Am I Underleveled (and Undergeared) Thanks to Child Prodigy?

[Brian (The Schmaltzy Cynic)]

Maybe this is one consequence of Child Prodigy, but my current end-game character is around Level 13 at the very last fight whereas I've read other players would typically reach Level 20 on Normal and Level 15 on Expert. (I'm not sure if the level affects the gear available at various stores as I currently have some Bulletproof vests, Special Forces Helmets, an AVS-36, an SVT-40, a Skorpion and a 12-gauge shotgun, and no dog armor.) I've also done most sidequests outside of a few "go collect X" things and I haven't found the last companion, so I don't think the problem is that I am not doing enough side content.

Due to how much the automatic weapons are shredding my character, even after doping up on painkillers and battle-stimulates, I am wondering if my end-game gear is simply too low for the final battles as I had no problem with the Dead City nor the Mountain Pass of Woes. Now I'm either being killed by a burst of 28 - 35 HP shots or getting crits that deal 90 HP of damage.

[sorenthewild]

Having child prodigy(and not grinding) on expert, more or less require you to have high rifle skill. And using the rifle from the bunker safe(mountain pass of woe).
Or to have good luck(not the stat).

Most good gear is lvl locked.

[Dorok]

Normal doesn't provide higher level than Expert, the difference is unnoticeable. The reason is probably the XP lowering for checks and quests is too small and more than compensated with more random encounters and harder encounters providing more XP.

I don't know for Child Prodigy without grinding, I played it Expert but wanted grind.

That said level 13 seems a bit low, level 14 would be more standard, but not sure it would change anything.

If you just want finish the game and skip final combats I read you can use LUCK 10, which should be doable with drinking. I saw it for first final encounter but not for final and don't know the consequence on end.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Yes....you can go to the dead city and farm experience, most end game gear will unlock after you level 15 and at 16-18 you will encounter them very often, even most traders will start selling nice stuff.
But it also depends on your style and your difficulty....you can complete the game the cheesy way with skills...and not like a man through combat

[Dorok]

Gee a man has muscles but no brain?

For grinding, my experience with Dead City was mediocre, main land is much better for many reasons, diversity, bounties, income, ease of use. Moreover stick to main land will allow check for missing weapons and armors all along the grind.

[grraf]

Child prodigy is good if u play easy mode OR go for the death gang's acolyte route(thus having one/nobody as a companion to further drain yr xp) and artificially racking up the xp kill count by razing settlements...otherwise the level grind is soul crushingly slow.
Most of use that play on expert are round lvl 15 for the final mycelium showdown and will often grind up another level(easy to do on slaver encounters) if we feel our party/MC needs the extra perk that lvl 16 offers...however there are few to none that ever bother going above lvl 22(extra perk again) because of the amount of artificial grinding that's involved and not needing either better gear/skills in order to fight their way trough.
Further more the incoming new content in ~3 days from now will likely see most reach lvl16 by end game without the need for much grinding...
Personally i see that trait as very detrimental since i tend to relay on snowballing my way thru the game and that involves a quick ramping up of some key core skills that will function as a swiss army knife in terms of milking every last bit of xp i can and for that failing speech checks for extra xp&cash is not an option...further more quicker level ups on the same xp means u will enter the harder set&non scalable combat quests with better hp; accuracy&crits(more sps to dump into weapon skills faster); gear(random encounters with caravans/hostiles yield better equipment the higher yr lvl is) and leverage that into an even bigger potential for the acquisition of skill&gear.

PS:best way to put it is in terms off the difficulty curve: --^-______-^ and the darn child prodigy trait tends to mercilessly groin shot u exactly when u can least afford it as in very early&very late game...

[Dorok]

Child prodigy can be a bit easier for two reasons:
- For a same level you have a quite better income because you'll do a lot more combats. And it's more and more true as you progress in level. Obviously if you rush through the fixed content it will become harder at a point and you'll just be lower level, nothing else.
- Companions are more powerful, they don't suffer the XP penalty and then get easily 2 to 3 levels more than player character. As enemies are scaled to player level, companions are comparatively stronger.

But the price is really heavy then, you'll need grind a lot to really benefit of this. If you don't you'll just get a tougher play. It is only for players that want a play that is quite longer, and that want to do a lot of random combats. Otherwise it's more a handicap.