Newbie Guide to Ranger Skills

"There is something strange at work in this land. I distrust the silence. I distrust even the pale Moon. The stars are faint; and I am weary as I have seldom been before, weary as no Ranger should be with at clear trail to follow."

Aragorn, The Two Towers

This guide is all about practicing and the different guilds in the game.

Many parts of this guild reference to the MUME help pages which can be found at:

• MUME Help files

Bold words can be looked up in the games help files. Like help bandage or ride.

This guide of Ranger skills will try to expand upon the MUME help files for Ranger skills and give suggestions for practicing Ranger skills. Suggestions will be given for different types of classes, levels, and character builds. As with any advice or suggestions, some players may have other suggestions or disagree. There really is no one right way to practice skills for every playing style.

If you happen to practice some of these skills, and think you've made a mistake, don't worry. This game has couple of ways to get your practices back and try something else.

Please see the Newbie Guide to Practicing for more tips or information.

• Newbie Guide Guilds and Practicing

Ranger Skills

Ranger skills are more about exploration, travel, and survival than combat. But some ranger skills do come in very handy to find or avoid combat. Those with well rounded ranger skills will tend to thrive in the wilds and gain travel points (tps) easier.

Check out this Guide to Travel Points:

• Newbie Guide Travel Points

A nice feature of Ranger skills is that they do not count against you for cross class practicing. Any race or any class can practice any Ranger skills without having to worry about affecting their skills or percentages in any other classes.

Entries in this Ranger Guide will give some practice suggestions for how high you want to practice a skill. Not every skill for your character needs to be at 100%. It's often a good idea to save some practices for other skills, instead of trying to max out the skills you have.

Also, each entry will come with the character abilities or stats that the skill is based off of. For skills with 2 abilities, the first one is most important and the second is still important, but not as much as the first skill listed. If there are 3 abilities listed, the first and second are most important, and the third has an effect, but will be hard to notice. These affect your % while practicing the skill.

For example, if a skill says you need Strength, Constitution, and Willpower, if your character has higher scores in those abilities, then you will practice the skill more efficiently, and get a few more % per practice.

Ranger Skills for Travel and Exploration

Climb

Some exits in the game are climbable exits. You can choose for your climb to be always on, but can also shut it off, so you will not attempt to climb those exits. Climb safe means you will attempt to climb any exit where you do not have a chance of falling down. Climb always means you'll risk climbing on some exits that you could fall down, and potentially take some damage. Climb is also a good way to get a few more tps here and there.

This is an in game example of a prompt with Climb safe on:

![ c>

This is an in game example of a prompt with Climb always on:

![ C>

There is rope in the game that can help you climb down some exits safely. Rope can also be useful to help those who are following behind you to climb exits.

Climb commands:

climb always, climb safe, climb off, tie rope down, prompt

Practicing suggestions:

• If you are leading a group in mountains or other climb heavy areas, you want a high climb, say 80%-100%.
• Also if you want to use Climb to occasionally escape from PK or pursue someone in PK in some areas, a climb skill of 80%+ is needed.
• If you just want access to a few rooms here and there for exploring, getting tps, or to perhaps prevent some falling damage, 50% should suffice.
• That will give you access to all of the easier to climb areas in the game.

Abilities required: Dexterity, Willpower, Strength

Ride

Travelling in MUME is much more efficient with a mount. Your moves will last much longer, you can travel further, and have more moves left over in case of an emergency. Practicing Ride allows you to use your movement points wisely.

If you have low Ride skill, it increases your chance of falling off of your mount. If you do fall off your mount, in MUME often referred to as a ZBLAM!, there is a delay of remounting. More Ride practiced means less falling off your mount, and faster remounting speeds if you do fall off. Your mount will also refuse to listen to movement commands as it begins drop in movement points.

Short races (dwarves and hobbits) will have an increased rate of falling off of taller mounts. They can ride on donkey, ponies, and mules without any additional falling issues.

With higher Ride you can ride your mount down to lower moves, like tired or slow, before the mount refuses your demands. More Ride practiced means less falling off your mount, and faster remounting speeds if you do fall off.

You can also examine your mount and see an estimate of how many moves the mount has left.

This is an in game example of a prompt with Ride while riding:

!. CR>

Ride commands:

ride, dismount, lead, abandon, ride behind, exam <mount>, saddle <mount>, unsaddle

Practicing suggestions:

• For general road travel between cities, look to get a Ride skill of at least 60%-70%.
• If you are riding away from PK or pursuing in PK, you want a ride skill of 90%-110%.

Abilities required: Dexterity, Willpower

Swim

Swimming can help you escape foes, find more tps, and get access to some more difficult rooms in the game. Surface swimming is much safer the underwater swimming. You can easily drowned trying underwater swimming. Surface swimming costs moves, but as long as you have some moves left, it can be fairly safe. If you are swimming with low moves, you can start to choke on water.

To use a canoe or boat, you do not need any ranks in Swim. You can cross most all surface water rooms in the game (a few are rapids, or don't allow a boat). But canoes and boats do have a very heavy weight, and are difficult to carry. Which can have an impact on your moves, DB, and fleeing. But if you want to save some pracs on Swim, canoes and boats are an option.

Prompt

Swim commands:

swim on, swim off, get canoe, drop raft

Practicing suggestions:

• If you plan on swimming to escape or pursue PK, you want a high Swim, 80%-100%.
• If you plan on doing alot of exploring underwater, 90%-100%+.
• If you are just trying to occasionally cross a stream or river, or not drown if you fall into a river, a Swim of 40%-50% should help you survive.
• If your Swim is below 40%, try to avoid any underwater rooms. It is possible to drown.

Abilities required: Constitution, Willpower, Dexterity

Wilderness

The Wilderness skill covers several different aspects of your character. One feature you'll notice is it reduces your need for food and water. So you do not need to drink or eat as often. Players with very high Wilderness can go for 2 days without needing to eat or drink. The higher the Wilderness, the more you'll notice this effect.

Wilderness also reduces the time delay for building campfires. With high Wilderness, you can build campfires very quickly. This can be useful for cooking food, making crude torches or getting the resting bonus called

-comfortable

Check out this guide to campfires for more information:

• Newbie Guide Campfires and Cooking

Wilderness can also help you become a little more efficient in using up your movement points in very difficult or rough terrain. So dense forests, mountains, swamps, etc.., you might notice your movement points last just a little bit longer. This doesn't really affect movement on roads or in cities.

Wilderness commands and related commands:

camp, cover campfire, get torch fire, cook raw, rest

Practicing suggestions:

• Most thieves, scouts, archers, and warriors get Wilderness pretty high, 80%-100%
• Some combo characters find that 50% Wilderness is enough.
• Some casters use spells in place of Wilderness, like create food, create water, and breath of briskness, instead of getting Wilderness high %.

Abilities required: Strength, Willpower

Ranger Skills for Protection and Recovery

Awareness

All characters have the ability or stat of Perception, to notice sneaking or hidden threats, but those that practice Awareness are better at it. Awareness increases the chance of you to seen sneaking and hidden mobs. This can somewhat protect you against mobs trying to steal from you or attempting a backstab. You have a higher to chance to know they are there, or to sense the steal attempt or backstab. It is not immunity to steal or backstab, but reduces the chances of those being successful against you. It also helps when hunting mobs that can sneak. You can also notice mobs in fog better then those without Awareness.

If you practice Awareness to 95%, it comes with a skill mastery called Night Vision. This does not give you amazing, see anything in an unlit room powers. But you can see what mobs are in a dark room, or react to them attacking you. So it does help when you are without a light, but is not all powerful. Some sneaky archers or backstabbers find this useful. Some mobs cannot see in the dark, and may not know you are there.

The Awareness skill has no commands that are used. It is just always automatically on.

Practicing suggestions:

• Many thieves, scouts, and archers practice this skill quite high, some of them to the 95% to gain the Night Vision effect.
• If you practice Awareness over 40%-50% you will notice a increase with sneaking mobs you see much more often, such as moles, thieves, brigands, scouts, shadows, etc...
• Other characters try a few practices in Awareness if they have some to spare, but are not sure where else to put them.

Abilities required: Perception, Intelligence

Bandage

During combat in MUME, you can receive a wound from some hits. Light wounds do not bleed, but any deeper wounds do bleed, every minute. Wounds can also get dirty or infected, which means they can take a longer time to heal, and can advance to a worse wound category. Having one light wound isn't very much of a threat, have 2 deeper wounds can start to severely hamper your character. Deeper wounds also come with penalties to your abilities or statics, so you can actually lose some OB, DB, hit points, mana, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and so on.

Using the Bandage skill can clean a wound if it is dirty, and bandage it up so it is no longer bleeding or getting worse. It also helps the healing rate of the wound. If you fail the bandage attempt, you can cause the wound to do some small amount of bleed damage.

There are 3 different tiers of a bandage you can tie:

• poorly bound, bound up, and securely bound.

Wounds that are poorly bound, can have the bandage simply fall off, and you start bleeding again or getting the wound dirty. Bandages also have a chance to fall off in combat, but poorly bound tend to fall off much more often. Bound up or securely bound wounds the bandage tends to stay on better, and can even help out the recovery rate a little bit.

If a character is dying or incapacitated and you successfully use the Bandage skill on them, they improve to Awful hit points. This will save their life and keep them from dying. It acts as a very weak cure spell. It is challenging to time this, but could end up saving their life. Unfortunately you cannot use Bandage during combat or on anyone in combat.

Bandage does not help treat diseases or poisons.

Check out the guide to Wounds:

• Newbie Guide Disease, Poison, and Wounds

Bandage commands:

bandage, bandage horse

Practicing suggestions:

Many different characters get some Bandage to not suffer from wounds.

• If all you want is to survive, look for 30%-35%. This will lead to more poorly bound wounds and a chance to fail the Bandage attempt.
• But any bandaged wound can still save you from bleeding out or the wound from progressing and getting worse.
• If you want more reliable first aid, try for 50% Bandage, you'll succeed more and reduce the chance for poorly bound wounds.
• If you want to be a combat medic, at 65% Bandage on up, you'll succeed very often, and increase the chance of getting a securely bound wound.

Abilities required: Intelligence, Dexterity

Ranger Skills for Grouping and Pets

Command

Command commands:

If you use order followers all pets, charmies, and familiars will perform the command. Or you can order 1 charmie at a time, or charmies of the same type.

<pr>order followers rest order followers stand order followers assist order falcon sleep order falcon flee order falcon kill rabbit</pr>

Practicing suggestions:

• Many characters in the game practice zero command, they don't use charmies or pets.
• The Call Familiar spell, you can control your familiar with out command skill.
• If you are attempting to control 2 pets or low level charmies, Command of 50%-55% should be enough.
• Example is using 2 falcons from the pet shop for parry split.
• If you are planning on being a "charming" caster, you'll want to go for 100%.

Abilities required: Intelligence, Willpower

Leadership

This skill has 2 features, both of them only used in groups, and only while you are leading the other group members. Leadership works for other characters following you in the game, but also pets, mounts, charmies, and mercenaries. Leadership reduces the amount of 'group noise' you make by walking from room to room. The larger the group, the more noise you make, and the further away you can hear them moving around. The more Leadership you have, the more you reduce this noise made, maybe even down to none.

The second feature of Leadership is to reduce the amount of 'group lag' you have while walking around. If you have groups larger then 3, you will notice your moving from room to room will have a delay. Leadership reduces this delayed time while moving rooms, down to none if you have enough Leadership practiced.

Leadership commands:

group, follow

Practicing suggestions:

• Many characters don't practice this skill at all. Some players do much more following then leading and really don't need this skill much.
• If you do plan on leading groups often, you will find some benefit.
• If leading a group of 3, 25%-30% in the skill will help well. Group of 4 look for 45%-50%.
• If leading groups larger then 3 or 4 often, try for 75%-90%.
• At 100+% Leadership skill, you can pretty easily lead groups of 5 and maybe more.
• This also counts for leading mounts, pets, charmies, or mercenaries, not just other players.

Abilities required: Willpower, Wisdom

Ranger Skills for Hunting

Track

One function of Track is to help you in areas with random exits. The higher your Track skill is, some random exits will become less random. It is still a random exit, but your chance of going the correct way increases with % in Track. This Track function works much better in the daylight.

The main uses of Track is to see what or who has been traveling in your room recently. And if you want, you can follow the tracks of a mob or character. If you just type track, you will see what's been traveling recently in that room.

If you type track <target>, like track wolf, track orc, track elf, you will see the tracks for that target and then be able to follow it to the next room. It will give you a hint of which direction they went. If you use the pursue command, you will follow the tracks until you find the target or lose the tracks.

You can track a mob or player by name as well. So you can track a dwarf, but you can also try to track Clint (a dwarf mob). This works with players as well. However if the player is riding a mount, you'll need to follow the mounts tracks.

Tracks fade over time as they get old. If you have a higher Track % practiced, you will be able to find older tracks more often. Tracks also fade faster in some types of weather, such as rain or snow. Tracks from a target who is bleeding are easier to find. Some types of terrain are easier to follow tracks. Tracking in a tunnel or on mountains can be more difficult then tracking on the plains for example.

If you pair Track with Awareness and Wilderness you will use your moves more efficiently while following tracks.

You cannot track on open water or underwater. You can possibly track over ice, if your Track skill is high enough. It takes a Track of % to track on ice.

Track skill cannot help you see hiding targets, but it can help you find the room that they are hiding in.

Several types of MUME's creatures do not leave tracks. Most fly mobs, fish, and spirit like undead such as shadows, do not leave tracks. Characters who are riding do not leave tracks, but the mount you are riding does leave tracks. Shrouded or sneaking characters still leave tracks.

Track commands:

where stag, where wolf, where elf, track, track stag, track wolf, track orc, pursue, pursue troll

Practicing suggestions: If you are planning to PK, you'll need high Track, 85%-100% If you are using Track defensively or vs mobs, 45%-60% should help.

Abilities required: Perception, Intelligence

Skills for Leveling

For any type of ranger, you'll want to focus on movement related skills at lower levels. Exploring, traveling, searching, climbing, and swimming are the main way you gain tps (travel points) and levels in MUME. Your ability to travel will improve, which very likely means more travel points.

To gather travel points more efficiently, Swim, Climb, Ride, and Wilderness will help and save some time.

At level one, your rate of traveling and getting travel points can seem low. But at about 50% Swim and Climb can take care of most average traveling locations. And a Ride of over 70% can make visiting other towns much faster.

Wilderness can also help with food and water issues, and building campfires faster to rest or sleep next too. Or even cook your next meal!

So go out and see what type of ranger you can become while you level up and practice with your character!

Link back to the wiki guides:

• Guide