Utilities skill.

[Lichlord the Disparager]

I had a new survivor that had no skill yet. I was hoping for a rare skill trader to pop up for lichenology, but could not wait. So I gave her utilities. After reading how to work this up, all I could gather from it is I need to build a latrine and do poop detail. Can't for the life of me figure out how to do it at my power plant or water plant. Any help?

[mr.D4RK]

Originally posted by Runs With Chainsaws:

I had a new survivor that had no skill yet. I was hoping for a rare skill trader to pop up for lichenology, but could not wait. So I gave her utilities. After reading how to work this up, all I could gather from it is I need to build a latrine and do poop detail. Can't for the life of me figure out how to do it at my power plant or water plant. Any help?

Utilities is at the same time, a very useful and rather useless skill.
You will absolutely need one surv with utilities if you aim to use hydroponics, but upgrades for this skill is pretty mediocre.
To level up utilities you need to build a latrine, water collector, still or generator. and on activation of power and water generating abilities on this facilities utilities will level up.
Maxed utilities allow you to get either plumbing (unlocks latrine 2, that dispense water and can raise morale, pretty useless considering that we can build still) or electricity that unlocks solar array for large slot (situational but neat).
I personally just used one book on surv without skills to build hydroponics, and that's it, he still have 0 stars in utilities :)

[Panic Fire]

To add to the above.

Plumbing gives an aditional morale bonus for latrines (or officers quarters) Which isn't bad actually. At max Plumbing gives +20 Stamina to that character as well.

Electrical unlocks the Solar Array (pretty useless) but also Refrigerated Storage (which is a nice boost to total food and medicine storage) At max it also provides +20 parts per day which isn't all that bad to be honest.

Hydrophonics requires a Utilities person at all times so since you have to keep them unlike say computers where you can ditch them after upgrading. Its best to pick the one that helps you out more. If you plan to run an officers quarters for additional beds then Plumbing might be the best choice as thats going to be a tasty bit of extra moral. However if you aren't planning on that free parts every day isn't bad either and Refrigerated Storage is very nice especially when you plan on running Stills.