Low level ranger armor advice.
 

Ok, I got my lowbie Ranger his Silver Switfblade. Now I'm looking to upgrade his armor.

While I am collecting pelts to fill out his Patchwork set, is there a nice but inexpensive (50 - 100pp) Chest piece i can watch out for in the Tunnel, or should I just save my money and skill up my Smithing and make myself some Banded? Or skip the tradeskilling and go buy some chain?

You can get a full set of banded for 91pp (91 AC, 1pp per AC). I would shoot straight for that.

Next step would be to get 500p for two 5/55 rings.

Not worth skilling up smithing yourself.

If you do decide to go down the route of smithing your own armour, which I don't advise, a good skill grind path for a ranger is to make arrow heads. Your RSI will be less tender when you make something you can actually look forward to using instead of revendoring.

That said, fletching will make your RSI so much worse.

Banded (circa 100pp) then 5/55 rings is ample.

Ok looks like I will go shopping for some banded.

Problem is I am a bit of a tradeskill geek. I really enjoy making my own stuff.

Of course I can wait till I grow up and get rich, then make banded and sell it to the lowbies...

Been sitting in the tunnel on and off for three days now and cannot find any banded armor.
Guess I will just have to keep killing cats until I can replace my cloth with patchwork and then start saving up for building my smithing skills.

If you are the kind of ranger that likes to fletch then a good path to level your black smithing skills is through making metal bits, then field point arrow heads and then hooked arrow heads.

I'm not sure about min/max efficiency, but your RSI from tradeskilling will be more satisfying