I need some pointers.

[Evil Tendencies]

I've only recently started playing Atom RPG and while I have yet to encounter any serious issues (aside from the rather grindy amount of points it wants you to put into certain statistics) treating it like the old fallout titles seems to have been the way to go.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2916294434

As you can see here I have fairly decent stats, but the issue I am having is that a lot of the information surrounding this game, unlike fallout, seems to either be out of date, inaccurate or obfuscated.

For example, as I understand it, there is a quest to win a tattoo contest which I believe can provide a permanent boost to dexterity? I stumbled across this information on complete accident and was well on my way to wasting my second serum to boost my dexterity to ten had I not.

When I realized I didn't have enough attention to make the skill checks for this contest, I might have wasted the serum again, had I not learned in some hidden post that mining helmets may provide the attention buff I need instead. This one is on me though, because it's called a miner's helmet instead of a mining helmet, which I am so used to.

Ultimately here are my questions below.

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1. How many permanent stat buffs are actually in the game? If you want you can include the expansion assuming characters can carry over. So far I am aware of five.

Shrine, goldfish, two serums and the tattoo. Are there any others?


2. How are my stats looking? I'd like some thoughts from more experienced players.

Since I can get nine strength from a helmet and 10 dexterity from the tattoo what should I bother leveling up with my two free points? I considered intelligence but I don't really need the extra skill points TBH, even with child prodigy, and I can't imagine why there would ever be a ten stat intellect check. Dexterity and strength are fine. Attention might be a good idea? There's no temp buffs for it. Personality on the flip side can be buffed with weed.

That just leaves Luck, which I know effects everything including item drops and might help in the next game (again assuming I can carry over) among other things. Thoughts?


3. *How* does luck affect drops and trader items? Is it calculated upon entering an area or opening the inventory or container in question?

Edit: Also what are the current builds for survival difficulty these days? Links would be appreciated if possible.

[ElPrezCBF]

I'm rather new myself but have played enough to understand certain key issues. Looking at your stats, this is what I see:
-Strength 8: allows you to operate all if not most weapons in this game since you already satisfy the strength requirement of higher tier weapons and just need to increase your shooting skill points to match each weapon's skill requirement to operate. I think if you try to use the weapon without meeting the skill requirement, there will be an accuracy penalty.

-Endurance 7: I've yet to run into quests that require endurance checks to be met but this stat is crucial as it allows you to take more damage.

-Dexterity 9: If you're going for a rifle/shotgun build, dexterity 10 would be better because many high tier weapons take at least 5 APs to get off shots. With 10, you can potentially get off 2 high damage shots in the same turn. This is less of an issue if you're going for an automatic weapons build since those would have more burst shots.

-Intellect 9: This opens up many intellect conversation options. If you have at least intellect 8 and attention 6, you can get 20 free automatic weapon skill points iirc when you observe the Krasnoznamenny weapons dealer handle his assault rifle in the armory. You will also be able to get quests that require high intellect like one of them on the Peregon ship.

-Attention 6: You start off with lower accuracy but it's not a big deal once you start to increase your shooting skill points. But higher attention will also open up certain dialog options with NPCs.

-Personality 6: This is sort of a middle ground where you can have a decent number of conversations to get more xp but yet not high enough to open up a much wider range of dialog options. Without temporarily buffing up your personality with cologne and joints, you can only romance certain NPCs and some of them may even have higher personality check requirements to successfully romance them. Bear in mind that you can only smoke 2 joints each time, which means that with cologne, you can only temporarily increase your personality by a max of +3 each time.

-Luck 2: You will rarely land critical hits, which can be very dangerous against high level enemies. So you might want to consider increasing your luck with the special serum. I don't think luck affects drops and trader items. I believe those are randomly determined although non-trash items in fixed locations will not change.