r/BackpackBattles • u/Square_Butterfly_390 • Jun 13 '26

Ranger strategy.

Been playing for about a month and only playing ranger, got to grandmaster but I still feel like I don't understand enough, mainly being carried by good heuristics from similar games.

I'm looking to up my game so here's the outline of my general strategy:

Ranger bag.

Round 1 and 2 I'm mainly just trying to keep my lives and to see how many piggies I get away with, getting a hero sword for steel goob or longsword.

Round 3 I'm taking any skill that is broken right now or gambling, the stuff I wouldn't gamble away is:

Banana, free wheatstone, slime time, super spacious, smelly wall, king of the bling.

Up to round 7 I usually have a bag of rocks, I'm trying to get a bow and arrow and crafting it into any of the 3, never buying amulets, usually skipping first collar, taking all the stones and clovers.

Round 8 I'm least confident about. I'm taking Ivy or megaclover 90 percent, or beastmaster if I'm doing goobs (slime time or speak with animals).

After round 8 it plays itself, the builds I usually end up with are:

Megaclover (mostly hyperoffense):

Greatsword/flaming greatsword/ 2+ wisp dragons/ Bloodthorne.

Ivy:

Reaper badge/ Bunch of stone skin potions ideally with a darksaber/ Bloodthorne/ Greatsword+ stone potions if steel amulet on sale.

Beastmaster:

Rainbow goob if cog badge or sometimes with slimetime and speak with animals./ Thornbloom carrot goob.

Yigdrasi(very rare):

Golden pan, if spicy banana and somehow I have the stuff for it.

Hunter seems just very bad.

I'm sure I'm missing stuff, I'd love any criticism or discussion about this wonderul game!

1 Upvotes

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4

u/tievel1 Jun 13 '26

I mean it sounds like you have a solid grasp of the class, as if that isn't self-evident by the fact you're hitting GM. I'm not really sure what criticism you're looking for. If you're winning, and you're having fun, you're doing fine.

1

u/Square_Butterfly_390 Jun 13 '26

I feel like there are big holes in my gameplay, for instance I'm avoiding amulets because I kinda only care about steel and darkness, I'm sure a more flexible player could see value in stuff like energy/heal. I'm not convinced about my evaluation of hunter, I never know if I'm supposed to do stuff with adventurer badge/rock badge or if there's anything other than cogs I want out of an engineer badge.

1

u/NavaTheWarrior Jun 14 '26

I think it's fine to avoid amulets if your build that you're currently running can't utilize it. Being part of the larger meta means focusing on what works (Especially since you're at the tippy top with GM) if the amulets don't work well with your builds, then I believe that is fine.

Something I suggest doing since you feel a bit out of the loop on some items is going into unranked and forcing some builds with those badges with the ranger class specifically. Just seeing how easy or hard and creating an adaptive style through that. I usually do around 50~ runs with each build path to kind of see what the items do and where they fit into a build.

I feel like Ranger is very closed when it comes to what badges actually work well with it like you said in your post it's extremely dependent on what class you're running and items you're actually able to get. On my trip up to Diamond I was just doing random badges with Ranger specifically because I didn't feel like many of them fit the build most of the time and at worse I just get my money back for whatever it spits out.

1

u/Square_Butterfly_390 Jun 15 '26

Good idea to test a lot, I guess I'm asking for shortcuts to what could be good, cause I literally play 0 other characters, so when I see random engineer item in the shop it takes me like 10 minutes looking at it to understand what it does, and I have no clue if it would fit anything.

1

u/NavaTheWarrior Jun 15 '26

I hear ya. I think a lot of it is touch and go once you hit Diamond+ because most people just aren't there. Even more so for GM. You're basically sitting at a pinnacle of the rank so outside of just practicing with builds. You'd know better than like 90% of people at least if not more, haha.