How many skill should you try and max, besides one weapon type?

[Hexton]

As title says, wanted to know what is a good number, 1 weapon, and 3 skills?

[Palad1n]

The game requires you to max out intelligence early on, which then allows you to max out or fill in most of several skill lines rapidly.

Ideally you would want to utilize 1 weapon line and 3-4 skills.

Once a lot of bugs are fixed and hopefully many messed up and broken quests get fixed, I plan to start over and might even just run with 4 rangers, assigning 4 skills to each to cover everything needed (or most things depending).

[Hexton]

Hmmm ok Int high to start. That doesn’t mean full max 10 from get go?

[Hollywood]

Originally posted by Palad1n:

The game requires you to max out intelligence early on, which then allows you to max out or fill in most of several skill lines rapidly.

Ideally you would want to utilize 1 weapon line and 3-4 skills.

Once a lot of bugs are fixed and hopefully many messed up and broken quests get fixed, I plan to start over and might even just run with 4 rangers, assigning 4 skills to each to cover everything needed (or most things depending).

You only need to max out intelligence on crit characters, and you only really need a crit healer and sniper, but of course could go for more if you want. The intelligence buff only gives you 5 skill points total in this game.

But yeah, what he said, prioritize first aid, explosives, lockpicking, sneaky, nerd stuff, and mechanics on individual characters, then occasionally give them a 3rd side skill like barter, weird science, survival, etc. Explosives is great on melee, sneaky is great on snipers or whoever you use to start the combat, mechanics goes well on a support character. You want the first ones I mentioned to at least level 7 quickly as the game goes from 1-7 requirements real fast and then slows down. Hard/Kiss A is optional but handy.

Ultimately you can get 2 skills maxed really fast, so I usually do weapon and their individual skill, then you can get the 3rd and 4th maxed out as well but much more slowly.

[stretch]

Originally posted by Palad1n:

The game requires you to max out intelligence early on, which then allows you to max out or fill in most of several skill lines rapidly.

How ? You only get 3 per level up. Something may modify it with a perk or trait but INT just gives you 1 skill point for every 2 INT attribute points you purchase. That's 5 bonus skill points. How does that allow you to max your skill lines faster.

One of us does not understand how the INT works.

Could be me.
If it is, can you explain how (other than the 5 points which really is not much at all) this is so ?

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by Hexton:

Hmmm ok Int high to start. That doesn’t mean full max 10 from get go?

Ignore that advice. INT barely helps with SP whatsoever (you get 5 SP with 10 INT, whoop-dee do...) but it helps SIGNIFICANTLY with critical damage output. Get INT for the crit boosts, not for Skills.

Of course, 5 SP translates to 1 lvl 3 Skill and 1 lvl 2 Skill, so you can have 2 lvl 3 Skills and 1 lvl 2 Skill with a character beginning with 10 INT at level 1. That's not bad, but you don't need that AT ALL. And, again, INT and no impact whatsoever on your longevital SP gains. Zero. So since you'll have enough SP to max every Skill, you can, even if every character in your team has 1 INT!

To directly answer your question, you'll want to max EVERY Skill, and you can easily afford it. 28 SP to max a Skill, 17 or 22 SP to level it to 8 or 9 respectively, then use items/Books to level it the rest of the way. There are 16 non-combat Skills, total, and you'll want 7 Combat Skills (1 for each of your characters), so that's a total of 23 Skills. 22 * 23 = 506 SP needed to get EVERY Skill to lvl 9. 6 characters, 3 SP per level, max level 35, 6 * 3 * 35 = 630. 506 < 630.

There's MORE than enough SP to max every Skill with room to spare. Max em all!

[EDIT: Ooops, by force of habit I calculated the max team at 7 characters, instead of 6. Fixed now!]

[Hexton]

Well on that train of though about Int, I just noticed Brawler which I wanted to make, say it uses Cord, Cha, and Int? So I assumed Strength would be the main choice...so now does Brawler count as melee for str bonus. Why Int and Cha as primary stats on a brawler and not St.

I guess a Brawler Leader build then.

[Hollywood]

Originally posted by Hexton:

Well on that train of though about Int, I just noticed Brawler which I wanted to make, say it uses Cord, Cha, and Int? So I assumed Strength would be the main choice...so now does Brawler count as melee for str bonus. Why Int and Cha as primary stats on a brawler and not St.

I guess a Brawler Leader build then.

That's just game devs expecting you to crit every 3 seconds and getting strike meter up. On a brawling weapon that is of course a build choice, but honestly I'd rather get strength to at least 8 first on any character going into melee. You'll need speed, strength, and coordination. Strength and coord being the most important, maybe alternate intelligence and speed one the first two are maxed.

[Hexton]

For brawler you mean, strength or coord first. So strength helps brawling as if it were a melee weapon? And Int Cha for Crit Chance and strike (whatever that means) it doesn’t state hovering over it

[Zaris]

Finished the game with lvl24-26 and had all support skills maxed (4 on 4 custom rangers, 3 on the 2 recruits).

For now i see 2 possible ways to reduce skill pts waste:
1) Plan for Kiss Ass / Stealthy on Kwon (first recruit) and Animal Whisperer / Survival (? forgot her initial skill here, maybe it was Barter) on Lucia (second recruit). You can lose 1-2 of them depending on the ending but doesn't matter after that it's only 2 fights left and you can swap them aroudn with other recruits when that happen.

2) Put Leadership, Armor Modding, Weapon Modding, Animal Whisperer on the 2 random guys because they aren't to necessary early on and the other 12 skills on your 4 custom ranger.

[jack_of_tears]

I would say 1 Main Weapon, a lesser Melee skill for when you run out of ammo, and 2-3 secondary skills. Lockpicking, Mechanics, First Aid, and Nerd Stuff are probably your four most important skills, so put those on characters you intend to have around for awhile - like your starting custom two.

[Arandur87]

Originally posted by Zaris:

Finished the game with lvl24-26 and had all support skills maxed (4 on 4 custom rangers, 3 on the 2 recruits).

For now i see 2 possible ways to reduce skill pts waste:
1) Plan for Kiss Ass / Stealthy on Kwon (first recruit) and Animal Whisperer / Survival (? forgot her initial skill here, maybe it was Barter) on Lucia (second recruit). You can lose 1-2 of them depending on the ending but doesn't matter after that it's only 2 fights left and you can swap them aroudn with other recruits when that happen.

2) Put Leadership, Armor Modding, Weapon Modding, Animal Whisperer on the 2 random guys because they aren't to necessary early on and the other 12 skills on your 4 custom ranger.

Pretty much this. Kwon comes with Kiss Ass allready, no need to put it on a custom Ranger.
Lucia has Weapon Modding and Barter, on level 6 you unlock a perk, wich allows you to sell junk with a chance of 50x the value. If you get a lucky procc, you swim in money early on and can buy everything in the game, without worrying about anything.

I would advice to make a Melee (Brawler is insane)/Weird Science/Animal Whisper/Survival guy, an Explosive/Mechanic/Big Guns/Toaster Repair guy, a Sniper/Sneaky/Lockpicking/Armor Modding guy and a Nerd Stuff/First Aid/Leadership/Automatic Weapon guy.

That covers preatty much everything and you have great synergys (Melee+Weird Science opens up Cyborg options and usage of the best strenght-Armor in the game. Sneak+Sniper on a crit build is insane for opening fights with oneshotting stuff, even Scopritrons. My highest crit was ~15k dmg. Toaster Repair+Explosive+Big Guns have synergies for Fire+Explosive-damage and so on)

[just.dont.do.it]

If you're minmaxing builds, then poindexter rangers can reliably level up 1 weapon skill, some Weird Science, and 3 noncombat skills. Non-poindexters (meaning, all companions) can level 1 weapon skill, 2 noncombats, and some levels of WS as well. Also, your lockpicker with hog so much skill checks xp that he'll outlevel other rangers by 2+ levels (more if he also have great CHA).

(Meaning, you can pick Weird Science levels for combat bonuses, but you won't have enough to keep it maxed with the rest of skills)

[BigRockWall]

using level 26 as an end game reference (average of what i been seein people post). 84 skill points if you have 10 INT. 79 without it. 84 SP is 3 rank 10 skills if you pay for all 10 ranks yourself. or, 3 rank 9 skills and rank 8, using books and items to max the skills that need to be maxed. 16 non weapon skills (15 if you ignore survival like me). plus the 6 weapon skills (1 for each character) means the party requires 22/21 total skills to be (close to) maxed. and a level 26 party has 24 skills between ranks 8-10. so, if ignoring survival you can afford to have all skills covered one time only no doubling up, exception 4 total characters can have weird science.

I'm sayin you get 3 flex slots if the game ends at level 26.

[SnapSlav]

Originally posted by BigRockWall:

using level 26 as an end game reference (average of what i been seein people post). 84 skill points if you have 10 INT. 79 without it. 84 SP is 3 rank 10 skills if you pay for all 10 ranks yourself. or, 3 rank 9 skills and rank 8, using books and items to max the skills that need to be maxed. 16 non weapon skills (15 if you ignore survival like me). plus the 6 weapon skills (1 for each character) means the party requires 22/21 total skills to be (close to) maxed. and a level 26 party has 24 skills between ranks 8-10. so, if ignoring survival you can afford to have all skills covered one time only no doubling up, exception 4 total characters can have weird science.

I'm sayin you get 3 flex slots if the game ends at level 26.

To piggyback off your point, the level to which we can save our already-abundant SP in this game is quite amusing.

For instance, when making your 3rd and 4th rangers after reaching HQ for the first time, you can start one with between 6 to 11 SP, so you could give Hard A** to one of them, spending 7 SP to get the Skill to level 5, then make the character The Boss, granting an additional level of Hard A**, thus saving 3 SP (the cost of level 6 of any Skill) and starting a level 2 character off with a level 6 Skill! This can also be done with Kiss A** and Barter, as well.

(NOTE: This will NOT work If you simply create a character with a Skill-enhancing Background but don't invest in the associated Skill AT CREATION. It will only save you 1-2 SP if you don't use this trick.)

There are pieces of equipment which also add levels to Skills, and Utility items (WL3 equivalent of Trinkets from WL2) which add levels to Skills, ON TOP OF Skill Books and the above creation trick, saving you between 11 to 14 SP or more PER SKILL!

I don't get why so many people are debating the possibility of maxing every Skill in this game. The abundance of SP + fewer Skills to max + SP-saving tricks makes it an absolute breeze to learn EVERYTHING and then some! XD

[talemore]

Yes but how many skills should you invest to not end up hitting your head in a wall by your character being completely incompetent in battle or walking straight into bombs or end up stuck behind a lock on a door