Psyche Build Useless Early Game + Other Small Issues

[IAmTheClayman]

First off, I want to say that I enjoyed this game when I first played it back in October. Went for a standard small guns build with some science skills and it was very fun shooting and hacking my way through Magellan and Nashville.

Just returned to the game today because I saw the update had landed and was excited to see companions and Psyche skills were included. "Awesome", I thought. "Time to play a charming type with some psychic abilities." Unfortunately this build is completely useless when fighting the Infected in the Gas Station Basement. The pistol I was given is my only usable weapon, as the Infected enemy type seems immune to the basic Psyche attack (forgive me, I can't seem to remember the name of it but I believe it's something like Psy-Shock.) What's more, with a Light Weapons skill of only 40 the pistol is capped at 70% hit chance even at point blank range, meaning a strategy of luring the enemy in, shooting once and then running away isn't reliable. Plus those green puddles mean that unless I am incredibly precise when I move my character the Infected will heal up most of the damage at the end of the round anyway.

Some suggestions as a fellow game designer as to how to make this area more friendly to alternate builds (though I am still very new to the industry):

• Make sure at least one companion is available from the start of the game (for Leadership-based builds)
  
• Have the first enemy not be immune to any particular type of attack.
  
• Barring this, consider implementing some kind of system with buff/debuff-style icons that can inform the player what an enemy's resistances and weaknesses are. Perhaps tie this into the scanning feature - if you manage to scan the enemy before fighting them you can go into the battle with a better sense of how to fight it.
  
• Limit the number of green puddles in the basement arena. Have a bunch in the back so the player can see before starting the fight that these puddles heal the Infected, but only have 1 or 2 in the center of the room where most of the fighting will actually take place.

Again, the game shows a lot of promise but some of these encounters definitely need refinement. I also think item descriptions need to be more quantitative - items like Radforce should tell the player exactly how much radiation they remove. Currently the item just says that it removes radiation, and it's a bit buried in the flavor text. A line of TL;DR for aid items would greatly benefit the player by reducing the amount of reading required to understand what an item does, it turn meaning the player spends less time in menus.

Best of luck with development, and I genuinely look forward to future updates!

[Khan]

Not sure if you are aware, but you can already view enemy or NPC resistances by right-clicking on that enemy in question. As for the basement area, I agree that there should be slightly fewer pools (especially the one makes it impossible to search a certain container without getting interrupted by damage) and the enemy should be only resistant to psi damage rather than immune (only robots should be completely immune).

As for psi builds in general, my advice is to make good use of Stasis (works everything, even robots) and invest in at least one other combat skill. Personally, I usually go with High-Tech Weapons, which gives you good damage against robots (immune to psi damage, weak to energy damage) as well as a partial stun attack, and a heat damage attack if/when the devs fix Ignite (currently does nothing).

[IAmTheClayman]

Originally posted by Khan:

Not sure if you are aware, but you can already view enemy or NPC resistances by right-clicking on that enemy in question.

I wasn't. Is that tutorialized anywhere in the game or did you figure that out on your own?

[Khan]

To view a character's or creature's HP and resistances, right click on him/her/it (in or out of combat) and choose "Examine" (magnifying glass symbol). This will bring up a window showing a brief description of the target and the target's current / maximum HP and resistances. This also works for most or all objects, and will show hit points for things like doors that can be destroyed.

Incidentally, doors (unlike robots) can be damaged normally by psi damage, at least in the current version, so you can use Psy-Shock to batter down doors from a distance while saving ammo and not having to be right next to the door with your bare hands. Other useful things to know are that you can rotate the camera with Q and E (not mentioned on the help screen, though it does mention using the middle mouse button), and that the key to show most interactable objects is Caps Lock (hold, not toggle). Caps Lock for "Show Tooltips" is mentioned on the help screen but is a very unusual choice, since Tab is the standard key for that function in most similar games, and most games avoid using Caps Lock for anything because it affects the state of Caps Lock system-wide (leading to fun like trying to enter passwords in other applications without realizing you have Caps Lock on). Annoyingly, the "Show Tooltips" function only shows name bublles next interactable objects but doesn't actually highlight objects, and far more annoyingly, it doesn't show any indication of objects which are interactable but do not display a name.

There is no tutorial on this that I am aware of. The F1 help screen only mentions that right-click open the "action menu" for a character or object, which lists options like Examine, Use, Attack, Pickpocket, Lockpick, Hacking , Scan and so forth, depending on the particular object. For characters or monsters, the options are generally Attack (standard attack with currently-selected weapon), Examine, Pickpocket (if you have the ability) and Talk (target is intelligent, not in combat). I just happen to be in the habit of right-clicking on things to open up action menus and examining everything on general principle, based on experience in other games of this type.

[Codename V]

It is hard, takes time, but any character with ranged attacks can complete the basemant at any diff. I did it with realy bad guy (i had the bossy trait so missed alot of attacks + i go for the renesance ttait later so nearly all stats was 5), took me maybe 30-40 shots to kill it. The trick is the seacret passage. Enemy cant use it. So just teleport from right to left of the room and keep shooting and kiting. He jit me 0 times. It is possible, need time and precision. Only problem js the green puddles heals it, so i got in a problem when it was healing faster then i was doing damage. This can be easily fixed -he allways run stright to you so you have to position you in. A way he dosent cross ghe green puddles.

[deadsanta]

Don't forget consumables, contraptions and grenades. There should be *something* in all the junk you carry that will help you out.