A small guide?

[El_Verdugo]

Hi! I want to know if anyone knows which akills and perks i should choose and which ones to avoid and why?

[Dirmagnos]

Speech - low importance, mostly allows to extort questgivers for small amount of ammo. Increase with books, save skill points.
Firearms - high importance, save skill points, improve with skill books.
Laser Weapons - low importance, there is like couple of energy weapons in total and they are at the very end of the game. By then you probably have enough skill points saved to invest.
Melee Weapons - just lol. While melee weapons cost no ammo, they are slow, have ridiculously low damage and you do not want to get swarmed. Just ignore.
Critical Hit - good investment all round, but id invest into it later in game. There are far more relevant skills early on.
Defense - same story as with Melee Weapons - if you get swarmed it wont save you.
Health - yes, larger pool of hp is good. Plus, passive regen is based on your max hp, so it would save on healing items. Id put it, in terms of importance, after Driving and Trading.
Curing - save points, increase with books.
Outdoorsman - completely useless skill imo. You generally want to do random encounters, as they occur along the way from here to there, so cost no fuel and their content varies from fairly harmless to really good. Plus it can be increased with books. No point in wasting skill points.
Lockpicking - it takes a bit of practicing, but lockpicking is fairly easy even with basic level of this skill. Ignore.
Driving - yes, yes and yes. Unless you bought a bundle that eliminates need to manage gas. Otherwise get it at least to 100, better max it out to 200. Otherwise you will be really annoyed by constant shortages of gasoline after you get to Springfield.
Trading - imo second most important skill. Aside of general stuff(mostly grenades, as there is no other way of getting them, since their drops in loot are extremely low), traders often sell skill books. So its beneficial from beginning to the end.
Radiation Resistance - better invest into Health, as latter is allround useful skill. Resistance provides rather negligible benefit in rather specific rare conditions.
In general there is possible to max out all skills, as Encyclopedia, albeit rare, gives 2 free skill points. And you can find or buy it as any other skill book.

Reading - really useful. Allows reading books, allowing you to max out 4 skills without investing a single skill point into them. Save books till you can add Bookworm perk to supplement it.
Animal Language - not really important, gives access to a couple funny quests. But thats about it. A second tier pick.
Scavenger 1+2 - extra coin always have uses.
Faster Healing 1+2 - a good supplement to natural healing. With high base HP makes buying healing items pointless. Between free bandages from workbenches and what you will find in loot, you will probably have more than enough healing items to keep yourself going.
Nothing - gives 2 perk points. Its more of a gimmick, rather than actually useful perk.
More Criticals 1+2 - its nice, but not that important. I took those when i run out of interesting perks to take.
Rest of the perks are kinda meh. Once you arrive at Open World you can buy(with gold) special perks. Badass gives you extra 1xp for every enemy killed. Radio allows you to see actual information about POI, optimizing loot grind. Cyber Hands increases pickup range for stuff. Zombie Hunter gives 10 silver for every 10 zombies killed. I Am Zombie is broken as ♥♥♥♥, if i could i would pay gold to actually remove it.

When it comes to zombies, aim for the head and kite them around to utilize explosive barrels to full effect. Pick weapons that trade fire rate for damage. And you will never have to buy ammo.

[El_Verdugo]

So its better to having slow weapons like the carabines or sniper. What is i am zombie perk? What does that do? I spended to 35 points in speech wrong desicion :) so i should keep spending on those you mentioned thanks for the tip

[Dirmagnos]

Description states that it reduces zombie detection range to 50 meters.
I have no idea what it is supposed to mean, as even without perk they were ignoring player unless he got as close as about 15-20 meters.
But with this perk they often fail to "see" me at almost point blank range, so kiting them became that much more difficult.
Considering that even rifles have rather fast fire rate, granted they are semis, with headshots they are not hard to kill for this perk to be worth anything.
After i got Kar98 3000 my life got a lot easier. That rifle is a beast.

[El_Verdugo]

Should i keep wqtching ads and get the premium kar90? Im in the second city and i need 800 gold more for that

[illgib]

Originally posted by El_Verdugo:

Should i keep wqtching ads and get the premium kar90? Im in the second city and i need 800 gold more for that

Stack all the gold money you can and invest in a perk in the Open World or a powerful rifle like the one you spotted.
The Kar it's almost the most powerful weapon, it's a bit slow as rate of fire and reload, have 7 round, and beign swarmed whit it require a bit of practice, but it's really satisfy when you get used to it.
With the firearms skill cranked up it deals an hell of damage!

Edit:
And i forgot, you can upgrade your weapon at the table in the city, with silver you can increase reload and attack speed, with gold the damage.

[Dirmagnos]

Open World > Trading Post
It often offers various extremely easy requests, like a few MREs and couple of gas cans for 100+ gold. Easy money(really need balancing). Youd have to build it up first tho. But it all can be build with silver.
In 20 minutes you can make more gold than in whole day of opening safes and redeeming few coins every hour.
One of the reasons why investing in driving is a good idea - every now and then driving around between cities, to visit shops for books and do farming/requests in Open World,

[Vathek1]

The most important thing to do is to buy the $10 Steam edition--it costs less than a pack of cigarettes in my home town, and for me, considering that I've gotten close 50 hours out of the game before I had seen and done everything there was to do, that translates into $0.20 per hour of fun. Most AAA games that cost $60 don't provide me with 50 hours of enjoyment.

But besides that endorsement, other advice I can offer:

Don't buy any premium weapons until you are in City of the Sun and/or high level. You will quickly outlevel them as enemies level with you in terms of their HP. In terms of weapons, you can generally rely on the free items you get. These will include:
1. The free MP5 you can get from the premium store (I'm not sure if this is exclusive to the $10 Steam edition, though)
2. The Vector you can get as a quest reward pretty early in Springfield from the Donald Trump mayor. This is a good weapon to use until the end of that area.
3. The Omerta shotgun you can get from Chuck near the end of Springfield. This is a great shotgun--very powerful. And shotguns, as we all know, are the staple of the zombie fighter's arsenal!

Regarding paid (non-premium weapons), I would only recommend buying the following:
1. The M40A1 in Springfield--this is a potent sniper rifle that will serve you well until you are close to the endgame
2. An AA12 in City of the Sun. I used this to kill the final boss with ease.
3. A SCAR, P90, or Rifle 3000 in CiTS--all of these are excellent options. However, I'd recommend the SCAR as you are likely to see it first. With some upgrades at the weapon bench, it will serve you well until the end of the game as a nice secondary for your AA12.

Whatever you do, don't buy the Vintorez in Springfield. This isn't The Zone, and it sucks as a weapon. Get out of here, Stalker.

Finally, in terms of armour, I tend to stick with the Skull Armour which you can buy from the Tramps in the Science Lab (you can also find pieces of it in stores in CiTS). Having an extra 5% bonus to criticals will make you all the more effective in combat.

Whilst opinions are like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥--individually variable, and equally pungent--I do disagree with Dirmagnos on a few points.
1. Defense is important. Zombies are the least of your worries; it's the things that can shoot back that will really ruin your day. The bandits are surprisingly resilient to headshots, and unless you have a surplus of flashbangs, you really have no choice but to trade bullets with them until you or they are dead (taking cover helps a bit, of course!) Putting points into defense will help slow down the rate of your transformation into Swiss cheese.

2. Perks: "Cat" and "Extra XP" are also important perks. The former will prevent certain bosses from one-shotting you; the latter, when combined with "Badass" will give you 11 experience per zombie kill. Considering that you will be killing a lot of zombies, this will vastly speed up your levelling, which is a good thing. The "Badass" perk is, to my knowledge, somewhat of a hidden one. You can see it when you first open the 'Perks' tab but don't click on anything.

3. The Kar98K 3000 isn't worth getting unless you are swimming in cash. It has rather bad iron sights, and it really won't do anything that your AA12 can't already accomplish. It also doesn't have a scope, either so won't be able to use it to snipe bandits from beyond their detection range as easily.

4. Automatic weapons are actually more useful in some cases than slow-firing ones. The larger magazine sizes translate into more DPS and a longer 'up time' which is important when facing the hordes.

5. Critical hits are important--if you aren't putting your skill points into anything else, I'd use this as a dump stat. If you have a 40% crit rate, nearly half of your shots will be inflicting double damage, which translates into one-shotting a lot of things with even body shots. And if you are using a shotgun, this means you'll be getting a lot of multi-kills against tightly packed zombies.

And as a final tip for the endgame bosses--things that tend to output a lot of ranged damage don't tend to be as scary in melee range, and vice versa.

-Edit for silly math mistakes, lol.

[Dirmagnos]

And shotguns, as we all know, are the staple of the zombie fighter's arsenal!

Ive tried AA-12. Shotguns are trash, unless your aim is non-existent. I need 2 shots out of it to take down even an average zed and that at close range due to insane scattering.
At the same time i can headshot and kill most zeds in one shot, utilizing rifle, with far more abundant 7.62 ammo.

Whatever you do, don't buy the Vintorez in Springfield. This isn't The Zone, and it sucks as a weapon. Get out of here, Stalker.

Pff, i find Vintorez to be excellent choice for a mid-game sniper. It can kill most basic zeds in one headshot, has decent zoom and utilizes 9mm ammo, that drops all the time and has really no other uses. Of course this ammo could be used with MP5, but this gun is a peashooter, kicking zombies would kill them faster.

Finally, in terms of armour, I tend to stick with the Skull Armour which you can buy from the Tramps in the Science Lab

I played till CotS with basic armor you get in the beginning of the game. Only reason to pick something new is for it bonuses, rather than protection, so now i have full set that gives me rather nice 20% speed bonus, making ranged play even easier.

The bandits are surprisingly resilient to headshots, and unless you have a surplus of flashbangs, you really have no choice but to trade bullets with them until you or they are dead (taking cover helps a bit, of course!) Putting points into defense will help slow down the rate of your transformation into Swiss cheese.

Bandits are only a problem if you have intelligence of a chicken, since their AI is extremely primitive, all you have to do is to sidestep when they aim. As they do not adjust it, so they miss.
They only become a problem, if there is a lot of them and you are stuck in cramped space, with little room for maneuvering. But with enough health even that can be easily dealt with. With even just decent armor(not something top of the line), they are merely chipping away on your health when hit.
I havent used a single flashbang to date.

"Cat" and "Extra XP" are also important perks. The former will prevent certain bosses from one-shotting you; the latter, when combined with "Badass" will give you 11 experience per zombie kill.

As i understand there is just one boss in the end, that can one-shot you. So far i fought handful and they were anything but had to beat. Zombie plant was particularly funny, died in about 15 seconds.
Extra XP...maybe. If you have nothing better to invest perk points into.

The Kar98K 3000 isn't worth getting unless you are swimming in cash. It has rather bad iron sights, and it really won't do anything that your AA12 can't already accomplish.

Kar98 3000 is so vastly superior to AA-12, that its not even funny. It is worth every silver coin invested into it, as it uses 7.62 rounds, that are about 10 times as common compared to shells(i am at 15k ammo for Kar...and this number is growing). It has good accuracy at any range, particularly mid-range, where shotguns suck balls. With decent aim it has far greater DPS than AA-12. While it just has iron sight, it is still better than what AA-12 has to offer and it can still effectively be used for sniping after some practice.

Automatic weapons are actually more useful in some cases than slow-firing ones. The larger magazine sizes translate into more DPS and a longer 'up time' which is important when facing the hordes.

Automatic weapons suck for the most part. While they do have rapid fire capabilities, they also have rather significant recoil, making them mainly viable for bodyshots. That in turn turns them into ammo hogs, so you can forget saving any silver or other uses.
Because they full auto it also means that player tend to go run'n'gun, so in reality DPS output is same or close to one of the rifle, but it will cost you a lot more ammo. All while providing no other benefits.
One full mag for Kar98 3000 is worth 5-7 zeds within about 15 seconds. With something like Scar you can get similar results, but for twice the ammo and about 50% increase in time, at the best, presuming headshitting. With spraying ammo consumption will go up 6-7 times, kill count will go down and TTK will increase due to constant need to reload and adjust aim.
Only instance where i found fully automatic guns to be useful is when dealing with those damn running zeds, as tend to jump and swing all over the place. Precision aiming is rather hard with them.

If you have a 40% crit rate, nearly half of your shots will be inflicting double damage, which translates into one-shotting a lot of things with even body shots.

And if you are playing with a good rifle, then you are most likely one-shotting most things as is, with crits playing fairly minor role.
Crits are nice, but there are better skills to invest into early on.

And if you are using a shotgun, this means you'll be getting a lot of multi-kills against tightly packed zombies.

I am fairly positive, altho i havent played with shotguns that much, that damage is divided between pellets, so even with critical hits, they wont be sufficient to kill several zeds in one blast.

[El_Verdugo]

Originally posted by Dirmagnos:

Open World > Trading Post
It often offers various extremely easy requests, like a few MREs and couple of gas cans for 100+ gold. Easy money(really need balancing). Youd have to build it up first tho. But it all can be build with silver.
In 20 minutes you can make more gold than in whole day of opening safes and redeeming few coins every hour.
One of the reasons why investing in driving is a good idea - every now and then driving around between cities, to visit shops for books and do farming/requests in Open World,

Where i find this "open world"? Im still at springfield. Got the car and the small house

[El_Verdugo]

Originally posted by Dirmagnos:

And shotguns, as we all know, are the staple of the zombie fighter's arsenal!

Ive tried AA-12. Shotguns are trash, unless your aim is non-existent. I need 2 shots out of it to take down even an average zed and that at close range due to insane scattering.
At the same time i can headshot and kill most zeds in one shot, utilizing rifle, with far more abundant 7.62 ammo.

Whatever you do, don't buy the Vintorez in Springfield. This isn't The Zone, and it sucks as a weapon. Get out of here, Stalker.

Pff, i find Vintorez to be excellent choice for a mid-game sniper. It can kill most basic zeds in one headshot, has decent zoom and utilizes 9mm ammo, that drops all the time and has really no other uses. Of course this ammo could be used with MP5, but this gun is a peashooter, kicking zombies would kill them faster.

Finally, in terms of armour, I tend to stick with the Skull Armour which you can buy from the Tramps in the Science Lab

I played till CotS with basic armor you get in the beginning of the game. Only reason to pick something new is for it bonuses, rather than protection, so now i have full set that gives me rather nice 20% speed bonus, making ranged play even easier.

The bandits are surprisingly resilient to headshots, and unless you have a surplus of flashbangs, you really have no choice but to trade bullets with them until you or they are dead (taking cover helps a bit, of course!) Putting points into defense will help slow down the rate of your transformation into Swiss cheese.

Bandits are only a problem if you have intelligence of a chicken, since their AI is extremely primitive, all you have to do is to sidestep when they aim. As they do not adjust it, so they miss.
They only become a problem, if there is a lot of them and you are stuck in cramped space, with little room for maneuvering. But with enough health even that can be easily dealt with. With even just decent armor(not something top of the line), they are merely chipping away on your health when hit.
I havent used a single flashbang to date.

"Cat" and "Extra XP" are also important perks. The former will prevent certain bosses from one-shotting you; the latter, when combined with "Badass" will give you 11 experience per zombie kill.

As i understand there is just one boss in the end, that can one-shot you. So far i fought handful and they were anything but had to beat. Zombie plant was particularly funny, died in about 15 seconds.
Extra XP...maybe. If you have nothing better to invest perk points into.

The Kar98K 3000 isn't worth getting unless you are swimming in cash. It has rather bad iron sights, and it really won't do anything that your AA12 can't already accomplish.

Kar98 3000 is so vastly superior to AA-12, that its not even funny. It is worth every silver coin invested into it, as it uses 7.62 rounds, that are about 10 times as common compared to shells(i am at 15k ammo for Kar...and this number is growing). It has good accuracy at any range, particularly mid-range, where shotguns suck balls. With decent aim it has far greater DPS than AA-12. While it just has iron sight, it is still better than what AA-12 has to offer and it can still effectively be used for sniping after some practice.

Automatic weapons are actually more useful in some cases than slow-firing ones. The larger magazine sizes translate into more DPS and a longer 'up time' which is important when facing the hordes.

Automatic weapons suck for the most part. While they do have rapid fire capabilities, they also have rather significant recoil, making them mainly viable for bodyshots. That in turn turns them into ammo hogs, so you can forget saving any silver or other uses.
Because they full auto it also means that player tend to go run'n'gun, so in reality DPS output is same or close to one of the rifle, but it will cost you a lot more ammo. All while providing no other benefits.
One full mag for Kar98 3000 is worth 5-7 zeds within about 15 seconds. With something like Scar you can get similar results, but for twice the ammo and about 50% increase in time, at the best, presuming headshitting. With spraying ammo consumption will go up 6-7 times, kill count will go down and TTK will increase due to constant need to reload and adjust aim.
Only instance where i found fully automatic guns to be useful is when dealing with those damn running zeds, as tend to jump and swing all over the place. Precision aiming is rather hard with them.

If you have a 40% crit rate, nearly half of your shots will be inflicting double damage, which translates into one-shotting a lot of things with even body shots.

And if you are playing with a good rifle, then you are most likely one-shotting most things as is, with crits playing fairly minor role.
Crits are nice, but there are better skills to invest into early on.

And if you are using a shotgun, this means you'll be getting a lot of multi-kills against tightly packed zombies.

I am fairly positive, altho i havent played with shotguns that much, that damage is divided between pellets, so even with critical hits, they wont be sufficient to kill several zeds in one blast.

Great guide also! The thing os that im on mobile. My pc ia broken so even aiming is a bit hard so i dont tend to use the iron sights since even when tapping 2 times most of the times the sights doesnt activate. Maybe im missing the zone. That damm kar 98 3000 dissappeared and was replaced by 3 other weapons so its seems that ill have to wait until this weapon appears again. In which city i get acess to the "open world"?

[Vathek1]

You gain access to the Open World area near the end of Chuck's quest line in Springfield, if I recall correctly. You can actually head there before going to City of the Sun.

As for the weapons, you can see based on the differing suggestions that Dirmagnos and I have that it is largely subjective. I like shotguns and automatics; he does not. (As a tip, if you also like automatic weapons, fire them in short bursts of 2 to 3 rounds, and aim for the head.) I'd advise you to try out different weapons and figure out what works best for you... or go with whichever method sounds best to you.

Apropos of your aiming issues, are you sure the issue isn't with your mouse and not with your entire computer? Maybe try getting a new mouse, as that would be a hell of a lot cheaper than fixing or replacing your entire PC! Do you have issues with your mouse inputs not being recognized in other games?

Finally, in the PC version at least, you can pay 10 gold to refresh store inventories, if you have the gold to spare.

[El_Verdugo]

Originally posted by Vathek1:

You gain access to the Open World area near the end of Chuck's quest line in Springfield, if I recall correctly. You can actually head there before going to City of the Sun.

As for the weapons, you can see based on the differing suggestions that Dirmagnos and I have that it is largely subjective. I like shotguns and automatics; he does not. (As a tip, if you also like automatic weapons, fire them in short bursts of 2 to 3 rounds, and aim for the head.) I'd advise you to try out different weapons and figure out what works best for you... or go with whichever method sounds best to you.

Apropos of your aiming issues, are you sure the issue isn't with your mouse and not with your entire computer? Maybe try getting a new mouse, as that would be a hell of a lot cheaper than fixing or replacing your entire PC! Do you have issues with your mouse inputs not being recognized in other games?

Finally, in the PC version at least, you can pay 10 gold to refresh store inventories, if you have the gold to spare.

Thanks! But you didnt readed im on mobile version not pc and my phone is anew so i think the game might have some issue with the aiming system :)

[astrea_anerada]

@El_Verdugo, is the aiming issue on one type of weapon or does it happen to all types of weapons when you try to aim with sights on your mobile? Such as iron sight against sniping scope.

Try and see if you can find any issue on your mobile settings about "double typing" or/and try and tick the "auto shooting" from game's option, this will allow you to auto shoot the enemy as soon as you move the aim on a zombie, bandits, explosive barrels.

The more info you give the more help the devs will receive to fix the issue.

[Vathek1]

Originally posted by El_Verdugo:

Thanks! But you didnt readed im on mobile version not pc and my phone is anew so i think the game might have some issue with the aiming system :)

Indeed, I didn't read your original post correctly. I hope you can get that aiming issue resolved, though, since being able to score headshots on enemies at decent distances is a huge part of the game and if the game isn't correctly recognizing inputs, that will be a real handicap.

As Astrea_anerada pointed out, the auto-shooting option could be a decent workaround in the meantime, although you'd definitely want the ability to make more precise shots.

[Dirmagnos]

The thing os that im on mobile.

Ooof, then yeah, without proper aiming capabilities, this gun is not as effective. Altho i still would prefer it. Fully upgraded gold version of Kar, with 200 Firearms, deals around 250 base damage, with crits and headshots i can even go over 1k.
Btw, you can sniper on mid ranges, even if shooting from the hip, for as long as you stand still when shooting, as it greatly reduces spread. Plus there is perk that decreases spread by 40%.

As for the weapons, you can see based on the differing suggestions that Dirmagnos and I have that it is largely subjective. I like shotguns and automatics; he does not. (As a tip, if you also like automatic weapons, fire them in short bursts of 2 to 3 rounds, and aim for the head.) I'd advise you to try out different weapons and figure out what works best for you... or go with whichever method sounds best to you.

Yep. Everyone has their preferences.