"The Ultimate" achieved with a ranger

[sammy got popped?]

I know I'm late to the party, but after playing pillars 2 and seeing how unsatisfying it was, I decided to play the imo much better first game, and try for the ultimate achievement. There is very limited guides on getting this achievement with a ranger both on steam and on the obsidian forums. So if there is any interest, I will post a detailed tutorial/guideline on how it was done

[Competizione]

Would be interesting to see. I got it myself with a wizard.

[sammy got popped?]

sorry about the late response, been busy lately

The end game equipments i used for all dragons/archmages were :
persistence bow (dont add elemental lash, upgrade with legendary + beast slaying+durgan enchant)
Maegfolc skull ( for dragons only, for normal encounters use the Pirate hat)
Pirate belt (from anslogs pass merchant )
Gwisk Glas + durgan enchant
Boots of speed
Gauntlets of accuracy
Cloak of the frozen hunt
Ring of searing flame/changing heart/bartenders ring (the rings arent really important,pick w/e gives the most dmg for the situation)


Early Game :
starting stats: max per/might/res/con , min dex/int (max res instead of dex to pass speech check for raedrics hold speech checks, so you can loot boots of stealth/gaunt of accuracy/gloves of manipulation using loot tables)

- dont bother with eothas temple/bear cave/spore cave, do the rest of the early game quests

- start with bear companion and take resilient companion, then respec into boar companion due to better scaling at around level 9

- sneak into caed nua at level 3, without buying the figurine from the smith since rangers dont ened it. (sneak bear pass ghosts in caed nua halls, activate the fight then run bear into the top western hallway and wait for it to die. The fight will end and ghosts will return to their original position, then sneak yourself the same way)

- take the easy fetch quests , side with domenels and kill the knight with shade/beetle summons

Mid Game:

At around level 7, you should have finished all the act 2 easy quests, respec into max might/dex/per/con, dump int/res. The hardest part here is to get through level 4 of endless paths to get the persistence bow.

- Once you have acquired the persistence bow, and the +1 speed armor from the first crucible knight quests, you are pretty much golden. Start white march , and get boots of speed from the russet woods body), Respec and dump cons/res, pump INT to around 15, max might/dex/per

-Once we have boots of speed + persistence, the game is very easy, every single encounter can be done by kiting. Only exceptions are cave bounties (nalrend for example), which we will leave until lvl 13+ when we get twinned arrows.

Late Game Bosses:

Due to the ranger being extremely fragile, I did not attempt the adra dragon/alphine dragon/cragholdt/lengrath until I finished both white marches, and had lengendary + durgan enchant bows.

- 99% of hard encounters can be beaten by abusing scrolls of confusion

- DO NOT USE THE PIRATE HAT FOR DRAGONS. The dragon auras will constantly crit you and the pirate hat confusion enchant will confuse and HEAL the dragons.

- Adra dragon can be pulled with bear , use summons to activate all adragans then use scrolls of confusion to have the enemy minions tank for you. With beast slayer talent, marked enemy, twinned arrows, envenomed strike + max upgraded persistence at level 16. All dragons will die extremely quickly. However if you get hit by a single petrify or dragon breath you will instantly die. Practice a few times on a non ironman save, and you will find its not that difficult.

-Alphine dragon is pretty much the same, use scrolls of confusion to have enemy minions tank for you. The hardest part of killing dragons on expert mode is that you dont see the range of your scroll aoe, I had plenty of previous experience in test runs, so I had a good grasp of the ranges. If you confuse the dragon, it will HEAL(see above note for using pirate hat vs dragons)

-Llengrath was the hardest encounter for me to figure out. However I am confident now that I can very consistently beat her. One of the biggest downsides to playing ranger vs llengrath is that you pet will always die, and you end up with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ debuff. This can be somewhat offset by taking Vengeful Grief. Abilities like stunning shots/binding roots are not useful for this fight, so we can take things like heal companion/vengeful grief/revive companion/play dead.

The key to beating this encounter is to kill the ranged dragon as fast as possible, then kiling the llengrath herself. Once this is done, the fight is won. You can simply kite in a circle and slowly kill everything else with boots of speed + persistence. Start the fight by sending your bear forward to draw out the paralyze attack from the mage apprentice. Drink alacrity potion, cast prayer against fear and start using confusion scrolls, use ring to dominate the xaurip skirmishers/mage apprentice. Keep your pet alive as long as possible, using the confused enemies to tank. Once you start chaining confusion scrolls, summon Concelhaut and have him cast the hammers on the ranged dragon. Then dump everything on the ranged dragon/scale breaker/marked for death/dominion of the sleeper/sever the soul/envenomed strike. Once the ranged dragon is dead, you can run up to the north eastern edge of the map and wait for llengrath's buffs to run out. Kill llengrath, kite the rest of the mobs to death. One thing to watch out for is the swamp lurker which will de aggro- and intercept you while kiting in a circle.

I hope this is somewhat helpful, i left out most of the early game tips/tricks since they are common for pretty much all solo runs and can be found in other places.

[theworld]

Well played.