Power Leveling

[markelphoenix]

Any place to grind out levels? Most encounters have been rewarding 200? Any more difficult high exp encounters?

[atomRPGmod]

Combat XP is related to the enemy HP. The more HP an enemy has, the more XP it will give. Mutants in the Dead City, mole crickets, bandits and mercs you're pitted against in certain quests, like the Death Gang quest have a lot of HP.

[InEffect]

Depends on level mostly. I'd say bumping cultists/bandits is best till 22-ish. After that you can either bump looters in dead city or hunt slavers(if your MC can survive PTRD to the face, which still is in the game for the sole reason of facilitating the grind).

[Dorok]

200 is very low even with a party. Looks like a low level character.

Mole crickets should provide the best XP amount as soon as you take care force them generate new crickets (hurt one and not kill it, at next turn it will spawn one more cricket).

It's a bit similar than Mutants in Dead Cirt that call for help, except you control it and crickets provide more XP. 1800XP for a party of 5 is rather doable, and an average of 1200XP should be doable with the right technic. This will be faster than try do the same with mutants. Crater combat with mutants won't even provide as much XP than 1800 for party of 5.

But if it's not been changed, animals seem have a scaling limit. So at end at later levels only some humans random encounters will provide good XP. InEffect already answered on that, but before high level, Crickets is a good bet and much safer than slavers.

But for both Mountains and Dead City, don't forget bring ammo for a long power leveling session.

[markelphoenix]

I heard after leaving Dead City, game ends? So I can't go there, level and do content, then come back? That is just end of game?

Also, where is this Mountain?

Outside of these two areas, any good specific locations?

Somewhat location uninformed, thus why I am asking here.

[markelphoenix]

Also, can you travel back and forth from this Mountain and Dead City to main area?

[Dorok]

You can travel as many time you want to Dead City and back, and to Mountains and back. Each time you pay the travels.

The game doesn't end after leaving Dead City.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Yeah, stockpile ammo and go to the Dead city on the overworld map and start farming, if you have low luck and low survival skill even better:)) you will swarmed by mutants and bandits, probably in a day you can make a lot of levels and the enemies are not that hard if you go with max party(of 4).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uBFFwuGIKM

[MindofMarcel]

Remember to grab all the meat and cook it. each meat gives 12 xp and you can just keep cooking.

[ElPrezCBF]

Unless you have a high endurance build, you will unlikely survive slaver encounters even at high levels. And even if you do, your companions might not. This is where the encounter mechanic breaks down. You can buff up endurance with drugs if you know you are walking into a huge fight. But since wasteland encounters are random, there's no way you can prepare and seek out slavers for a fight without getting killed. To be exact, I'm referring to the encounter where they start off surrounding your group, which you will unlikely survive without high endurance or pre-emptive drug boosts since you cannot possibly prepare for such a random event. Other slaver encounters where you do NOT start off surrounded are more survivable, though they are less likely to drop truly valuable loot.

[Dorok]

Open Inventory is one action for the whole team. So it's only a matter of initiative, if you have the initiative and the drugs, then you can use as many drugs you want for whole team. Or are drugs impossible to take once the combat started?

But ok there's probably always a RNG involving that having the initiative isn't guaranteed,

In video demonstrating how manage them you don't see such inventory trick because it was video before the game added the option to open other inventories when the character inventory is open.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by Dorok:

Open Inventory is one action for the whole team. So it's only a matter of initiative, if you have the initiative and the drugs, then you can use as many drugs you want for whole team. Or are drugs impossible to take once the combat started?

But ok there's probably always a RNG involving that having the initiative isn't guaranteed,

In video demonstrating how manage them you don't see such inventory trick because it was video before the game added the option to open other inventories when the character inventory is open.

You can take drugs in combat but if your sequence is less than the slavers, you will always get killed before you have a chance to take the drugs since they will all shoot first. So it seems the game is heavily scripted toward buffing up your endurance and sequence as much as possible before such an encounter happens although I don't see many opportunities to do so.

[Dorok]

The initiative wasn't by group, but I suppose if your initiative is low too many slavers will attack first.

Because I pledged the game I registered a code and always had the soviet army knife at start of the game, it also increase initiative. I thought it was the default but nope, with this knife and high attributes with DEX and ATT, it should increase your chance in initiative. Another point is the dog could be used as cannon fooder but you'll lost it in the combat.

The game isn't so well tuned for permadeath, the game had multiple versions, not sure where it ended, but slavers was more at precise locations but one slavers group more or less hunting you until they get the combat with you, and load back on fail was tending push back this encounter spawn.

Without permadeath it's not game breaker, with perma death it's a serious challenge aspect to manage but I remind there was tricks, but I never finished (never bothered either) a permadeath play so I won't be able provide tips for a permadeath context.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by Dorok:

The initiative wasn't by group, but I suppose if your initiative is low too many slavers will attack first.

Because I pledged the game I registered a code and always had the soviet army knife at start of the game, it also increase initiative. I thought it was the default but nope, with this knife and high attributes with DEX and ATT, it should increase your chance in initiative. Another point is the dog could be used as cannon fooder but you'll lost it in the combat.

The game isn't so well tuned for permadeath, the game had multiple versions, not sure where it ended, but slavers was more at precise locations but one slavers group more or less hunting you until they get the combat with you, and load back on fail was tending push back this encounter spawn.

Without permadeath it's not game breaker, with perma death it's a serious challenge aspect to manage but I remind there was tricks, but I never finished (never bothered either) a permadeath play so I won't be able provide tips for a permadeath context.

It's not about permadeath or not but the fact that there is no way you can prepare for such a random slaver encounter without exact knowledge of their stats, except to buff up your endurance and sequence beforehand as much as possible. Yet, such slaver encounters are so rare that if you get killed or reload, it's not practical to keep trying your luck reloading again until you get it. But tbh, their main benefit is providing XPs because by the time you level up enough to take them on confidently, their weapons/loot would be less valuable than if you had run into them early game when you would most certainly be killed. So either way, they don't really benefit except for late game XPs.

I don't think the knife alone helps much with sequence and a lot depends on your character build. For example, if you take traits that penalize sequence, that makes it harder to buff it up adequately. And you also need to get MGs, grenades and drugs anyway to dish out and take tons of damage in such a situation. Basically, it brings us back to what I mentioned earlier that for all your efforts, such a situation would only be somewhat beneficial late game.