Any way to level melee up fast??

[Ganyu]

I want to train my melee guys without them getting clawed, bitten, and shot at half to death everytime i try. I've tried downing animals and have my melee guys come in and melee them to death, but it doesn't seem to raise their xp. Any other ways out there?

[Bryan=0101]

Yeah sneaking and some perks to increase sneaks attacks. Wear light armor to help you sneak better if they don't know you are there they can't shoot you

[NecroRebel]

Weaker weapons make you need to attack more to down or kill the target, so getting the weakest weapon you can might actually be a good idea.

A lot of herbivores, while relatively unlikely to go manhunter or otherwise fight back, deal blunt damage with their attacks, and blunt damage is relatively hard to get good armor against. Checking to see what damage types prospective training dummies can deal you and making sure you have armor against it might also be a good idea. Some carnivores might even be less dangerous than herbivores if you've got good armor.

It might be worthwhile to have a pair of good snipers and a good doctor hiding a short distance away so that if your brawler gets hurt the snipers can take the attacker out quickly and the doctor can rescue. At the least, you can minimize the risk.

Encouraging social fights might work too? I don't really know how they work. Pawns use their fists when they social fight though, so that might improve melee skill.

[TechFlame75]

I find crashed alian ships to be good they can't hit back also downed enemys I use my melee fighters to clean up sometimes but normally it is my snipers because they need the exp more. Also try small animals like rats. Also I think social fights work but I don't think many of my people would want to fight my melee fighter who has two robotic arms and punched the neck clean of my cleaner. Melee is hard to control because exp loss it anoying most fights with easy things only take one hit meaning by the time your guy wakes up to kill another 5 rats he lost the exp he had so cleaning up the survivors of the last raid is probably a good idea because most can take like 5 to 10 good fist hits before they die. Lastly one good thing about low level melee people is it means less medicine needed to fix them up because they fight so little also means you gunners are doing there job

[Ganyu]

Originally posted by 101=5, bryan=5:

Yeah sneaking and some perks to increase sneaks attacks. Wear light armor to help you sneak better if they don't know you are there they can't shoot you

Sneak is a skill? You're probably thinking of Skyrim/Fallout

[Ganyu]

Originally posted by NecroRebel:

Weaker weapons make you need to attack more to down or kill the target, so getting the weakest weapon you can might actually be a good idea.

A lot of herbivores, while relatively unlikely to go manhunter or otherwise fight back, deal blunt damage with their attacks, and blunt damage is relatively hard to get good armor against. Checking to see what damage types prospective training dummies can deal you and making sure you have armor against it might also be a good idea. Some carnivores might even be less dangerous than herbivores if you've got good armor.

It might be worthwhile to have a pair of good snipers and a good doctor hiding a short distance away so that if your brawler gets hurt the snipers can take the attacker out quickly and the doctor can rescue. At the least, you can minimize the risk.

Encouraging social fights might work too? I don't really know how they work. Pawns use their fists when they social fight though, so that might improve melee skill.

I've tried this on a downed animal. Took about 25-30 hits to bring it down (it was a bear) and i was looking at the skill progress and it wasn't improving so I'm not sure this works. Also I don't want it to involve too many people from my colony because that affects their productivity. I was hoping there was something i could do that would only involve the ranged fighter. Social fights are also too random too control unless I try to make an arrest which would create negative debuffs.

[GuessMDK]

Im pretty sure you can melee downed raiders and mechs for good xp. A couple of guys with crappy wooden shivs can spend DAYS stabbing a centipede.

[NecroRebel]

When I say "attack animals," I don't mean "attacked DOWNED animals." Downed things don't give melee XP, as you've discovered. I mean send your guys out with a log or a beer as their weapon and outright make them melee animals that are capable of fighting, but not really likely to actually kill your guys. I was trying this a bit earlier, and found turkeys fairly good victims.

Short of actually having your guys melee something that could theoretically be capable of dealing at least some damage to them, your only recourse is neurotrainers, and they're not cheap or readily available. There is no other means of training melee that does not involve actually fighting in melee.

Another possible thought: get a large predator as a pet, train it for obedience, but then unassign it from its master and leave it either to an unrestricted area or restricted to outside. Have your meleer follow it around and wait until it gets hungry. It will decide to hunt something. The first attack on a prey creature from most predators causes a fairly lengthy stun, so wait until that first attack lands, assign the predator to a faraway colonist and draft that colonist, and then have your meleer "fight" the now-stunned prey creature. Since it is not downed, you may gain XP from this, and since it's stunned it's not much of a threat. You might not be able to kill it in time, though.

Really, though, all your troubles are just part of the reason why melee combat is not really a viable strategy in this game. Guns are typically the way to go.

[BEEF]

you are looking for a mad called "Misc. Training"
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=717575199

[Daffy]

Originally posted by Shieldwall:

you are looking for a mad called "Misc. Training"
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=717575199

Yep that is a very nice mod and does not feel like cheating as the pawns use time on training the skill.

[identifiedasbeingdisrespectful]

I'm guessing melee is currently a skill that will be reworked to have something to train as I don't think there is one. Even horsehoes train shooting a small amount. It's the only other direct violence skill so it may just be a current oversight. Personally I like to get everyone armed with guns as fast a possible and preferably ones good enough that I don't have to engage in melee.

[kevinshow]

I've begun to like guns but unfortunately I still have times where the enemy gets in close and now the gunner, who has low melee skills, ends up using melee to defend himself. While that is not ideal, hopefully the other guys can take out the attacker fast....well, at least, without also taking out their friend in the process.

I did notice that exp stopped when hitting a downed animal like someone said, so I think a possible viable option so that you don't have to micromanage things too much, is to take a meleer out during the night, and have him get in a few hits on a sleeping animal.

He can finish the fight (because you need meat anyway, right?) and he may just get hurt, but that's a possible result doing melee, as opposed to shooting something from far away.

[KalkiKrosah]

I get great melee experience by putting my brawlers on night shift and then actively controlling them in order to have them attack animals in the night. Blades work the best because you can cut something to where their bleeding rate goes over 100% and they will bleed out over the next 24 hours. Then you just collect the bodies the next day/night. A steel gladius works quite well. Decent damage and a short refresh speed allow you to "chase" targets better while still dishing out decent damage. Larger weapons can one hit KO a target but you get less experience and a missed attack is more problematic as the wind down leaves you open to getting attacked back. And smaller weapons give better experience but give the animal more opportunities to turn hostile. So medium size weaponry is the way to go for farming melee experience my way.

[identifiedasbeingdisrespectful]

Originally posted by KalkiKrosah:

I get great melee experience by putting my brawlers on night shift and then actively controlling them in order to have them attack animals in the night. Blades work the best because you can cut something to where their bleeding rate goes over 100% and they will bleed out over the next 24 hours. Then you just collect the bodies the next day/night. A steel gladius works quite well. Decent damage and a short refresh speed allow you to "chase" targets better while still dishing out decent damage. Larger weapons can one hit KO a target but you get less experience and a missed attack is more problematic as the wind down leaves you open to getting attacked back. And smaller weapons give better experience but give the animal more opportunities to turn hostile. So medium size weaponry is the way to go for farming melee experience my way.

Certain animals either don't turn hostile or have a very low rate to do so. I've found does never go nuts, but bucks will and the rest of the herd follows the one mad animal. I lost a colony once because all were injured and a buck in a herd went nuts while hunting. They kept brusing my pawns to the point of passing out from pain, but not killing them, and my pet that could rescue. Got a wanderer join during this and thought I could handle it, but he got downed too. Then they all died of frostbite or infection after running out of medicine treating the wounds.

I do think melee hunting sleeping squirrels or hares would be a good way to level it though. Do social fights level it? Make sure skills aren't too disparate.

[KalkiKrosah]

Originally posted by sc2mails:

Originally posted by KalkiKrosah:

I get great melee experience by putting my brawlers on night shift and then actively controlling them in order to have them attack animals in the night. Blades work the best because you can cut something to where their bleeding rate goes over 100% and they will bleed out over the next 24 hours. Then you just collect the bodies the next day/night. A steel gladius works quite well. Decent damage and a short refresh speed allow you to "chase" targets better while still dishing out decent damage. Larger weapons can one hit KO a target but you get less experience and a missed attack is more problematic as the wind down leaves you open to getting attacked back. And smaller weapons give better experience but give the animal more opportunities to turn hostile. So medium size weaponry is the way to go for farming melee experience my way.

Certain animals either don't turn hostile or have a very low rate to do so. I've found does never go nuts, but bucks will and the rest of the herd follows the one mad animal. I lost a colony once because all were injured and a buck in a herd went nuts while hunting. They kept brusing my pawns to the point of passing out from pain, but not killing them, and my pet that could rescue. Got a wanderer join during this and thought I could handle it, but he got downed too. Then they all died of frostbite or infection after running out of medicine treating the wounds.

I do think melee hunting sleeping squirrels or hares would be a good way to level it though. Do social fights level it? Make sure skills aren't too disparate.

The stuff I generally hunt through melee are almost always non-predator animals. So you are right in that hares, rats, squirrels and racoons are pretty safe to hunt in the middle of the night with your melee guys. Pack animals I do attack but I don't attack and kill them outright. I attack them just enough to get their bleed rate over 100% then I move onto something else. They die off in the next 24 hours and I just tell someone to go haul it back. I use this trick on boomalopes too. Stab just enough to get them to bleed out then "rescue" them to an area that is less flamable and then I let them die on their own. You just have to be extra careful with them. And do not try to do this on a boom rat. They can be killed in one hit and you do not want that.

As far as predators go there is only predator I make an exception for and that is cobras. Cobras, due to their size, are very nimble at dodging bullets but if you take them into melee range they die in 1-2 hits. I just give my melee guy a larger weapon to kill the cobra in one shot. All other predators I use bullets and arrows to kill. Or in some cases, mortars.