Strong + Athletic Question

[House of Rahl]

beyond just giving bonus str or fit values at the start of the game they give some impressive bonuses to melee damage and stamina usage. my question is if you reach 9 str/fit do you acquire these traits naturally like when you get stout/fit at 6 str/fit? if so so you also get the bonus to melee damage from strong or is it purely cosmetic if acquired that way like stout?

[Nordil(Hun)]

I don't feel like searching the forum for it, but some guy actually dug the codes through and got the exact numbers and posted it somewhere on the forum.

[Prowler™]

Yes you can gain these traits by levelling up using exercise or passively.
The real question is why would you do that? Strength isn't bad to level up but fitness? Good luck my friend. Hundreds of thousands of exp is required to level up and you can't gain more than 5-6 at a time.

[LSD]

You only get the trait icon, you don't get the bonus . E.g., getting to 9 or 10 Strength gives the Strong trait icon, but the 40% bonus damage from Strong doesn't apply.
https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Skills#See_also

[House of Rahl]

Originally posted by LSD:

You only get the trait icon, you don't get the bonus . E.g., getting to 9 or 10 Strength gives the Strong trait icon, but the 40% bonus damage from Strong doesn't apply.
https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Skills#See_also

is there any way to confirm that? i saw at the bottom that it said for example you will get stout at 6 str but you wont get the +2 str from the trait. the 6 point traits don't have inherant edits to them like the 0-1 and 9-10 ones do. what i'm asking about is to try to find out if the strong increase to melee damage and athletics decrease to stamina consumption is applied when you earn that trait via raising the stats to those points. i'm fully aware that when you get athletic at 9 fit it wont just add another +4 on top.

[LSD]

Originally posted by House of Rahl:

Originally posted by LSD:

You only get the trait icon, you don't get the bonus . E.g., getting to 9 or 10 Strength gives the Strong trait icon, but the 40% bonus damage from Strong doesn't apply.
https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Skills#See_also

is there any way to confirm that? i saw at the bottom that it said for example you will get stout at 6 str but you wont get the +2 str from the trait. the 6 point traits don't have inherant edits to them like the 0-1 and 9-10 ones do. what i'm asking about is to try to find out if the strong increase to melee damage and athletics decrease to stamina consumption is applied when you earn that trait via raising the stats to those points. i'm fully aware that when you get athletic at 9 fit it wont just add another +4 on top.

It says pretty clearly:
"Players should note that these positive traits gained through Occupations or Hobbies during character creation and Exercise after character creation are purely cosmetic and do not have any effect on gameplay."
You can see it on the table above it as well: https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Skills#Passives
There's the entry for 9/10 Str/Fitness, then there's an entry below to show what 9/10 looks like with the 40% bonus.

Also, bear in mind you're never, ever gonna hit the threshold for 8 -> 9 fitness, and though easier, is basically the same answer for strength. 120k xp is a slog.

[House of Rahl]

the entry line in the str and fit read "Actual ..." suggesting that it's not separate at all and instead is just a hidden effect that isn't reflected in the character menu. also the line about the gained traits being cosmetic is exactly why i specifically was asking about 0-1 and 9-10 str/fit traits because the example only uses stout that doesn't have a "hidden effect" like strong does. without going into the wiki, forums, or code you would never even know strong does anything more than +4 strength.

[LSD]

Originally posted by House of Rahl:

the entry line in the str and fit read "Actual ..." suggesting that it's not separate at all and instead is just a hidden effect that isn't reflected in the character menu. also the line about the gained traits being cosmetic is exactly why i specifically was asking about 0-1 and 9-10 str/fit traits because the example only uses stout that doesn't have a "hidden effect" like strong does. without going into the wiki, forums, or code you would never even know strong does anything more than +4 strength.

The trait effects are tied to the skill level as well as the trait, meaning e.g. if you took Athletic and -1 fitness, you wouldn't have the 40% bonus until it's over 9 again.
But you won't get the 40% bonus without taking Athletic.

[thebadman]

Welp, weight traits suddenly look way, way worse even if one is willing to grind the hell out of fitness.

[House of Rahl]

Originally posted by LSD:

Originally posted by House of Rahl:

the entry line in the str and fit read "Actual ..." suggesting that it's not separate at all and instead is just a hidden effect that isn't reflected in the character menu. also the line about the gained traits being cosmetic is exactly why i specifically was asking about 0-1 and 9-10 str/fit traits because the example only uses stout that doesn't have a "hidden effect" like strong does. without going into the wiki, forums, or code you would never even know strong does anything more than +4 strength.

The trait effects are tied to the skill level as well as the trait, meaning e.g. if you took Athletic and -1 fitness, you wouldn't have the 40% bonus until it's over 9 again.
But you won't get the 40% bonus without taking Athletic.

i spent about two hours learning about the debug and testing this. since athletics trait reduces stamina drain from running/sprinting i timed a new, just spawned in character at various fitness levels. i ran till they hit the first stage of fatigue 'moderate' and then allowed the zombies to eat that character so i could make a new one within the same world so that things like hunger or w/e wouldn't play a factor.

at 5 fit it took 2 min and 30 sec to become fatigued. this character had no traits positive or negative.

at 9 fit, starting with only the athletic trait it took 5:45

for 8 fit i started the character with the fit trait and used debug to add 1 level to get me to my desired 8. at 8 fit it took 3 minutes flat for the character to become fatigued.

for the final character i gave them fit to start with 7 fitness. i then used the debug to give them 1 level up to 8 fitness. finally i gave them 119,999 fitness xp. after that i closed the game and disabled debug so that i could go into the character without debug being on just in case there would be an issue. i then ran and it took prolly 10 seconds before the first fitness xp that plussed the character up to 9 fitness. in the character window they did show that they had athletic as we would expect. the character ran 5:30 before becoming fatigued. i think this is pretty conclusive proof that the 40% is either not being applied at all in any case, or that it is applied as soon as you earn the trait.

i also attempted to test the strength traits, but frankly because of how widely damage varies i ended up just giving up on it.

[grogcito]

Yes, you get both. The only reason to pick those traits is to not waste hours irl grinding those skills up to lvl 9.
Those special bonuses are tied to the traits themselves, independent of how you got them. If you remove the athletic trait while being lvl 9 fitness, via the debug menu, you'll notice the difference.

[House of Rahl]

Originally posted by thebadman:

Welp, weight traits suddenly look way, way worse even if one is willing to grind the hell out of fitness.

frankly if you arn't using a mod or some kinda xp boost for fit/str xp grinding it can take dozens of hours, and then it can all be lost if your char dies forcing you to start over. fit is much much harder to grind and a high fit allows the char to level strength much much faster. i noticed that a low fit char does exercises slowly while a high fit char does the same exercise much faster and thus gets more experience in the same time period. stamina is also the killer of characters so having a high fit in the early game is super useful while a low strength can be gotten around by just hitting the target more. spending a bit more time hitting things just means you get more maint and weapon specific xp. i tend to nerf my strength at the start to either 3 or 0 since it doesn't matter to me much, but fit i try to keep from falling and if possible it's great to start with athletic so you can exercise faster and power level strength back up.

Originally posted by Grogcito:

Yes, you get both. The only reason to pick those traits is to not waste hours irl grinding those skills up to lvl 9.
Those special bonuses are tied to the traits themselves, independent of how you got them. If you remove the athletic trait while being lvl 9 fitness, via the debug menu, you'll notice the difference.

that was more or less the answer i was looking for. i know the wiki is unreliable and the wording also wasn't definitive one way or another. the example didn't even apply to the types of traits that actually have impacts. strength was just something i duno how to field test. didn't think of manually removing the athletic since it auto added itself at 9 i figured it would just keep reading every few seconds as it did a status check to see if fitness was within the range to apply athletic while removing other fit type traits.

[grogcito]

Yeah, it even works if you manually add the athletic trait to a character below lvl 9 fitness, even though that normally would never happen.
I tested my guy with no traits and no occupations on creation, noclip, invisible and ridiculously tired, to sprint for 10 seconds in a straight line, using my phone's stopwatch so it's rather inaccurate lol.
However the difference is pretty obvious, this is the endurance stat at the end of the sprint, always starting at 1
0.864 lvl 8 fit 136
0.931 lvl 8 athletic 69
0.885 lvl 9 no traits 115
0.935 lvl 9 athletic 65

and I also tested having 119 999 exp at lvl 8 fitness and earning the athletic trait by running. I didn't bother to create another character, I think that's pretty conclusive.

Feel free to recreate the test in a more controlled environment

[LSD]

Well damn, i remember looking this up years ago and found people who tested saying it was specifically from the trait from character creation.

Still, with base 5 + 2 from Fit, you're looking at 90k xp in fitness for 7 -> 8, and 120k for 8 -> 9. Squats are 4xp (+25%, so 5) per rep, so...42k reps, interspersed with resting, eating, sleeping.
Not in this lifetime. Strength is a better bet, since you reliably get it from carrying 50-100% total carry weight, plus i think from fighting. plus higher gains from protein (annoying to manage) and barbells (rare to find). But it'll still be a horrible, horrible grind.