Thoughts on custom character creation

[Steelfleece]

I've been messing around with making custom characters to try to get as good a start as possible. Been tinkering with attributes especially, and have changed which ones I prioritize a little. This is how I currently see them:

Attack. You'd think this would be a no-brainer to stack up, but... Seems like that may be the opposite. Putting points in Attack at character generation also increases your base Appetite. Each point there reduces how much food'll fill a character by 6%. Seems like you can go from 3 to 6 appetite at the start, resulting in a net loss of 18-36% of the nutrition of a meal. This doesn't sound that big, but if you're stacking for attack you'll probably snag the appropriate dog, which adds 5 appetite as well. If you go all-in, that could be 11 appetite or -66% from each meal. You'll be going through at least twice the food as most others. Yes, rations just about grow on trees, but if you wait and add the attack attribute points later, you won't have the same drawback. Instead, other stats at character generation, rely on gear to prop you up until you can start adding points by leveling. And to aid in leveling?

Intellect. This is a hidden gem. Try something: meet a new person in the bar, and see how much experience you get. Throw on a thinking cap and meet another person. The change in experience gained is pretty visible, especially since there's no random variation in the number. Intellect gives a bonus to experience gain across the board, for faster leveling right out of the gate. It'll also allow you to research new crafting projects sooner, and help solve some puzzles. Speaking of crafting projects...

Crafting. I initially was putting points into this at the start or leveling, until I actually tried crafting. See, when you fail to craft something, you often gain +2 crafting skill to make up for the lost crafting ingredients. Even if you, say, continuously fail while trying to craft a cheap beanie or bandana that use materials you'll probably be swimming in pretty soon. So, crafting skill can be gained independent of leveling or starting attributes. May as well start with 6 crafting and get cracking on those beanies a week or so in.

Defense. Aside from gear, you can't really gain this stat during the game as far as I know. It's a small benefit, but when you're trying to shave the last few hit points off a boss without being wounded every percent can help. Plus, with high intellect you can get plenty of points for other stats via leveling while you can't raise this one.

Farming: If you made a custom character, you're not going to consign them to townie work. No reason to bother with this one.

Husbandry: Unlike the above, this'll increase the benefit from your pet. You'll have to go pretty far into the skill to get a large benefit and make some of the hungry doggies worth the appetite hit, but on the other hand even a modest husbandry skill makes a parrot worthwhile if you're the main Speech character. Could always go with a kitty for the extra leeway in terms of stress, too.

Foraging/Fishing/Hunting: Some will likely disagree, but I don't find these skills super useful for the limited points budget of a protagonist character. You'll generally get more bling in less time by raiding landfills, factories, bases and so on, and won't need to invest in another skill to do so.

Cooking: As above, but more useful. Mood boosts and cash from selling cooked meals stack up faster than fish and venison. I stopped spending starting points on it at the start, but you may benefit.

Speech and Focus: These two will always be at least moderately useful. Even if you're a lone wolf, you'll want to see the attributes and traits of potential hires for your towns, and speech both gets you out of some trouble and get you in to more cash for large trades.

Virtue: This is a tricky one. It's easy to gain virtue once you get on track - or lose it if you so desire - but having 10 virtue right at the start spares you some scrap and headaches. If I was totally minmaxxing, I'd say screw it and pay the scrap costs to get in to cities for the first few days, but I usually go with 10.

Charm: YMMV. If you want to play a suave pretty boy/girl/mutant who sleeps their way across the badlands, go for it. Like Defense, you won't really have opportunities to raise this after character creation aside from gear, and adding 1 or 2 points isn't going to starve your build. Personally, I take the 1.

I'm not sure if you can raise starting Fitness. If so, it may be worth looking into.

In terms of traits, I imagine there are all kinds of builds that'll prove useful. One line in particular stands out though, Bloodthirsty-Violent-Pacifist-Cowardly. Unless you have a secret trick to never fighting, I'd go with at least Violent. I find Bloodthirsty's nice, since you can finish off weakened foes with a melee attack for a nice little boost to mood at the end of most fights rather than gradually going insane from the constant infected hordes like most people.

Gear:
Bolt Action Rifle. You know you want it. Buy it. Buuyyy iiiit. Being able to solo small infected hordes early on is well worth giving up half your starting funds.

Also grab a cheap melee weapon - I find the crowbar useful. That way, I can replace it with a crafted weapon later but keep it in my inventory for when I'm trying to make high-quality gear. Just remember to remove it if you're trying to fail crafting for skill points.

Add in an accuracy boosting accessory for the gun - the angled grip is technically the best, but it can't be used for crafting anything better down the road so I go with the 2x scope, which will eventually be an ingredient for the better 4x scope.
Bulletproof vest is a nice, cheap +30 defense.

Finally, a thinking cap. Trust me on this. Wearing it increases experience gain and boosts your chances on research, and you can always swap it out or make the improved version later.

Remember, the 4k scrap you see in this screen is just your budget for buying personal gear. When you go in to the game, you get a whole bunch of starting supplies like tires, water, rations and medkits so there's no need to buy more here.

Initial relations: I dunno, spread 'em out. 5-10 points in each. Taranis is the first faction you'll be dealing with, so I'd put at least 10 to them.

My current setup winds up with:

Attack: 3
Defense: 16
Fitness: 3 (cannot change?)
Appetite: 3 (Dependent on Attack, above)
Focus: 10
Speech: 10
Crafting: 6 (can always raise it with failure later!)
Intellect: 16
Virtue: 10
Farming: 6
Husbandry: 10
Cooking: 6
Fishing: 6
Foraging: 6
Hunting: 6
Charm: 1

Lone Wolf (gotta love the bonuses, even if you only use them early on)
Celibate (Ain't got no time for that, gotta get to the next one:)
Bloodthirsty (Why go clubbing when you can go clubbing?)
Optimist (Violence makes me happy but sometimes I have to stay chipper while awaiting further violence)

Crowbar, 2x Scope, Bolt-Action Rifle, Bulletproof Vest, Parrot, Thinking Cap

10 points in every faction except Mil-Sec who gets 5. I don't usually visit them early.

Anyway, this pose wound up going WAY longer than I'd anticipated, since I was kind of collecting my thoughts as I wrote. Interested to hear from other players what they choose to go with on their customs and if they feel differently on some of the stats and gear.

[Daisuki-chan]

Interesting post. How do you feel about high husbandry and the falcon pet? You seem to get slightly more focus per point of husbandry than you do per point of focus, so paying slightly more per point of husbandry (which can be repurposed into other stats later if you don't want focus) may be worth it relative to focus. Of course a falcon isn't cheap either, which is why you need husbandry to pay off like this to be worthwhile.

I am basically ignoring speech for the reasons you recommend ignoring crafting. You level it lots from failures anyway. Does that taper off too much at some point (compared to crafting)? I feel like failing your way up to 10 speech probably isn't very hard, though. Does cooking basically work the same way, leveling up easily from failures if you have it low?

I wondered about defense and what you said sounds logical. And intellect might even be fun to start with 18 in before wearing the thinking cap. It seems like you might be able to get away with just defense, focus, and intellect (plus husbandry if you use a pet). Of course the return on investment gets really poor as you keep pushing them, so you probably would pick other things, too. Maybe virtue since if you have too little you can't even try to take delivery jobs, not to mention all the bribes you have to pay to get into cities.

EDIT: I guess on a custom character you probably have enough virtue to take delivery jobs from the start, so it would just be the bribes that matter.

[Steelfleece]

I haven't tried using cooking much, but if it does level off failure then ingredients can be had perhaps even easier than crafting. If so, means leaving it at 6 in character creation is a good idea even for those who do cook.

As for the speech, even with the parrot I usually chuck a few books at it. Haven't tried with just the lone wolf trait and parrot and maybe putting those books into husbandry instead, should still be high enough... Without enough speech, you can't interact with most bar patrons for that easy EXP. High intelligence and interacting with everyone you meet will get you to level 3 on day 2 easy.

[Daisuki-chan]

I cook a fair bit and am trying to accumulate recipes. At the start I cook most of my rations, at least. I'm not sure how easy it is to level cooking, but if you truly stay a lone wolf you'll be the cook and get the chance to improve it, if that's possible. I don't remember, and maybe I never knew.

It's 6+15 speech including lone wolf vs. 10+15, right? Do you need 25 as opposed to 21 to access significantly more bar interactions? How much does the parrot add if you have 10 husbandry (and train it)?

It does seem like 18 intelligence is just so expensive. It's probably a good first level up choice, though (assuming you start with 16). I wonder if you might even want to spend the first three level ups on it just to roll as hard as possible over the long term, since lone wolf essentially covers you on the other things you need.

[Steelfleece]

I never needed to cook. Wound up with way too many rations as is - last run, think I had 2k or so stashed in the town I was building up. Abandoned farms are just loaded with the things.

Honestly, the current run I've been mostly adding +intellect. Up to 28 currently - figure 30 should be plenty, since there's a +10 intellect headwear and I don't think there are any researchables that need more than 40. Then it's attack time.

[Daisuki-chan]

It's still better to eat cooked rations than uncooked ones, but do you think it's not actually worth the time needed to cook them? Still, I probably will continue to cook them because it's only civilized to do so, or something.

[DiscoZombie]

Great post and great discussion! I wish I had known earlier how attack is connected to appetite, and how much appetite increases your food consumption. It seems high attack isn't even that important in the late game, right? because you need to gun harder guys down before they get close enough to melt you.

Had no clue int was related to xp either, great info.

One tip I'll add is that I find charm actually very valuable. At least I think it's my team's high charm that makes this work, but my main source of stress reduction is flirting in bars. with decently high charm, flirting is almost always successful, and having my whole party flirt can completely wipe out all their stress by flirting with just a few bar patrons. And it costs no money, and you get the xp for meeting the patrons at the same time.

As a side note, "hooking up" is poorly implemented and not worth the trouble. Definitely not worth paying to do it in a bar. It only lets you do it at camp under very specific circumstances - everyone needs to be well rested, and at least 2 need to be companions with each other. Anyone who's NOT a companion will actually GAIN stress from knowing that the companions are hooking up. The ones who do hook up will frequently have their opinions of each other go down if they didn't perform well. And to top it off, it fills like two thirds of the fatigue bar! I don't know how hard these guys are going at it that it makes them more tired than like 12 hours of driving.

[Steelfleece]

Originally posted by Daisuki-chan:

It's still better to eat cooked rations than uncooked ones, but do you think it's not actually worth the time needed to cook them? Still, I probably will continue to cook them because it's only civilized to do so, or something.

Oh, quite probably. But as you can see from the build I posted, most of my stress reduction comes from mercilessly slaying infected and raiders in hand to hand combat for the sheer rush and rations drop like candy when you do a lot of raidi...I mean, searching at abandoned farms. I'm tempted to do a more pacifist playthrough at some point, but the pain road train just seems to work.

Originally posted by DiscoZombie:

Great post and great discussion! I wish I had known earlier how attack is connected to appetite, and how much appetite increases your food consumption. It seems high attack isn't even that important in the late game, right? because you need to gun harder guys down before they get close enough to melt you.

Had no clue int was related to xp either, great info.

One tip I'll add is that I find charm actually very valuable. At least I think it's my team's high charm that makes this work, but my main source of stress reduction is flirting in bars. with decently high charm, flirting is almost always successful, and having my whole party flirt can completely wipe out all their stress by flirting with just a few bar patrons. And it costs no money, and you get the xp for meeting the patrons at the same time.

As a side note, "hooking up" is poorly implemented and not worth the trouble. Definitely not worth paying to do it in a bar. It only lets you do it at camp under very specific circumstances - everyone needs to be well rested, and at least 2 need to be companions with each other. Anyone who's NOT a companion will actually GAIN stress from knowing that the companions are hooking up. The ones who do hook up will frequently have their opinions of each other go down if they didn't perform well. And to top it off, it fills like two thirds of the fatigue bar! I don't know how hard these guys are going at it that it makes them more tired than like 12 hours of driving.

Raising attack down the road doesn't affect appetite, just at character generation. Nothing wrong with raising attack later when you've got your other stats up where you want them - a little bit of extra accuracy helps in night fights and against infected with the -accuracy effect.

[Gorgeous_Joe]

Unless you are going lone wolf or Role Playing something, pre-generated characters are superior to anything you can create. (Currently) Even then there is a lone wolf pre-gen.
If you are playing the game as intended, excluding lone wolfing, then you will usually create a team of four or more with each one specialising in a specific stat and role. I think the hunts-woman has the highest starting focus with 37 and that's at level 0. If you made a custom character and tried to get to 37 focus it would take you a minimum of twenty levels and that's pretty much half the game.
Then there are other characters that start with very high crafting and intellect, one in particular has both.
Then there are those with high attack, bots seem good but they cant use pets so the character with 30 is best, pretty sure you could boost that to 100 with equipment and pet.
You can also find a speed racer character with +15% to driving speed, which you also can't pick on any character, even custom ones at the start of the game.

If you pick the fast rig on your next play through and even starting with the ex-racer trait that's 70kph but if you get the speed racer driving for you with all the modifications you can do to your rig then I'm thinking you can get it to over 100kph even with weather and terrain effects which is insane considering I spent most of my first play through struggling at around 30kph

The thing is, depending on how far you have played through the game will greatly influence your build and choices and without giving away too many spoilers, many of the things you think you need at the start you realise you don't need later on but it's often too late to change things. For example, who needs attack stats when with focus i can gun down anything before it gets to me but that's a risky strategy to begin with.

[Gorgeous_Joe]

Originally posted by Daisuki-chan:

It's still better to eat cooked rations than uncooked ones, but do you think it's not actually worth the time needed to cook them? Still, I probably will continue to cook them because it's only civilized to do so, or something.

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Cooked rations remove the stress debuff eating uncooked ones give you, there is a cooking discussion with a lot of recipes on it, you should check it out. Without learning to cook and eating food you have crafted yourself you will simply fail at the game, especially early stages. For example if you cooked up a legendary hotdog it would relieve around 200 hunger and 100 stress depending on traits but a ration would only relieve 100 hunger and if you have certain traits eating crafted food will also reduce your fatigue allowing you to drive on and on and on and on.......

[Gorgeous_Joe]

Originally posted by DiscoZombie:

Great post and great discussion! I wish I had known earlier how attack is connected to appetite, and how much appetite increases your food consumption. It seems high attack isn't even that important in the late game, right? because you need to gun harder guys down before they get close enough to melt you.
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Yes and No, there are certain enemies which reduce your accuracy to hit with ranged and damage from ranged attacks.



One tip I'll add is that I find charm actually very valuable. At least I think it's my team's high charm that makes this work, but my main source of stress reduction is flirting in bars. with decently high charm, flirting is almost always successful, and having my whole party flirt can completely wipe out all their stress by flirting with just a few bar patrons. And it costs no money, and you get the xp for meeting the patrons at the same time.
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Charm is pretty much a dump stat and not worth taking, it gives you an initial boost to relations but you don't really need it.

[Gorgeous_Joe]

Originally posted by Steelfleece:

I never needed to cook. Wound up with way too many rations as is - last run, think I had 2k or so stashed in the town I was building up. Abandoned farms are just loaded with the things.

Honestly, the current run I've been mostly adding +intellect. Up to 28 currently - figure 30 should be plenty, since there's a +10 intellect headwear and I don't think there are any researchables that need more than 40. Then it's attack time.

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Intellect is useful as it gives you an xp boost but in the long run, not worth taking above 15 I think when it starts burning through your talent points.
You can simply find the character who starts with 50 intellect and swap them into your party whenever you want to learn a new schematic. I'd say use them in your party but the rest of their stats are next to zero.

[Gorgeous_Joe]

Originally posted by Daisuki-chan:

I cook a fair bit and am trying to accumulate recipes. At the start I cook most of my rations, at least. I'm not sure how easy it is to level cooking, but if you truly stay a lone wolf you'll be the cook and get the chance to improve it, if that's possible. I don't remember, and maybe I never knew.

It's 6+15 speech including lone wolf vs. 10+15, right? Do you need 25 as opposed to 21 to access significantly more bar interactions? How much does the parrot add if you have 10 husbandry (and train it)?

It does seem like 18 intelligence is just so expensive. It's probably a good first level up choice, though (assuming you start with 16). I wonder if you might even want to spend the first three level ups on it just to roll as hard as possible over the long term, since lone wolf essentially covers you on the other things you need.

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Speech goes up naturally when you fail bartering at stores, it can be a little frustrating at first in the bar trying to talk to people but it's not worth investing in Speech points. Also Speech is a group stat so it's evened out across your party members until they hit 20 i think.

[Gorgeous_Joe]

You can also level up your focus when you are attacked and wounded and survive, it raises focus assuming you heal them and they don't die.

Virtue caps at 25 so you don't always have to be good all the time.

Spend your talent points on getting good traits or removing really bad ones, a character with good traits can run like a Duracell bunny. Homophile/Hetrophile, Violent, Good Sleeper, Foodie, Ex-Racer, Foodie. Thats 12 talent points and 60 books. Get a character with those traits and they will just keep on trucking and on and on and on, assuming you feed them properly that is.

Ultimately its up to you how you want to play though, have fun