Best mental health preparation?

[John Rambo Jr.]

After patch, I'm thinking of visiting this game again. My most recent run was ruined by a bug, so I'm giving up that character, but considering to start from new.

If play combat character, what might be the best way to prepare sanity and ANGST?

For sanity, I know dumping Presence and invest Mind, and invest psychology, but any other way?

How about ANGST? Only way I know is to minimize combat, but combat character cannot minimize combat, isn't it? What might be the way to reduce ANGST accumulation?

[Ashtrails]

I'd reccommend tapping into will, not mind (or just do both, if possible), since will gives sanity AND HP and also ups your addiction threshold. By using drugs you will keep your very high sanity above the mental illness zone.

As for angst... why would you care? It accumulates very slowly in the beginning and there are a good deal of junk traits you can pick that won't impact gameplay at all:
sanity penalty for losing friends: of no concern. if a companion dies, you will probably reload and with a combat heavy crew, nobody's gonna die anyway.
lower addiction threshold? either you already have one, or your threshold is high enough anyway. losing sanity periodically while not fighting? inconsequential for your build,
losing sanity when there's no exp gain or journal entry?
it's 2 per pop and mitigated by psychic resistance as well.


With a moderate amount of fighting, I ended up at angst level 3 in my playthrough and only because I got 150 by clicking a specific thing, so... don't worry about angst : )

[John Rambo Jr.]

Originally posted by Ashtrails:

I'd reccommend tapping into will, not mind (or just do both, if possible), since will gives sanity AND HP and also ups your addiction threshold. By using drugs you will keep your very high sanity above the mental illness zone.

As for angst... why would you care? It accumulates very slowly in the beginning and there are a good deal of junk traits you can pick that won't impact gameplay at all:
sanity penalty for losing friends: of no concern. if a companion dies, you will probably reload and with a combat heavy crew, nobody's gonna die anyway.
lower addiction threshold? either you already have one, or your threshold is high enough anyway. losing sanity periodically while not fighting? inconsequential for your build,
losing sanity when there's no exp gain or journal entry?
it's 2 per pop and mitigated by psychic resistance as well.


With a moderate amount of fighting, I ended up at angst level 3 in my playthrough and only because I got 150 by clicking a specific thing, so... don't worry about angst : )

Well my all combat characters before patch reached ANGST 4 or 5... So I'm still thinking if I can minimize ANGST but seems like there is no way. Also, Mental defense is function of Mind, not Will...

[Sisyphus]

Using skills to avoid the encounters in game, such as using survival to out-drink Carrion Jack, and hopefully having the right skills to minimise encounters on the map. At this point if you're replaying you should be efficient enough to not get past angst 3, I never get to 4/5 anymore.

[John Rambo Jr.]

Originally posted by Sisyphus:

Using skills to avoid the encounters in game, such as using survival to out-drink Carrion Jack, and hopefully having the right skills to minimise encounters on the map. At this point if you're replaying you should be efficient enough to not get past angst 3, I never get to 4/5 anymore.

Do you know how many stealth + sense (or agility) required to escape from battle? I'm thinking of Criminal - Hitman, maybe I can play stealth + combat to escape unnecessary battles.

[Ashtrails]

6 agi / 6 sense and 4 stealth got me through all non-mandatory encounters. nightwalk trivializes this hard later on.
stealth checks just seem to decrease the trigger distance between you and patrolling enemies, though. so you could get by with less, I suppose.

never said will boosts defense / resistance. but I'd say mind is very overrated in that regard, especially if you have a high sanity anyway.
I can only reference my own playthrough again, but I had 5 mind and 1 psychology and 7 will and I've never hit the sanity check threshold and only aquired an addiction at the very end, despite not having great mitigation.

[John Rambo Jr.]

Originally posted by Ashtrails:

6 agi / 6 sense and 4 stealth got me through all non-mandatory encounters. nightwalk trivializes this hard later on.
stealth checks just seem to decrease the trigger distance between you and patrolling enemies, though. so you could get by with less, I suppose.

never said will boosts defense / resistance. but I'd say mind is very overrated in that regard, especially if you have a high sanity anyway.
I can only reference my own playthrough again, but I had 5 mind and 1 psychology and 7 will and I've never hit the sanity check threshold and only aquired an addiction at the very end, despite not having great mitigation.

Thanks to share. My new character is 4 Mind 6 Will, and I'm not sure how much I could invest to psychology because I will play stealth and firearm main. But by playing nihilistic, I think I have small amount of mental resistance. Let's see how it goes.