Make 'em or buy 'em?Follow

Newbie, 19 thief/ 9 warrior at the moment and apsiring ranga.

I've read the lot on rangers and I'm aware than no matter what I do, I won't have the cash to play a ranger when I hit 30. Ok, fine, well I'm a thief and I'll play until I can but when I DO play a ranger whats the best plan of action?

Should I buy the arrows at the get-go? Or should I take the time to learn fletching? Will I be using bows long enough or should I just prepare to make bullets in the long run? Then the second part of the question, if making the ammo is best, where do I start?

I have about 25k saved up for now and by the time I hit 30 I assume I could have 40-50k, is that not a decent start for my ranger to get past its teens? Thanks a lot all!

you have several options to pay the upkeep of rng:
1. nm camping--hunt for your equipments and profit
2. silk hunting--easy gils and fame
3. woodwork--craft the arrows yourself
4. tanning--use the profits to buy stuff
5. alchemy--another profitable craft. Can also make flame and bullets

I personally do 1-3.

Arrows are very cheap until you get to horn and silver arrows. Woodwork will pay off in the long run tho. But you may end up sinking a lot of money to level it.

Fletching and arrowhead are very cheap, at least in my server. I wouldn't bother lvling those up.

You can use bow all the way if you want. Guns are good for pulling, 2hr emergencies, and ws. Otherwise, they are about even with bow if you factor in delay. They are only powerful when you get silver bullets (lvl 50). All other levels, guns aren't better. You also get elemental arrows to take advantage of mob's weakness. At lvl 71, if you can fork out 2-3 million for the best bow, guns aren't any better. There benefits of going the marksmenship route. You do deal the most one-time damage. And you can do status effects with xbow and have better hate control since you can control your damage output easier with xbow.

Crafting is your best bet, but only if you are commited to it and lvl it. Otherwise, it just becomes a money sink. You will probably better off buying from AH for your ammo in that case. If you do plan to take on crafting, you can start with arrowood log and turn them into arrowwood lbr. And sell them at AH and make about 1k profit while at it. Once you lvl a few, you can do bone arrows. After that, you do willow wands and maple sugar, but that's the one of the money sink period.

50k should get you past lvl 20.

I'm at 53 and have been buying my arrows the whole way. I took thief to 30 and saved up a decent amount of gil, and I haven't had any serious money problems.

I think whether to buy or craft really depends on the economy of your server. I've been picking up scorpion arrow stacks for 1200-1500 gil on Ragnarok lately, which is easily affordable. I do hope to be able to craft my own sometime soon, however. At woodworking 40 and bonecraft 28 right now.

700 gil iron arrow stacks will take you a long way, then silver arrows are fairly low-level to craft. You'll save a bit of money crafting beetle arrows, but you need woodworking 32 to do that effectively. Horn arrows aren't even worth the bother to use, just skip them and go straight to scorpions, which are generally cheaper because of the price of scorpion claws relative to ram horns.