Bladeling using light melee weapon

[cypherusuh]

Any idea on how to deal with these bastard? Using tungsten sword only deals 3 damage while it eats 400 durability chipping off their health. Grenades and molotov don't do ♥♥♥♥, and I don't have any (and hopefully won't invest on) trap skill for poisoned bear traps, poisoned knife won't pierce their DT even with fairly high throwing skill and dex. Does caltrops poisons regardless of damage pierce?

[Jean-Luc]

Expose Weakness. I don't want to say it's a must have but...

[cypherusuh]

Yeah, I ends up taking Expose Weakness quite early, since I want to rush SS. Apparently, poison caltrops is kinda effective, but each proc only reduced their hp by 40%. Combination with poisoned bear trap might be enough to cheese it with minimum trap investment. Gas grenade also helps.

[destroyor]

Just like crabs you should just use Tichrome knife w/ energy edge emitter for DEX build or Spear w/ energy edge emitter for STR build.

[cypherusuh]

I can't get neither tichrome nor energy edge before The Beast and getting to Expedition. I was around level 11 before, unless there's different place to get energy edge, cuz I forgot to to check on core city

[destroyor]

Sounds like a DEX build, if you are lucky enough to get a chem pistol or energy edge emitter as random loots than that should be it. If not, I would just say tackle them a bit latter.

[cypherusuh]

I should've savescum Camp Hathor reward, since I found energy edge there before tbh.
As I said before, I picked Expose Weakness and the sword could kill it in 2 turn. I honestly can't imagine how it is with knife pre-expedition and non-psi brawler, since they have less base damage and more mechanics penalty. Chem pistol w/ tazer might do the trick

[nightshift]

Originally posted by cypherusuh:

Yeah, I ends up taking Expose Weakness quite early, since I want to rush SS. Apparently, poison caltrops is kinda effective, but each proc only reduced their hp by 40%. Combination with poisoned bear trap might be enough to cheese it with minimum trap investment. Gas grenade also helps.

That's exactly what I dislike in this game.

You're creating a character specializing in knife close combat, developing the skills and taking all the feats relevant.... only to find your main method of attack, your very CLASS utterly useless against tougher enemies and have to resort in traps and grenades (same for everyone else).
CHEESE IT with that, exploit that the game does not feature item restriction, not even to skill level. So since everyone can use those, it will save your hide, but still it's kinda lame that the method you're most good at, the attack form you perfected through the game and devoted your whole character towards to is kinda okay against small fry, but suddenly worths nothing whenever even a semi-heavyweight comes in the way, the game forces us to accept that our preferred choice sucks, saying that yes, here at this game some weapons are just way more effective than others, deal with it, even include a few that are downright suicide to take. And sorry pal, you choose poorly. So in the end, everyone have to use grenades regardless of builds.
Well, excluding psy, as the game considers those the walking gods among humans.

That is a huge fault of the game in my opinion.
I am a pure knife user, that's my choice, why can't that route allow me to get through the game? Every focused build should let you prevail and grenades or traps should be optional utility at most. Not mandatory if you focused on a certain weapon that the devs created tons of feats for but ultimately deemed utterly ineffective.

I don't want to make my choice of class based on what deals the most damage, I think every class should have a place in the game. And you should be able to kill every enemy with a friggin toothpick if your skill is high enough.

[Tamiore]

There are no "classes" in the game.
"Class" is just a combination of stats, skills and feats.
In absolutely no way a well-balanced game should "have a place" for ANY random combination of stats, skills and feats. Because that would effectively mean that your choices don't actually influence your build in a crucial way.
Also, the whole idea behind meaningfully different builds is that they work differently in different parts of the game. That is, some content might be VERY hard for some builds. Working as intended. Not every build is supposed to be able to do everything.

[cypherusuh]

Originally posted by nightshiftgamer:

tl;dr

As Destroyor said at #3, it's very possible to run as aggressive knifer due to Energy Edge. And if you delay Foundry after doing stuff in Core City (and preferably clearing Dude quest to teleport quickly), then join expedition just to buy the weapon mod, it's very doable.
I was intentionally want to know the cheese way without proper prep to deal with it "correctly", because I wanna rush SuperSteel (and ends up didn't make any because I forgot how bloody expensive it is)
Almost all build could deal with everything. The only exception is Throwing Knife only, since there's no EMP knife to deal with robots and it usually depends on poison stacking. Although if you're not doing challenge run, you could simply chug EMP grenade MK3 with Three-Pointer and decimate any robots if it crits.
And there's problem with Doppelganger, which can only be killed by Neural Overload

And as Tamiore said, light melee has weakness to heavy armored guy, if you didn't pick Expose Weakness. But, they're pretty strong vs light armored. Knife excel killing human thanks to Cutthroat and Eviscerate, while fist has very low AP, making it one of the best damage/AP weapon