Best Items and Teammate Classes

[Enter the Wang]

I'm too lazy to create a guide, but after completing the campaign I'd like to at least mention what I found to be effective and why:

Field Nurse is a great addition to a party throughout all levels. It can either directly heal other party members or purge them of status effects like bleeding, poison or stun during combat. It can prevent infection by healing all party members to full health before the end of combat (in combination with a shield/stunlocking member to control the last monster alive) and though its passive ability speeding health regen on the map. Infection and fog are pretty much the only things stopping you once you've got a good character loadout and this takes care of that.

Amber goggles are a niche body item that reduces movement through fog by 5 sanity per tile. As above it can be very helpful if you greed it up and extend your island trips to stripmine it of all the fame and experience possible and the only thing stopping you eventually becomes infection and fog. Goggles are a godsend when you're dragging your sacks of filthy lucre to the Golden Pyramid through 10 tiles of fog chased by hordes of spear wielding maniacs. I don't get why they get so upset when you drop their burial ground into a chasm, what's the big deal?

Magma launchers are a relatively easy weapon to farm from the mole people. It does burn damage which is one of the best ways to take down tank boss monsters. Even better, its 'Wild Spray' ability can allow you to do burn damage to 3 random enemies. Combined with a shield/healing/stun capability in the party this can make high hp enemies a breeze. More DOTs!

Storm Lantern is also a great item. It combines burning, direct damage and one of its sides even has a stun/vulnerability ability. On top of this it adds search dice to the many search challenges stopping you from finding treasures and useful items in shipwrecks and altar secrets. From what I've seen this is one of the best items in the game from its all round usefulness. Items like this just seem so much more useful than things like the hunting rifle. You still need blue dice to be a balanced party, but green dice seem to be the most useful all around in my experience.

You guys come across any favourite items/characters/combos?

[Mauman]

The humble meat cleaver.

No, seriously.

It's cheap to get, cheap to upgrade, and at rank 8 hits like a truck. Sure, the self-stun sucks but there are ways to lessen that, like stacking stuns on one character by using the cunning trade ability.

You can use it to easily hit over 100 damage per hit, and with the right party and some buffs/debuffs, I've seen a good throw cleaver hit go over 200 damage. And that wasn't even a Sihk Warrior.

Next game, I'm going to try and get a Sihk Warrior with Inhuman Strength mutation with one. That would probably get some big numbers.

[Cocineros cachondos]

Some toughts in random order:

- For combat I like British soldier + shotgun for that sweet 30+ aoe damage. Hyenas become a joke. (I tried the lux inventor guy with their ray gun and gloves for no damage and can't see why you would rather have them than the soldier and the shotgun, much worse damage, maybe if u desperately need blue die)

- Roma trader is all around the best companion, good skill and amazing die.

- Depending on the composition of your party you should give someone a lantern (if you have some more green die otherwere) or have a corgi companion (it alone can take care of all your green die problems, also goes well with street rat for safe stealing).

- Binoculars, love them. You know where you're going, you pick the best path, you dont stop with short trips. Walking stick is a good pairing with them.

- OP likes goggles to avoid purple fog, I favor clock for the same reason. Both items have the same function, being greedy and getting away with it.

- Not sure if good characters, but altering the map is fun: Taishi scroll guy and mole drill guy. Good times doing your own path where there's none, wish the lizardfolks had a companion that gave you the shallow water wand each map.

- If I get the mycologist (and is my favorite of the "get free items" traits) trait, a shaman is great. Lizard shaman allows you to better walk on water, human shaman has healing die.

- Not a fan of mounts, I'd rather have a fifth guy/dog. I'm an Avalon dude and use pidgeons, so take this one with a grain of salt.

[Mauman]

Cook plus Hunting dog.

I can't really recommend any dogs normally as their abilities are a bit meh, and their gear is rubbish, but if you have a cook, then a hunting dog will generate lots and lots of yummies.

Also as a side note about Coci said about the Roma, Red Flag Pirates get their signature ability (cunning trade) and it's AMAZING.

[Black Hammer]

Those Coston flares are a nice budget option. Completely carried me through a couple absurd fights I got shoehorned into with a combat-incapable team. Just set things on fire for 20+ damage a round then use shields and stuns to stay alive while they slowly burn to death.

I've also never regretted bringing along a bunch of those potions that give bonus dice. This game is brutal with scaling challenges and loves to punish you for actually exploring rather than just beelining objectives. Anything off the beaten path is likely to slap you with an absurd challenge that gives you squat if your dice come up weak. Torches and potions to mitigate those rolls really pay off.

[jlawleraz]

To reiterate what others have said, the British soldier with a shotgun was one of my favorite teammates, I liked the street rat because stealing helped me so many times (I'd steal from traders and then trade back what I just stole), I loved the binoculars, and I always bought all the potions from the supply ship.

I really liked the oryx as a pack animal - the extra capacity always helped and the special ability to find water/rest locations was amazingly useful. I liked the parasaurolophus because of the coolness factor and the combat abilities. I used the rabbit's foot a lot more than I was expecting. I liked the censer on my most medic-like teammate and I used weather balloons a lot.

[Mikeavelli]

The Red Elk is actually pretty amazing as a companion. With a few levels, you're looking at a free 5-10 standing with the natives every expedition.

A Giant Tortoise is probably the best mount in the game, giving high damage scaling and bonus shielding on its mounted attack die. With enough levels it can also provide more carrying capacity than the entire rest of your party combined.

I agree with above posts, British Soldier with a shotgun is basically mandatory. I find he makes the difference between struggling with combat and steamrolling it.

My biggest disappointment is probably the cook, which got nerfed hard compared to CE1. A really high level cook combined with a raptor in the party might be pretty good though.

[RIP]

Traveling Quack is a jack of all trades. Seems weird on the first glance, but once you know how to utilize it's skills it's versatility really comes in handy. Elixirs can save the party in nasty situations too, and can be used for a trade as well.

Once of the most useful item I find is the Lantern. It greatly helps getting green dices, provides extra light in caves(secret feature), and is useful as a weapon too.

And of course, the boots. It's pretty much essential on the Primal map as without it evey steps on river causes damage, resulting in a potential infection. Boots are really useful on Islands too.

[Silly Clown]

1.Multiple stacks of fannypacks, seriously, at least 3 people on your team should have this + leveled up to 4. This lets you carry everything you could need, which also increases your chances of having enough stuff to take advantage of shops.

2. Speaking of shops, always take advantage of deals. You will always win(in terms of trading surplus) in the end if you buy anything on sale. A discounted bad weapon that you dont need? -> the next vendor will buy it at almost full price.

[TowerWizard]

Originally posted by Mikeavelli:

My biggest disappointment is probably the cook, which got nerfed hard compared to CE1. A really high level cook combined with a raptor in the party might be pretty good though.

Agree to disagree. When I played the game hunter, the cook was a game changer. I fought every enemy I came across anyway, plus I had a hunting dog. I never had to worry about sanity with the cook. Also, all those stacks of cooked meat makes a decent trade good too. But yes, if you don't fight monsters at every opportunity, then you are not using the cook at full potential.

[Larc1n]

I'm surprised no-one mention the Kinetographer yet, the fame it provide from good films I'm addicted to, making it the recruit i try to get the earliest and lvl up first. also their blue color strenght buff is one of the strongest one you can find I think.

[TowerWizard]

I have never tried the kinetographer, so that might be a reason :)

[Snooper]

All animal team build is OP. I am sure the devs will nerf this soon.
But get one of each common animal. Donkey, horse, corgi, and hunting dog + 1 saddle + carry pack. Bag of treats for the pups or combat collars whatever works.

Green and red dice specialty. You can pass every search check at temples and most other places too. Their combat is decent, where the horse and donkey can both stun, corgi and hunting dog provides double dice for your main character to do the damage.

The main thing that makes the build so OP is that all pets are not affected to loyalty checks, bad resting events at nature and I think insanity events to a degree.
What this means is that you're immune to doing all the booze, toads, coca, native trinkets (the ones that give you 25 sanity but -1 loyalty to all non-natives). Your main explorer obtains no negative traits and the pets do not either. [You're not immune to the effects of the dream mushroom or whatever. You still lose -10 max sanity]

Tons of carry capacity, can win tons of fights (I wouldn't fight big groups of natives or rainbow orchid wolves), and high sanity gain items with no worries about loyalty or most bad events.

Best team before the nerf coming in.

[Larc1n]

looks cute but wouldn't say all animal team is OP or the best, it would be if managing bad perk and loyalty was horribly hard but I don't think it's that bad once you learned 2 or 3 things. but it has to be fun to play i don't say

[TowerWizard]

It seems hard to find the animals. I have never been offered a horse, in my five playthroughs, and donkeys only one or two times.

[NerdExtrodinare]

Originally posted by Mauman:

Cook plus Hunting dog.

I can't really recommend any dogs normally as their abilities are a bit meh, and their gear is rubbish, but if you have a cook, then a hunting dog will generate lots and lots of yummies.

Also as a side note about Coci said about the Roma, Red Flag Pirates get their signature ability (cunning trade) and it's AMAZING.

I don't know, I liked them. But I did have a cook too, which does indeed make them great.
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