What is your favorite build?

[flemingluiz]

i like chimera builds with lots of axes they feel really powerfull.
and my favorite True kin is the consul for the lots of comphanions i feel like im a warlord commanding a warband.

[Foolswalkin]

I'm just getting started, but I can't imagine wanting to play without Burgeoning. Max risk, max reward, and all kinds of weird synergies with other Esper tricks.

[Yossarian]

TK tinker with gun rack, giant hands and biomechanic powerplant: infinite shield and quad shooting eigenrifle. Later you can up to a lightrail, mod nanon into the rifles and get nanon fingers plus a floating nanon fingers. Before you could get the radr thing to throw geo discs in things before they saw you, but they nerfed geo discs

[Yossarian]

Tinker TK has an answer to anything, you can vaporize chrome pyramids with quad grenade launchers and plasma/thermo grenades, you can clear large rooms of enemies with hand nukes shot from a grenade launcher, you can rebuke a cloneling and make an army of yourself, you can dig VERY deep, you can fly, rebuke a galgal, you can mod a geo disc with morphigenetic to stun entire screens of enemies, you can get infinite carry weight with negative weight spheres the list goes on.

The only thing i can't get around is the scrap limitation that leads to boring vendor farming.

Wish there was a reliable way to get scraps other than cloning vendors and going through their inventories

[glass zebra]

Anything tinker (especially with true kins) or follower based pre-Moonstair patch, although the game gives you so many options that it is hard to pick something. I might just like tinker stuff so much because I modded it.

[flemingluiz]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Anything tinker (especially with true kins) or follower based pre-Moonstair patch, although the game gives you so many options that it is hard to pick something. I might just like tinker stuff so much because I modded it.

I liked playing as a mutant tinker with eletricity generation and psychometry, but didnt like playing with the TK because its very hard on start. But maybe it was because i didnt understood much of the game at the time as i do now.

[Shadowdweller]

Depends on my mood. But one I'm fond of is Longblade (with shortblade secondary) Warden mutant with multiple arms, paralyzing stinger, wings, and maybe an utility mutation. Melee falls off later in the game, but it's pretty fun charging and lunging about IMO with the stinger and shield slam on charge abilities.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Shadowdweller:

Depends on my mood. But one I'm fond of is Longblade (with shortblade secondary) Warden mutant with multiple arms, paralyzing stinger, wings, and maybe an utility mutation. Melee falls off later in the game, but it's pretty fun charging and lunging about IMO with the stinger and shield slam on charge abilities.

Melee can slay throughout the game, but longblades specifically are more utility than damage. Axes keep scaling due to cleave and hammer through slam or continued weapon strength scaling, while short blades have the strong auto attack buffs (x2 in offhand plus x1.3 if mainhand).

Longblade has that Vibrokhopesh, which is really good against some heavy armour enemies, and also afaik the strongest average weapon damage on 2h, but otherwise it is really mostly about the active skills. Those never really scale that well as auto attacks, due to only using 1 weapon and not all of your hands. +2 PV and -3 hit from the passive is nice at the start, but does not really scale as much as any of the other weapon specials if you have more than 2 hands and just 1 cleave will add the same without the hit debuff.

[Nico]

I really like true kin dual pistols but I don't have a lot of luck with that build. Another build I've always liked is mutant multi-arm short blades. I like these builds because of how many actions you get to take before the enemy gets to do anything, for the most part.

[Bystandard]

Gunslinger:
Heightened Quickness
Adrenal Control
Photosynthetic Skin
Triple Jointed

Duel pistols and maxed quickness means I can akimbo just about anything dead before it gets a shot off.

[Shadowdweller]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Originally posted by Shadowdweller:

Depends on my mood. But one I'm fond of is Longblade (with shortblade secondary) Warden mutant with multiple arms, paralyzing stinger, wings, and maybe an utility mutation. Melee falls off later in the game, but it's pretty fun charging and lunging about IMO with the stinger and shield slam on charge abilities.

Melee can slay throughout the game, but longblades specifically are more utility than damage. Axes keep scaling due to cleave and hammer through slam or continued weapon strength scaling, while short blades have the strong auto attack buffs (x2 in offhand plus x1.3 if mainhand).

Melee falls off in the later game because there are increasing numbers of foes one either does not wish to engage in melee or that are preferable to kill asap, generally before they can close to melee; not because one can't kill things with melee attacks. It never becomes completely useless and there are also enemies that are better to fight in melee. But it also becomes less valuable / worthwhile unless one has some sort of insane, indestructible melee-focused build.

Few enemies can withstand a berserking, particularly a berserk flurry. But Long Blades have the highest-damage (melee) weapons and the easiest access to vibroweapons last I was aware. One doesn't pick Long Blades for a couple extra points of DV or PV (keep in mind the unlisted pv penalty long blades suffer relative to axes, blunt weapons). One takes them for easy disarms and repositioning. Performed correctly the skills give one extra attacks while the foe is otherwise occupied; or extra space from crowds. Swipe is noticeably more reliable IMX at removing dangerous enemy weapons than dismember. Lunge is fun to play around with with stingers because it gives one a free stinger attack.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Shadowdweller:

Melee falls off in the later game because there are increasing numbers of foes one either does not wish to engage in melee or that are preferable to kill asap, generally before they can close to melee; not because one can't kill things with melee attacks. It never becomes completely useless and there are also enemies that are better to fight in melee. But it also becomes less valuable / worthwhile unless one has some sort of insane, indestructible melee-focused build.

It is still very few enemies that you don't want to melee. I'd say about 1 per zone and it is usually the oozes (though Golgotha has 2 of those). Most other stuff can be negated by AV (bats, snails etc.). The "indestructible" melee builds need a plasma rifle and a freeze grenade, unless you are going for shortblades which make enemies bleed a lot. You can kill glazed/might cherubs with that in melee and for most other enemies you just need some AV and hit them.

Originally posted by Shadowdweller:

But Long Blades have the highest-damage (melee) weapons and the easiest access to vibroweapons last I was aware

Yes but the lowest dps boosts in either the skill tree or PV cap. The weapons and the skills are great, but the attacks get overshadowed by other weapons as the game progresses. The vibro weapon is also the strongest of the melee ones (3 times the damage of the short blade), unless you get lucky with a relic.

Originally posted by Shadowdweller:

One takes them for easy disarms and repositioning. Performed correctly the skills give one extra attacks while the foe is otherwise occupied; or extra space from crowds. Swipe is noticeably more reliable IMX at removing dangerous enemy weapons than dismember. Lunge is fun to play around with with stingers because it gives one a free stinger attack.

I did say the abilities matter for long blades and not the auto attacks and disarm is the strongest reason. You stop using active dismember to kill when you have 4+ axes too, because you lose multiple attacks that turn, but you still cleave and occasionally dismember with auto attacks. Long blade abilities and passives are extremely good for utility or used defensively though (even for non-melee chars). Active abilities are better for offensive use when you have only 1 or 2 weapons or when you want a certain effect (e.g. get body parts) instead of killing, since otherwise you lose damage from the attack over a normal auto attack. Chimeras hardly ever use weapon skills later on.

The extra attacks (like defensive lunge) of the longblade skills are also reduced attacks, due to skipping the offhands. While offensive lunge grants you a "free" stinger attack, it skips all offhand attacks too and your enemy attacks right after that, so if you use it against a moving melee enemy, with 3+ weapons you still lose damage on on the first encounter turn vs just waiting 1 turn and then hitting them when they move onto the tile next to you. E.g. charge will attack with all weapons normally, regardless of type. Stingers unfortunately do little damage on the hit since they are capped at 1 pen. The guaranteed poison is extremely good though.

[gilrad]

I try to shake up my builds each run, but I'll go through a few items that I always ensure are in my builds:

- Tinker, and by extension, pumping intelligence to 29 as soon as possible. I've tried runs without Tinker and I always miss not being able to mod items or getting tinker-only items like programmable recoilers. I almost never pump stats on character creation because I want to get that 18 int so I can get tinker II and tinker III as soon as possible. It doesn't make much sense to start with 23 str if I'm spending all my attribute points making up for a low int. It's gotten to the point where, whenever I play as a true kin, I always pick the guy that starts with tinker II just so I can dump int.

- Regeneration. It solves so many problems in the late-game, it's basically mandatory. Sure, it can be fun to quest for a cure for glotrot, fungal infections, missing limbs, etc. the first time you run into those problems, but having to stop whatever you're doing to go back to base and deal with them every time you accidentally get hit by them is extremely tiring. Also, gamma moths mean deep delving requires regeneration, since there is no way to reliably avoid their attacks and gradually getting more permanent debilitating mutations is not sustainable.

- Electrical generation, multiple feet, quickness combo. It solves lots of problems, such as feeding hungry tech items, allowing phase cannons as a primary attack, giving access to an attack that ignores armor. There are other ways to deal with those problems, but this is a very nice package that cleanly solves them. If I'm not doing this, I generally solve those problems in other ways:

- Power needs met by radio-generated batteries if I'm not deep delving, auto-collecting blood batteries if I am deep delving (especially if I'm using short blades, yum yum blood). I generally can't rely on too much power-hungry junk though, overloading my gear isn't an automatic power bump.

- Light manipulation, at higher levels, is a really good ranged attack if you don't have the resources to invest in phase cannons. As long as it's not your primary attack and you only use it to deal with enemies you don't want to get near, it does a great job.

- Armor-ignoring attacks, vibro weapons work okay but the damage just isn't all that reliable, even with +3 penetration from sharp and improved aggressive stance. Arc winders are a good alternative, though energy-hungry without electrical generation. My favorite method though tends to be axes with nanon fingers. Instead of spending 15 rounds killing a 2k hp robot, I can do it in less than five on average.

- As an aside, I like putting as many body parts on my character as possible, two-headed, legs, arms on creation. Even better if I find helping hands during the run. So many item slots, later on the bonuses really add up. Four sets of overloaded nanon fingers (normal hands, mutation hands, helping hands, magnetized floating nearby) can turn a modest 3% chance into a 34% chance. Dual overloaded psychodyne helmets for a massive pile of wisdom to get to 32 points with no level investment. Kaleido gear to get 100% resists all around. Two two-faced helmets for four ego-boosting faces equals +6 levels to mental mutations

[I blame Earthshaker]

Originally posted by gilrad:

- Tinker, and by extension, pumping intelligence to 29 as soon as possible. I've tried runs without Tinker and I always miss not being able to mod items or getting tinker-only items like programmable recoilers. I almost never pump stats on character creation because I want to get that 18 int so I can get tinker II and tinker III as soon as possible. It doesn't make much sense to start with 23 str if I'm spending all my attribute points making up for a low int. It's gotten to the point where, whenever I play as a true kin, I always pick the guy that starts with tinker II just so I can dump int.

It is possible to get Tinker III without 29 Int, but generally unreliable. Still, without some further uses for Int, it's kind of a dump stat above 23ish unless you reeeaaaallly want Tinker III... but fingers crossed for Tinker IV to be a hidden skill!

Originally posted by gilrad:

- Regeneration. It solves so many problems in the late-game, it's basically mandatory. Sure, it can be fun to quest for a cure for glotrot, fungal infections, missing limbs, etc. the first time you run into those problems, but having to stop whatever you're doing to go back to base and deal with them every time you accidentally get hit by them is extremely tiring. Also, gamma moths mean deep delving requires regeneration, since there is no way to reliably avoid their attacks and gradually getting more permanent debilitating mutations is not sustainable.

Regeneration is nice, but gamma moth dancing is one of the few reliable ways to generate mutation points late game (even if it is impossible for chimeras and a tedious pain for every other build). But easy to deal with otherwise, just get insect rep above -250 and gamma moths will ignore you (although not impossible to still accidentally get shot if the moth is aiming for something else, but this can be mitigated with high DV and decent late-game toughness 24+ ish).

Originally posted by gilrad:

- Power needs met by radio-generated batteries if I'm not deep delving, auto-collecting blood batteries if I am deep delving (especially if I'm using short blades, yum yum blood). I generally can't rely on too much power-hungry junk though, overloading my gear isn't an automatic power bump.

Since bringing an animated broadcast station with some electrical generation is cool but a pain to set up, liquid collecting batteries are a must-have cave diving. But roughly sub-60 level, game starts to generate A LOT of lava, so honestly lava batteries are prolly better once you get that deep. Blood batteries above that, though.

Originally posted by gilrad:

- Light manipulation, at higher levels, is a really good ranged attack if you don't have the resources to invest in phase cannons. As long as it's not your primary attack and you only use it to deal with enemies you don't want to get near, it does a great job.

It's even better with two heads! Although not possible for ESPers...

Originally posted by gilrad:

- Armor-ignoring attacks, vibro weapons work okay but the damage just isn't all that reliable, even with +3 penetration from sharp and improved aggressive stance. Arc winders are a good alternative, though energy-hungry without electrical generation. My favorite method though tends to be axes with nanon fingers. Instead of spending 15 rounds killing a 2k hp robot, I can do it in less than five on average.

Armor ignoring MELEE attacks at least can deal damage for an entire run, but yeah, DPS kinda drops off late game, especially compared to any weapon that has uncapped penetration combined with enough STR. But as fun as arc-winders are, electricity arcs, so it can aggro neutrals unnecessarily. Finally, nanon fingers go especially well with glazed artifacts, but those are a total crapshoot to find... sharp masterwork axes are great substitute!

[Shadowdweller]

Originally posted by glass zebra:

It is still very few enemies that you don't want to melee. I'd say about 1 per zone and it is usually the oozes (though Golgotha has 2 of those). Most other stuff can be negated by AV (bats, snails etc.).

Plenty of enemies one doesn't want to melee. Sure, one can likely tank the puddle of acid a spitting slug leaves behind in melee but it's still not best practice to take the damage. Or say face the comparatively small % chance a sawhander will dismember a limb. Yeah, lots of things become much less threatening once one achieves super-armor - but it's still usually a hefty chunk of the game before that happens. Amongst other things, bludgeoning attacks do not need to penetrate armor to daze or stun you. So two or more enemies with bludgeoning attacks are ALWAYS a risk in melee if there's something that can actually hurt you around.

Originally posted by glass zebra:

Yes but the lowest dps boosts in either the skill tree or PV cap. The weapons and the skills are great, but the attacks get overshadowed by other weapons as the game progresses. The vibro weapon is also the strongest of the melee ones (3 times the damage of the short blade), unless you get lucky with a relic.

1) The Long Blade tree actually has the second best PV boost (cap) of all melee trees, after maybe Axes with Cleave and Charging Strike.

2) So what?

Originally posted by glass zebra:

I did say the abilities matter for long blades and not the auto attacks and disarm is the strongest reason. You stop using active dismember to kill when you have 4+ axes too, because you lose multiple attacks that turn, but you still cleave and occasionally dismember with auto attacks. Long blade abilities and passives are extremely good for utility or used defensively though (even for non-melee chars). Active abilities are better for offensive use when you have only 1 or 2 weapons or when you want a certain effect (e.g. get body parts) instead of killing, since otherwise you lose damage from the attack over a normal auto attack. Chimeras hardly ever use weapon skills later on.

Long Blade DPS remains fine. But again, offense isn't the end-all be-all of melee. Still not completely sure why you're focusing on it so much?

Originally posted by glass zebra:

The extra attacks (like defensive lunge) of the longblade skills are also reduced attacks, due to skipping the offhands. While offensive lunge grants you a "free" stinger attack, it skips all offhand attacks too and your enemy attacks right after that, so if you use it against a moving melee enemy, with 3+ weapons you still lose damage on on the first encounter turn vs just waiting 1 turn and then hitting them when they move onto the tile next to you. E.g. charge will attack with all weapons normally, regardless of type. Stingers unfortunately do little damage on the hit since they are capped at 1 pen. The guaranteed poison is extremely good though.

The point of the Stinger mutations is usually suppression, not direct damage. And an extra Confuse or Paralyze attempt is absolutely worth it. Let alone potentially 5-10 rounds worth with En Garde. Plenty of tactical situations where an Lunge is still worth it, including 1) the energy / movespeed / quickness system is such that waiting doesn't always guarantee that you'll get to attack first, 2) situations where the enemy won't actually approach you because it's a ranged attack user, confused, frozen, inherently immobile, etc 3) you're using a round-limited effect like En Garde, Inflatable Axons, certain tonics, etc, 4) the minimum +3 PV bonus for an aggressive lunge is actually large enough to be relevant against a number of foes if you don't have a Vibrokhopesh yet (and likely even if you do), 5) a variety of terrain considerations - like slime, webbing, or adverse gasses. Poison Stinger is a bit tricky to use well tbh. Easier to use with other builds IMO.

Also: A defensive lunge or swipe, followed by a ranged attack or waiting a turn for a melee foe to close, followed by a full normal attack when they do close is STILL putting you ahead as far as # of attacks. At least compared to counterattacks.

Reminds me that I need to check whether deep pools affect defensive Lunge speed. I don't -think- they do, but it's been a while and I could easily be wrong.

[glass zebra]

+2 PV becomes a small boost quickly, as it only adds 1 damage dice roll, similar to how the sharp weapon mod is not the best for damage later on. Getting 33% more attacks with short blades will usually net you more damage, especially with elemental weapon mods and the perma stun and infinite PV cap from cudgels are a lot stronger for melee only killing too. Axes of course add that +2 PV with every single hit for any weapon attack after that and it stacks. The damage you do in melee is important, because that is where melee shine vs. ranged in most games. Ranged will of course always be safer for general gameplay, but melee kills faster, which can keep you from being overwhelmed or stopping enemies that need to die asap or make greater use of crowd control time (like plasma + freeze grenades).

Spitting slugs have 10 rounds cooldown and they will usually spit as soon as they see an enemy. After that you can rush them and kill them. It should not take 10 rounds to do so. For the enemies with bludgeoning the damage output you have matters a lot and so does positioning. Enemies should not be able to chain daze you unless you get super unlucky and even then stuff exists to mitigate that. For the most part you should be able to either reposition or kill #1 before #2 comes into melee. Most of my chars were melee and never had this issue after I got more experienced with the game and I do keep melee as main throughout Moonstair.

You don't need ridiculous amounts of armour with tons of neutron flux to be able to ignore stat saps. I think crysteel or flawless cysteel armour + callous was enough and you do meet them at around that tier. On top of that they have 25 hp and 100 quickness and a single melee attack should always kill them before they can even hit you. Saw-handers have vibro weapons, but their chance is indeed so small that I pretty much always ignore that they even have dismember. Getting 1-2 limbs back is no problem if you started in Joppa.


Offense isn't the only purpose of melee, since long blades do exist and those are more about utility, positioning and complementing a ranged weapon instead of dps. For all other melee weapons either dps or cc are indeed the focus, though short blades can go either way. If melee would not shine in damage, there would be little reason to take it over the safer ranged option and multiple games do indeed have an issue in the design on this part "Why would I play melee, if it does the same damage but puts me into danger?". There are of course some other boni you can give melee instead.

Cudgels on a chimera from start to finish makes melee feel broken. You stunlock all bosses into death. My axe true kin pretty much killed everything with charge or one turn after that was not a leering stalker or similar, which died in ~4 turns instead and my short blade chimera kept chrome pyramids in freeze lock with elemental short blades, which also died pretty quickly from the electrical damage under plasma. All of those hardly ever used their ranged weapon, apart from stuff like red jells or to apply plasma or some other effect (freeze raying crypt ferrets makes them a lot less annoying).

If you wanna play save you usually go ranged in games. If you wanna burst down enemies before they do anything, you play ranged. Long blades are a bit different since they instead focus on stuff like disarm and moving yourself or enemies around, but they are are the only melee weapons that have non-scaling/flat damage boni apart from the best vibro weapon in the game and people really take them for their utility (mostly disarm) and they go best with a ranged weapon. They get a big flat damage bonus at the start which does not really grow that much as you progress. I did not mean to say that long-blades are bad, but they are simply the melee weapon type that are offers the most utility, which goes great with a ranged combo. You can even go full agi without str with vibro + offensive stance. Of course the ranged weapon can then in part replace them for most enemies since don't even need to swipe them away or disarm if you are already on range and do similar damage from afar with little reason to go closer.