Tips for new players.

[spore]

This is a summary on how to get an optimum start on this game, from character creation to basic concepts. I highly recommend you read the more detailed versions on the wiki if you want more information, but since the game just got ported to steam I guessed leaving a quick guide here would help.

So. You just started the game, first thing you do is choose your gender and appearance. Choose whatever you want. It is true there is a small amount of dialogue choices dependant on gender (with 2 specific characters) but all they change is how good of a relation you'll get for choosing them, and there are other ways to improve it anyway, so the change is basically cosmetic.

Then we get to attributes, you get 5 each but can reallocate them to leave every option on a scale of 1 to 10. This is far more important than appearance because attributes don't go up during gameplay, if you play with 1 in Intelligence you might get Smarter with time but you'll still learn things very slowly no matter how much you train that. And indeed every attributed except Acc has something it locks permanently. As such, first let's talk about what do attributes change:

Attributes alter many skills and facets of your gameplay, like "mechanic", "foraging", stuff like that. ALL those skills can be trained without too much fuss so they don't matter that much, they'll only come up near the beginning of the game, so what does matter?

Strength: changes your HP, that is, how many hits you can take, and starting load. HP can't be trained and is vital to combat, so Strength should be pretty high on your list of priorities. As for starting load, not only is it important for commerce until you get a donkey, but it also determines how much gear you can carry on combat. Which can be vital. This is the postapocalypse, being dumb is bad but being weak reduces your survival chances considerably more. Pretty much all high-tier builds put 8 points here.

Agility: changes your AP, that is, how much you can do per turn, and your walking speed. AP can be trained but extremely slowly compared with almost everything else, and walking speed only matters until you finally get mounts for everyone, but that will happen only very late in the game, and until then it'll be the difference between getting ambushed by faster raiders and surviving to reach the village (if you're wounded), plus will drastically alter your economy as being slower means wasting more water and meat. Overall, Agility is a "how much do you want to spend grinding" meter, which of course has munchkins and speedrunners setting it to 10, but you'll even find people that set it to 1 and swear by it, particularly those who prefer to set int to 10 instead. So, we'll talk about the int-agi dichotomy later down the line. Notably however it should be mentioned that Agility, if not just dumped to 1, should be taken always in even numbers. Why? Because AP and most agi-dependant benetifs come in increments of .5 rounding down, so any odd number for agi is just a wasted point that could go to str or int, even if you think both of those values are where you want them, at least it'll do something more, so don't bother with 3-5-7-9 acc values.

Accuracy: just set it to 1, this is the dump stat. Yeah you'd think being accurate matters during a gunfight, but it doesn't matter that much here. Because Acc doesn't actually control anything that can't be upgraded with training with relative ease, and most early game enemies are melee, and ranged weapons on melee have 100% even if your skill is terrible, so Acc only really matters depending on how many bullets you wanna waste on the tribal area. So just get a crossbow and bolts (which are cheap and can be recovered) and take potshots at the rovers while they get to you and you'll be accurate enough for real combat before you know it. As such, Acc should be regarded as 4 free points to allocate somewhere else.

Intelligence: Int determines at which speed you learn your skills, an Int of 1 means a lot more grinding than an int of 10. This should explain why there is the int-agi divide as it's basically a matter of philosophy really. Either way, the only other noticeable change is dialogues. There is a sidequest locked at int 5, and some more dialogues at lower values. Most guides say there's also dialogues locked at int 6 but after plenty of playthroughs back when it was a flash game I didn't notice any difference myself, and it certainly doesn't lock any quests. So, if you want your character to have more options Int is also something to consider, but if you're just going in survival mode or trying to slaughter your way through the desert like a living natural disaster, which many players enjoy, then dropping it for Agi is perfectly reasonable.

As such, here are some very common builds:

8/10/1/1: THE GRIM REAPER: for players using this build peace was never an option, cut your way through the game and enjoy. Maximum speed and AP allows for hit and run tactics even early on, and 8 strength lets you carry 2 rifles and armor. So enjoy blasting bandits and slavers to gory bits... or becoming one of them.

8/1/1/10: The Grinder: combat will be an absolute pain with this build early on, but as you get better it'll ease quickly. Preferred build for those who want to spend ages minmaxing the desert economy and upgrading their caravan. Slow but methodical wins the race?

9/4/1/6: The Dialogue: can walk like a donkey, has access to all dialogue options, extra point in str isn't optimal but at least it does more than it'd do in agi. I don't like this build myself but a lot of people swear by it so hey I'm not gonna say they're wrong.

8/6/1/5: My Preferred Option: 5 supposedly gives you less stuff than 6, but I didn't notice the difference, and 6 agi lets you run faster and gives you an easier start, so imho it's worth it.

Build over, got to desert. What do? First off hit pause (spacebar) immediately, open the menu, and enable pause when entering travel mode. I don't even get why that is on by default. Then consider if you want to keep foragging and hunting on or not. Both of those options slow you down but in exchange give you forage and food respectively. And once trained those skills can help you greatly, but right now they're not gonna be much use, and they increase the cost of travel, so I'd recommend turning them on only after you have a good amount of extra money to spend training them. Then go talk with your superior, look up the map, get the dialogue option for the special mission if you want goodies... DON'T think you can take the drekkar from the special mission yet, you can't. And go to Silos to get started with the Tribal Area. Have fun.

Ok, but. How do I actually get places? Open your map, trace your route (it's a straight like I'm sure you can handle that) and look up how much water, forage and food it takes to go there. You're gonna need twice that amount. Why? Because not all locations actually have food stores in them, and you will need food to get back. Once you know which locations are safe you can spend more load on merchandise, but at first always make sure you can come back.

That done with, weapons: you start with a pistol and your room has a knife. The knife is pretty bad so change it on lintu whenever you have enough money, best melee for this area is the axe if you can get it, if not it doesn't matter too much, I also recommend getting a crossbow to train your accuracy without wasting more valuable pistol bullets. As for armor, once you finally start taking Drekar patrols on you can get their leather vests and jackets. The leather jackets are incredibly good armor and you should use them and keep as many as you can on your room in the bunker for when you get extra members. They are seriously very good until the midgame and not that easy to find outside of the drekkar.

Then we get onto travel paths: Do the rounds around the 3 tribes a few times, the economy there is very simple (buy wool on lintu, sell it and buy yarn on pullid, sell it and buy jackets on kivi, sell the jackets on lintu. Your bunker gives you free food water and medical aid, and food is cheap on pullid, sell what you get from the dead rovers to the weapons merchant on lintu, it's hard to get lost.) and this will introduce you to the economy of the game. Every area is best seen as one big trade route, you should try to find out which trade route works for which area and always go around like that unless you have a specific mission has an expiry date. Even if it takes a bit longer, it will fill your pockets, and that means you can get more food, gear and ammo. it's worth it.

And finally we have animals and companions:
1-Never get anything slower than a donkey. If you've played for a while and wanna try to build a farm go ahead, but until you have some experience cows just slow you down until you're the bandit's preferred target, and make the game take forever, and as such also make you waste a lot more food and water, donkeys and above is where it's at.
2-Always get female animals, they consume more water but they're otherwise identical and they give you milk, which humans can use both for water and food. Enough female animals and you won't even need food for your trips, they are absolutely worth it. Also, breeding requires the calf to actually grow to mature age, so I don't recommend it.
3-As for companions: I don't recommend hiring any companions slower than a donkey (agility 4) until you get carts to carry them, at least unless you're an agi 1 yourself in which case you're already doomed to be slow as all hell no matter who you hire. Either way, companions help on combat and carry weight, so you want them to have decent str. Don't hire too many, though, because non-volunteers expect a salary, and a big one at that, every companion will as such increase the cost of travel significantly, I don't recommend hiring anyone until your economy is very solid, they can help you against drekkar but there's story ways to achieve that which don't require you to waste so much money, so hire at your own risk.

And this has been a quick guide to caravaneer 2, hope you enjoyed it, don't forget to visit the wiki for added info, feel free to ask any doubts.

[Gorebane]

I'm a long time player, but it's always interesting to see how someone else plays. This is a great guide for new people and perhaps it ought to get stickied to help newcomers!

[thorstein92]

"8/1/1/10: The Grinder: combat will be an absolute pain with this build early on, but as you get better it'll ease quickly" this quickly means: "use scripts to 12hours grind to make your character playable".
So it is rather "combat will be an absolute pain with this build early on, but as you get better it'll be still pain in the ass. And when you finally grind your main character up your mercenaries will be much better than your main. So it was really waste of time and effort".

For easy and balanced run 6/7/2/5 is good.
7AGI means 17AP at start - so you can use hit and run melee and hit and run pointblank crossbow shooting in Tribal.
1ACC make base accuracy too low before grinding. But accuracy grinding is easiest and fastest. So it is easier to go 2acc instead 7 str.
120HP would be enough to get heavy hit and few bleeding turns early on.

About hiring mercenaries:
In tribal region keep salaries less than 10k/week in total.
You should be able recruit few cheap and decent in Pullid camp (less than 1k$ for 8/4/4/x merc), or freed Drekar prisioners/slaves. (1500$-5000$ acceptable price range if more than 5 agi)

In later regions keep salaries less than 100k/week in total. Early on because budget, later on because over 20 mercs will be overkill at all battles. I think 9-15 range for caravan size is optimal.
Post Tribal any merc with less than 6AGI will be a half of merc. (1 shot instead 2 shots from rifles per turn is major problem)
In later regions best recruits are:
Cameron Hale (Alkhubra) - cheap scripted merc from fort michell
Mimsy (Janubi) - cheap scripted merc from Mimb.
black maradeurs (Alkhubra) - imprisioned bandits (this ones with black tagelmusts) (all stats slightly above average)
Shinobi Pillagers (Janubi) - imprisioned bandits (very fast 8,10AGI, but low INT, and average other stats)
Borykuden (Qubba/Federation) - imprisioned bandits (strong (10STR); high int (mostly 9-10). agi and acc random in 3-10 range)

The rule of thumb says: "never recruit merc with wage higher than 5.000$" Even if he is exceptional good.
Never leave mercs with low/medium int in fort michell and with less than 140HP.
Training is good for exceptional black maradeurs and pretty much every Borykuden.

[老枪]

I perfer 6/4/1/9, so this person can have 5km/h speed which is equal with donkey, so in first 2 area this speed is suitable, and 6 strength is for get higher HP which is important, 9 intelligence is for keep team status good and make person learn rife faster

[[OCe]Kagari]

Maximizing intelligence is a bad idea, grinding your main even with 10 INT isn't worth it as you can have way more powerful mercs in the later stages of the game. Newcomers should put it INT at 1 unless they want to unlock a couple dialogues that dont benefit them much gameplay wise.