How useful is Persuasion and Intimidate? And about Guns/Crossbows

[MisterWytt]

I'm making a general character build, and while it's my first time giving this a try, I'm mostly focusing on more of the essential skills, like Hacking and Lockpicking. I'm still trying to decide if I should take either Guns or Crossbows, since both seem rather appealing. The thing is, if I take Guns/Crossbows, is there any need to go Melee as well?

One other thing I'd like to ask is how useful Intimidation and Persuasion is. Intimidation I can see being useful initially for a stealth character since most of their equipment raises that, but what about Persuasion? Are any of them useful at all?

[IronBudmeister]

really depends on your preferences, but usually if you're going ranged there's not much need for melee added in the mix, considering with a good sniper rifle and stealth ability you can reach out and touch your victims without them even knowing, and burst fire absolutely decimates in close quarters. i cant be bothered with melee, but different strokes for different folks i guess.

from my experiences in the EA period of the game, the speech skills worked well to get what you want and out of a tight situation. i would recommend sticking to one and maxing that first rather than worrying about splitting your time leveling both. granted both have their situational value, but the best results are with a higher skill point value. hope that helped, best of luck in the UnderRail!

[MisterWytt]

Originally posted by IronBudmeister:

really depends on your preferences, but usually if you're going ranged there's not much need for melee added in the mix, considering with a good sniper rifle and stealth ability you can reach out and touch your victims without them even knowing, and burst fire absolutely decimates in close quarters. i cant be bothered with melee, but different strokes for different folks i guess.

from my experiences in the EA period of the game, the speech skills worked well to get what you want and out of a tight situation. i would recommend sticking to one and maxing that first rather than worrying about splitting your time leveling both. granted both have their situational value, but the best results are with a higher skill point value. hope that helped, best of luck in the UnderRail!

What would be more useful in a variety of situations though? Guns or Crossbows? Crossbows sound appealing since the crafting of ammo seems cheap enough to make. But with the variety of guns in the game and the very few weapons (But many ammo types) for Crossbows seems less of a headache quantity wise...

[Altos]

If it's your first playthrough, I would recommend you choose Guns as your main source of damage over Crossbows, because the latter can be very, very tricky to use (and beyond difficult come the end-game).
Generally speaking, Persuasion is infinitely better than Intimidation for the purposes of getting the best dialogue outcomes. There is only one worthwhile Intimidate check in the whole game (the rest are either purely useful for avoiding an unimportant battle, are impossible to pass, or can be solved with Persuasion instead), and it is the Grover Intimidation check in Junkyard that is encountered within the first 5 hours.
For combat purposes, however, Intimidate can be very useful if you choose the Yell Feat, which scales with your Intimidate skill, IIRC. Persuasion doesn't have any in-combat applications.

[Sexual Tyrannosaurus]

My first try is crossbow+stealth+traps. Very fun and strong build if you cook it right. Don`t worry about crafting ammo, etc. Money is not a problem, I have like 1 mil cash and never was low on it. I`d totally ditch chemistry, biology and tailoring for this build as it prooves pretty meh at least for me. But electronics and mechanics - hell yeah.

[destroyor]

I second the recommendation for guns for a new player. Do NOT add melee either way because you just won't have enough skill points. It's very important to pick one single offensive skill and max it every single level, and possibly supplement it with throwing/traps.

Social skills in general is just lackluster. Persuasion is much more useful than intimidate overall: there are more persuasion checks (75 effective to pass most and I think 110 is the highest but not 100% sure). Intimidate + yell + decent will is pretty good but most build just won't have the skill points/feat to fit it in.

Originally posted by Sexual Tyrannosaurus:

My first try is crossbow+stealth+traps. Very fun and strong build if you cook it right. Don`t worry about crafting ammo, etc. Money is not a problem, I have like 1 mil cash and never was low on it. I`d totally ditch chemistry, biology and tailoring for this build as it prooves pretty meh at least for me. But electronics and mechanics - hell yeah.

Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to defeat Tchort without chemistry using xbow?

[MisterWytt]

Originally posted by destroyor:

I second the recommendation for guns for a new player. Do NOT add melee either way because you just won't have enough skill points. It's very important to pick one single offensive skill and max it every single level, and possibly supplement it with throwing/traps.

Social skills in general is just lackluster. Persuasion is much more useful than intimidate overall: there are more persuasion checks (75 effective to pass most and I think 110 is the highest but not 100% sure). Intimidate + yell + decent will is pretty good but most build just won't have the skill points/feat to fit it in.

Originally posted by Sexual Tyrannosaurus:

My first try is crossbow+stealth+traps. Very fun and strong build if you cook it right. Don`t worry about crafting ammo, etc. Money is not a problem, I have like 1 mil cash and never was low on it. I`d totally ditch chemistry, biology and tailoring for this build as it prooves pretty meh at least for me. But electronics and mechanics - hell yeah.

Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to defeat Tchort without chemistry using xbow?

I'm curious, too. Having a Crossbow with none of the benefits of Chemistry would make it a pretty lackluster weapon by itself...

[Sexual Tyrannosaurus]

I still have not finished the game, I am in deep caverns at the moment. I do have chemistry, but just don`t find it useful since I can buy needed chem ammo from vendors if I really need it, acid bolts are meh. Fire bolts are ok due to panic (but still on the "meh" side for me). The best bolts anyway are shock and serrated ones (with crits it deals insane bleeding damage). With right perks/crossbow I get crits for 800-900 damage easily, combine it with bear trap(every hit = crit) it just pwns everything.

I have tons and tons of acid bolts, poison bolts and fire bolts and use them only to use them (out of boredom).

May be I will change my opinion when I will meet Tchort, we`ll see.

[Altos]

Originally posted by Sexual Tyrannosaurus:

I still have not finished the game, I am in deep caverns at the moment. I do have chemistry, but just don`t find it useful since I can buy needed chem ammo from vendors if I really need it, acid bolts are meh. Fire bolts are ok due to panic (but still on the "meh" side for me). The best bolts anyway are shock and serrated ones (with crits it deals insane bleeding damage). With right perks/crossbow I get crits for 800-900 damage easily, combine it with bear trap(every hit = crit) it just pwns everything.

I have tons and tons of acid bolts, poison bolts and fire bolts and use them only to use them (out of boredom).

May be I will change my opinion when I will meet Tchort, we`ll see.

If you've only just entered DC, then I implore you to use your special bolts sparingly, even if you have "tons and tons" of them. The components needed to craft special bolts are rarer than gold in DC, and you are going to burn through your special bolts faster than a wildfire once you begin exploring the Mushroom Forest and Arke Power Plant.
And I hope you have 100+ Mechanics, because unless you're a god with a crossbow you're not going to be able to beat a certain robotic boss, even if you have 200 shock bolts.

[Revisor]

I think the hardest Persuasion check is in Deep Caverns, Arke Power Plant, Iris AI Core.

It must be between 105 and 115 (didn't pass with 105, passed with 115).

It skips a hard battle.