Wasteland 2

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I'm downloading this now, any advice for party creation?

[Volourn]

Have fun.  You ahve as many as 7 characters in the game so you'll be fine with the right approach to combat.

 

Still, best advice is give every character at least one weapon skill and spreak non combat skills around. It's also good to have at least 2+ characters with the med/doctor skills espciially doctor in case your doc goes down you have  back up.

 

Don't listen to the x weapon  sucks or y wepaon is best.  Everyone has their faves but all weapons can be sueful at minimum (personally, to me, handguns are probably the weakest but others would likely laugh at me for saying that heh).

 

 Finally, have fun.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Thanks volo. I think I'm going to spread skills around pretty evenly. The custom Rangers are gonna have at least one ranged combat skill, and I'm gonna try to fit in all of the ass skills.

[Enoch]

I'm downloading this now, any advice for party creation?

As far as attributes, skillpoints per level and Combat Initiative are the most important derived stats.  Get those high, and try to have 8+ AP on each character.  Total skillpoints/level in the party should be 14 or better (e.g., party INTs of 4, 4, 4, & 10 or 1,1, 10, & 10).  There is very little downside to dumping Luck, and only 1 character needs to have meaningful points in Charisma (because it affects the radius of your Leadership skill, which is necessary to keep control of joinable NPCs in combat). 

[Volourn]

Luck is a fun stat. It's not needed but it can be useful.

[Rosbjerg]

Group Charisma affects whether certain NPCs will join you, so dumping that will have consequences.

 

But yeah, as it stands you pretty much need to dump one stat (often luck) as anything less than 3-4 skills per level and 8+ in initiative will make the game very hard in certain areas.

[Marceror]

Luck is a fun stat. It's not needed but it can be useful.

True, but given how limited attribute points are, it's generally the attributes that can always be relied upon (i.e. those that increase AP, CI, etc.) that players are going to want to invest in. Vs. a skill that may well not come through for you when you really need it to.

 

For fun, I may try a high luck character in a future runthrough, since the difficulty level of the game isn't great once you know what you're doing anyways, even on Supreme Jerk.

[Enoch]

Group Charisma affects whether certain NPCs will join you, so dumping that will have consequences.

For what it's worth, the thresholds for this are 12 (2 of them), 18 (2, mutually exclusive), 22 (1), and 25 (1, mutually exclusive with the 2 18s).  There are 9 joinables with no CHA requirement. 

 

By the way, you get credit for the CHA contributed by the NPCs you've already recruited, and they average around 3 points apiece.  (The hobo and the mutant, unsurprisingly, are 1s.)  So the 12s are easy to get, and the 18s aren't tough if you have a Leadership character with 5+ CHA, which you should unless you like your allies doing dumb things.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Enoch

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Thanks volo. I think I'm going to spread skills around pretty evenly. The custom Rangers are gonna have at least one ranged combat skill, and I'm gonna try to fit in all of the ass skills.

 

With the Smart/Kick/Hard Ass dialogue skills, the game seems to go up in steps and then plateaus for a while. So at the start, I put 2 points in each skill and it was enough for me to open those dialogue options. Then sometime in the game, it'll ask for around 4 or 5 points in that skill and then plateau for a while. Then halfway through the game you'll need to put more points in them to get them around 6, 7 for most encounters or a couple of encounters with 8 but not absolutely necessary. There are also items in the game that can give you a +1 to these skills, if you find them.

 

I've been doing my own walkthrough which is why I'm taking so long and I've even found a guy who gives you the best armour in the game for free at this current stage of the game where I'm up to. I still haven't finished Arizona yet. All due to dialogue. Normally you might talk to this person of just ignore him. There's a specific dialogue tree you have to go through and need Smart Ass (4) and Kick Ass (5) to get it. Even if you have those skills and don't go through the dialogue tree the 'correct' way to get the armour, you won't get the armour. 'Correct' being subjective because it depends how you roleplay your group. And I just checked a couple of walkthroughs and they make no mention of this armour or dialogue skills at all.

 

Volo is right in that you can't do every quest. It's impossible due to previous actions in the game. And even if you do the same quest or talk to the same person as me, we'll probably have different experiences.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Keyrock]

My advice is don't worry too much about how you build your party.  Don't just do it randomly, but don't get too crazy trying to cover every base, companions will fill those holes soon enough.  While you might miss out on a few things in the early going, it won't be anything earth shattering.  Plus, the game gets quite easy in the end game portions, at least on Ranger difficulty, so which weapon skills you develop isn't going to be all that critical in the long run.  You'll be fine as long as you don't make a completely fubar'd party.

[prodigydancer]

Group Charisma affects whether certain NPCs will join you, so dumping that will have consequences.

Not really. There are consumables that boost Cha temporarily. And a trinket (random drop farmable from random encounters). So it's technically possible to dump Cha and still recruit all followers.

Edited October 23, 2014 by prodigydancer

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I don't understand why some people are suggesting energy weapons aren't that great. I'll admit against heavily armoured humans like raiders, they're not as effective but against more dangerous threats like Honeybadgers and robots, they're fantastic. I'm at the Abandoned Railway and here's screenshots of M16s vs Energy Weapons. And these are average damage. No critical hits.

 

 

 

Magnum with his M16. 45 points of damage to robot.

 

 

 

Rick with his M16. 37 points of damage to robot.

 

 

TC with his M16. 40 points of damage to robot. Second hit did 45 points of damage. Total 85 points in 1 turn.

 

 

Pizepi with her Gamma Ray Blaster. 121 points of damage to robot.

 

 

 

Pizepi with her Gamma Ray Blaster. 112 points of damage to robot.

 

 

 

 

 

Pizepi is doing more damage than any other person, even if they get two shots off with their M16. Maybe it changes in California? I'll have to find out. After this map, I'm off to Damonta.

 

Oh and if anyone wants to know, this is how you get the Kevlar Armour in Temple of Titan. I consider it to be the best armour I've found so far. Armour rating of 5 with no Strength requirements or minus combat speed modifiers like you get with Combat Armour.

 

 

 

NPC Buck Dinges - Dialogue Option keywords

 

1. Bomb

2. Bluff (Smart Ass 4)

3. Army Base

4. Tech (Kick Ass 5)

 

You are then rewarded with the Kevlar Armour. He'll then go to sleep shorty after that. Usually any other dialogue options and he'll go to sleep before you can get all the dialogue options to get the Kevlar.

 

 

[Raithe]

I think it's more that energy weapons are generally great against robots, but seem to do about 1/5th of that damage to human opponents. So when the majority of encounters are humans, the energy weapons tend to suck compared to the higher tier assault rifles.

 

But when you have those robot encounters, especially towards the end of the game in California, the energy weapons really are king.

[Marceror]

Gamma Ray Blaster also happens to be the best energy weapon in the game. And since it has an armor threshold of only 2, will be effective against most everything you encounter from that point you are able to obtain it.

[prodigydancer]

I don't understand why some people are suggesting energy weapons aren't that great.

 

...

 

Pizepi is doing more damage than any other person, even if they get two shots off with their M16.

Two shots? I have a feeling that you use AR in single shot mode. Singe shot sucks, use burst (except when target is low on HP). And later in game, when you have enough CtH for burst headshots EW are totally outclassed.

 

But the problem isn't that EW are bad. They have decent damage and look cool and most people agree that they're OK where they are now. That problem is that pretty much nothing can compete with AR burst+headshot damage. It's ridiculously overpowered.

Edited October 23, 2014 by prodigydancer

[Volourn]

No.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Two shots? I have a feeling that you use AR in single shot mode. Singe shot sucks, use burst (except when target is low on HP). And later in game, when you have enough CtH for burst headshots EW are totally outclassed.

 

But the problem isn't that EW are bad. They have decent damage and look cool and most people agree that they're OK where they are now. That problem is that pretty much nothing can compete with AR burst+headshot damage. It's ridiculously overpowered.

 

I was comparing single shots to get an approximate or average damage per shot. (Also, I was going up against robots with 90hps. I didn't want to waste bullets with burst while Pizepi can one shot them.) Switching to burst mode for M16, AP goes from 5 to 7. You get three bullets. Average 120 damage if you're doing around 40 per bullet. Pizepi can have both the Gamma Ray Blaster and Pulse Rifle in single shot be used in the same turn. The Pulse Rifle does around 35 damage per shot on top of the 100+ damage from the Gamma Ray Blaster to robots. I'm doing around 150 damage a turn with Pizepi. I've also noticed energy weapons are very effective against humans who have little armour. It's only when humans have quite a bit of armour is when energy weapons start to suck. Whenever I see a robot or honeybadger, I think great, Pizepi will cut through them.

Edited October 23, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Volourn]

Energy weapons do more damage when enemies have armour not the other way around. It's why when you face a group of energy weapon using enemies it's best to go 'naked'.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

ah okay. I was wondering why some humans were getting a lot more damage and others weren't. Also, I wouldn't mind having an extra 2 action points for Pizepi. Burst with pulse rifle and swap to Gamma Ray Blaster would do over 200 damage to a robot. I could get another 2 APs when I hit level 40.

[Gorgon]

Headshots can't crit, which makes them pointless when you have a very high crit chance at higher level. Only use i ever got of them was if I was almost out of ammo and losing badly or with energy weapons and even then I would usually go for the safer hit. 

[Keyrock]

Headshots can't crit, which makes them pointless when you have a very high crit chance at higher level. Only use i ever got of them was if I was almost out of ammo and losing badly or with energy weapons and even then I would usually go for the safer hit. 

That depends on the weapon.  Headshot is essentially an automatic critical, it just won't stack with another critical, but it's always 2X damage, regardless of the weapon.  Some weapons have a higher crit multiplier (particularly some melee weapons), some weapons have a lower crit multiplier.  Hence, for some weapons, not only is it a guaranteed "critical" as opposed to 35 or 40 or 50% chance of critical (or whatever), it's also a higher multiplier.  For example, the anti-material rifle has a crit multiplier of 1.6X (I think), hence using a headshot will net you more damage than using a regular shot, regardless of whether you critical on said regular shot or not.  So, as long as the 2 extra AP for the headshot don't spell the difference between being able to fire once or fire twice, using a headshot is the superior choice in that situation (provided your skill is high enough that you still get 100% hit even on a headshot).

Edited October 24, 2014 by Keyrock

[Gorgon]

Well, it's allways going to affect your ability to fire twice if you have say 12 action points. You would be able to burst fire twice every other round. I believe the crit multiplier for assault rifles was 2. something ?. and headshot is 2.0. The aim penalty is also pretty severe. Only really suitable for big targets.

[Keyrock]

Well, it's allways going to affect your ability to fire twice if you have say 12 action points. You would be able to burst fire twice every other round. I believe the crit multiplier for assault rifles was 2. something ?. and headshot is 2.0. The aim penalty is also pretty severe. Only really suitable for big targets.

The penalty is 40%, if I recall correctly.  In the early game that absolutely makes a difference.  When your characters have high level skill, like 9 or 10, especially with high accuracy weapons like sniper rifles, you're going to have 100% chance to hit on a headshot, regardless of the target, especially if you're getting some buff from leadership, unless the target has cover.

Edited October 24, 2014 by Keyrock

[Gromnir]

am gonna finally give wasteland 2 another try. the recent patch(es) appear to have addressed a few o' our concerns and problems. our game time has been extreme limited these past few weeks, so we couldn't have played regardless. am gonna be optimistic and try and get a marathon session in this weekend.

 

our four rangers will be inspired by Predator characters: dutch, dillon, billy and hawkins. am expecting that we will acquire rose asap, and pizepi is a likely addition.  ralphy, with his 7 ap and int o' 3 sets our teeth on edge 'cause we know we can make him useful (moderately so) by level 30, but waiting 26 levels before he becomes anything other than a toaster repairman strikes us as a sisyphean ordeal.

 

billy (ap 9, ci 12) should be bladed and ar, but blades lag behind brawling and blunt. for now, billy has assault rifles for a weapon, with perception and demolitions... am suspecting we will likely add minimal blades skill.  hawkins (ap 7, ci 13) will be our sniper and smart arse, with lockpick and safe cracking as well. maybe add mechanical repair or weapon smithing as he has an intelligence of 10. dutch (ap 9, ci 12) is a shirtless brawler, with outdoorsman, hardass and brute force to be replacing angelas' skills. dillon (ap 9, ci 10) gets leadership and kiss arse, but since we loathe smgs, we give him shotguns. we foresee adding a bit o' blunt to dillon. rose (ap 8, ci 10) will be getting medic and assault rifle skills in addition to her starting compliment, and by level 20 we will have increased her speed by 2 which should address her few flaws. party charisma o' our starting four rangers = 16, so we shouldn't have problems recruiting pizepi. am gonna see how quick we can get her in our party.

 

dunno. there is a few skills we don't have worked into the mix... 'less we take raplhy.

 

*groan*

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Also Gamma Ray Blaster can do burst. Goes from 6 to 8 AP. That's over 300+ damage to a robot. Around the 330-360 damage range. For my walkthrough, there's a few ways to do Canyon of Titan and Temple of Titan. It's been interesting finding out the different ways and you can't do everything. Even as far back as saving the Ag Center or Highpool can affect some things.

 

Also, if you have a high enough Perception you can find stuff at the Mysterious Shrines. For example, this is what I found at the Cubes Shrine between Temple of Titan and Damonta

 

 

Perception revealed landmines and a buried stash.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 24, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II