When do you invest in fortitude and intellect?

[Nemmy]

Im on day 28 and my character is at level 30 and i still haven't invested in both of these perks and so far i have been doing good

I feel like investing in these perks early or mid game is pointless compared to what other perks has to offer but maybe im just missing something

[DreamFree]

You're definitely missing something, you didn't add into the equation:

- individual playstyle
- settings difficulty
- RNG

Here are some things from the top of my mind, there are probably more reasons why these two trees can potentially be useful early/mid-game

FORTITUDE
- If you play with low loot, Iron Gut / Healing Factor is awesome

- Pain Tolerance to not get stunlocked by zombies is a must if you are playing Permadeath

- If you found a good machine gun, putting points into Machine Gunner is awesome

- If you decided to live in the Snow Biome, going for The Huntsman and Well Insulated combo is awesome

Tier 10: 300% head shot damage and ?50%? chance at dismembering with machine guns

-------------

INTELLECT
- Better Barter 3/5 early/mid game to do the stash-swap with nerdy glasses

- Some people do the questing thing. The Daring Adventurer is great for that
- Some people play with Robotics Inventor, i think it allows more ammo in turrets also the usage of ?2-3? robots?
- Some people use them electric batons, i believe the damage bonus is similar in all perktrees 300% more head damage etc

[Brevan]

I've tried lots of different play styles, and early Fortitude or Intellect worked fine (but I like Fortitude least of the 5 skill tabs). I really like the Intellect perks for early game since they give you access to all the workstations early, and if you get your Better Barter up to rank 3 or more, then it's pretty trivial to just buy missing stuff like a Crucible, decent gun, or maybe Chem Station or Motorcycle (I don't notice these much in the Secret Stash, but they're expensive so every discount helps).

You don't need points into a weapon perk to use that weapon quite well, same with armor. Looting is affected far more (early game) by where you're looting compared to your Lucky Looter perk. I guess I mainly notice benefits from points spent on Stealth and Jumping, Mining and Salvaging with SexRex, or Barter and Engineering.

[RasaNova]

The ONLY tree I would have a hard time without is strength. Int & fort are extremely useful, from the early days through endgame. The two that I could most easily do without would be per & agi, I almost never add to those unless I'm doing a specific stealth run or something.

[Hexerin]

Originally posted by RasaNova:

The ONLY tree I would have a hard time without is strength

That would be because the strength tree is massively overpowered.

[Mad Hawaiian]

I really like brawler, so I typically go Fortitude right away. Intelligence starts to happen depending on how good/bad my RNG is. If I have horrible RNG or am playing a low drop world I start picking it up by level 20/25.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

I normally go strength and intelligence early. I likes me my baseball bats, shotguns, vehicles and traps. You have to invest fairly heavily in intelligence to make it particularly good, and you have to invest a stupid amount of points to be able to make a crucible when you can harvest steel fairly easily from things like lamp posts and vending machines. But a handful of points give you the ability to craft workbenches, cement mixers, minibikes, and get some better bartering deals.

Also, fortitude could give you fairly nice pipe machine guns early on, and those things are beasts when you first start. Plus, you'd be surprised how far a couple of points into health regen goes.

[Hexerin]

Originally posted by WhamyKaBlamy:

Also, fortitude could give you fairly nice pipe machine guns early on, and those things are beasts when you first start.

They're already slated for nerfs. Considering how garbage machine guns have always been in this game, the nerf will likely shove it down to 2nd worst pipe gun (above the shotgun).

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Originally posted by Hexerin:

Originally posted by WhamyKaBlamy:

Also, fortitude could give you fairly nice pipe machine guns early on, and those things are beasts when you first start.

They're already slated for nerfs. Considering how garbage machine guns have always been in this game, the nerf will likely shove it down to 2nd worst pipe gun (above the shotgun).

What kind of nerf and on what settings are other machine guns currently garbo? Or are you talking about all machine guns getting a nerf in the future? I'm using the tactical rifle for big stuff at the moment and it's fairly awesome, and I'm normally a shotgun boy, but I'm playing on default settings to test out the new stuff in this alpha so I can't really judge beyond that.

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by Hexerin:

Originally posted by WhamyKaBlamy:

Also, fortitude could give you fairly nice pipe machine guns early on, and those things are beasts when you first start.

They're already slated for nerfs. Considering how garbage machine guns have always been in this game, the nerf will likely shove it down to 2nd worst pipe gun (above the shotgun).

Ok I'll bite, how do you figure that what is arguably the best weapon in the game is garbage?

[Slainpessimist]

Originally posted by RasaNova:

The ONLY tree I would have a hard time without is strength. Int & fort are extremely useful, from the early days through endgame. The two that I could most easily do without would be per & agi, I almost never add to those unless I'm doing a specific stealth run or something.

Yeah STR is needed just for stamina alone, mining perks are up there as well.
I'm doing a perception strength build now and perception has some good skills, penetrator is great especially with AP ammo and even more so on horde night, lucky looter is ok, demolitionist is fun, once again at horde night and rifles are a bit OP once specced into.
I could imagine combining it with agi and becoming the sneaking one shot death bringer to anything, but run and gun is great, so is parkour.
I think as long as you focus yourself down one route to begin with, there are handy skills to use and you will do alright, but I must admit that fortitude is the least tree I have ever invested in. Food is too plentiful there is no need to grow it really, but machine guns and the health perks are pretty good.

[Nemmy]

Originally posted by RasaNova:

Originally posted by Hexerin:

They're already slated for nerfs. Considering how garbage machine guns have always been in this game, the nerf will likely shove it down to 2nd worst pipe gun (above the shotgun).

Ok I'll bite, how do you figure that what is arguably the best weapon in the game is garbage?

I don’t know about the nerfs and im new to the game but trying things in creative mod i can say 9mm pistol with gunslinger maxed out seems to be doing much better than auto weapons with their skills maxed out

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Originally posted by justinqmelb:

Food is too plentiful there is no need to grow it really, but machine guns and the health perks are pretty good.

Farming is usually pretty low on my priority list, but I've specifically specced into it early on this game to test the farming and it is quite nice once you're up and running. Every 2 days a quick replant, throw stuff on to cook and then you have stacks of mineral water, coffee and stews to grab whenever you come back to the base.

[Slainpessimist]

Originally posted by WhamyKaBlamy:

Originally posted by justinqmelb:

Food is too plentiful there is no need to grow it really, but machine guns and the health perks are pretty good.

Farming is usually pretty low on my priority list, but I've specifically specced into it early on this game to test the farming and it is quite nice once you're up and running. Every 2 days a quick replant, throw stuff on to cook and then you have stacks of mineral water, coffee and stews to grab whenever you come back to the base.

I should give it a good crack, maybe my next save.

[WhamyKaBlamy]

Originally posted by justinqmelb:

I should give it a good crack, maybe my next save.

I've found it pretty satisfying, it's definitely sped up my general mining/building thanks to always having decent food buffs on. But as you say, it's not needed because you generally find more than enough food to keep you going.

[✚ Mariel ✚]

My personal build is 3 strength and getting clubs, miner, motherlode, sexy rex. Lets you kill zombies more easily and get good resources and break blocks at a decent speed

Then 5 intelligence (6 with nerdy glasses) and get 1-2 points advanced engineering for forge/workbench if I didnt get schematics, lets you make ammo and t2 weapons, and get barter and adventurer so you can get high level items from the traders, you can have a pump shotty week 1 if you are lucky! Or maybe shotty parts to make a double barrel

Then go 5 str to get some better gathering stuff, and I get the heavy armour and shotgun points so I can make nice scrap/iron armour and a db shotgun if I havent got one yet. You can transition into more shotgun use for T3/4 POI quests at this point

Then go int all the way to 7 (8 with nerdy glasses) to get more barter and the max level adventurer, you start getting amazing rewards and can pick two of them, even from the end of tier rewards, shops sell the best weapons at q3-4, loads of nice things that can be hard to find like recipes and parts

After that you can go to 7 str to get max H armour and sexy rex and some more gathering/shotgun stuff, or go straight into fortitude for pain resistance, machine guns and farming. Perception is also quite valuable at this point for lucky looter because your loot level is getting high and the % increase will start to make a really big deal. You just have to weigh up better loot with better resistance or better gathering.

Personally I prefer to go more into gathering and expand my base more, you get the exp back. Then perception to 5 for some lucky looter, then go all in on fortitude

But seriously don't underestimate str/int build, the stuff you can get from traders is a lot better than what you can loot early on, loot doesnt really surpass it until you reach a high level. You can even get Q6 steel tools and armour from only t4 POIs!