Build tips for beginners?

[Plonker]

I admit I am not very good at coming up with builds for these stat based games, I always make critical mistakes that hurt me later with no way to revert them., any general tips to make a decent party?

[Boneyard Bob]

Well, I have no real tips at the moment, but you can respec your characters at a certain point, so there's that.

[Radiac]

I have a spreadsheet for my team builds. I assume I'm going to use the two NPCs I like (Jodie and Lucia) for the whole game and build around that, giving each of the 4 main people on the "travel team" primary responsibility for two non-combat skills and one gun skill. Jodie and Lucy use sniper rifles. and pistol/shotgun respectively, which fire one bullet at a time, and as such don't use much ammo, so having them as second copies of those gun skills is fine. This is all pre-Steeltown, so take that for what it's worth:

Guy 1: Leadership, Lock Picking, Several ranks in First Aid and/or Mechanics, and full ranks in a gun skill, usually Small Arms or Automatics (these use less Action Points than Sniper or Big Guns, and you're going to be using 4 AP to pop Rally at the beginning of the fight). Starting C.L.A.S.S.I.C. scores: 4.1.1.1.1.3.10 We want high Charisma for two reasons: 1 to allow us to power level the other characters, and 2. to give us the highest Strike Recharge Rate we can get. Starting Background/Quirk: Raider Hater and Prospector (you can pick other ones tho, not terribly crucial to the build, Serial Killer is good if you want him to get the AP spend on Rally back and do more shooting). Wears the Leader's Banner Utility item in combat.

Guy 2: Sniper, Sneaky ♥♥♥♥, Hard Ass, and eventually the hidden secret skill, Combat Shooting. takes _1_ rank in First Aid, , Starting C.L.A.S.S.I.C. scores: 4.1.2.1.1.2.10. Again here we want to give our first two guys 10 Cha to give them max Strike Rate and also max bonus XP, for power leveling the others later. B/Q: Goat Killer and Two-Pump Chump. This guy wears the Anabolic Injector Utility item in combat, but he could also wear the Star of Bravery.

Guy 3: Big Guns, Nerd Stuff, Weird Science, and like 3 ranks in First Aid and then later maybe some Leadership when you have points to spare. Starting C.L.A.S.S.I.C. scores: 6.1.2.5.1.2.4. I don't play melee so I decided to make this guy my "high strength" guy. That's not critically important, but there are some decent heavy armors you can wear with a Str of like 6-7. The added hit points help ameliorate the Quirk I chose.Q/B is Vicious Avenger, Sadomasochist. Wears the Star of Bravery or the Anabolic Injector.

Guy 4: Automatic Weapons, Explosives, Kiss Ass, and later some Weird Science for added damage, plus a point or 2 in First aid. Starting C.L.A.S.S.I.C. scores: 8.1.4.2.1.3.2, B/Q: Sex Machine, Serial Killer, no particularly crucial Utility item. I try to eventually get this guy's Str to 4 so he can wear the Chemtek armor chest piece.

NPC1 (Lucia Wesson): Small Arms, Barter, Survival, Weapon Modding (take it to exactly 5), First Aid, level up her Attributes as you like. I kept her speed high so she could run around applying First Aid to others. Binoculars, Monocle, Modder's Kit. You'd be surprised how much good stuff you can mod onto a gun with Weapon Modding 6 (5 ranks plus the kit).

NPC2 (Jodie Bell): Sniper,Mechanics, First Aid, Animal Whisperer. Again, level her Attributes any way you want. I mostly use her as a second sniper/second healer and primary Mechanics check maker, when that's needed. That said, you can't get her right at the beginning, so I would give like 4 ranks in Mechanics to either Guy 1 or Guy 3 in the early game, before you get Bell, or else make a 5th guy and give him 4 ranks in Mechanics. Stethoscope, Mech Tools, Grooming Brush

Bench Player: Make a guy with whatever Attributes, Background, and Quirk you want and then level him up in Toaster Repair, Armor Modding, and Weapon Modding. Then leave him on the bench until you need those skills. You don;t have to open any toasters at all if you don;t want to, but there are some okay things you can get out of them. You should be able to give this guy 4 ranks in Mechanics in the early game use him to do some of the early Mech stuff, if you want to.

Kwon: Before Jodie becomes available, I use Kwon as a 6th man and generalist. No big strategies for him, he shoots, he heals, that's about it.

A note on power leveling:
When you promote a ranger from inactive roster to active roster, they get auto-leveled to the average level of the active team. This means that if you have 2 high Charisma guys, who will probably out-level everyone else, you can just demote everyone except the two high-Cha guys to the bench, then bring them back one at a time and they all get leveled to the current level of the two fast levelers. This is how you level up the Bench guy that does all the modding and Toaster stuff for you. You can always clear out an area, then go back just to open the toaster. You won't miss out on anything that way.

[cl656]

I can tell you what I do. I build my two main rangers for combat. While the rest of my team is comprised of members who fulfill my utility and speech needs. Also, don't invest in survival at all. You want random encounters, because each encounter has a loot chest and the enemies are all worth xp. I'd also keep your weapon and armor modders at base, and just head back to base when you want to mod your weapons and armor.

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by Ser Loin of Beef:

I always make critical mistakes that hurt me later with no way to revert them.

Any general tips to make a decent party?

I finished this game a long time ago, but I'll never forgot one thing. The most important piece of advice that I can give you is to be careful when building a team full of big guns, big explosives and big bombs. Not only will they obliterate the enemy but they will wipe out your own team, too, due to friendly fire.

I built a team that specialized in specific targeting, rather than area of effect damage. I'm glad that I did because back then, the forums were much more active, and people were complaining about friendly fire.

[Laggy]

One high Sneaky ♥♥♥♥ Sniper, the rest are just Shot guns and rockets! Forget about AI companions. Once your rangers have the Devastation perk plus each in their hands a wide-choke modded shotgun... there isn’t really gonna be much of anything left standing between your rockets range and shotguns cone of fire...

[dudex]

these 2 builds are insanely strong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4re8xOw9XA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgc5O_rdPXw

add in a skill monkey with those 2 and take 3 npc (or 4 npc if u respec them). npcs are nice for extra dialouge the created rangers are silent.

[Papa Shekels]

Lots of good stuff here, but a few bits from me too:

If there is a single skill you want to rush, it is 100% lockpicking. Getting more money and better gear early on, gaining additional advantages in tougher fights, unlocking secret content that would otherwise be unobtainable...lockpicking does it all. Goes double now that you have some useful crafting recipes that can only be obtained behind locked doors/safes. Lockpicking checks occur way more often than any other single skill (unless you count combat as a skill check, but even then lockpicking would give it a run for its money), so being able to pick all those locks will also give you a fair bit of exp over time. And most bunkers, which only give you one try to solve, can be successfully looted with a lockpicking check.

In terms of most other things, you really want to min-max in this game. Spreading yourself thin does not work out well. My early game character attributes just ended up with two 10s, a bunch of ones, and I think one stat that ended up being a 3 due to extra points. You get advantages that very quickly stack up for specializing in specific things.

You can do this in many different ways, but I would also suggest planning out a strategy for each character as you build them. Have a specific goal for what they do and try to minimize overlap with your other characters.

Also, don't sleep on consumables. Grenades/drugs can be very helpful, especially in huge fights where the first few turns can pretty much decide the outcome. Until you get to the point where your rangers can each take out 2-3 enemies in one turn, bogging them down with status effects and damage over time really shines

[Radiac]

When trying to decide which skills to give to which rangers, I suggest first trying to decide who your NPCs are going to be, then give the main 4 other stuff. This is why I like Bell and Wesson, as their starting skills aren't terribly great combat-enablers anyway, which cuses me to be able to give those "good" skills to other people.

Lockpicking will cause the guy who has it to gain significantly more XP than the rest of the team. If you put it on a guy with maxxed Charisma, this will be even more apparent. As such this guy will be like 1 level higher then the rest of the team, most of the time.

Some non-combat skills synergize with different gun skills. For instance, you may want to give the Leadership skill to a guy that has a low AP-cost gun like a Small Arm or Automatic Weapon so he can pop Rally first, then still shoot once or twice. If he has a Big Gun or Sniper Rifle, that's not as good. It makes the skills awkward, for one thing, and the AP to Pop Rally and then shoot is really high. If you give him Automatics, the last Perk you get in that skill line, Trigger Happy, gives you 3AP back when you kill a guy, which is a nice way to replace the lost AP from using Rally on that guy. You don't get all 4 of them back, but 3 is a lot. The Serial Killer Quirk does this too, and you could build a guy that has BOTH Serial Killer and the Trigger Happy Perk, if you want to go crazy and get really meta,

It's wise to give your Sniper guy the Sneaky ♥♥♥♥ skill just to get the added Sneak Attack damage, since the sniper always takes the first shot, when they can. I like to give the Big Gun guy Weird Science because there are some good Energy big guns, and theoretically you get more damage out of a flamethrower that way too, but I think flamethrowers are really bad and a waste of time. I give my Automatics guy Explosives in anticipation of getting a good Explo SMG in the later part of the game. Some would tell you to give the SMG guy Weird Science to make use of the Laser Sprayer SMG instead, that's totally your call. There are also some good Energy sniper guns, though I reserve the skill points I'd spend on that for Combat Shooting instead, which is a skill that is points-intensive and needs to be unlocked in the story.

The rest of the non-combat skills, like Hard Ass, Kiss Ass, Survival, etc don't really combo up with anything in any really specific or noteworthy way. Sure, there's a Perk in Toaster Repair that can get you an extra 25% Fire damage, but I don't think it's worth doing.

Some spoiler notes about guns you'll eventually find:
Explosives and Weird Science will allow you to get optimal damage out of certain guns you'll find, which do Explosive, Energy, or Fire damage. I never really found a Cold damage gun I liked, FWIW. There's a really good SMG (PDW-01) and a good HMG (Nidhogg) that do Explosive Damage. You'll find the HMG earlier, but this means you might want to switch to a Minigun later anyway. The Explo SMG is top tier, but it's in a level 3 rad zone, so you can't rely on getting it terribly early. There are some good Energy Sniper rifles and a few decent Energy SMG/AR guns. The only high-end Energy pistol is in Yuma, which is the last map you clear, and thus that gun is mostly useless by then. There may be good Explosive or Energy shotguns in the game, but nothing is as good as the Jackhammer, so I wouldn't give the Small Arms guy Weird Science. I like to give Explosives to the Automatics guy and Weird Science to the Big Gunner. There are one or two really strong Energy Big Guns, one you find very early (in a the toaster in the Sans Luxe apartments), and the other is late game purchased from the guy in your base, if you don't randomly find it elsewhere first. There are also 4 unique mods you can get that change the damage type of the weapon they're on. They're called "Linkages" If you've talked to Snappin Jimmy Bob in Colorado springs, you'll notice he sells the Cryo Linkage. I don't recommend buying it, because it converts the gun to cold damage, and it requires some skill level in Modding to apply it. There's one that converts the damage to Fire, called Incendiary Linkage, which is sold by The Sanctified Piscatelli, in The Bizarre. The Plasma Linkage, which converts to Energy damage is found somewhere in The Warrens, under the Bizarre, and the High Explosive Linkage can only be obtained if you side with the Hoon Family and go save them when you get the Heads or Tails mission, which is sort of Sophie's Choice scenario. Theoretically, you could end up eventually giving your Big Gunner Weird Science and then give him one Minigun that has the Fire linkage and another that has the Energy linkage, or you could just use the Graviton Shredder for energy damage when you get it (late game, purchased from the guy in your HQ). Frankly, the Minigun is so good that it doesn't really need a linkage anyway, and there are other underbarrel mods you could put in it. There are two places in the game where you can get good guns early. One is the safe in Liberty Buchannon's room in the Buchannon Mansion in Broadmoor Heights. The other is a bunker in the outside world, in area northwest of Colorado Springs, located south of the DOE Site. You'll have to drive North to get to it, so you'll see the bunker before you see the DOE Site, FYI. I recommend saving the game right before you hit any overworld bunker. Even if you're not going to savescum for best loot, you might hit a skill check you aren't prepared for, in which case you won't be able to open the bunker and then you get no loot at all, and the bunker disappears forever. This one bunker I'm mentioning here, the one south of the DOE Site, will give you a random high tier weapon when you successfully open in, which requires a series of different skill checks. I forget which skills and what levels they are exactly. The bunker gives you some junk items, some random loot, like ammo etc, and the last item it gives you is a random high tier weapon. Sometimes is a Plasma Hammer, sometimes it's a Minigun, etc. I got a PDW-01 out of this thing once, and a Graviton Shredder another time, and it can be accessed relatively early in the game. Early enough that you definitely won't have the required skill for the weapon you find when you find it. Personally I recommend savescumming this bunker for something you can actually use.

[Commander Gorda]

Dont have my exact Numbers but for supreme jerk i have.
Leader
Charisma 7 for leadership aura, strike rate and xp boost, 2 in the other stats and Max out coordination as you go.
Goat killer and serial killer.
Usually starts combat with rally then he finish of a low health target to get ap back and kills another target for multi-kill leader bonus. Used both smg and assault rifle.
Automatic, leadership first aid.

Sniper
8 coordination ( can shoot twice per turn with rally from leader)
3 charisma for strike rate and xp
2 most other stats.
Goat killer sadomassochist

Heavy
8 coordination ( Two shoots with heavy with rally)
4 strenght 4 speed nice for flamethrower
Big Guns , eplosives, toaster Weird science.
Pyromaniac disciplle of metal , everything synergy with fire and explosives in this build.
Used both minigun and flamethrower can use rockets for hard fights.

Small guns
4 strenght and speed for close range
4 luck for better penetration
Vicious avenger and serial killer
small Guns , nerd stuff

I give Kwon lockpicking and replace him with scotchmo later, lucia is the other Companion.

[snuggleform]

My 2 cents:

The 4 custom rangers you use should all be sadomasochist perk since it hugely increases your damage, and the drawback can be avoided by playing well or just alpha striking them before they hit you.

For all 6 characters I recommend maxing out charisma first thing, since strike abilities are great, exp is great and extra reward from missions is great, then coord to max, then int, then whatever you please.

1 sniper - take sneak to 4 for early game checks, max out sniper rifle asap, then finish sneak and save points for combat perk book late game

1 sniper - kissass 4 is all you need until the very end of the game, weapon mod 5 for powder pack perk, survival 6 (goes to 7 with binoculars to skip all world encounters), and weave in sniper rifle to use whatever you have available. It sounds like a lot on one character but it goes fast, and you'll still have room to do whatever later.

1 heavy weapons user - get nerd stuff to 7 quickly for early game checks, then balance toaster repair and heavy weapons

1 assault rifle user (get the meatmaker gun early by getting bizarre to liked the very first thing you do when you go to the overworld, then look for the overworld shop that will gift it to you) - get mechanics to 7 for early game checks, then max assault rifles

lucia - get leadership to 3 immediately to use rally, she and kwon will alternate rally (both will not stack in the same turn), take enough pistol skill to use whatever pistols you find, max lockpock as quickly as you can

kwon - get leadership to 3 immediately to use rally, max out explosives, finish leadership, I don't recommend more assault rifles since you already have one so do as you see fit, I barely have kwon firing since he's busy rallying and demoralizing so maybe take weird weapons to make use of the weird stuff you find

bench character - max out barter with it early for your selling and buying sprees, poindexter and max int early for more skillpoints, then it can max out weapon modding and armor modding as the game progresses, although you can spread the burden here with companion characters that you aren't using anyways. have one of your early companions get weird science 7 to get a nice pistol from the patriarch's palace.

you'll have plenty of skills to do whatever you want later on, make sure to pick sniper rifles 2 for everyone at some point because it activates a mark ability that anyone can use regardless of weapon equipped.

the skills I didn't mention like first aid, animal whisperer have very limited uses for skillchecks and aren't necessary for combat if you play well. But you can easily pick these up as you finish the builds I recommend above.

[dudex]

u dont need charisma on everyone for exp if ur goal is to powerlevel.

due to level scaling it is better to feed most of ur skill checks to 2 characters and have them gain levels at a much faster rate then the others.

all u gotta do is remove the lower level members and reinstate them to party and they will be same level as the average of the 2 high level one.

also if u need money to respec/recruit people make sure u got someone with max barter + prospector quirk to dig for gold. if u are willing to quicksave/load every digging spot for gold u can get enough money to do everything u want early game.

[snuggleform]

I dont level up charisma primarily for the exp, it's a side dish. The strike meter bonus is the main reason. Also I consider it metagaming/clunky/unnecessary to abuse the auto leveling by dismissing all but 2 characters. The game's not hard enough that you have to go to such lengths, nor savescum with gold digger.

[Radiac]

I would point out that all skills are not created equal. I don't know what changes the new patch will make to this discussion, but previously to this patch, there was no Utility item that gave +1 Lockpicking, nor was there one for +1 Sneaky ♥♥♥♥. It's possible those Utility items are in the game now, somewhere in Steeltown, I don't know. That said, Kiss Ass has no Utility item at present, so if you want to get it to effective level 10, you have to pay for the first 9 levels the hard way and then read the +1 Kiss Ass book to get it to 10. On the other hand, Hard Ass is a skill that has many different things which give a +1 each: a skill book, multiple Utility items (the Veteran Ranger's Star, the Aviators, and the Star of Bravery, which are all things that would equip into the Utility slot, so you can't use more than 1 of them at a time in any meaningful way, thanks Brian Fargo....) AND a unique armor piece, the Scrap Helmet. This is one reason I give my Sniper Hard Ass. He needs to conserve skill points so that he can use them to max out Snipe, Sneaky ♥♥♥♥, and Combat Shooting, so I give him Hard Ass as one of his two non-combat skills, because it only "needs" 13 points put in it to get it to effective level 10. You pay for the first 7 ranks, then read the +1 Hard Ass book, then, then don the Scrap Helmet and the Veteran Ranger's Star when you need to out of combat.

The combat skills each have one skill book you can get for them, no utility item, and nothing else that buffs your ranks in them. The other skills are kind of all over the place, but there IS a skill book, only 1, for each skill in the game. There are Utility items for +1 in some skills but not others, and there are helmets that give +1 Hard Ass (the Scrap Helmet) and +1 Mechanics (the Machine Shop Helmet). There's also a leg armor that gives +1 Leadership, but it takes a lot of doing and a long time to get it, and the armor bonus is so bad that you're better off without it, probably.

[dudex]

Originally posted by snuggleform:

I dont level up charisma primarily for the exp, it's a side dish. The strike meter bonus is the main reason. Also I consider it metagaming/clunky/unnecessary to abuse the auto leveling by dismissing all but 2 characters. The game's not hard enough that you have to go to such lengths, nor savescum with gold digger.

your post and your builds is full of metagaming but somehow using a mechanic in game to powerlevel is abuse?

even without save scumming having someone in your party with prospecting will give u a ton of money early game unless you got really bad rng.

like u said game isnt hard enough to need metagame to such extents however this is a post asking for tips and im providing them whether people want to use it or not is up to them.

[snuggleform]

How is my post full of metagaming? I basically leveled up a bunch of skills across multiple characters, it's quite a bit different than trying to abuse an auto level system. False equivalence.

The poster asked for build tips, which is...exactly what my two cents are. You veer off the path by trying to abuse the auto level mechanic and savescum.