How do you get combat skills past ~70?

[Space]

So I've had a game going for a few days now and it's the furthest I've ever made it. I have a handful of guys with ~70 combat skills (defense, attack) and we've even taken out the bugmaster. My problem is that I don't know how to improve my guys further. Holy Nation Inquisitors have lower stats than them so they don't work anymore. Are there any relatively common enemies somewhere with insane stats I can grind against? Or any tips in general would be great. Thanks!

[tikiman572]

You're gonna need to look for stronger opponents, I'm afraid. Down south would be your place to hunt though I would recommend to be well provisioned and prepared. It's pretty wild down there.

[Shadex]

I am more curious how they got their guys to combat 70 in a 'couple of days'.

[di eshor ribly]

Some people like to cultivate training dummies, like elder beakthings or elder gorillos. There's an elder great white gorillo trapped inside the ancient lab inside Mourn that I like to use as a training partner.

Beat them unconscious, patch them up, and put them in a bed in your base. Animals don't get out of bed on their own... so attack them while they're 'sleeping' (don't kill them, let the bed heal them)... that sorts out your Attack, MA, and weapon skills, plus some strength and dexterity.

If you're going the humanoid/robot version you'll need to remove their limbs before throwing them into the bed/repair beds. Toss some heavy armor/helmet on them for protection and beat them up too.

For defense/dodge/toughness you need more active dummies. Keep a prisoner or five with good armor, trash tier iron clubs, and a locked building. Let them out of their cage, fight them, have your backup squad put them back in their cell after they're done beating on your crew. Just remember to keep them fed and try not to kill them, and it's a matter of finding (and capturing) a strong enough enemy to be worth your time. Cat-Lon, Tinfist, The Phoenix, The Stone Golem, Bugmaster... plenty of options.

[Space]

Originally posted by Shadex:

I am more curious how they got their guys to combat 70 in a 'couple of days'.

Real world days. I realized I could fight those skeletons up in Wend and take their swords for massive returns and that got me to ~40 skill and lots of money. Bought the best armor I could and then fought holy nation patrols outside my base for a while. Then explored for a while, and did a bunch of bounties and that got me to ~70.

[Space]

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

Some people like to cultivate training dummies, like elder beakthings or elder gorillos. There's an elder great white gorillo trapped inside the ancient lab inside Mourn that I like to use as a training partner.

Beat them unconscious, patch them up, and put them in a bed in your base. Animals don't get out of bed on their own... so attack them while they're 'sleeping' (don't kill them, let the bed heal them)... that sorts out your Attack, MA, and weapon skills, plus some strength and dexterity.

If you're going the humanoid/robot version you'll need to remove their limbs before throwing them into the bed/repair beds. Toss some heavy armor/helmet on them for protection and beat them up too.

For defense/dodge/toughness you need more active dummies. Keep a prisoner or five with good armor, trash tier iron clubs, and a locked building. Let them out of their cage, fight them, have your backup squad put them back in their cell after they're done beating on your crew. Just remember to keep them fed and try not to kill them, and it's a matter of finding (and capturing) a strong enough enemy to be worth your time. Cat-Lon, Tinfist, The Phoenix, The Stone Golem, Bugmaster... plenty of options.

That all sounds like a giant warcrime in the making and I love it I'm so totally doing that xD

[Loot]

Originally posted by Shadex:

I am more curious how they got their guys to combat 70 in a 'couple of days'.

I've managed 60-70s in combat stats, as well as 95 toughness in a few hours, just from fighting Band of Bones outside the Squin Waystation. This is with a Wanderer start. The most difficult part is getting toughness to 30 without bleeding out. You have to keep kiting them and applying bandages to stop the bleeding, so that it won't kill you while you're knocked out the first few times. Once you're at 30ish toughness, you won't bleed to death while unconscious and you can start levelling up fast from fighting the whole camp. Note that I play on 3x death rate, 3x squad size / population, 4x nests, so my experience may differ from yours.

[🅶ila]

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

Some people like to cultivate training dummies, like elder beakthings or elder gorillos. There's an elder great white gorillo trapped inside the ancient lab inside Mourn that I like to use as a training partner.

Beat them unconscious, patch them up, and put them in a bed in your base. Animals don't get out of bed on their own... so attack them while they're 'sleeping' (don't kill them, let the bed heal them)... that sorts out your Attack, MA, and weapon skills, plus some strength and dexterity.

If you're going the humanoid/robot version you'll need to remove their limbs before throwing them into the bed/repair beds. Toss some heavy armor/helmet on them for protection and beat them up too.

For defense/dodge/toughness you need more active dummies. Keep a prisoner or five with good armor, trash tier iron clubs, and a locked building. Let them out of their cage, fight them, have your backup squad put them back in their cell after they're done beating on your crew. Just remember to keep them fed and try not to kill them, and it's a matter of finding (and capturing) a strong enough enemy to be worth your time. Cat-Lon, Tinfist, The Phoenix, The Stone Golem, Bugmaster... plenty of options.

Lmao that's diabolical.

Out exploring the other day, I had wondered whether I'd be able to get blueprints for cages like on top of the slave traders and police buildings, then thought about what use it would be to lock NPCs up in them.. Maybe temporarily to pen up raiders until someone can get them all carted off to sell... Probably not worth the time/effort.

This actually sounds like a good idea

[AldouzTek]

Theres two way
1. Go mess with Armour King
2. Take down cleanser unit melee
Other than that I don't know never try lol

[Derek Withers]

As well as finding tougher enemies you should also try and reduce your own stats with penalties. Slap on some Samurai armour and the huge back pack and your apparent stats should allow you to still train and still gain skills.

You can still get stat gains from fighting Inquisitors but once you hit around level 80 its slows right down.

[Space]

Originally posted by Derek Withers:

As well as finding tougher enemies you should also try and reduce your own stats with penalties. Slap on some Samurai armour and the huge back pack and your apparent stats should allow you to still train and still gain skills.

You can still get stat gains from fighting Inquisitors but once you hit around level 80 its slows right down.

So hold on. If I have a high level skill and equip gear with debuffs that took it back down to a low level, the skill would train at the speed it would if it was actually that level? That's HUGE!

[Shidan]

Originally posted by Space:

Originally posted by Derek Withers:

As well as finding tougher enemies you should also try and reduce your own stats with penalties. Slap on some Samurai armour and the huge back pack and your apparent stats should allow you to still train and still gain skills.

You can still get stat gains from fighting Inquisitors but once you hit around level 80 its slows right down.

So hold on. If I have a high level skill and equip gear with debuffs that took it back down to a low level, the skill would train at the speed it would if it was actually that level? That's HUGE!

No, you still train at your base skill level's speed. But some skills get a bonus/penalty for fighting enemies that are stronger/weaker than you, and by lowering your effective skill level with equipment, you can increase your bonus or reduce your penalty.

[Hatsune Neko Gaming]

the penalties is one reason why i like to wear heavy armor. since as of late i do mostly crossbow and MA play throughs. with all the negative's, i get really good training out of it.
when i would take off my amour, i can clean teh clock of enemies when my skill level is high enough. the difference is like night and day.

train as much as you can with heavy penalties.

[Grizzly]

i wouldnt train them bejond tbh, i realised fast that at some point higher levels are clearly not worth the work, example is working, getting it to 60 is fast, getting it to 90 really really slow, if you got two workers at 60 they will do better then one at 90.

so basically if you got 2 guys at 70 they will do way better then one guy at 90, while one guy at 90 will cost you as much training as getting 5 dudes to 70. just get your guys good equipment and as the guy above me said, heavy penalties on your equipment are acutally really good to train skills higher.

[Major0Noob]

at a 50+ squad its time for war
build a base near a enemy camp, within rendering distance. don't let it die

my current base is north of stoat, filled with retreated paladins, high paladins, and inquisitors
the first batch of paladins were in 60+ skills, one even rivalled weak inquisitors.
i gave them desert sabers, naginata's, guardless katanas, and specialist gear with no stat penalties.
every few days a holy nation assault would add a few more and i'd send my guys to a real battle.
they turned into the most dangerous group of humans on the continent, till my fps couldn't take it no more

past 87ish you need cheese to progress. it ruins the flow tho. you'll spend more time cheesing around than using the stats

[Raymond]

that's pretty much the soft cap. The only way to level up further is keep fighting and gain exp without strong foes bonus. Alternatively you can download mods to add more powerful npcs to fight with.