Please sort out Advanced Engineering

[The Civillian]

The fact that you are FORCED to spend 6 points in Advanced engineering just so you can function in ANY other tree is flat out bad planning.

Allow me to explain.

Want to make your own Iron or STEEL arrows, Advanced Engineering Tier 1 for Forge.
Want to Make an Iron Pick axe, Advanced Engineering Tier 2, (Intellect tier 4) thats 5 points btw.
Want to make pretty much ANYTHING from any other tree.

YOU NEED A WORKBENCH.

Tier 2 Advanced Engineering, 5 points.

This makes spending skill points rather linier and you have two options...

Go Intellect for advanced engineering

or

Go Intellect for daring adventurer and other bartering bonuses and just buy everything.

Now, call me crazy, but that makes Intellect kinda a must have.

Now if TFP are gonna revamp the skill system then this is moot, But if not, heres a suggestion.

Move the workbench into tier 1 with the forge

Bump the crafting parts of the other tiers up a tier. (Not the cost reduction stuff.)

New tier 5 perk.

EXP gained by trap kills is shared between those in your party. (Because there is little need for more than one electrician/trap maker in your group, assuming small groups)

This means you no longer get pigeon holed into intellect just so you can make stuff, and suddenly most of the other trees are appealing because you can MAKE the stuff your spending points on.

Yes I know this is all moot if you get SUPER lucky and find the workbench plans, or a working workbench right off the bat. But imo that shouldnt be something you should gamble on.


Thoughts

[Shurenai]

Or, yknow, Search the world and find a working workbench. Or search the world and find a workbench recipe so you don't need the skill... Or just buy the workbench at the trader without any investment in better barter/daring adventurer, Neither is needed for the workbench to appear it just makes it appear a little sooner- it's pure RNG either way. You can have 5/5 barter and never see a workbench, you can have 0/5 and see a workbench every shop cycle.

And all in all, You do not NEED a workbench. You can craft most of the most useful items without it. Forge is the only real necessity; being able to craft forged iron and eventually steel, bullet parts, and various other things makes a huge difference in player survival.

Workbench though? It doesn't add too terribly much to a players capabilities imo. The most notable things that come to mind are VEhicles, which are nice but not Necessity, and electrical traps, which again are Nice, but not Necessity.


Lastly, Super lucky? Workbench recipe has a 25% drop rate from destroyed workbench, higher than many other drop rates in the game.. It barely takes any luck. You can walk down a street and enter the garage of each house in turn and almost certainly obtain a schematic by the end of the street; Destroyed/working workbenches are in many POIs offering TONS of chances to loot the schematic.

[Niuq]

Finding the plans for work bench, can be fairly easy. It is all Rng, but if you look hard enough you can find a working bench.

1 point for access to the forge, if you arent willing to wait till you find the plans isnt terrible and allows early access to forged iron.

Crucible is a whole other conversation.

Nothing in int is required unless you dont want to wait.

Conversely speccing heavily into int will quickly allow you to gather dukes and cheaply buy a respec potion.

It is all a trade off for me a few points to let me have the forge, bench and chem station early, and make things at a discount is nice. Lets me set up a permanent base, and later on if im not doing junk turrets i tend to respec.


TLDR Spend em if you dont want to wait or rng is unkind, respec later.

[De Espirit]

Are you playing on Alpha 15 or something? This issue was solved ages ago. It's the entire reason why we now have random-chance schematics and why the other attributes have their own recipes in their perks.

You can choose to find everything you need by random chance, or you can choose to spend the points/money to get it early and consistently. You're not forced to do anything now.

[Ihateeverybody]

Level 103, gamestage 150+. Never put a point in advanced engineering. Swimming in Steel, Iron (mostly purchased from Vendors on the cheep (Barter Maxed) or salvaged (no points in salvage either). Have all the workstations and parts too them. (Lucky Looter 3).

I am not minimizing your pain or outrage. Simply saying it can be done. There are lots of paths to get where you are going. Choose the one that works for you.

[Ihateeverybody]

"VEhicles, which are nice but not Necessity" but man when you get that 4x4 storage...its reall hard...REAL HARD to go back.

[KellyR]

Originally posted by Ihateeverybody:

"VEhicles, which are nice but not Necessity" but man when you get that 4x4 storage...its reall hard...REAL HARD to go back.

You can always just buy one.

[Incunabulum]

Workbenches - indeed, any workstation - are found throughout the world *and* they're sold by vendors so you can buy one and put it in your base.

In addition, schematics are found by looting or sold by vendors allowing to to build pretty much anything without any skill-point allocations. SP allocations just guarantee you access to some things.

[Scorchy0h]

Currently playing A Spec Ops build (Stealth Perception-Agility build) only 1 point in INT (for 1 extra choice in quest rewards) no points in lucky looter, Have A nice stack of loot candies in my base that I constantly forget when I go out looting

Day 1 - found the chem station recipe, trader had 2 workbenches (5k each) and a cement mixer (4k) for sale. Found forge recipe in the destroyed forge @ trader

By day 3 (Trader stock resets @ day4) I had almost 8k from quest rewards and random loot. A few stacks of meat (looted grilled meat recipe and bacon and eggs recipe by day 2)

Looting % is set to 100 re-looting disabled (exception being quests on a poi that was previously looted)

Before this build I had a Str-fort build and I did not have any workstations until day 19

Its all about the RNG and honestly depends on which POI'S you loot

all the skill-tree does is give you a bonus to said item (reduced mat costs - higher dmg - higher quality items) and you do not need to invest into Workstation skills just to get them, most of them have recipes that you can find to unlock it.

[Johnman]

You're crazy

[Uscari]

You're 100% right that questing and buying from the trader is far more effective than crafting things and putting points into craftsman skills.

Once you max out Daring Adventurer and graduate to Tier V quests, you can often get 2 blue weapons/tools every quest you complete.

In the mean time, you've found 5 traders through the opening trade routes quests, you bring your intellect to 9, add Nerdy Glasses, suddenly every 3 days you get access to 10 high tier secret stashes, because you can toggle glasses for better bartering perk.

Another thing to remember is that when you start looting all of these quest POIs, a lot of the time you'll find all the schematics you need over there.

I tend to graduate to Tier V quests by Day 14 on 60 minute days. By then I'm basically guaranteed to have a motorcycle, iron tools, and weapons for every ammo type. By Day 21 I have a gyrocopter, auger, chainsaw.

They just need to nerf traders, that's the real problem. Nerf those nerdy glasses, nerf the secret stash. You get access to hundreds of high tier items without hardly any effort.

[Teratus]

I agree if you're going for pure crafting based on skills it's kinda required however there are so many alternatives for the workbench.

Loot the schematic, buy one from trader or find a working on in the world.. the first house I spawned by in my current game had a working workbench in the basement and I used that for a good while before I was able to craft my own benches.

I don't mind investing in intellect since there are other good perks in there, robotics etc.. Junk turrets almost trivialise the game in terms of difficulty.. it's like a portable I win button lol

I assume eventually we'll get enough levels and points to unlock everything but I hardly find it too restricting to invest in intellect, I still have enough perks to put in the other things I really want.

[FT]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

And all in all, You do not NEED a workbench. You can craft most of the most useful items without it. Forge is the only real necessity; being able to craft forged iron and eventually steel, bullet parts, and various other things makes a huge difference in player survival.

Workbench though? It doesn't add too terribly much to a players capabilities imo. The most notable things that come to mind are VEhicles, which are nice but not Necessity, and electrical traps, which again are Nice, but not Necessity.

Don't you need the WorkBench to craft those bullet parts into bullets?

[The Civillian]

This is funny.

To those saying..

'Oh you can just loot one, or the plans, or buy one or use a working one'

Sooo RNG then

Good luck making ammo for your guns.

Bullet casings and tips - Forge, - Tier 1
Gunpowder - Chem station - Tier 1

Oh but wait to assemble these things you gotta sink another 5 points into that tree because you need a workbench.

If your doing ANY sort of crafting you NEED a workbench. period

Now yes, you can get lucky and find the plans, or a working one.

But then you can get lucky and find a shotgun or blunderbuss on day one too.

Relying on RNG to be able to function is non senseical, More so when your playing on harder difficulties and you absalutely need the fire power.

[Derpykat5]

Originally posted by The Civillian:

This is funny.

To those saying..

'Oh you can just loot one, or the plans, or buy one or use a working one'

Sooo RNG then

Good luck making ammo for your guns.

Bullet casings and tips - Forge, - Tier 1
Gunpowder - Chem station - Tier 1

Oh but wait to assemble these things you gotta sink another 5 points into that tree because you need a workbench.

If your doing ANY sort of crafting you NEED a workbench. period

Now yes, you can get lucky and find the plans, or a working one.

But then you can get lucky and find a shotgun or blunderbuss on day one too.

Relying on RNG to be able to function is non senseical, More so when your playing on harder difficulties and you absalutely need the fire power.

crafting ammo is nice and all, but the only ammo I ever craft is HP ammo because I find more than enough of the rest of it.

I put a whopping 3 points into int to be able to make a forge and workbench, but I could have easily just put 1 and ran down the street to the pre-built workbench there. I also could have easily bought one like I did with the chem station and cement mixer.

The whole point of the skills is to eliminate the RNG in certain areas. You don't hear anyone saying strength is mandatory for any good tools because you can loot or buy pickaxes (both iron and steel) just like you can loot schematics.

[RasaNova]

Originally posted by The Civillian:

This is funny.

To those saying..

'Oh you can just loot one, or the plans, or buy one or use a working one'

Sooo RNG then

Good luck making ammo for your guns.

Bullet casings and tips - Forge, - Tier 1
Gunpowder - Chem station - Tier 1

Oh but wait to assemble these things you gotta sink another 5 points into that tree because you need a workbench.

If your doing ANY sort of crafting you NEED a workbench. period

Now yes, you can get lucky and find the plans, or a working one.

But then you can get lucky and find a shotgun or blunderbuss on day one too.

Relying on RNG to be able to function is non senseical, More so when your playing on harder difficulties and you absalutely need the fire power.

The people saying that are not wrong. It all depends on how you play.

I have done many A19 playthroughs, and I NEVER put points in engineering. You can go a long time (forever even) without even crafting ammo. I'll often end up crafting it by late game when I unlock bulk crafting and find a good M60, but if you haven't found or ctafted a bench by then you're either doing something wrong or the RNG really, really hates you.

Zero engineering. Sometimes it takes longer to get what I want, so I have to adapt or improvise. But by mid game I'm swimming in steel, driving a 4x4, and have Q5/6 gear.

No, we are not forced to spend points.