Brand New & Overwhelmed

[MrPlurface]

I bought the game last night and am super pumped to start my adventure. Started some research on ranger team bulding/creation and have a solid idea of what I want for my team to be but between attributes and skills I'm way overwhelmed I'm going to make 4 people die.

My main idea is a Leader/Medic probably with an SMG, Sniper with high coordination to shoot right off the back in a fight with Outdoorsman and Perception, Jack of Trades thinking maybe energy weapons with high INT to cover the until skills, and a Heavy Armored Tanky damage dealer range weapon but I know AR is expensive.

Anyone who wants to give me input on starting stats, flesh out my skills, or point out my plan is utter garbage would be my hero.

[littlemarty]

One thing to keep in mind is you will gain more party members (NPC's) so don't feel like you need to cram every skill into your starting 4! It may seem strange but make sure one of your people has Toaster Repair as there is a lot of things to be found in toasters!

[neil]

look at the Guides pages here
There are a number of really great ones that help you build some great Ranger types
Just look there mate

Oh and have fun, great game IMO

[Gillsing]

I'd say the heavy armor Ranger would be better as the medic, because a self-healing tank is a better tank, and is also the one most likely to take a lot of low damage that you'd want to heal in combat, rather than high damage that would make you want to run away and hide and please-no-more-damage-please-that-one-almost-killed-me.

The leader should have high Charisma, for increased Leadership radius, but Charisma does not give Action Points or anything else for combat, so if you want your leader to be almost as good as the other Rangers in combat, you'll have to focus on Speed, leaving very little left for Intelligence, which slows down the skill points for a third skill after Leadership and weapon skill.

I'm also thinking that the Psychopath quirk would be good for Submachine Guns, since it should be easier to get the ten successful hits it takes to max out the Violent Tendencies bonuses. I assume the heavy armor Ranger would be Thick-Skinned, because that's pretty much needed to get the best out of heavy armor. Assault rifles might work, but for +1 Armor from Self Defense perk you'll want to have a bladed weapon out and an enemy in melee range at the end of turn. And melee and rifles don't mix. Though Assault Rifles offers a Melee Shooting perk to mitigate that. I guess it might still be better than other ranged alternatives.

[megapat2]

smg and heavy guns waste ammo I dont like them. I gave my stupid rangers delayed gratifcation quirk. hurts at low lvl but is great for end game. get lockpicking and safecraking on same person for end game perk. grab rose companion if you want high int char, I grab ralphie companion for toaster repair he starts with high lvl skill. try not to get more than 5 skills on anyone that way you can max them. you should plan for your helper npcs to fill in weak spots. shotguns and pistols are ok for early mid game. but assault rifles and sniper rifles will save your butt late game.
most important is have fun its a game, dont be afraid to not be perfect.

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by plurface:

Anyone who wants to give me input on starting stats, flesh out my skills, or point out my plan is utter garbage would be my hero.

Your plan isn't quite utter garbage, but it has holes. You are new, so this is to be expected.

Combat Accuracy:

High Coordination (COR) for the bonus Chance to Hit (CtH) might sound great on paper, but the reality is that the bulk of CtH character get comes from Leadership aura and weapon Skill level. Getting Sniper Rifles to level 6+ will do FAR more for accuracy than 10 COR. Likewise, getting your leader's Leadership to 4-6 will be vastly more useful for the rest of your team than their COR stats.

A third source of CtH comes from various Weapon Mods, so a dedicated weaponsmith is essential to your team. If I'm not mistaken, NO Recruit comes equipped with Weaponsmithing? So someone on your team MUST pick it up! Disregard what anyone tells you about WS being "bugged". It's not bugged, it works as intended. There IS a script that doubles the probability of getting parts rather than Weapon Mods, but you can still get Weapon Mods using the skill. It works just fine. Don't let the naysayers get to you.

Skills and SP:

You can calculate your total SP per character quite easily, so it's simple to figure out what their skill load can be. Likewise, you can work backwards by checking the various sources of "free levels" of certain skills, to determine how far you should level a particular skill. Combined, these 2 pieces of information will tell you how many skills a character should be trained to excel at!

Every character begins the game with 12 SP, regardless of stats, and they start at level 1, not level 0 (seems like a no-brainer, but a lot of people miss that when attempting to calculate total SP). There are 16 statues that can be found throughout the game which each yield +1 SP to your entire team, so that's 16 SP you can acquire over the course of the game. Several Quirks and Perks grant SP or "free levels" of skills, so these should be included as well.

So the equation looks something like this:
12 + X*L + Y + Z = SP
X is your character's SP/lvl rate (1-6), L is your character's level -1, Y is "free SP" from statues, and Z is "free SP" from other sources.

For example, a character I expect to reach level 25 by the halfway point in the game, who will gain access to 8 out of the 16 statues, who has the Delayed Gratification Quirk, and an Intellgicence of 10, their equation would look like this:
12 + 4*9 + 6*15 + 8 = 146 SP around level 25!

For a second example, a character I need to be ready to break down any door ASAP so I want them to be relatively "done" around 10, with an Intelligence of 4 and the Ascetic Quirk, assuming they only find a handful of statues, their equation would look like this:
12 + 3*9 + 4 + 5 = 48 SP around level 10, This character can easily max 1 skill by then.

If you plug in the numbers for any character to reach level 40 (the max is 50, but you won't necessarily beat the game by 50, but should reach 40 by the end) then you can determine how many skills that character can handle.

Extra Teammates:

EVERY non-combat skill has a use, though the benefit of Barter is highly debatable, so I usually recommend to skip Barter until you've got more SP than you know what to do with. So aim to have 16-18 non-combat skills disbursed among your eventual 7-man squad. Most settlements early on will have a Recruit to pick up, so once you find 5 or so Recruits you'll have a good idea of who you want to keep in your team.

NOTE: When hiring a new Recruit while your team is currenly full, ou MUST kick someone from your team to accept the new Recruit! If you "accept" the new Recruit, but you dismiss them before you add them to your team, this is counted as refusing them, and that will usually upset them. Some recruits won't give you many opportunities to accept their services, so keep this in mind!!!

It's generally advisable that you pick up Recruits early on, for a variety of reasons. For one, the lower the level of a Recruit, and the sooner you get them, the better you can customize them. Most Recruits are designed in fairly un-optimized fashion, so player customization is pretty important. Also, if you get certain party-wide bonuses that cannot be repeated before you hire a certain NPC, then that NPC misses out on the bonus (usually exp and SP).

Conclusion:

That's it from me (for now)! I'd personally recommend you try out the game and finish the first major settlement, which will probably take you 2-10 hours to complete, before you "decide" what to do with your team. You may decide to scrap it and start over! That's perfectly fine, because by playing the game a little bit, you'll have a better understanding of how the mechanics work, and what to expect. With that personal experience in mind, rather than spoilers from other players who give you tips without the context that knowledge was learned by, you'll be able to make a better decision about how you wish to proceed!

With that said, I hope this information was useful, and have fun! =D

EDIT: Corrected "level" to "level -1" in equation explanation.

[Gillsing]

Originally posted by SnapSlav:

If I'm not mistaken, NO Recruit comes equipped with Weaponsmithing?

Well, Angela Deth comes with Weaponsmithing 2, which is enough for Tinkerer perk and attaching Grip Tape to melee weapons. Oooh, and Underbarrel flashlight[wasteland.gamepedia.com] too!

It also seems like the random amount of broken weapon parts when stripping weapons goes from 2 to twice the level of Weaponsmithing. As if two dice are rolled, each one going from 1 to the skill level. So it would be worth it to strip weapons mainly after the skill has been raised to 7, before the skill book and the trinket take it to 10.

EDIT: Just now I noticed that according to my list of NPC recruits, Corran Cain also comes with Weaponsmithing. 5 levels!

[ÄmJii]

For starters you'll wanna check up what kind of recruits you'll be running into:
https://wasteland.gamepedia.com/Recruits_(Wasteland_2)

Off of that list, Vulture's Cry / Rose (I prefer VC) and Ralphy can be obtained quite early. VC is a sniper, Rose is a Computer Science geek and Ralphy is focused on Toaster Repair... but he comes at lvl 5 and he can be molded in any type of combatant you want (make sure you up his INT to 4 ASAP!).

Speaking of weapons, Assault Rifles and Sniper Rifles are the top dogs. Just be aware that you don't run out of ammo in early game.
Following those, Energy Weapons and SMGs have niche roles for certain characters: EWs are good for targeted shots which de-buffs your enemies and SMG pairs up nicely with Psychopath quirk (seems bit weak at first, but really kicks up a notch when your Accuracy goes up).
I'm not too impressed with Handguns and Shotguns, but you can try them out... their main downfall is the lack of weapon mod slots, except to see them jamming on critical moments. Same goes for Heavy Weapons, which you REALLY don't wanna bother with.

As for melee weapons, Bladed are best IF you invest heavily into Bladed specific perks. Blunt weapons deal consistent damage, but don't expect to see too many crits. Blunt is better if you want to invest your perks elsewhere.
Brawling is bit awkward, potentially very strong but you can only attack vertically/horizontally which makes the positioning a headache.

If you want to use recruits, you'll absolutely want to have someone with high Leadership. It reduces the chances of "going rogue" (acting on their own) during combat AND it adds Accuracy bonus to all your teammates.

Leadership radius is based on your CHA score and CHA affects how much EXP you get from skill checks, therefore I like to make my leader a "Smarty Pants" type of character: 10 INT and all the tech skills I consider mandatory. S/he sucks as a combat unit, but s/he can still contribute with some pistol shots, chugging explosives and hacking enemy droids (VERY handy in certain encounters!).

[Luckso]

i recomend... do your starting party and go with it...dont read guides until you have finished the game.

[SeriousCCIE]

yeah the guides can overwhelm you even more, should you not really understand what they are talking about.

one of the designers (I believe it was mr. stackpole) had done an interview and discussed the first Wasteland, and he had said he was always curious or something about the mentality of those that write and follow guides.. do this do that maximize your potential, etc... when part of the fun of the game is discovering what works best for you at your own pace.

Often the guides detail a specific method or way that worked for the writer, but may miss stuff.

In fact, many of the wasteland 2 guides out there are for the beta version, which has a great many similarities, but also important differences and so the guides are wrong... and the writers of course rarely went back to fix them. it practically proves his point that it is sometimes best to go it your own way.

anyhow I have played through a few times and still realize I make unwise decisions as far as character progression, but... i still was able to win despite not maximizing stuff and just sort of going with what kept me alive.

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by SeriousCCIE:

In fact, many of the wasteland 2 guides out there are for the beta version, which has a great many similarities, but also important differences and so the guides are wrong... and the writers of course rarely went back to fix them.

^- This!!!

Many guides have great information, and they'll tell you something that gets you alarmed, only to never see what it is they're describing... cause it was either patched or was a feature of vanilla and not DC!

I'd also stress that, unless you're the type of player who NEVER notices there's a story to a game and always skis past cutscenes and so on, that you'd want to avoid guides like the plague. The story of this game revolves around a MYSTERY, and the moment you see names and locations are chapter titles in a guide, the mystery is gone and all the intrigue of the plot has been sabotaged.

TL;DR Play the game and make your own mistakes, try to avoid guides telling you what to do!

[red255]

Yeah I made a lengthy video on character builds a while back
https://youtu.be/r3vfqieISD0

But thats not really needed for normal.

just the basics.
AP and initiative is basically your offensive power.
STR every 2 points is one point of HP per level so thats...your survivability stat.

armor is worthless unless you really stack it. generally I'd just go HP since healing items are everywhere and maybe take the healthy and weathered perks if I wanted extra survivability.

AP is gotten either from every 2 points of COORD or by a sum of every 4 points in STR, SPD and INT. (so like 6 STR 6 SPD and 4 INT would be 4 AP over base)

initiative is gotten either from 1 point of awareness or 2 points in speed.
int gives an extra skill point per level at 1, 4,8 and 10. so it should only be one of those numbers.

the other two stats are typically dump stats.

Charisma makes you level up faster and increases the leadership aura radius.
Luck ...provides a bunch of bonuses in an unreliable manner. and its better to just get them reliably from the other stats instead.

[gamename]

Originally posted by SeriousCCIE:

one of the designers (I believe it was mr. stackpole) had done an interview and discussed the first Wasteland, and he had said he was always curious or something about the mentality of those that write and follow guides.. do this do that maximize your potential, etc... when part of the fun of the game is discovering what works best for you at your own pace.

Well, he could havemade a better ingame tutorial then.

I mean, mainly I agree with you guys, about not wanting spoilers, not getting too hung up on guides and advice and 'perfection', and just exploring and enjoying .... *BUT* each playthrough of this game is so long, and there are many easy to miss things. OP's question in particular seems like a very reasonable question, designing a squad. I'd agree a lot more with the 'just play, no guide' attitude if this were a game you finish in an evening or three and repeat.

(I went with a default squad for a while, then came here to ask for advice and start over. Snap and Gill and a couple others gave good advice .. but granted, you start looking at advice/guides and it's easy to slip into spoilers.)

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by gamename:

I mean, mainly I agree with you guys, about not wanting spoilers, not getting too hung up on guides and advice and 'perfection', and just exploring and enjoying .... *BUT* each playthrough of this game is so long, and there are many easy to miss things. OP's question in particular seems like a very reasonable question, designing a squad. I'd agree a lot more with the 'just play, no guide' attitude if this were a game you finish in an evening or three and repeat.

The advice isn't "just play, no guide", the advice is "play up until X, then decide if you want a guide or not". It's a very reasonable 2 or so hours of playing blind to decide whether the game is easy to understand (and it is) or if you need help and wish to risk spoilers to seek out a guide (and plenty would).