance.  If you're pretty slick with moving around, you can handle him 
as long as you don't get stomped.

- Innoruuk: if you don't get hit with his hammer, he really doesn't have much 
that can take you out.  By this point, you should be doing plenty of damage.  
Keep him frozen (if he stops being frozen, hit him with a cold arrow... pretty 
basic, really), and never let him get within 2-3 steps of you, because that 
hammer comes down REAL fast, and then while you're lying on the ground he hits 
you with the fire shots.

The way to take this guy out is to use the columns (the seals you broke to set 
the girl free) to your advantage, by making him run around them.  He runs as 
fast as you do, but he hobbles a bit behind the columns, so if you get far 
enough out, you can hit him with arrows till he closes the gap again.

Last tip: Like the archer enemies firing arrows at you, Innoruuk will always be 
on target when he fires his fire bursts.  What you have to do to avoid them is, 
as soon as you see him fire them, immediately change direction.  You can get 
between two of the things if you're far enough out and have good reaction time. 
 They do a lot more damage than you might expect, so learning to avoid them 
(like avoiding archer arrows) is a good skill to acquire.


There are only 4 sites that I've found on the web for Champions of Norrath that 
are worth discussion:

1) GameFaqs.  Not just the guides, but the message boards as well.  Some good, 
knowledgeable posters there.

2) http://www.gamebanshee.com/championsofnorrath/
The only semi-complete, graphical guide to this game that I've found.  Very 
good walkthrough and uniques list.

3) http://www.neoseeker.com/Games/Products/PS2/everquest_con/faqs.html
Has one guide that Gamefaqs doesn't have, the Warrior/Ranger boss guide, some 
of which is useful.  Also has another, less active, forum.

4) The Snowblind Studios forums: 
It's the company that made the game.  Their website doesn't have a ton of 
useful info, but their forums are very active.

Contact: write destes(at)ix.netcom.com with questions or contributions.