#specialisations

That's right, we're still alive!

Plains tend to go hand-in-hand with common environments just like forests, and are somewhat easier to handle. These tend to be grassy fields or meadows of flowers, since although places like arctic wastelands or deserts could qualify as a plain, the main danger associated with them are to do with the climate, and not the landscape. Similarly, plateaus fall within Mountain rangers' responsibilities rather than having a Plains ranger trying to climb up there for an uneventful shift.

Easy on the feet and relatively simple to navigate, plains are usually the site of most exhaustion rescues, or sometimes forest fires that spread too quickly. People will run out of supplies, or underestimate a sunny day's intensity (or rarely get bitten by an Ekans that's just been trodden on) and call us in to escort them to the nearest town.

Interestingly, we get a lot of calls from plains during thundertorms too, and we can sympathise with terror of possibly being struck by lightning in a wide, open, empty space. Contrary to popular belief, you shouldn't bring out an Electric-type Pokémon to help 'guide' the lightning; in fact, any Pokémon should ideally not be used at all. While it's true that some Electric-types with the Volt Absorb ability benefit from being hit with electricity, that's an ability that tends to only be scaled to a Pokémon battle. Lightning is a powerful force of nature and is incredibly hot -- your Jolteon would be lucky to make it out with any of its fur left. This also applies to Ground types, though there are reports of legendary or mythical Pokémon being nigh immune to their effects.

So, one of these have been long overdue, huh? But moving right on, this time, we have inland bodies of water: rivers, reservoirs, lakes, waterfalls, heck, you name it. 

There’s no prizes for guessing number 1 favoured partner type. Yup, water types are a necessity for large and/or fast-flowing bodies. In saying that, calmer areas -- Lake Verity comes to mind -- sometimes only need flying, bug and normal types. Well, they’re the types that feel most at-home on the banks, but ain't really limitations, especially for an experienced working pair.

Waterfalls and flying types go well together, though waterfalls are by no means calm areas. Nor are whirlpool-heavy areas, but hey, I didn’t have to tell ya that

Before specialisations caught on, the nearest ranger would attend to a case out wherever in the wilderness. That still happens now, but for this particular environment, there were far too many drownings (both rangers and otherwise) and hence inland bodies of water were actually the first to have a specific set of rangers to cater for the area.

You see, people remember the dangers of the ocean and so they post lifeguards. But a lake? A river? A filled-in quarry? Most are superficially tranquil enough to picnic by, but undercurrents, freezing water, submerged debris, loose sediment and sudden drops are all out to get you. Luckily for us, a strong swimming Pokémon is enough to combat against most of these hazards, but not everyone has a Feraligatr. 

So I suppose this is the wrong season to be saying this, but please don’t go wading into unregulated bodies of water. While this may be an environment where the inhabitants are nicer than their home, these hold the highest fatality rates to date simply because they’re underestimated. I’ll do a separate post on a particularly infamous case, but I’ll leave it here before this gets too long.

Not too many deserts exist across the multiple regions, but where they do, they demand a certain flavour of ranger.

Known for their amazingly fashionable goggles, deserts rangers have to be highly self-aware of their own limits, both in the pressing heat of the day, and the piercing cold of the night. It comes as surprising to some that water Pokémon are rarely partners for the desert environment, but through a combination of water from Pokémon being unsuitable for human consumption, and water-types usually needing to stay damp, they’re not really cut out for the job. In fact, ground and rock types are almost always the partner of choice, and it means desert rangers rarely stray from their environment specialty. 

Sandstorms (and hungry, hidden Trapinches) are the largest threat to these guys, so you’ll notice that their partners are also physically large, or they possess a move akin to Protect. Technology is also shifting towards developing a pop-up forcefield, but this is very much a work in progress

Often the eyes of large-scale operations, open air rangers will pass over all sorts of landscapes, and deal with the conditional changes with each one. Up there, they deal with the brunt of the hot, the cold, the wildest winds, and lowest visibilities. 

This particular breed of ranger stemmed from at least a couple of decades ago, when the Bird Keeper Trainer’s Association had offered a flight safety programme to the Union. Not only was it highly beneficial to any rangers who were able to partake, but also encouraged bird-trainers-to-ranger types to thrive in their zone of comfort and expertise, as well allowing them to act as teachers to their cohorts. They’d learn to read the wind currents, conserve energy, even direct larger teams of rangers should it come to it. 

Since ranger duties on the seemingly idyllic stretches of coastline rarely sway from what is essentially lifeguard watch, coastal-specialised rangers also take on the tougher demands of the open ocean environment. Equipped with swim suits and tanks especially designed to be geared up quickly, they brave the ruthless waves searching for a stranded soul, or scour the depths to recover vulnerable young Pokémon.

As you’d expect, water Pokémon are indispensable to this class of ranger. Ideally, they’d need both a strong surface swimmer (Lapras are an international favourite) and a stronger underwater swimmer (Mantine are most commonly used, but those able to capture Sharpedos praise their higher speed and strength. Judge carefully by the currents). Flying types are a must-have for searching, but some don’t do well on/near the water, so again, choose carefully. I can assure you, your Charizard or Altaria would rather fly back to shore than try settle on the surface water. 

Even fewer true wetland areas exist across the regions than deserts, and the rarity of this ranger reflects it. Often, you’ll find them more or less tied to one particular wetland area, be it a marsh, swamp, bog or fen, with their differences in characteristics. Of the very few who have been around long enough to outgrow this role, they often find themselves guardians of natural reserves, Pastoria’s Great Marsh being the dream location

It’s been an old children’s belief that the most dangerous things in swamps (in particular) were its inhabitants. In times of old, this may have been more true, but human and Pokémon relationships have drastically improved, and this environment’s main threat has instead been given the limelight: hidden water pockets.  While no fatalities have been recorded from them, they’ve trapped people--rangers, trainers and everyday folk alike--for up to hours at a time, and are often a cocktail of bacteria and disease. Luckily, these pockets are very receptive to basic quicksand responses, which are pasted at pretty much every ranger base and depot. 

Very Bad Specialisation

Farspeaker (Elementalist Rifel 2 handed)

The far speaker is all about ammo skills (like the Blades worn before them) the auto attack builds up a resource called a magazine. For each time it activates an ammo is added to the magazine in the attunement the elementalist was in when it activated.

The ammo will work in the reverse of how ammo skills normally work, all being used at once to fuel the skill that asks for it, but the ammo itself being a shared resource between all weapon skills.

Then skill 2-5 is all about unloading that magazine into the rifel. Skill 2 is the basic burn skill, it will trigger once per ammo to deal damage based on the Attunement of the ammo that was put in. Skill 3 does the same but makes a larger and larger field based on how many ammo it has in the magazine when triggered.

Skill 4 and 5 both require a full magazine, but they do fancy stuff. I don't know what, yet, but that's probably because I haven't played ele seriously since 2013. So I leave that as an exersize for the reader.