Ranger Training & Paths

This is one idea for the training a new player can take right from the moment they land on Puddleby until they become a Ranger and beyond. I'll list what to train and why and different paths a Ranger can take.

1st Circle

1. Start training with Skea and become a Fighter after 10 ranks to get the Dagger. You can get 10 ranks in anything to qualify, but Skea will be the best investment. Don't bother with Bodrus because you'll get something better as a Fighter. Everything else you could train is just fluff and a waste of ranks.
2. Continue with Skea until you get 50 ranks. This will serve you well in your career as it will enable you to skin almost all of South and North Forest and get a reliable income. This is an annoying time as each subsequent rank takes more kills to get but you're not getting stronger. Trust me that you will really enjoy the 50 skea later.
3. After you finish with Skea you can now start on your Fighter training. You have access to Atkus (accuracy), Swengus (balance & balance recovery), Histia (health), and Evus (everything). You want to train with Evus and only Evus for a long time. Evus is a really good trainer and teaches you every skill, including a bit of Detha and Darkus, two trainers you can't get access to until 2nd circle.
4. You will find yourself gradually losing the number of swings you have, but your balance regeneration will be increasing and you'll miss less often so each swing will be more valuable. If the number of your swings becomes too low then train with Swengus. How low is up to you, but I think that maintaining 4 swings is a good number to have.

2nd Circle

1. When you get access to 2nd circle you'll find four more trainers; Detha (defense), Balthus (balance), Regia (balance regeneration), and Darkus (damage). You might be tempted to stop training with Evus and/or Swengus and learn from one of the new trainers. DON'T! Evus and Swengus will be the trainers you want to stay with. Evus has just the amount of Detha and Darkus you want and if you want better balance it's far better to train with Swengus. If you want better damage later on it's better to wait until you become a Ranger when you get access to Bangus. I know it's tempting to change trainers, but you'll regret it later when you've missed out on the bonus Evus gives.
2. To repeat, STAY WITH EVUS AND SWENGUS.

3rd Circle

1. Now you can start preparing yourself to become a Ranger by qualifying for the Gossamer. You do this by killing stuff in one hit which usually means rats and vermine. Yes, now that you don't get any experience from them you're expected to go back and kill them. There's a Vermine Tree with a lot of rats and vermine that is a good place to go to. Just spend a few minutes every day, because it will take a long time to qualify.
2. Once you qualify for the Gossamer buy it if you have 5,000c. You should be saving all of the coins you have earned and with your 50 Skea should be close to this amount. If not, go out and kill more, find stuff to sell, beg in town, ask for a loan, gamble, and do anything to get a Gossamer. Once you have it train 100 ranks in it and use it as your main weapon from now on. Not only does 100 ranks enable you to qualify for Ranger but it will also conserve balance on the killing blow.
3. Now that you're stronger and can go to more dangerous places, you might want to train with the Marsh Hermit in pathfinding. He teaches a maximum of 100 ranks and enables access to the pathfinding books in the Slate Caves and Trillbane. You absolutely don't need to get pathfinding or even all 100 ranks if you get it at all. You could get just 50 ranks and be able to go to Northwest Forest and the other paths in the forests which can be useful. Just keep in mind that getting above 100 pathfinding is a royal pain in the butt and requires a large group for Book 2 and Trillbane.
4. Continue with Evus and Swengus.

4th Circle

1. You get access to the best trainer a fighter can get and that's Rodnus, who's unfortunately located in a rather hard-to-get location. Just find a stronger fighter or two and a healer or two, some pathfinding and go to the Trainer's Grotto. Rodnus enables healers to heal you more efficiently and some health as well. All fighters should get this asap.
2. Do some of the fighter hunt challenges (rat, large vermine, island panther) as the rank you get is worth more than the rank you would have gotten if you did it earlier. I've also heard that this counts toward qualifying for Ranger.
3. Train another 100 ranks in the Gossamer as 200 ranks is a good amount to have and is about what the average Ranger has.
4. While you could have become a Ranger in 3rd circle I think most don't until 4th circle at the earliest. The reason being the higher circle you are the easier it is to qualify for a sub-class.
5. Continue with Evus and Swengus.

Ranger

1. Now you're a Ranger and you have many options ahead of you as well as some goals and items to work towards. The charm (enables you to briefly run fast), belt (enables studying creatures), and extra study slots (you start with 1, can have up to 4).
2. You can switch your main trainer from Evus to Bangus (offense) or Farly (health/troilus). Bangus has troilus and a bigger damage range than Evus but with morphs you'll be able to make better use out of troilus than other fighters.
3. You can also decide as to what kind of Ranger you'll want to be. One type is the High Gossamer/Studies Ranger who has more than the 200-250 Gossamer most Rangers have and focuses on studies rather than morphs. They get most of their power from the Gossamer. Another is the Core Fighter Ranger which gets most of their power from fighter skills and only gets the most powerful studies and morphs which means they have fewer than the average Ranger. Other Rangers pick a theme and try to get morphs out of that family. Gremlins with his spiders, Azel with her cats, and Super Chicken with his birds. Another type is the Morphing Ranger who gets morphs with the atkus that will enable them to get studies and tougher morphs. As an example if you have 200 Atkus when becoming a Ranger you'll pick a morph that you can hit but which gives you more Atkus than what you have. I've heard Jade Noids or Valley Panthers are good first morphs which can give you up to 400 Atkus. With this you can go to tougher places than you normally would and enable you to get even stronger morphs. Many Rangers get the GCP as a tagging morph. There are also Fighter Test Rangers who get 5 studies in a family that's present in the Fighter Test to enable them to use the 50% family bonus and pass the test. I put them separately because if it wasn't for the test I doubt anyone would bother with studying greymyrs. There are Defensive Rangers which use the Gossamer for offense which frees up their ranks to train with Histia, Detha, and Balthus. Which one you want to be is entirely up to you.
4. Just be sure to train in spirit and spirit regeneration once you start getting studies, befriends, and morphs because after getting hundreds of last hits to get a morph you'll want to be able to use it. Until then you don't need to as you won't use spirit unless you've studied a creature's movements.

As to myself I'm leaning more to the Core Fighter Ranger and I might not get any studies at all until 5th or 6th circle. It's possible to pass those Fighter tests with only core Fighter ranks as I did it on Jeanne with a Longsword so you don't need to get studies with families you don't want just to pass them sooner. After 4th circle the only thing you get from passing the tests are a new belt (which doesn't really apply to you since you'll be wearing your Ranger belt) and at 7th and 8th circle you can change your weapon's color to gray and black respectively. I'll be going through the families and deciding what the weakest creature I'll study, if I decide to do it at all, and if I can't hit them reliably then I'll just get more fighter skills rather than more studies.

You might think this is a bit silly. Why become a Ranger if you're not going to take advantage of studies and morphs as soon as you can? Well, to qualify for tougher morphs you need a certain amount of ranks and I'm not sure if Gossamer ranks count. In other words if I spend Duvin getting studies on a weaker creature which I don't need and which I'll eventually hit well enough with the family bonus and core fighter skills, I'll eventually need more core fighter skills to qualify for the studies and morphs I do want. In other words, why waste Duvin on studying Artak Cougars? I'd rather get advance slower and get movements on powerful beasts than Duvin on weaker beasts just to be able to fight the powerful beasts sooner just to have to train extra Duvin to study them.

The same thing with the fighter tests since most of them are for bragging rights anyway and not of any practical importance past 4th circle. You can pass all of them with only core fighter skills and from my experience with Jeanne only the 7th and 8th fighter tests really benefit from sub-class skills. I'm not going to go out of my way to study a useless family just to pass those tests sooner. It seems a waste of time and ranks.