Everquest Ranger Headshotting Guides
<Nerfed as of February 2014. Unless you're on a private server or someplace that doesn't have current EQ code, Headshot will no longer work the way it currently does, making this guide completely obsolete>
As many of you out there know there is a great way for Ranger's to earn massive amounts of experience in Everquest by using Headshot. Headshot is a long line of Alternate Advancement Abilities that allows the Ranger to instantly kill (or almost kill in some cases) a humanoid mob, lower level than them, that they are firing their ranged weapons at. Headshot has a chance to proc off of each ranged attack the Ranger performs and can only proc on the Ranger's target. (Back before the Headshot nerf of 08, I think it was, Rangers used to be able to use Hail of Arrows and Headshot dozens of mobs at once. If you played before that nerf know that this is now no longer possible as aforementioned).
Now as you could imagine since you can only headshot mobs lower level than you and only humanoids it is somewhat difficult to find areas you can Headshot efficiently at. There are "sweet spots" that Rangers commonly venture to when their Headshot ability reaches a certain point. These sweet spots will usually have light blue mobs (sometimes green) that will reward you with a great amount of experience for how fast you are able to kill them. Some of these more well known "sweet spots" are Plane of Fire's C1 and C2 camps, many of the Field of Scale camps as well as Feerrott's Temple Camp (the dream Feerrott).
If you're new to a Ranger and are unfamiliar with how Headshot works, I put together a little bit of a guide below to give you an idea of how it works. Also I have a great instructional video on How to Headshot on Youtube.
If you would like to learn about how Headshot can make you an insane amount of money by Power Leveling lower level players take a look at my How To Make Money From Power Leveling!
Headshotting for Noobies:
Headshot isn't as hard as you may think it is. In fact it's quite easy if you have the prerequisites down. They are as follows:
A Ranged Weapon
Sufficient Headshot Level
Vinelash Cascade (Frontal Cone Root Spell)
Hail of Arrows (Frontal Cone Arrows Spell) - Not as much a requirement as it used to be
With all of those things you will be grinding up large amounts of experience in no time at all! You of course also need an appropriate location that is good for Headshot (which we will get to locations later). Once you have all of the things listed above and a good location for Headshot it's a simple process there on out! All you need to do is agro a bunch of mobs, run them around a bit to get them into a nice line and then use Vinelash Cascade on them to root them all. After this just start firing away at the pack of mobs in the line until you proc Headshot. Once you do, switch mobs to start firing away at another.
At this point you will also want to use your Hail of Arrows on the mobs every chance you get to improve your chance of procing a Headshot. I also recommend refreshing Vinelash Cascade every 20 seconds or so that way root doesn't break randomly or early on you and things all of a sudden get really messy. That is really all there is to Headshotting as a Ranger, of course there are more things you'll learn as you go such as when to pop certain cooldowns to survive on a bad pull or how to make mobs run around terrain funky so they get to you slower and things such as that. But all of those come with experience!
Locations for Headshot
Now the part of the guide that probably everyone is waiting on, where to Headshot and when. As aforementioned you can't just Headshot everything and there are certain areas to Headshot if you want to maximize the amount of experience you will earn while doing it. Below you will find links to all my different Headshotting guides which will hopefully provide you with all of the best locations you could ever ask for when it comes to using Headshot.
Headshot Rank 2 - Mines of Nurga (Kunark)
Headshot Rank 3 - Torgiran Mines
Headshot Rank 5 Temple of Droga (Upper Section)
Headshot Rank 7 Temple of Droga (Lower Section)
Headshot Rank 8 Crypt of Decay - Puslings and Rats
For these initial few ranks of Headshots I won't have a great guide for awhile. I would need to re level a ranger to do them, so I am just going to give some information on each of their pages about how to get to that location and things you can do to improve your headshotting experience in the earlier levels.
PoFire C1 Headshot Guide (Level 80 requirement)
PoFire C2 Headshot Guide (Level 82/83 requirement)
Dragonscale Hills Minotaurs Headshot Guide
For these ranks of Headshot you are going to be in an extremely painful place. At level 87 (Rank 15) you can do the Pirates in the Burning Sea which is a huge relief but until then you are stuck with DSH and Lost Gnomes which requires you have to other people with you. Even ranks 15/16 are painful with the pirates and Old Blackburrow. Headshot doesn't get awesome again until Old Commonlands at rank 18 and then it really picks up at rank 19 in Field of Scale.
Headshot Levels 85 - 90 (A must read for you Rangers)
Old Blackburrow - Gnolls (Need Headshot Rank 16)
Commonlands - Obliteration Mobs (Need Headshot Rank 18)
Bloody Kithicor - Obliteration Mobs (Need Headshot Rank 18)
Field of Scale - Most Iksars and all Sarnak (Need Rank 19)
Toskirakk (Need Rank 21)
Korascian Warrens (Need Rank 21)
Kaesora Library - (Need Rank 22)
Feerott - Some Lizards (Rank 22 Required)
Cooling Chambers (Rank 22 Required)