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I'm not sure I follow, unless 'good use' means your invincible build or something close. Which, OK, it's a cool idea ...
When I first browsed through the Quirks, Brittle Bones seemed like a pretty good choice. I take your point, above, about ComSpeed, but still seemed like a decent trade. And Delayed Grat also seemed OK. And the Ascetic, uh, 'quirk' (bug?) seems funny, but I wouldn't really abuse it (not in a real playthough ... if I could talk my way into RC and cycle in a few min, maybe I'd set up a joke squad, but ehhhh). Was more or less set on plowing through with my current squad, and accepting that they're not great, and that I'll screw/miss some things, etc .... But good grief, I took another look at Disparanumerowotsit .... Wow. I think I'm going to have to do it, start over with an all Disnum squad. Postponing levelups hasn't been a problem so far .. keeping them all on the same level might get tricky. Currently I'm on standard difficulty, and use my levelups for healing, and almost never use my medic (and have tons of medpacs) .. I think I'll bump up to the next difficulty, and I guess use her a lot more. Plus 2 to all attr, just wow. It does change a lot of things on allocation ... like, suddenly maybe weird levels (6 or 8 Int?) make sense.
There's no way to drop an attrlevel down to 0 is there (ahem, Luck)?
Do per level things work as I'd hope? Eg, if I save Callin for 2 levels, will Con/Lv and SP/Lv behave according to what my (Disnum altered) Str and Int are when I make the Callin?
A few other random things:
I read about a situation where I need 22 Cha recruiting, late AZ .. Anywhere else I need high Cha?
If I start with less than 4 core rangers, can I take more recruits? (Don't see why I would, just curious)(I started with 2 customs, bc I thought that would save them, so I could use them later)
If I dismiss a recruit before I have a base (before I access RC) .. what then?
I failed a Demo challenge, blew the trap took a little damage, and looted the box. Can that sometimes ruin the box contents, like using TNT?
Does "Scotchmo helps himself" mean anything (like that he'll steal from me or go rogue) or just chatter (about helps himself to drink, maybe).
And one kinda ... I found and entered GD. With Angela. Storywise, this action fits her; aaand I haven't really liked her much, all along. I'm half inclined to ask you if there's more surprises like that coming, and half inclined to not spoil, just see how it plays .. just save frequently, right?
Some Rangers might even benefit from multiple weapon skills, though probably not one who spend 9 attribute points into Intelligence! But that leaves more skills that other Rangers don't need to pick up. Though putting too much of a burden on a single skill monkey has the drawback of not having access to some skills for a large part of the game, until that Ranger has levelled up enough to get those skill points intended for those skills.
Yeah, that's what I meant. Because without those last two points of extra Armor, there might be weapons that do 40% damage when they could've done 0% damage, and that's still a lot of damage. After Arizona there will be enemy snipers with Penetration 9, so even with the Power Armor my Armor 14 Ranger still takes 20% damage from each hit, and your heavy armor sniper would take 60% damage. If they even bother shooting at that Ranger, since some other Ranger would probably be closer and easier to hit. Which removes a huge benefit of the heavy armor: The option to position your heavy armor Ranger out in the open and close to the enemies, making that Ranger the preferred target, soaking damage that would've been dealt to other Rangers.
But Power Armors have -1.0 Combat Speed, so getting into position while all the other Rangers are participating might be difficult, and taking 40-60% damage from attacks is not nearly the same as 0-20%. And there's still the huge drawback of heavy armor when up against energy weapons: Do not let your heavy armor Ranger get attacked by energy weapons, as they do x2.5 damage or so against conductive armor. In order to be worth the expenditure and limitations, I thus feel like it's (nigh) invulnerability or bust.
Just checked, and as I thought, Disparnumerophobia was downgraded in Director's Cut from +2 to +1 on even levels.
That's the thing. As far as I know, the bonuses do not affect Con/level or SP/level, so when it comes to both Strength and Intelligence the bonuses lose half their effect. But +1 to each instead of -1 is still a total of 4 points of difference, which is 1 Action Point. Though only half an Action Point compared to having a different quirk.
I haven't bothered with that quirk for any of my Rangers though, since it seemed too cheesy to avoid the drawback. And obviously my Leadership Ranger with maxed Charisma levels up faster than the others, so maintaining the bonus state for everyone would not have been possible. And Thick-Skinned. And Twitchy for my sniper to maintain distance to the enemy, which worked great in Arizona. I guess I felt that I had better options than annoying myself with level-up shenanigans to gain extra attribute points.
I think you need total party Charisma 26 to pick up some NPC recruit in Arizona. Not sure which one, and one of those demanding recruits are only available if you side with DBM, and (I've read, not sure) didn't kill any of their people. So that might not even be an issue. The other NPC recruit comes up earlier, or later if you choose to leave that optional place for later.
Supposedly you're only allowed to recruit three NPCs because the Desert Rangers don't want the pick-up recruits to outnumber the 'real' Desert Rangers. But I'm pretty sure that's just flavour talk, and that you can play a single created Ranger who picks up six NPC recruits.
If you want to recruit any of the three extra recruits hanging out in the citadel courtyard at the start, you have to create extra Rangers from the start and then get them killed to open up space for the extra recruits. Plus finish the first mission so you're even allowed to recruit them in the first place. Before finishing that mission I guess your own Rangers are just interns or something.
Fun fact: Whenever an NPC recruit's Rogue Chance is activated during combat, and your Ranger's Leadership skill calms them down (check combat log for this green text), that Ranger gets 1 XP per skill level, modified by Charisma (Skill Level 10 +50% for Charisma 10 = 15 XP every time). So if you have high enough skill to always calm down your recruits, rowdier recruits (up to 50% rogue chance for skill level 10) and more turns in combat means more bonus XP for the Leadership Ranger.
I had plans to replay the game with as many rowdy NPC recruits as possible just to exploit that thing for fun, but now I'll be relieved to just finish the game once before I give up access to my computer. Originally I planned for a single created Ranger, but then I changed to two: one Thick-Skinned leader/medic/drinker (Intelligence 1 and Speed 1 = +3 Strength for 300 seconds from alcohol) and one max Combat Initiative SMG Psychopath (which I haven't tried yet).
I think they get sent into the citadel, and will be there waiting for you once you get inside. As strange as that may sound, since they were recruited by Rangers-not-quite-yet.
If something is destroyed because of explosives or exploding seed pod in Ag Center, that item seems to be replaced with wood splinters, glass shards or some other obviously broken junk.
Scotchmo will simply steal all the Snake Squeezin' carried by any other party member, so that Scotchmo is then carrying them. He steals one every ten seconds or so until he has all of them. So you can steal them back and sell them or drink them. Probably a bad idea if one of your own Rangers has the Way of the Squeezins quirk, but otherwise rather inconsequential.
Oooh, I don't even know what she does there, because the first time the game removed her from my party when we entered Canyon of Titan, thereby removing practically all of my Outdoorsman, HardA and Brute Force skills. On all subsequent restarts I therefore ditched her as soon as I picked up the third recruit, which I did without visiting the distillery. Mostly because I didn't know how to find the place, and even if I had know that, I would've wanted the XP to go to my real recruit and not one who's destined to leave halfway through Arizona.
And apparently there are some NPC recruits who will defect to the enemy in the end game. If you keep your eyes open during the game, it'll be kind of obvious who they will be, and why. Probably not too bug of a deal, and if you have any of those NPCs you could disarm them as best as possible right before it happens, which you would know if you have to reload due to failure to vanquish your enemy.
Arrrgghhh .... If you're right on both counts, I probably won't bother restarting at all. If not, probably worth the shenanigans, to me (we little shenanigans!) Yeah, having one ranger with a bit more Cha for Lead is what I was thinking would screw up keeping everyone aligned. Rrrrrr.... What good is plus 2 int without the sp/lv?
More responses in a little bit, throwing this up for now in case you see it soon. I've got 4 rangers more or less ready, based on how I thought Dispnum works ...
Ah yes, forgot about that since I never played the original version. I went entirely by the last post in this thread.
EDIT: Patch 1 seems to be the one changing the quirk from -2/+2 to -1/+1 for all stats. According to this thread.
Mine might not be up to date. But OK, as long as ingame desc is right. If there they changed it and didn't change the description, that'd be bad.
IDK, just as a matter of low AP (with recruit VC, especially), I've more or less done that in a bunch of battles. Still earlygame though, so, IDK.
I did see a bunch of Quirks that looked unappealing, a few that looked potentially worth their drawbacks, but not a huge net gain, a few that look silly/funny .. and Disp seemed like the biggest game changer to me. The silly ones (lightning, drunkard) might be fun if this were a shorter game, but like they'd get a bit old. I see people in the forum talking about editing saves .. cheating. Saw at least one thread about the Ascetic veteran bug ... technically, I guess that's 'glitching', but .. yeah, feels like cheating; that's why, as I said, I wouldn't really use that for a real playthrough, even if it were easy. Using Disnum .. I mean, it's a listed perk, I don't see how saving callins is 'gaming' it, they must have designed it with that in mind .. maybe they figured people would be at risk of getting caught on odd levels? IDK, just sayin, we each draw the line somewhere. Grinding a bunch of random encounter before doing any story certainly isn't *cheating*, but I can see how it might seem like 'gaming the sys'. (Not saying that in a negative/judgemental way. I've done plenty of grinding in other games .. and sometimes then changed my mind about it ... and sometimes then done it some more)
Edit0: And the sp/lv, con/lv? Also patch, or you think that applies in my -2/+2 version?
Oh, and the 0 level thing? 0 Luck possible?
Edit1:
As I said about the 'silly' quirks .. if the game were a few hours, or a night or three's worth of play (or had some kind of NGplus/speed mode), such goofiness would be more feasible
The Cha recruit ... Pizepi, in/under Darwin is who I was thinking. Wiki says it's 22, but seems to say that's a little variable? Not sure why I read about her, since I'm somewhat trying not to spoil ... That's the thing, I like to explore, come at it fresh, and give a game a chance to present itself ... but some games do a pretty poor job of tutorial/explanation (like this one, at least sometimes), and with such a long, involved game, the risks of missing something that could be really cool, that you really had little/no way of knowing about ...
Heh. See, now that's a funny little thing ... He actually does something, so it's not just chatter, but it's something ultimately harmless, not going to screw anything up.
Er, sorry, misspoke. You'd mentioned Gorkinovich's Distillery as a good trader/shop, and I just came across Gork's ... something .. Bar? in Rail Nomad.
I mean when she shoots the wandering Squeezin seller with the funny voice for being a 'coward' ... because what? He only fired a few shots, and didn't bring down this mechanoman that wrecked up a hardened ranger? From her intro at the beginning, I really considered not taking her, bc it was obvious she'd do something like this. OK, that would've been dumb, she's not doing this all willy nilly, but still. Side note, if we're told about how rangers always go in quads of 4, why was Ace on mission by himself, anyway?
Edit2: Steam censorship is getting worse and worse. :(
The fact that it was initially designed with +2/-2 tells me that they had surely not thought about skipping levels because radioing in is optional. Lowering it from +2 to +1 when doing so seems like a compromise between "oh $#!% we didn't think of that" and "oh $#!% we can't just remove a whole quirk from the game". But as you say, it is not without risk. Or inconvenience. So I'm not going to judge you.
I read in the second thread that Disparnumerophobia is comparable to Brittle Bones in that they both get you roughly 4 attribute points' worth of stuff with no negatives (assuming stationary sniper/gunner). Because the bonuses to Intelligence and Strength don't counts when leveling up, and bonuses to Luck and Charisma are pretty useless. So that's Coordination, Awareness and Speed that you can make full use of, plus Strength for everything but MaxCon, and Intelligence for +0.25 AP, which is kind of like 3 + 2*0.5 = 4.
Also, it is not possible to lower Luck or any other attribute below 1. You can get the Unlucky quirk to kill all your enemies for you, but it takes some special dedication[forums.inxile-entertainment.com], and is best done by a single Ranger, with no recruits.
Edit1: Yes, Pizepi was one of the recruits who demand some total party Charisma, but I wouldn't call that late Arizona, as you can go there right after entering the citadel. You just need Thrasher to put it on the map for you. Scotchmo requires total party Charisma as well, but it's so low (12) that it easy enough to fulfil without even trying. The Charisma 26 recruit is then in Canyon of Titan, but I went with one of the other two ways to finish that quest, so I picked up one a different recruit that I didn't need. You get one out of three, depending on your choices. Or none, if you just decide to not finish it. One of the recruits has a high Barter skill, so you can bring him shopping when you feel like it. Not the one I got though.
Regarding what Angela Deth does in the bar, that's not something she does anywhere else as far as I know. Though as I probably made it clear before, she's not a real recruit, so use her and then lose her. I wonder what happens if she gets killed though? She's supposed to play a part later on... a voice-acted part, unless I misremember. Gee... now I really wonder what happens if she dies early on in Rail Nomads Camp when my level 1-2 team takes on some rail thieves?
What, because why would they make the drawback min2 if you can just skip? Yeah, maybe, but they made radioing in optional / mostly at player's discretion in the first place, so that should've been on their mind in general. And then forgot about it when designing and not testing Quirks? That seems crazy sloppy .. which is possible. IDK, I guess we'll never know. I would think letting me time callins for healing (on lower difficulty) is very much a deliberate design choice....
Y'know, if you only have one Disnum, it's just the modest inconvenience of if your other rangers want their skills, but if you have more than one, the risk is them getting out of alignment ,, which, someone noted in the other thread, can happen even if all have same Cha.
Umm .. Brittle bones is 2AP, not 4, isn't it? And no other buffs.
Edit: read the other thread you linked (that you're referring to about this) .. not sure I get it. What about the non AP stuff? (CI, foremost) And, uh ... "Intelligence for +0.25 AP" Huh? AP is whole numbers only, isn't it? You have the Attr level for it or you don't.
Mmm, judging from those threads, I guess this is an old patch. I'll mention it, but I doubt my friend will bother, and if he does, it'll probably be too late for me. IDK how far I'll get / if/when I'll get my own copy
From one of the threads you linked:
(That one not relevant to this Disnum thing, just an interesting note.)
Thanks for that Unlucky Link. Heh heeeehhhh.
Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention that the Way of the Squeezins quirk is probably one of the more overpowered quirks in the game. -100% critical hits has no effect on energy weapons or explosives, and the -0.6 Combat Movement isn't that much of a problem. The real problem is buying all those snake squeezins from the bar, run into the Atchison side and back to replenish store inventory, and doing enough of that to get enough bottles to last for the rest of the game, because there aren't a lot of snake squeezins outside of Arizona. There's alcohol, but other types, mostly. Also, the Way of Squeezins quirk bonus comes in the form of a 'drunk' effect, so not only doesn't it stack with the regular Tipsy effect that lasts for 300 seconds, but it only lasts for 90 seconds, which means that one bottle might not be enough for a single fight if it gets dragged out. But other than that, +2 AP and +25% damage is pretty great.
No point at all, as far as I know. And the large rat in Rail Nomads Camp is more of an easily killed combat animal than a 'stick around to give a bonus to its master' follower.
As red255 explains in one of those threads, you'd have to put 4 attribute points into Coordination to get those +2 AP, so that's why it's about equal to Disparnumerophobia's 7 attribute points where 3 goes away because two attributes are rather useless, and two other only get half a point each.
I think the 100% crit book is a book for Combat Shooting, and while it could surely do some heavy damage with blunts, there's also a heavy weapon which has a crit multiplier of x15. That'd do some hefty damage as well, I think. Combat Shooting was a skill in Wasteland 1, but I don't think it actually did anything. So maybe they decided to do the opposite this time, to make up for that.
Yeah, sory, as I edited in, I hadn't read that link yet. Still not sure I get it .. still seems like, depending on your Attr, Disnum gives you mroe overall, but I don't have it in front of me.
First time I recruited Ralphy I also took him to the brothel. "You're a man now, boy." But then I realised that he's already got a girl, so I didn't do that on subsequent restarts.
Getting drunk (Tipsy) is usually rather pointless, but I guess the +3 Strength could help you carry lots of loot, But the -2 Speed and -2 Intelligence means that most characters mainly suffer from it. Not someone who's already at Speed 1 and Intelligence 1 though! Such a character could make good use of alcohol (+0.75 AP, or +1 AP at Strength 3 or 7), while suffering no drawbacks! Such a character could even combine that with Way of the Squeezins to drink both Snake Squeezins for 90 second boost plus some other alcohol for a 300 second Tipsy. In theory anyway. Could get 14 AP with Combat Initiative 15, or 13 AP with Combat Initiative 18, with the Pair of Wedding Rings trinket. Not too shabby I guess. But rather high maintenance, what with all those squeezins. There's a way to get a steady supply of cheap alcohol after Arizona though, so squeezins are the bottleneck. And of course, if all you want is AP, it's better to skip the drinking and go with maxed Speed to get really high Combat Initiative. At least according to my calculations.
Clothes? Actually, I'm not sure!
1a) Speech Skills: Different A** options lead to different results. For example: Spyke Alpha will give you different rewards depending on the speech skill you use. You can get him to join the Rangers (in DC version) with any of the 3, but the outcomes will vary slightly between them.
The Ranger guarding the door to the Citadel will give you a unique (and bad) weapon for passing a speech check. He will not let you through until you have attached a Repeater to a radio tower. The check with Vargas at the beginning of the game is just to teach you how the speech checks function, but other than explain your own tactics back to you, Vargas won't do anything. It also lets you decide who gets free exp at the beginning of the game.
1b) Difference between Veteran and Death: Veterans "beat the game". Death is just game over. For the lulz, InXile created MANY different game endings for WL2, and most of them are bad endings. So there are many opportunities to create Veterans... you don't have to play a 100 hour game all the way through to get a Veteran.
2) Animal Whisperer: No team can have more than 3 animals, ever. You can have any combination following any number of characters, as long as you have no more than 3 in total. If you dismiss an animal follower, you can always charm them back. I believe the "difficulty" of the check depends on the area, and not the animal, so be careful where you dismiss your pets! Animal Whisperer is a very potent, but also very niche skills. It has quest applications on a few occasions, it can grant "free" 3-6 stat points to your Rangers, but it's otherwise sparesely used.
The best pets to have are goats (Combat Initiative is easily the most broken (best) derived stat in the game, so 1 free CI is huge!) cows (as you've realized) and possums (Speed). These are weak animals, but they never fight, so they won't be a priority to most enemies. Dogs get themselves killed because they aren't particularly strong but they always rush in to attack enemies. The unique rat suffers from the same fate. Chickens are easy to keep alive, but the Luck boost is not that useful. Same with pigs and Strength.
Obviously, you get the most out of cows and possums if your Coordination is an odd number to get +1 AP and if your Speed is an odd number and adding +1 Speed gets your total SSI to a multiple of 4, so you get another +1 AP and +1 CI with the boost. Technically the same rule applies to Awareness, as you get +1% Evasion on even Awareness levels, but the CI is more valuable, and you get 1 CI for every point, so goats are really, really awesome pets!
Either distribute your stats on a characer to make the most out of 3 pets, or just get 3 goats for 3 different Rangers, or any arrangement you choose, and enjoy!
The skill also has combat applications, but using it on enemies gets them to retreat, unlike Computer Science on robots, which gets them to join your side. So I usually prefer to kill hostile animals rather than charm them.
3) Perk Stacking: There are very few Peks which have the opportunity to stack, let alone actually stack. If it says that it does, it does. If it doesn't, it doesn't. If you take the time to read through the full list of Perks, you'll probably see trend. Some of them are loot-related, and since you have no money troubles after saving Ag Center or Highpool, you might wanna avoid them. Some of them have combat utility that can apply to the character WITHOUT needing to use the specific weapon which unlocks it (Charge! will always give the benefit even if the character isn't using a Blunt weapon), while other weapon-specific Perks really only benefit those weapons. The generic Perks are mostly solid picks, but if you want your best Defense to be a better Offense, then prioritize the offensive Perks over the defensive ones.
What's not made clear AT ALL is that the core game mechanic of needing to find oases to refill your canteens COMPLETELY disappears halfway through the game! So the Camel perk becomes a total waste after a while.
4) Timed Level-Ups: I did the same thing as you my first time through. There is a benefit to NOT maximizing free healing, however. If you time your radio calls to JUST level up 1 character, you can save scum those calls until that character gets the most hp gain. Since Luck plays a role in hp/lvl, and since everyone can get at least 1 free hp per level, this can add up to quite a bit if you make sure everyone ALWAYS gets their free hp! But, as previously mentioned, that's a defensive tactic, so maybe you don't care about raw hp as much as saving healing items. You should find no shortage of healing items, however, ANY there's frequent access to medics who can heal your entire party.
I always look at healing as a toss-up between cost and experience. I can save resources by visiting a medic, but I can generate exp for my medic by doing it myself.
5) Mercaptain: She mostly provides good armor for the point in the game in which it is available, and a lot of junk. However, she does provide several VERY powerful items! You need to bring her items for her to give you an expanded list of offerings, and some of those take quite a while. A couple of the items are found in Toasters, but either way, if an item has bright white letters, some NPC in the game will want it. Flintlock and Mercaptain are the first 2 NPCs you'll want to check with. If neither of them want it, hold onto it. Someone will.
Mostly, Mercaptain's best rewads are THE best Energy Weapon in the game, and 2 weapons which give bonuses to speech skills. Don't underestimate the power of free levels in skills! These weapons effectively give you the potency of Trinkets, and they STACK with those Trinkets! So Smart A** can receive 5 free levels, and Kiss A** and Hard A** can receive 4 free levels, because of these items! Sure, the weapns suck for combat, but just hold them in your spare weapon slot, and switch weapons when combat starts!
6) Trinkets: Yeah, the "thumbs trinket" kinda sucks. If I'm not mistaken, it's a reference item, so it's not necessary made to be awesome, so much as it's made to be an Easter Egg. There are MANY Easter Eggs in this game. Many, many, many of them.
In general, there are a few really awesome Trinkets, a few good Trinkets, and a lot of bad Trinkets. Most Trinkets are generic, and you will get multiple copies of them with the right RNG. The "best" (most favored for combat) Trinkets, the Inverted Four-Leaf Clover, and the Pair of Engagement Rings, are generic. A few Trinkets are unique, and you'll never get more than 1. The most notable is Choice, which you will find in the 2nd half of the game.
7) Backup Surgeon: If you never go down, you never need a backup surgeon. That being said, at least 1 battle will be so difficult that you'll probably want a spare. Depending on how difficulty you find the game, you may or may not need any extras. But yes, you cannot revive your downed medic if you only have 1 medic. The recommended tactic is to just put 1 Basic Trauma Kit on your other characters, and to have no more than 1 level in Surgeon on each of them. This gives you the lifesaving extra surgeons if your primary medic falls, and you don't need higher levels of Surgeon to revive someone. You revive someone with minimal health, but it saves them.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/132117-wasteland-2-directors-cut/faqs/73119
GREAT guide, has a lot of info, and it covers almost everything! It even has a small section (page 2?) that covers sample Starting Ranger builds, for players who have no idea what they're doing. It's not "short", however. But if you skip the table of contents (to avoid spoilers) and just look up the part where you find yourself stuck (it's written in more-or-less chronological order) it will most likely have solid advice on how to advance. I've read some guides which are pitifully vague, and this one does not suffer from that problem.
Also worth noting, as I did not bring this up on section 1a, is that the amount of exp you get from skills is almost always based on the difficulty of the skill check. If a container has a level 3 lock and a level 2 lock, you'll get more exp using the level 3 lock.
Also also, I recommend using skills whenever you can. Even using as many skills on an object as possible. It's free exp. You could just grind levels in random encounters, but that's kinda tedious. You'll find that certain characters will simply zoom ahead of others because they have certain skills that they use more than others. Your weaponsmith will likely be such a character. So try to disarm and unlock AND break open all the doors!
Regarding recruits... This is one of my gripes with the game. It's not that the game pushes certain recruits OR punishes you with certain recruits, it's just that players have largely "figured out" how to build the "perfect character", so recruits who reflect this are more valued than others. The same goes with weapons. Scotchmo is one of my favorite recruits, and he gets a lot of crap for having Shotguns as his primary weapon skills. I'm not a fan of how few recruits there are to work with, in the game, and certainly if absolutely optimization is your goal, then certain recruits are "better" than others, sure. It's not helpful that the game doesn't warn you that you'll lose Angela Deth forever if you dismiss her or reach a certain point in the game, but it should kinda be obvious that she's meant as a "tutorial aide" for how easy she is to acquire and how leveled she is for that point in the game. Basically, pick up recruits where you find them, and if you don't like their setup or their stats, you can always dump them and they'll be back at the Citadel if you wanna pick them up later. The downside to this is, of course, that any recruits not with you as you earn party-wide exp will not benefit from it, hence the guides recommending skipping straight to RNC to get Ralphy and Scotchmo.
---
As for stats, as mentioned above, there is a meta, and that meta is the result of players figuring out "the best" character build. But I find that boring, and kinda kills the fun of playing the game the way YOU wanna play it. This doesn't change the fact that Combat Initiative is THE king derived stat, but you can still enjoy your variety without being too gimped...
The thing to remember is that every 10 levels, you get 1 point to spend on your primary attributes. You'll probably beat the game in your 40s, with a leader likely ending the game at 50 (the max level) so that's 4-5 points you get to add to your attributes over the course of the game.
Coordination (COR): AP and (ranged) CtH. A decent stat, purely because of the cost/payout ratio for AP. But you don't need that much AP, and CtH can be granted from leveling weapon skills, leveling your leader's Leadership, and modding your team's weapons.
Luck (LCK): A very versatile stat, but because of its dice-rolling nature, players discard it as a dump stat. You'll certainly make a stronger combatant if you leave LCK at 1, but more LCK has its advantages. In particular, Scotchmo has an unusually high chance to Crit specifically because of his high LCK and the Shotgun's relatively pitiful Crit chance. Meanwhile, 10 LCK on a Sniper means 50% Crit rather than 41%, which is no big deal. I prefer to use LCK as free hp/lvl, which is not to be underestimated, if you want a good tank!
Awareness (AWR): Combat Initiative and Evasion, with small boosts to vision range. The latter is not that important, and you get more Evasion from SPD, but the CI boost is huge. High AWR will heavily offset characters with lower SPD, but the downside is that you won't have much room to spend your free points every 10 levels if AWR starts out really high, so most recommend AWR to stay in the middle.
Strength (STR): It contributes to AP, it gives you carry weight, it governs hp gain (without relying on a LCK dice-roll) and it improves melee Crit damage. Because you can roll with 7 in your team, carry weight is generally a non-issue. Because ranged weapons grant you the opportunity to kill enemies before they ever get into melee range, the Crit bonus can seem underwhelming. So it's mostly a matter of AP and hp. Like with ranged vs melee, killing enemies faster mitigates the damage you receive, so more hp can also seem less useful.
Speed (SPD): Contributes to AP, Evasion, Combat Speed, and Combat Initiative. Because everything it gives is so good, players consider this the king stat. What's more, 4 SPD is ALWAYS preferable to 2 COR and 2 AWR. You get the same CI and AP, but more Evasion, Combat Speed, and you only lose some CtH, which is nothing in the larger scheme of things. So the advice "always set to 10" makes sense, though I find anything from 4-8 works, too. Just make sure it's always an even number, otherwise you miss out on 1 CI.
Intelligence (INT): Contributes to AP, and gives SP/lvl. Like with carry weight and STR, high INT for more SP/lvl is mitigated by spreading skills across your full team of 7. You shouldn't need more than 1 so-called "skill monkey" (10 INT, sometimes high CHA too), and with more than 2 you'll find yourself swimming in SP by level 10, with nothing to spend SP on by 30! The smaller your team, the more INT you'll want, otherwise 1-4 are optimal.
Charisma (CHA): Only has 3 functions, Leadership aura radius (on just the leader), non-combat quest exp bonus, and affects recruits. The Leadership bonus is the only thing that impacts combat at all, and it has no affect on how characters respond to you. A small number of potential recruits will not join you if your total team CHA is below a certain number, but this is easy to boost with keeping particularly charismatic recruits on hand (temporarily), as well as equipping Spiked Collars. You'll rise through the ranks quicker with more CHA, but past a certain point it won't really matter. Your leader needs decent CHA, and that's really about it.
Generally speaking, try to make S+S+I a multiple of 4, put the rest into A and C, and you're pretty much set.
I like to consider Animal Whisperer when designing my teams. Snipers benefit considerably from their pets, because they're typically far enough away from danger. If your build RELIES on the stat boost from AW, this could pose a problem near the end of the game... It means some tedious fights, but it won't break your character (too much). You can assign 28 points between your 7 attributes, and with level-up points and Quirks, your characters can have anywhere from 14-47 total attribute points! This makes Ascetic, Disparnumerophobia, and Manic Depressive potentially very powerful Quirks! Together with AW, this could mean a single character has 50 points to work with, while another character might only have 18! More than likely, however, you're going to be working with stable characters who have between 29-32 attribute points at any given time. Enough to make them good at something, but not enough to make them good at everything.
Also worth noting, attributes cannot go higher than 10 nor lower than 1. So the downside to Manic/Disp won't affect any stat set to 1, nor will the upside improve a stat already set to 10. So unless you deliberately gave your character very average stats, it's highly unlikely they'll suffer the downside of Manic to such a degree that they're down to 14 points. XD
You can really play with the character creator, but until you play enough of the game to see what you'll run into across multiple forms of combat, you won't fully appreciate how those really impact your characters. I like aiming for builds with 14 CI, which gives me strong combat potential, but also leaves me plenty of room to try out different things! Fewer than 9 AP also feels a bit weak, but your characters do have room to grow, so don't forget about how they will improve over time. The way they turn out at level 1 might not be indicative of how they will turn out as early as level 10!
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I think that about covers it for me. I know many of these points were just repeating earlier comments, but I wanted to both offer a different opinion, and in the cases where I did not disagree with another assessment, I figured reinforcing that perspective was also worth the statement.
Hope you're enjoying this game! =D
0) Precision Shots: This is one of the additions to the game in DC, along with Perks, Quirks, and a myriad of balance changes. In vanilla, you either fired normally at targets, or you attempted a headshot, which added 1 AP to the cost of your attack, the attack could not Crit, but would always deal 200% damage, and there was a moderate CtH penalty.
The idea behind Precision Shots was an expansion of headshots, but balanced in such a way that didn't make headshots the only thing you'd want to do. They cost the same AP as regular attacks, but they do different damage, you CAN Crit with them, and they have their own CtH penalties. The logic behind it is NOT that you're aiming more carefully (which the vanilla +2 AP cost reflected) but that you're aiming for a harder target to hit, so it's more likely that you'll miss. It seems a bit odd that the largest target, the torso, would suffer a CtH drop, but you're not aiming for the torso, you're aiming for the armor itself. Otherwise every normal shot would have some impact on armor degredation, no?
When you make a Precision Shot, there's a dice-roll which determines which of 3 status effects will be applied to the target. If you get really lucky, you'll get the best status effect for that body part, and never have to hit that target in that spot ever again. You will ALWAYS get a status effect of some kind, even if it's only the lowest tier.
So let's say you can fire 4 shots in a single turn, and the enemy coming straight for you is scary up close, but you can outrun them; you can either shoot the legs, slowing them, then shoot the arms, making them less accurate, shoot the armor, making them more vulnerable, then shoot the head to confuse them. You'll stack all 4 status effects on that single enemy, no matter what (unless you miss one of those shots, of course), though there is no guarantee that you'll get the particularly good ones or the lesser ones. You CAN, on the other hand, shoot them in the legs, be unsatisfied with the lesser slowing status effect, and shoot their legs again, and if you get a better dice-roll, the better status effect will replace the lesser one. If you get medium status effects, you can fire shot after shot at the body part and get no change, because you fail to score the best dice-roll for the best status effect, but you won't ever replace a decent status effect with an inferior version.
The first enemies that will give you a taste for using Precision Shots more than normal attacks will likely be Honey Badgers, as they are found relatively early into the game, after your first major forays, and they're robust enough that they're harder to take down in 1 turn, and pretty deadly when they get up close. By the latter half of the game, you should look to fire almost exclusively Precision Shots.
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Quirks are very balanced addition to the game, although I'd say each individual Quirk is well balanced with itself, but several Quirks stand well above the rest as the best Quirks to get.
Animal Husbandry: Animal Whisperer gives +2 stat points instead of +1, downside is your pets randomly explode. The downside can be offset by saving frequently, as the timer is reset every time you reload. It's a very peculiar Quirk, that's for sure. Pretty handy for 6 extra Attribute points, but tedious to keep it going...
Ascetic: Free 1 Attribute Point and 5 SP upon starting the game, downside is no Trinkets. This is one of the more powerful situational Quirks. Some advocate for it as the end-all Quirk, others that it has its uses on specific builds. I'd say it's excellent for a 1-INT combat types that don't use active skills. This gives them extra points to spend on combat attributes rather than INT, and since most Trinkets benefit skills, the downside is mitigated. The ARE really great combat Trinkets, however, so it's far from perfect.
A**hole: Hard A** checks ALWAYS succeed, Kiss A** and Smart A** checks ALWAYS fail. This is one of the best solo-run Quirks, if only because it's like 44 free SP from the very start of the game. In general, getting locked out of those other conversation options is pretty painful. I'm not a fan.
Brittle Bones: +2 AP but you take a HUGE cut to your CS! One of the best Quirks in the game. At least it is... on paper. As you progress through the game, battles will demand more and more tactical positioning and mobility on your team, so having slow characters will really drag you down! This is one of the most reliable ways to make a VERY powerful sniper, however. Having made several, myself, even with the extreme movement penalty, the deadliness of my snipers was largely unmatched. Don't put this on your whole team, unless you want it to take ages for your squad to move from one end of a very large arena to the other.
Delayed Gratification: More SP in the long run at the cost of fewer SP in the short run! This is a net-positive Quirk, but you need to be able to handle that drawback until the benefits kick in. What's worse, it benefits 10-INT characters the most, since they only lose 20% of their early SP/lvl, rather than <3-INT characters losing 50% of their SP/lvl, and you don't really need much SP as a whole for your squad. Worth considering if you plan to roll with a small squad, and maybe if you wanna do some grinding in the early game.
Disparnumerophobia: +1 to ALL Attributes every even level, -1 on every odd level. THE BEST Quirk in the game! So good, they had to nerf it into the ground, and it's still good! It's easy to mitigate the downside by avoiding radio calls until you squad members with the Quirk have enough exp to skip ahead 2 levels instead of going up 1 level. This inconveniences your entire party, since everyone else will have to wait for their level-ups, too, but this is further mitigated by putting Dispar on ALL of your main characters! The only real challenge to this Quirk is that active skills and differences in CHA will push some characters closer to levels more than others. But if you don't mind the tedium of managing your calls to HQ, this is an amazing Quirk!
Fainting Goat: Chance of avoiding any damage when an enemy scores a Crit on you, but you lose a turn. In theory, not a bad idea. I've never used it, so I can't comment from experience, but the consensus seems to be that it's not worth the drawback because of losing turns, rather than just sucking it up and taking the hit.
Heavy Handed: More melee damage, BIG hit to Crit. Net-negative Quirk, ESPECIALLY for Brawling, which relies on its 100% Crit (at skill-level 10) to score most of its damage. Doesn't benefit melee characters very much, but it hurts any other kind of character. Best to avoid.
Manic Depressive: +2 or -2 to all Attributes, randomly. The nerf received by Dispar was turned into a buff for Manic! This makes it a solid pick, if you don't mind reloading a lot to have the best chance at being Manic for battles. It's too random to rely on, but the strengths make it very tempting! Worth trying out, I suppose.
Mysophobic: Healing is more effective, but you can't use healing items on yourself. If you can't decide on a Quirk for your medic, this is not a bad choice. It's really just "less than ideal" in that there are vastly more preferable Quirks.
Opportunist: Deal more damage to low-hp enemis, deal less damage to the rest. Another net-negative Quirk, but it can be worthwhile to put on a character with subpar CI who only ever gets to have a turn when most enemies are near-dead. But then again, why not just give them better CI instead?
Psychopath: Better accuracy and Crit chance with repeat attacks, bonus resets after any miss and your bases chances are lower than usual. A VERY good Quirk that synergizes excellentyly with automatic weapons! Heavy and SMG benefit the most from Psycho, since they fire the most bullets-per-turn.
Raised in the Circus: Bonus Evasion, can't receive Leadership benefits. Hidden downside is you look like a clown and you cannot remove/change this appearance. If you can't decide on what Quirk to get for your leader, and you don't plan on training any backup leaders for your leader to get a Leadership bonos (and if you don't mind a clown being in your party) then this is a solid Quirk! That being said, all you're really getting is more Evasion. GOOD Evasion, and it stacks really, really well with the other sources of Evasion, such that you can get a 75% of attacks missing your character... but it's still just Evasion.
Repressed Rage: HUGE damage boost for 1 turn after being hit with a Crit, downside is you can't Crit otherwise. On paper, this might look like an excellent Quirk for a character who relies on non-Crit damage, like explosives, lasers, or low-Crit weapon types, like Blunt or Shotguns. But the activation cost is getting hit with a Crit from an enemy, so that's not great. Worse, you need to be hit EVERY time you want it to activate, since it only lasts for 1 turn! The bonus is really, really good, but do you really want to design a character to be a punching bag to benefit from it?
Thick-Skinned: +2 AC, but you take a hit to your CS. One of the best Quirks in the game. It makes tanks into almost-impenetrable bullet-sponges (super slow, though) or it transforms light armor wearers into pseudo-heavies who don't suffer the drawback of being weak to lasers and benefits from Tinkerer. The benefit-to-drawback ratio is really good on this one!
Twitchy: Increased CS, but -10% CtH. One of the best Quirks in the game. The hit penalty will hurt the most in the early game, and if you take it on your leader and if they wish to attempt burst shots, it will hurt them in the late game, as well (I speak from experience). But it can take a 1-SPD character and turn them into a decent runner. Naturally, it's even BETTER on 10-SPD characters! Trinkets, Mods, and Leadership bonuses will offset the drawbacks as you progress, meanwhile you'll always enjoy the benefits! The same battles where Brittle Bones start to hurt you will be all-but overcome thanks to Twitchy. It's not broken like Dispar ever was, but it's really good!
Two-Pump Chump: +2 AP and CtH bonuses during your first 2 turns of combat, -1 AP and a CtH hit afterward. This is another "looks good on paper" Quirk. Unlike others, however, I actually think this is pretty decent! It really hurts when you get to the later battles in the game, particularly the ones that take 10+ turns, so it will seem like a short-term boon but long-term detriment.
Unlucky: Lightning random strikes people in combat, including you. This is one of the silliest Quirks in the game. Players have figured that this works very well on solo-runs, but even then it takes a massive amount of dedication to save-scumming to get the benefits of the wrath of God smiting your enemies while avoiding the same wrath, yourself.
Way of the Squeezins: +3 AP and CtH bonus while drunk on Squeezins, you can't Crit and you lose some CS while sober. One of the best Quirks in the game. Like Gillsing pointed out, the Crit penalty is completely circumvented when using explosives and lasers (and the 2 synergistically work great with each other) and they benefit greatly from the benefits. Several battles that challenge players by presenting them with tough opponents who take a while to whittle away at will be made significantly less daunting by giving more attacks and better accuracy with their burst shots to an Energy Weapons specialist! The challenge is in planning when you want to get them drunk, as the bonus is very short-lived.
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I mentioned Perks in my earlier post, and there are too many to really cover in full detail. Suffice it to say, they really reshaped the way the game could be played! Suddenly the recruits that were shunned because they could only ever get 9 AP by the end of the game became excellent picks, because Precision Shots to the head didn't cost 9 AP, and those recruits could easily get 8+ AP thanks to Tinkerer for only 4 SP invested! Enemies that were deadly up close could be kited around effortlessly with a single shot to their legs. The drawbacks of Heavy Armor were somewhat curtailed thanks to Perks like Charge! and Shoulder the Load and Armor Maintenance. Characters became more than just "I have AP, I spend AP", they got some character to how they played!
Another MAJOR overhaul of DC was reworking Energy Weapons. Previously Energy Weapons relied on Armor Threshold, which worked the opposite of Armor Penetration. You WANTED enemies to have more AC for your EW specialist! With the introduction of target shots to destroy armor and lower AC, this made Armor Threshold a rather counter-productive mechanic, so it was entirely removed, and replaced with the Conductive Armor mechanic. This, sadly, made Heavy Armor and Energy Weapons rather broken... in the negative direction. Still, they're not bad, particularly in the early and later segments of the game, respectively. Furthermore, characters specializing in EW could invest in side-arms if they have no Conductive targets, or go for Preicions Shots to provide some valuable utility to their team during their turn, since damage output would be less-than-stellar, and characters facing laser-armed enemies could avoid the risk of ridiculous Conductive multiplier damage by simply taking their Heavy Armor off BEFORE a fight! In-universe this is rather odd, since who could be so clairvoyant to know ahead of time to take off their body armor, let alone WHO would do that anyway? Besides, why would LASERS be less effective against flesh-and-bone targets? Maybe a bit less, but WAY less?
Anothe change was removing Bleeding as a very common status effect from most bullets as well as other status effects to other weapons. I suppose this made the gap between lasers and bullets a bit smaller, but it also made Suture Kits all but obsolete!
There are many other changes, but most of them were bug fixes here and there, added voiced lines, other balance changes I just don't wanna mention, and a coding peculiarity that has led many players to complain that Weaponsmith is now "bugged" (it's not). Also a HUGE graphical overhaul (completely different game engine) is not to be overlooked.
So it's not really that the character has a chance to be 'Manic' for a battle. It's more of a chance to get good bonuses for the attributes that are important for combat. Maybe the best build for this quirk would be one with maxed Strength and Intelligence, so the character can at least be guaranteed to enjoy the full benefits of the level-ups? Because min-maxing is quickly going down the drain, with all those random odd numbers.
The skill itself might not be bugged, but when it comes to what it's usually being used for there's a different story[forums.inxile-entertainment.com]. Handy way to get more scrap from Ranger Citadel, but once you leave that place behind the extra chance for junk only hurts.