Best/Worst Perks

[Elriadon]

In case anyone wants to know which perks to get ASAP and which ones to avoid. This is from my experience, if anyone has a different opinion, feel free to comment on this.
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Best:

Main Level

Insomniac - Useful for the early game.

First Aid 2/3 - Mostly for the additional dialogue options during some quests.

Savage/Burgher - While the majority of fights happen in the wild, certain quests feature difficult battles in urban areas, some of which are very difficult, so Burgher is certainly useful. Burgher is also useful if you want to fight the town guards and most shopkeepers/quest npcs are located in towns/villages, so your speech skills will be boosted by Burgher more often then by Savage. Take whichever one you prefer, both are good.

Brute/Juggler - Both are pretty good ways to boost you combat stats, the Speech and Charisma penalties are minor and you'll likely get much more out of a Strength/Agility bonus.

Cloak and Dagger - Biggest Stealth boost in the game, -1 Strength is bad, but manageable as is the Speech penalty. Probably the best level 8 perk for a Merciful playthrough.

Contemplative - While it might not be obvious from the description, waiting, sleeping and studying books also no longer consumes energy and nourishment if you have this perk. This drastically reduces the need for sleeping and eating and makes it awesome for pretty much anyone.


Stats

Clinch Master - Clinch is what happens when you move too close to the opponent, winning it generally allows you to get a free swing in. Makes the fight with Kunesh much easier.

Tight Grip - Stamina is important and this will make sure you'll tire slower.

Headcracker - This perk is Runt's worst nightmare and great source of one hit KOs. It doesn't happen that often, but you'll definitely appreciate it when it does.

Heavy Swing - +20% damage is definitely worth the trade-off.

Dreadful - The lower the enemies morale, the less aggresive they will be in combat. This makes fights with multiple enemies more manageable.

Blood Rush - You mostly fight multiple opponents, so the great attack and Stamina boost is very useful.

Last Gasp - Great perk, works well together with Revenant.

Revenant - Perhaps the best perk in the game. It's best to save Vitality perk points and get Revenant and Last Gasp together, at which point Henry becomes almost unkillable. The health regeneration is slow (1 health per few seconds), but noticeable and if you are good at defending yourself, you can return back to full strength from the brink of defeat.

You also won't lose health when bleeding/poisoned if you have this perk, but neither will you regenerate health.

Empathy - While having a higher number then the NPC you are persuading doesn't guarantee a success if you choose the wrong dialogue option, it's still important to know if your Speech or Charisma is high enough to suceed in the first place.

Lowborn - Most people you try to persuade as well as most merchants and the town guards (except the bailiff himself, I think) are also lowborn. In my opinion more useful than Highborn.

Highborn - I remember only few times you had to persuade nobles, though those checks were among the harder ones. The wealthier merchants migh also count as Highborn, not sure. Still prefer Lowborn overall.


Skills

Routine 1/2 - While the alchemy system is very cool and all, by the time you can get this you'll be glad you have the auto-brew option. Be warned that autobrewing a potion gives you only about 1/10th of the Alchemy XP you'd get for brewing it normally.

Loose Tongue - A very good way to pass some of the more difficult speech checks. While the hungover speech penalties are also increased, it's easy enough to avoid it by just not talking to anyone and sleeping it off.

Drunk - If you plan on making use of the drinking bonuses, this perk is essential.

Leg Day - You can get reach very high strength during the tutorial if you pick enough herbs.

Forester - Very good for sneaking.

Luck of the Drunk - While drunk, you will be able to easily pick any lock in the game. Definitely worth it.

Lasting Lockpicks - Makes the lockpicking minigame much more forgiving. While the description says it doubles their durability, it feels like much longer and I lost only like one or two lockpicks since I got the perk. Get it as soon as you reach level 3 in Lockpicking.

Master Thief - At this point, lockpicking becomes very easy, so this perk saves time.

Avid Reader - You no longer have to take time to actually study the books, as your character will automatically read them while you sleep/wait. Makes it much less annoying and makes the actual Reading skill value a lot less important.

Magistrate 1/2/3 - One reason to level reading.

Cartographer - The other reason to level reading.

Stealth Kill - Quick and silent way to dispatch enemies.

Ordinary Mug - Makes it much easier to get away with stealing.


Combat

Golem - Just like Dreadful makes your enemies less willing to attack you during combat.

Well Worn - A set of heavy armor and a melee weapon pretty much fills up your carrying capacity even if you have a lot of Strength, so this is very useful.

Against All Odds - You will be outnumbered during 90% of the fights in the game.

Chain Strike - Great perk, you lose the damage bonus if your opponent manages to block your attack or dodge, you don't have to pull of crazy combos to gain use from this.



Worst:

Main Level

Ascetic - Even though the description doesn't mention it, it also doubles the Stamina penalty for overeating. I took at the start of the game and wish I didn't.

Scholar - -1 Strength and Warfare for a Reading bonus is terrible, even if you play a completely pacifistic character you are better off just leveling reading and taking Avid Reader.

Local Hero/Infamous - The drawbacks are too severe and the bonus is minor. It's already extremely easy to lose reputation and Local Hero only makes it worse.

Infamous only applies when you have low reputation and low reputation is something you want to avoid, since merchants and quest givers will refuse to speak with you unless you pay them a large amount of money and if it's in the negatives, NPCs might decide to attack you.

Ironically, the higher reputation gain and lower jail penalties are the best part of that perk, if you have to get one of these, get Infamous and ignore that bonus on low reputation part.

Wanderer - Most beds have a quality of atleast 60% or more, the ones you can buy at an inn are generaly pretty nice, as are the other beds you own and you can use to save your game, so most likely this perk will just gimp your Energy regeneration, unless you sleep at random bandit camps and use Savior Schnapps to save or something.

Golden Tongue/Ken - There are better ways to boost Speech/Charisma that don't carry a massive -2 Strength penalty, which also hurts your chances when using the Intimidate (crossed swords) dialog options. The Charisma boosting one is especially worthless, since expensive clean clothes or a set of plate armor are enough to impress pretty much anyone. And if you are doing a Merciful playthrough, Cloak and Dagger is a much better option.


Stats

Boar - Doesn't seem to work, atleast I haven't managed to activate it yet.

Marathon Man - You already have trouble catching fleeing enemies. Avoid and maybe get Sprinter once you get all the best vitality perks.

Healthy Diet - The bonus is not worth the hassle. If you don't mind micromanaging the nourishment value feel free to take it, but there are so many great Vitality perks already.


Skills

Trial and Error - Alchemy is forgiving enough already and once you are able to auto-brew potions this perk becomes useless.

Witcher - While the name is cool, I can't really remember a time I when couldn't drink a potion due to high nourishment value. This is even less of an issue if you avoid overeating.

Bundle Alchemist - Routine 2 produces more potions and makes them automatically. No reason to bother with this perk.

Drinking Habit - After some testing, Archery is pretty much impossible while drunk anyway and this perk doesn't help.

Lucky Thief - By the time you reach this level, you should be able to easily pick even very hard locks without breaking a lockpick. Breaking a lockpick also makes noise and draws attention.

Witcher - While the name is cool, I can't really remember a time I when couldn't drink a potion due to high nourishment value. This is even less of an issue if you avoid overeating.

In the Flow/Cushion/Swot - Avid Reader is all you need.

Repairman - Doesn't hold a candle to Lasting Lockpicks.


Combat

Sadist - If an opponent is bleeding, they are most likely finished anyway and there are plenty of great Warfare perks to choose instead of a situational +1 Strength bonus.

[One Stoned Bastard]

Personal v1.2 experience, but;

Best (most brokenly OP): Headcracker (potentially ruins your duel vs. Runt on your first strike, yay?)

Worst (least useful or interesting): Contemplative (no food or energy consumption while standing still, but who cares?)

Favourite: Stealth Kill (because it kills people, stealthily).

[VirusCode_X]

Nah, don't use any perks that make you stronger in any way. That helps to make you too strong end game and stops battles from being fun

[One Stoned Bastard]

Originally posted by VirusCode_X:

Nah, don't use any perks that make you stronger in any way. That helps to make you too strong end game and stops battles from being fun

At the same time, perks like "marathon" and "sprint" or whatever they're called, are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ useless.

Things like Burgher and Savage are better, though. You can decide if you're better at survival/solo or social/sieges.

[Elriadon]

Savage/Burgher and Race Horse/Heavy Duty Pony are the only two exclusive perks that are both perfectly viable I'd say. Others are either both useless or there is a clear best choice.

[One Stoned Bastard]

Perks that unlock further interaction are the best (hence Stealth Kill being a good one in my book).
Unlocking a new way to go about things feels rewarding.

[Jeff]

Best doesn't really matter at the moment, since each tree has enough points to get all but 1 (usually) of the perks.

Worst is just what's left over at the end. My least favorite perk is Dreadful, which makes enemies take the free loot and experience they are carrying and run away.

[Kai]

I notice that movement speed is stuck at a slow 17 points now, if you don't wear anything it doesn't go as high as 25 anymore.

[Elriadon]

Originally posted by ysnyder77:

Best doesn't really matter at the moment, since each tree has enough points to get all but 1 (usually) of the perks.

Best does matter in the sense of what you should pick first and whether you should save perk points or not. Some other skills like Drinking are pretty obscure and most players probably won't notice the good perks they contain.

As for the worst, some perks also have serious negative effects to a degree where you are better off not taking them at all.

[Germaine's Bra]

Drinking Habit I find to be terrible

[Jeff]

Originally posted by GeraldBaldZ:

Drinking Habit I find to be terrible

I took it on my first playthrough and it was terrible for me. If you drink while hunting, your WHOLE BODY sways instead of just the bow killzone. And then if you want to keep doing drunken hunting, you end up overeating and replace well balanced diet perk with the pig debuff. Screw all that. I'd rather hunt with a longsword at that point.

[Ape-tier Buffoonery]

Why wouldn't you like ascetic.

Being able to eat once a day, with a second feeding every other day is a godsend. My days mostly are: Wake up, eat, spend my whole day picking flowers or hunting etc, come home and if my hunger is near 50 eat, If not sleep and eat in the morning. Repeat.

On the off days where you don't sleep normally or can't find a communal pot to eat from, ascetic really stretches the nourishment from eating whatever you find like dried mushrooms etc.

I also suggest saving your speech point at 4 to get both empathy and bard. It's easy enough to persuade peasants decked out as a knight. So I prefer Highborn of the two but saving the point for level 8 is just better I find.

[Jeff]

Originally posted by Rumbly Tumbly:

Why wouldn't you like ascetic?

I took it on my first playthrough. It was nice until I started to level drinking. It makes it difficult to drink each night without going over 100 fullness.

Hunger goes down slowly enough that it doesn't bother me. Also, I'd rather be able to use more potions each day.

[kalashnjkov21]

It depends a lot on builds. For me, headcracker is the best perk when i choose hunting sword or decent blunt damage weapons but it's redundant if i choose other weapons. And the worst perk could be fast striker but it might be helpful for sabre build because someone said sabre is good for spamming slash due to slightly faster slashing speed.

[Elriadon]

Originally posted by Rumbly Tumbly:

Why wouldn't you like ascetic.

Being able to eat once a day, with a second feeding every other day is a godsend. My days mostly are: Wake up, eat, spend my whole day picking flowers or hunting etc, come home and if my hunger is near 50 eat, If not sleep and eat in the morning. Repeat.

On the off days where you don't sleep normally or can't find a communal pot to eat from, ascetic really stretches the nourishment from eating whatever you find like dried mushrooms etc.

It also doubles the Stamina penalty from overeating, even though the description doesn't mention it. Since I got to Rattay, Henry never went hungry, but he had the Overeating penalty quite a few times due to eating from those communal pots. I took it at the start of the game and regretted it ever since.

[Ape-tier Buffoonery]

Originally posted by Darel:

It also doubles the Stamina penalty from overeating, even though the description doesn't mention it. Since I got to Rattay, Henry never went hungry, but he had the Overeating penalty quite a few times due to eating from those communal pots. I took it at the start of the game and regretted it ever since.

I mean you shouldn't be overeating in the first place. Idk like I said I really only eat before/after going to sleep with Ascetic and Insomnia.

Originally posted by ysnyder77:

I took it on my first playthrough. It was nice until I started to level drinking. It makes it difficult to drink each night without going over 100 fullness.

Hunger goes down slowly enough that it doesn't bother me. Also, I'd rather be able to use more potions each day.

Yeah I guess I can see your point here. Personally I just play a teetotaler Henry, because he's a good Christian Boy. Lol also means no saviour schnaps, so prevents me from trying to save-scum certain situations.

And I'm not a huge fan of chugging potions either so yeah maybe Ascetic isn't as useful as I think on a general scale, but for me personally it's not useless.