Player-submitted builds (post-release edition)

[Vince]

Please share your builds here. It helps us to see how people play and it helps new players still trying to figure it out. Thank you in advance.

[BruteForce]

Originally posted by skaudus:

I'm very happy to open up this thread with my magnum opus murdering machine! It inputs anything and outputs waste for the recycler.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3077462889
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3077463151
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3077464084

What order do you tag skills? I've read about the biotech needing 9 for the final upgrades and was wondering if you need to tag it early game for it to level up or can you leave it last after the +2 int?

[skaudus]

Start: Bladed
Educated: Biotech
Overclock: Evasion

[MDMX]

My Cult Leader, was able to do the optional battles, but talked my way out of trouble most of the times.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198048029219/screenshot/2244542964194048890/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198048029219/screenshot/2244542964194049508/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198048029219/screenshot/2244542964194050199/

[stadtpark-hartmut]

Originally posted by MDMX:

My Cult Leader, was able to do the optional battles, but talked my way out of trouble most of the times.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198048029219/screenshot/2244542964194048890/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198048029219/screenshot/2244542964194049508/

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198048029219/screenshot/2244542964194050199/

Can't believe you did a playthrough with 4 Dex... - now that's pretty unique (- edit: Ok, I saw the 4-4-4-4-4-4 build in the old / EA player submited builds thread to make a point). That limits your AP to 12, and your initiative to let me check:8-1=7 - that is non-existent, as you always will go last. - I guess the companions make up for it.

(That being said: both your diplomacy rating and your combat rating were higher than mine at the end of the game... - well: I did a lot of stealth, and did not do all of the optional battles (- might be time to reload for me and properly finish the content.))

[MDMX]

Yup, Evans and Jed carried the battles, Faythe was the stealth skills monkey. Main Character was just a bullet sponge most of the game.

Edit: it would be very cool if the combat leader had some active abilities to do morale shenanigans during combat. Buff debuff stuff.

[sekwent]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3089272616

my final setup and party

looking backwards i'd switch pistols and biotech to lockpick and sneak
will next time do fastrun with diplomacy at first place as I planned at the start

and impersonate i just dont understand - never highlited option in dialogues

[family guy]

https://imgur.com/a/WvXReR5
My fast runner graze SMG finally failed when I reached the Heart. I never ended up going for the burst fire perk, so I could have put 2 of ap into con or gone for the heart implant, which might have saved me. I suppose it's time to go for duo/trios and crit builds.

[aXlem]

Originally posted by Giacomavelli:

1.0.8 Guy V1

Hybrid solo-rifle-crit-mastermind-skill monkey.

Was able to do pretty much everything, apart from pick up x2 level 9 biotech implants, and couldn't convince Stanton to ally with the Grangers.

Sided with the Protectors throughout.

Did use Romeo for Frontal Assault III (vs the Brotherhood) and also the final fight with Ava in which he bravely took one too many bullets for the (one man) team.

Killed Ol' Bub before he got a chance to attack me.

Stealth killed all of the Black Hand troops, without any stealth feats / tags (at that time).

Have had an absolute blast playing this game over and over for a ridiculous amount of time, as was absolutely the case with AoD as well. For me, they scratch the big min-max / meta / OCD itch I have, all bundled up in really cool and original story telling. Would love to buy you all a pint, but will probably just have to settle for saying thank you so much for making these great games!

Will copy and paste the above and make it my first ever Steam review :-)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3087270500

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3087270548

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3087270621

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3087270303

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3087270385

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3087270445

Edit: Meant to ask - is 83 the highest exploration rep, or have I actually missed something?

11 lvl wow. First time I see solo INT build till the end. Can u show all feats?

[Quickpawmaud]

Originally posted by BruteForce:

Originally posted by Purple Eyestabber:

https://i.imgur.com/WTXNWMj.png

https://steamcommunity.com/id/PurpleEyestabber/screenshot/2236661665084089116/

This is my Blunt/CS pure combat character. He has the highest stats you could possibly have in the game, thanks to healing factor and all stat implants being overclocked. I also gave him every single combat token, so I believe these values are as high as they could possibly get. Levels 1-3 were hell, but once the build comes online combat becomes doable. It shines on the late game, making short work of high DR enemies like robots, Creepers and floaters.

This build could be adapted for "true" solo play, but I find that to be boring so I ran duo with Faythe and added +1 companion at lvl 7 for Harbinger/Cobra. You may also go blade instead of blunt. That may even be better due to blunt's lackluster itemization and both swing and knockdown being incredibly unreliable.

Notice how I BARELY hit lvl 8 in the endgame, meaning the Educated feat paid for itself in the form of an extra level.

I'm doing a similar character. Wouldn't the healing mutation be worth it to maximize healing per turn with healing factor? I've noticed nobody ever takes it

No because there are other ways to get healing and the super soldier is the best way to get the benefits from that. Permanent 20 reaction is waaaay better than 1 Regen. Then with the stims you get 20 evasion as well as AP so that is offense and defense. You don't need more defense you are already overkill defense. You get extra DR and Regen from your implants already. Avoiding damage and killing enemies quickly are what will help you more at this point. Regen is kind of a weak stat tbh. You take Healing Factor for the implants and stat regen not the hp regen.

[Arday]

Late to the party due to can’t really play during the launch weekend, but finally completed a full run with this melee hybrid solo run:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3088309387

The last 2 feats are: Fast Draw & Quick Fingers

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3088309471

The build has total of 40 battle skill level, 29 science skill level, 24 speech skill level, & 26 stealth skill level.

Highlight of the character:

1. Enough standing and speech skill to access Sigma & Heart endings;
   
2. Enough resources (read: grenades) and decent battle skills & gears to trivialize the Roll Back ending encounter (1v5) unassisted;
   
3. Passed all highest Biotech (9), Computer (10), Electronic (10), Lockpick (10), & Steal (8) checks;
   
4. Passed/beat all sneak exclusive missions/checks: inc. Fort Stanton, Eye, to Stop a War;
   
5. Passed all speech exclusive check: inc. the Spy Hunt worker, Stanton alliance, & Heart Ending;
   
6. Beat all "considered as a challenging" battle encounters solo & unassisted in one run: Triple Worm, Double Psyker, Detroit, Great Mother, Shadow + Turret, Launch Deck Full, Red Hydroponic, Ol’Bub , without using any pulse grenade and very minimal stasis grenade (save it for the number 2 encounter).

If you need inspiration for the battle tactic you can find all the challenging encounter Videos in this link (and also to Stop a War sneak Vid with 7 sneak):

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zgxjxtLkgAZBmVZlaumDMmXs9MMaz81p
(sorry it’s raw file, still can’t find time to set new account, edit, and upload on Youtube, hopefully next weekend):

Edit: Youtube Version:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgjl5ze43WB8hvsk7fYeA3K0hQAsJbNzZ

All the combat videos are 3 fights in a row with similar tactic, so we can see the reliability of the build & tactic and also provide slight variation due to RNG and way to react accordingly.
Just don’t expect anything flashy like 40+ crit damage, this is far from optimal combat build (it’s 4 ways hybrid & 4-6 STR melee). Also please let me know if you find anything that still can be improved on.

FYI, the Launch Deck battle supposed to be significantly easier, but due to my poor & rushed planning on skill leveling, I must finish the battle before Heart & Hydro Y/R, so I don’t have enough biotech level requirement for Heat Absorber before the fight.

The weakness of this build: all related to STR, PER, & CHA ability check.

Fun fact: I’m also playing as an abusive partner to church here: steal their eye, kill their officer twice, betray them, & still considered as supporter.

This build hopefully also help to answer some FAQs in this forum:

1. Is the evasion/armor/regen/tanky/battle of attrition build useless? No, you can check on the videos, it can be very useful, but need to be on the right balance, and combined with right gadget, stims, & grenades at the right timing.
   
2. Can you still make viable melee build with low STR? Yes, blunt will be significantly easier to build than blade due to: (a) the natural high damage of 2H weapon and (b) blunt penetration feat. High AP/DEX also advised for the 2H weapon AP requirement.
   
3. Can you finish all sneak exclusive mission without tag on sneak and/or sneak feat? Technically yes, but we will need to really focused on sneak mission especially on early chapter (the actual challenge is to reach sneak level 6 for early chapter 2, the rest will snowballing). In this build I still need to use indirect feat (skill monkey) & certain mutation, because I need to split encounters to level my battle & speech skill also.
   
4. The certain fight is just impossible to beat even with full party, let alone solo, let alone solo melee, let alone solo melee with hybrid build, even it’s possible it will require very lucky RNG with countless reload!! No, just try to approach the battle encounter more like a tactical/puzzle game instead of FPS game (pick weapon & attack, aim, click, throw grenade for fun in between).

Personally, I only really play again last month (before is 2021 early access), and so far, managed to do 4 significant runs in total (1 run until chapter 3, 1 run until chapter 4, 1 full run on the beta test, and this run is the last).
So just like any other proper game there’s definitely a learning curve but not as extreme as some people claimed.

To the Devs:

1. Amazing game you have here!! Thanks for the hard work & Congrats!
   
2. Could use more non-high grade smokes grenade (in shop/loot/boxes), it's equal to bullet for melee build. While maybe it’s enough for damage-oriented melee build, it’s quite lacking for tanky melee build that typically has longer battle rounds.
   
3. Please consider giving alternative access to the melee implant chip (could be through passing blunt/blade skill check?), for one that need the most (low STR true solo melee char).
   
4. While the writing & level design is amazing, the build-up & story atmosphere at the end of the game seems not in the same level of earlier chapter & AoD. Not sure why & how to improve it, it’s just honest feeling as a fan of the series.

An alternative build :

Actually this build is very similar with my 1st full run (on beta test), the difference is the beta build has +2 PER but -2 INT, this run I decided to go with higher INT just for roleplaying purpose.

Skill-level-wise, I only found minor changes compared to beta test, so the beta build is still pretty much valid and only need little tweak on the speech choice to be able to do all what this build can do.

Higher PER also means the beta build has better PER check and due to its exact initiative number, with enough resource and grenade hoarding, we can cheese even harder on the last 1v5 battle (only need 2 rounds to win):

https://steamcommunity.com/app/648410/discussions/0/3954784199576515652/#c3975051032839453618

[Marcos_DS]

Thanks for posting the videos, quite impressive! I wanted to do a true melee solo build for a while but had lots of problems doing the 3 worms fight without cheating (i.e. sacrifice a companion) or wasting a stasis grenade.

[.]

probably best melee hybrid I've seen so far, grand job :D

[stadtpark-hartmut]

@Arday - I love it: this is probably the best build I've ever seen: you didn't miss out on any skillchecks, even reached Biotech 9 (thanks to Healing Factor I guess) without tag. Did all the nice sneaking and talking options as well.

Simply the Best.

Shows that you can access all the loot, and all the story / diplo / sneak events that make this game great and even choose to do the most interesting fights.

You did not need 200 Accuracy nor 100 Evasion oh you did have more than 100 Evasion, nor Level 11 CritStrike.

Edit: lol - you sold all Ammo aside from Energy Cells. Now that's consequent. - And you had a surplus of 16 EMP grenades roflmao.

[Gaad]

PIT Party
Started with intention for a peaceful diplomatic/stealth playthrough. Then when combat-only quests (courthouse, frogs, mindworms etc.) left in PIT - bipolar disorder kicked in. From this point - all guns blazing with stealthy diversions when appropriate.
Surprisingly, it went so/too? smooth and easy. Killed them all (mentzels, creepers, jellys, robots, bubs, shadows, storms, cobras, azraels, riggis etc.) and then we wept...
Only Ava had some problems with our intention to travel some more - and our party had some with her until we figured out how to "persuade" Zeta to attack Romeo instead of a party member in first turn.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3090079499

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3090079207

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3090078987

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3090078689

Lots of fun ! Thank You Devs!

[Nikanuur]

I don't know what's with Jed and blunt weapons but I have had this experience:

Made Jed a blunt/smg tank only to find how slow he was, often didn't even have APs for even a single attack, and even if he could, his hit-to-miss ratio and damage were abysmal. Despair for many gaming hours.

...all changed with the two handed hammer—which paradoxically has even more debuff to accuracy—and with consistent usage of Super Soldier hypo, and some additional movement upgrades / feats to complement that.

Idk what's going on, but I keep hitting with him even on percentages like 12-30% fairly often (not talking about grazes). On top of that, quite frequently, staggering.

Last but not least, as soon as he is close to an enemy and activates Super Soldier, he can knock out even shielded enemies with the over-head chop, and combo them for extra super cool damage with the aim-buffed heavy attack. The outcome is nothing short of amazing, often disabling one opponent totally.