Group heal/rest mechanic?

[Jennay]

Just started this today and it's going a bit rough. Is there a group heal or rest mechanic? I'm getting my ass kicked and I'm using up all my medical resources by healing up half my party after every fight. Divinity OS2 has the bedroll which functions as a full group heal, Pillars has camping/resting at an inn. Does WL2 have anything similar?

[Gillsing]

Depending on where you are and what you have done, you might be able to access a local doctor and get fully healed. Other than that there is no such thing. On Seasoned difficulty and below a Ranger gets fully healed when levelling up, other than that you have to rely on healing supplies. It's mostly tough in the beginning, when your Rangers have weak weapons and no supplies. Once you've upgraded your weapons you should have an easier time in combat, and thus lose less to purchasing healing supplies.

[Jennay]

Thanks for the info!

[AzureTheGamerKobold]

yea i wish it had a sleep system, like D&D has where you don't heal all the way, but you heal a set amount of life every 8 hours of rest (i think BG 1 and 2 had this) so y ou COULD heal but risk random encounters, could even have been a perk for doctor/surgeon combos to help speed the process along. Anyway yea i feel like it needs a sleep mechanic... even requirin' rest every so often or risk debuffs it could have been a great little system...

That said i think its an amazing game even with out it

[red255]

on the lowest difficulty you heal while wandering around the world map.

but even on higher difficulties once you get good gear you'll start accumulating healing items you probably won't burn thru.

on the second lowest difficulty you'll fully heal every level up.

but yes various locations (ag center/highpool/ranger citadel/Titan Canyon) have a doctor to fully heal you.

[jmsand1]

On the world map you can freely change the difficulty level: so you could lower it to recruit, walk around until you heal, then change it back to a higher level and continue your adventure.

[SnapSlav]

There's also a perk (Stimpacks) that gives you free heals over time. The downside is that you need Field Medic level 7 to unlock this perk, and it only activates per turn during combat. But it is another healing mechanic that's easy to overlook.

Really, the best advice has already been stated:
1) Seek doctors for free party-wide healing.
2) Exploit the mechanics by lowering the difficulty to Rookie on the world map, then raise it back when you're healed up.
3) It's worst at the start, progress and get better skills and items, and you'll have a much better time and require healing far less frequently.

[The Cunning Fox (raZoleg)]

The easy way to do this without cheating (by changing difficulty back and forth) or scumsaving - in the beginning of the game you need to kill a doc. The guy in Highpool will do.

Their inventory gets tranferred to you. I'm playing on Ranger difficulty for the first time and am quite far ahead already. What has helped me is having a field medic with a lot of med packs, and I've had JUST enough to survive. If I hadn't "accidentally" killed the wrong mayor in Highpool in his office along with the doc and the trader after being frustrated that I didn't get the woman elected - I wouldn't have made it through the game this far. As you level up it gets much easier though.

If your guys do get destroyed in combat - have a good surgeon skill. I'd imagine may people neglect it and use it only so they could revive characters, therefore they don't put almost any points into it. But, it has some perks which let you revive your Rangers with a lot of health. Even more than if you healed them up with a mediocre medic.

[Gillsing]

My ultimate recommendation would be to learn how to fight without taking damage. But that might come across as condescending. I do a lot of reloading to learn though.

I was planning to use my armoured ranger in Santa Fe Springs, but that did not work out at all, because those nuke pooches have so high movement that they think nothing of switching from a nearby target to a distant target. So after a lot of frustration I just had the twitchy Ranger do most of the work (as usual) while most of the team hid inside the radio building, where it was easy to trap my two robots.

Though towards the end I found a very nice spot near the Courtyard where I could block VAXs movement while also shooting into a path from which the team couldn't be reached by melee attackers. Definitely the place to start off with in any future playthroughs. Though it would've been tricky to block movement without my two cows, so without those it might have taken some save scumming to place the blocker-Rangers exactly right before combat starts. "Save often, load often" is the motto of this game's poor design. And then reload every time I forget that it always defaults back to group movement instead of individual movement, where everyone starts repositioning themselves even though they're already close enough to each other. I wonder if inXile is secretly fuelled by invectives from frustrated players?

Anyway, my first priority in any fight is to avoid taking damage. Sometimes that means killing quickly, but most times that means only getting close with the Rangers who can keep out of range of the attackers (weapon range, or move+attack range). When the enemies start digging into my healing supplies they're digging into my profits!

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by Gillsing:

[...]most of the team hid inside the radio building, where it was easy to trap my two robots.

A strategy I often employ to keep my companions safe, as well. Although it doesn't lend itself terribly well in SFS due to the open spaceousness of the map (unless a permanent squad member keeps them in the main building while the rest of your squad works halfway across the map the rest of the time), it's certainly a very useful method of keeping your glass cannons from rushing to their own doom.

Hell, now that I look back at that part of the game, I almost wish that's exactly what I did, cause Vax had a habit of being positioned so that he'd shoot past- and frequently into -my own rangers. He saved me some ammo, but not without some unnecessary injuries.

Certainly says much about the popular opinion of companions when a favorite strategy is to STOP them from participating in a fight... XD

[Gillsing]

Yeah, VAX did hit Scotchmo for 101 points of damage in one aborted attempt to have the whole team face some doggies. So that didn't work. Just the armoured Ranger alone? Got afflicted with some bleeding thing that did -21 CON per 10 seconds, despite the attack itself doing 0 damage (think it was from a honey badger). And while that didn't seem to do a lot of damage during the combat, right after the combat had ended, and Rose had used a Suture Kit within 10-20 seconds or so, 150 damage had been done. So that didn't work. That's when I decided to go back to what worked against everyone except the Ag Center boss: Twitchy retreat until moments of opportunity revealed themselves.

But I get the feeling that the robot companions are meant to be highly temporary, and not really make it out alive from the maps where you get them. Because with those two, The Night Terror, Aberforth, and two cows, my Rangers don't need any special quirks to make it look like the circus is it town. And Jaime has the unfathomable desire to go for targets that are so far away that they're not even visible to my Rangers. What is he thinking? That he's some kind of 'behind-enemy-lines operative? How does it help to light up a target that my Rangers can't even attack?!

[The Cunning Fox (raZoleg)]

My ultimate recommendation would be to learn how to fight without taking damage. But that might come across as condescending. I do a lot of reloading to learn though.

Yes, but the question is about what to do after the damage actually took place. Of course you can do the Gorky 17 level of fighting (which seemed extremely hard back in the day) where you use up your inventory almost entirely to stay alive and uscathed in a fight since the healing items are so scarce...



Just like in any tactical RPG you've got a choice of making tanks for your team (melee characters with high Armor or who can avoid well due to attributes), making your team extremely proficient in weapons (so you kill anything faster than it can f*ck you up - luck and criticals do the trick), or balancing the two and buying the most expensive armor/guns one can afford whilst being mediocre in fighting (barter and charisma).

I usually go for everything. I have two melee guys and two shooters. The melee guys tie up the enemy force, the shooters have the surgeon skill and doc skill so they can always revive anyone who's down. One melee character can evade pretty well, the other - take a lot of damage and keep walking. Recently though I just keep them near my shooters at ambush stance, since at top sniper rifles you can headshot a lot of things into olbivion and tight spaces are not a problem as anyone who comes through a door is bound to be bashed on the head and get a shotgun in the face from the "evader's" second major fighting skill.

So far I had to reload three times in the entire game, and I'm playing for the first time on Ranger difficulty. In difficult battles I usually get one or two guys in the "Bleeding Out" state, but no more than that. But if it ♥♥♥♥♥ up, it ♥♥♥♥♥ up royally. In Prison I barely made it with my sniper the only one left conscious after a certain battle.

[Gillsing]

Originally posted by כיטרע פוקס:

Just like in any tactical RPG you've got a choice of making tanks for your team (melee characters with high Armor or who can avoid well due to attributes), making your team extremely proficient in weapons (so you kill anything faster than it can f*ck you up - luck and criticals do the trick), or balancing the two and buying the most expensive armor/guns one can afford whilst being mediocre in fighting (barter and charisma).

No. You only need one very fast-moving Ranger to do both sniping and melee. As long as that one is the only viable target for the enemies, they're going to have to be awfully fast themselves to be able to catch up as that Ranger retreats to a safe distance after every bonus-turn due to high Combat Initiative. Well, maybe not exactly like that, but close enough.

The rest of the team can goof off however they want, just as long as they're not close enough to the action to attract any attention during combat. Though on some random maps, they need to be close enough to still count as being part of the combat, or no combat XP for them! But on regular maps they can be on the other side of the map and still count as being part of the combat, and receive oodles of XP for one Ranger doing all the work without taking any damage.

Well, maybe not. I like using VAXs ammo-saving Plasma SMG, so I usually try to set him up as a gun turret which I draw enemies towards. Works really well! That's when my Leadership Ranger usually gets to squeeze off a few shots too. And when the going gets real, they have Sabot Rockets from Holliday. And a stockpile at home too. And I intend to use all of them.