Hi guys, just downloaded and installed the game, and as usual with new RPGs, seeing all those skills and whatnot is a bit of a headscratcher. "What skills do I *need*, and what type of characters do I need?"

So then, what would you recommend? Massive min-maxing isn't really wanted, but some advice on sensible builds would be nice. Besides the title, I know nothing about this game :D

I recommend this thread:

gog.com/forum/wasteland_series/my_detailed_character_creation_tutorial

And the video there. It is very min-maxy but it also is jam-packed with info about what the attributes do, what weapons are a good idea, and what skills are important. The discussion in that thread is good, as well. To what they said, I would add that it helps to have a variety of different weapon skills distributed among your party. This is because ammo does not grow on trees. If everyone has an assault rifle then you will have a very hard time keeping their rifles loaded.

Also recommend my thread:

gog.com/forum/wasteland_series/looking_for_a_mild_spoiler_for_w2

I was interested in knowing what skills I might pick up pretty soon, with add-on characters.

Thanks. I've actually just finished watching that video as I located the thread here, and although it was very min-maxy, as you said, it was also highly informative. I have a much better understanding of what skills and weapons it makes sense to invest in now :)

Thanks, hopefully we won't be too useless. I went with Seasonal difficulty and set up this lot. I've no idea if those are too many skills and I should have focused them more, but I wanted to cover as many bases as possible. Would love comments though, whether this is a good group or not. Some min-maxing I admit, especially on the leader, which is probably terribly useless in combat :D

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2 Coord
1 Luck
1 Awareness
2 Strength
2 Speed
10 Int
10 Cha

2 Perception
2 Smart Ass
1 Kick Ass
1 Hard Ass

Huge mistake to not pick a weapon? He started out with a stick, haha!
Leadership sounds like a wise choice here, but the video mentioned it was a bit of a crapshoot, so I didn't pick it.

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6 Coord
1 Luck
4 Awareness
7 Strength
8 Speed
1 Int
1 Cha

3 Assault Rifle
2 Brawling (think the video mentioned this was good)
1 Toaster Repair

Best mule really, and will hopefully be good in combat.

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10 Coord
1 Luck
4 Awareness
2 Strength
6 Speed
4 Int
1 Cha

2 Sniper Rifles
2 Surgeon
1 Weaponsmithing
1 Field Medic

Is both surgeon and field medic needed?
Both sniper and medic, so I'm thinking she will operate from the back of the pack.

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10 Coord
1 Luck
5 Awareness
4 Strength
3 Speed
4 Int
1 Cha

2 Lockpicking
2 Demolitions
1 Safecracking
1 Energy weapons

Energy weapons and lockpicking lady. Hopefully she'll be useful from the start, though I hear that energy weapons are only good in the later parts of the game.

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Should probably mention that I have practically ZERO experience with true turn-based games, but I hope Action Points and Combat Initiative and all the rest will make sense after a while, and that my choices aren't too bad in that regard.

Obviously I've no idea what other NPCs we'll pick up.

Probably the guy with just one point at intelligence will have problem with his skills. When you are using the default 3 is OK (not so good but the guy become competent with 3-4 skills)

For my ranger mode I truly didn't left more than one single character with less than 3 in any attribute, but I think your set can work.

You're probably right about that. Only 2 skills per level isn't much, especially when they get so expensive at the higher levels. Hopefully the rest looks fine, though.

Have played to the Ag Centre, and I like the game. Think the random encounters can become a bit of a drag, but other than that it looks fun. Tricky with all the skills, so I hope we get some more people that have missing skills.

Is it fine to sell everything labelled Junk btw? I won't need anything to, say... open secret doors? ;)

The last thing I can say, as your PC are already expert on something, each time you earn a new attribute point, use it on strenght, for be able to carry more ammunition (and healing items)

I found that video to be inaccurate and leading in wrong directions all over the place. It's okay if you want to play like that guy plays, but it's no where near as useful as he would like it to be.

My biggest advice is to not listen to all the advice out there. Read the manual. Make a balanced group. Figure out what you want and need yourself. It's really a strong roleplaying game and I HIGHLY recommend simply creating 4 characters that you like. I've seen way more builds from people that baffle me than make sense to me. I regularly go "yeah ok sure that could work, but not how I would do it" so this game really lends to just playing characters how YOU want to play them.

My 2nd advice is once you've mostly figured out the 4 characters you want to start with, have a look at a list of all the recruits and decide which ones will fit your group best and what final tweaking you may want to do based on what characters you intend to have in the game.

Try not to have redundancies too much and tell yourself it is okay to start over and re-tweak your characters a few times once you get a better feel for the game. I replayed Ag Center 3 times before finalizing my build and am much much happier for it.

I play on Ranger difficulty and it's not very hard IMO. Easier than Fallout on Normal difficulty.

Could you expand a little more on what is inaccurate and leading to the wrong directions in the video?

What you write makes sense, and I think I've done that to some degree. Even wrote bios for all four characters, because I wanted to roleplay in this game, more than I usually do. I've no idea what people can be picked up though. Obviously I took Angie right away, and I've heard about Rose while reading a little, but other than that I've no idea who or when. Do future NPCs have any particular strengths that I don't need covered in the starting four characters?

I've tried to cover a lot of bases, but already notice that it would be useful to have computer science and mechanical repair, and since Angie has Hard Ass it was unnecessary to pick that for the main character. I also don't have Leadership on him. So far Angie has gone her own way 3-4 times in battle, but it's been fine so far really. Angie also has Weaponsmithing, so I could perhaps have gone without that too from the start.

Perhaps I've min-maxed some of the attributes on the characters too much, but the first guy aside (max charisma and intelligence), the others look more balanced. I wanted a 'leader', a tough mo-fo up close (tank, sort of), a sniper and a tech person. Then I've tried to include as many useful skills as I could. Have also covered several weapons, though with Angie, we have two Assault Riflers.

The Action Points on the Sniper/Medic is a little uncomfortable though (11). She can fire once, but will usually have several AP that I can't do anything useful with. I've gone into this game almost blind, though, so maybe I'll have to do what you did, and play up to the Ag Center a few times and simply find out what I like most in terms of skills, attributes and weapons.

Is there a way to Pause the game without bringing up the menu? One time the tank went down because due to bleeding because I didn't manage to start healing him quickly enough (getting used to the UI and so forth). Would be excellent if I could then pause the game so time stopped but I could still carry out the healing act.

What he says makes a lot of sense, in many ways. I read a lot of build advice and eventually for my first complete run through the game, I bucked conventional wisdom and went with 3 Rangers that had 8 INT and one that had 10. Many people will tell you that 8 INT is a 'waste' since you only need to add 2 more points to get to 10 and thus have another skill point per level. I love skills though, and I found my Rangers worked out brilliantly. I was playing on Ranger difficulty. Having said that, I will say that any advice to have high Combat Initiative is pretty solid (I haven't watched the video, so don't know what it recommends). If you act first - and possibly more than once - before the enemy acts, it makes battles go a whole lot better.

As for the skills that NPCs bring to the table, since skills from one character to another don't stack (ie. if one character has 4 ranks and another 2 in a particular skill, they don't pool together to give 6 effective ranks in the party: only the highest counts), then yes, you don't need to cover their strong areas.

One thing I can recommend is don't necessarily spend all your skill points as you earn them. Just hang onto them and when you start getting to, for example, locks that are consistently rated Hard or Medium, then drop another rank or two in the skill to make them easier.

I found Leadership to be quite useful. If you can stop your NPCs from going Rogue, you'll probably be a whole lot happier. They sometimes are fine when they go Rogue, but more often than not IMO they just cause a whole lot of trouble when they do.

Min/maxing is pretty much forced on you if you want to have a Ranger with at least one high attribute, since you just don't get a whole lot of attribute points to work with. But you can 'minimize' it to a certain degree (pun intended). Full disclosure though: I'm an incorrigible min/maxer, so take what I say with regards to this with a large bag of salt.

The unfortunate fact of this game is that Assault Rifles are king. Better than anything else in the game. That's not to say other weapons aren't effective as well, but they're generally so far behind Assault Rifles that it really makes you wonder why you'd take anything else. My current team has 5 members with ARs, one sniper, and an Energy Weapon user. I find no need to have any melee presence whatsoever, as it's simple enough to just move your Ranger out of the pressured state when an enemy moves in close and then blast them with your rifle. Ammo has not been an issue at all with this set-up.

Keep in mind that if you save 1 or 2 action points (end turn), you get an extra one next turn. If you save 3 or more, you get 2 extra APs next turn. This can result in being able to fire one or two more times on the next turn. As well, your medic may need to move in to heal someone during combat, so having enough points to do that is important.

Playing a bit into the game with a few parties is an excellent idea. I went through about 1/2 of Arizona with 4 different parties before finally figuring out how I wanted to build my Rangers and finishing the game with them. Then, after finishing, I ended up tweaking yet again. I quite liked my first finishing group, but I really like my current one.

Nope, no way to pause other than the menu/ESC key. At least not that I've found.

You asked if both a Medic and a Surgeon are useful/recommended. The answer is 'yes'. Medics only heal (and you'll find a lot of healing kits, while Surgeons are the only ones that can get rid of status effects (bleeding, etc). As well, without spoiling anything, you can use your surgeon to heal a lot of NPCs in the game (if you find any lying on hospital beds, try using the surgeon skill on them and see what happens. :) )

My current party has 2 field medics and a surgeon. Works great. I'll post my party up to give you an idea how I went. Bottom line though, is Drealmer7 is right: build your party how you want and enjoy it. As long as you have enough knowledge to at least be able to cover combat, you're golden. I find this game is a helluva lot of fun and there's a lot of room for replaying in a different way. So go with a party you like now, then switch it up for your next run.

Okay, here's my current team (I went all female and have twin sisters in the party as well - yeah, I know it's goofy):

Bianca D'Ismay (The party leader/'face')

Co: 2
Lu: 1
Aw: 4
St: 4
Sp: 4
In: 8
Ch: 5

Assault Rifles
Kiss Ass
Leadership
Toaster Repair

Ariel DeMorte (first of the twin medics in the party)

Co: 4
Lu: 1
Aw: 6
St: 4
Sp: 8
In: 4
Ch: 1

Assault Rifles
Lockpicking
Safecracking
Field Medic

Umbriel DeMorte (the other twin medic in the party)

Co: 4
Lu: 1
Aw: 6
St: 4
Sp: 8
In: 4
Ch: 1

Assault Rifles
Alarm Disarm
Computer Science
Field Medic

Gretchen Von Stitch (the party surgeon and multitalented brainiac)

Co: 2
Lu: 1
Aw: 4
St: 4
Sp: 6
In: 10
Ch: 1

Assault Rifles
Demolitions
Mechanical Repair
Surgeon
Weaponsmith


As I said, I find these Rangers are very effective. They have lots of skill points, they're pretty lethal in combat, they have no issues using all the same type of weapon, and they cover convo situations quite admirably.

I won't go into any spoilers by naming NPCs and what skills they have, so here's a generic listing of what my NPCs cover: Perception, Energy Weapons, Sniper Rifles, Smart Ass, Outdoorsman, Animal Whisperer, and Hard Ass.

I may add some Brute Force to one of them later on, but not sure yet if I want to spend the skill points. Angie had AR, Hard Ass, Weaponsmith, and Brute Force covered, but I came to a point where I went with a different NPC in the party as opposed to her, so had to cover some of her skills with my other party members. As I noted, I didn't immediately allocate skill points when they leveled, so was able to drop a bunch of ranks into skills when I switched Angie out.

All of my ability point raises go to Awareness. This adds to your Combat initiative and pretty much guarantees you'll act first in almost all battles. My party's currently at level 20-ish and rocking the wastes.

Thank you for these thorough posts. I can see my choices aren't ideal, but it was fun and I spent way too many hours in the start, so I couldn't bare to start over anyway. But right now, I must say the game is testing my patience. Maybe I just suck at it.

Some spoilers here from Ag Center (early in the game, I assume).

So much combat, and it feels like much the same each time, but each encounter takes a lot of time. I then wasn't able to shut down the damn gas that fills all the hallways, but now I checked a guide, and apparently there are some codes for the computer that I haven't seen anywhere in the game. So how was I supposed to know about that? Even "statusReport" has stopped working. I get no feedback when writing that, besides the very first time. I've moved a little into the corridor and cleared a few rooms, but it's a massive pain in the arse due to poisoning, which really eats away health more than one would think. So right now I had to close down the game in sheer frustration. I'm unfortunately starting to see the validity in some of the negative reviews I read here on GOG. Too much similar/grinding combat, poor camera, and a fair few bugs.

To the points you mention though. I certainly see the sense in your builds, as you will be able to develop many different skills, while probably still being competent at combat. Starting to see the sense in Leadership too, as Angie has gone rogue a fair few times lately, which too often has meant just running into enemies without actually shooting the buggars. Idiotic.

As for the Asses, is it needed to develop all three, or can you go high with one and not care too much about the others? I selected all three for the main character, but so far I've put all points post-character creation into Perception.

Looks difficult to be able to sufficiently cover all the tech stuff for traps, alarms, locks and whatnot, so do people tend to focus on a few here? I suppose this makes later playthroughs with different styles viable, but I'm a completionist, so it always pains me to have to leave behind safes and other knick-knack that we can't deal with.

With the above in mind, I certainly see the point in high intelligence across the board, as you'll be better able to keep all bases covered.

I've now read that I should invest future attribute points into both Strength and Awareness, though I suppose Awareness may be more useful. Don't think we could get back the 'lost' HP gains on level-ups, and getting better in combat is probably a good idea. There sure is enough of it...

When they tell you about the situation and give you the quest in AG center (and everywhere else in the game, for that matter) read it slowly and carefully. Process all the info. If they tell you there's someone you should talk to before you start, then you should go find them first (and process what they say carefully, too).

I don't remember the details from the video too well since it's been a bit since I watched (parts) of it, but he seemed like a min/maxer and very concerned with action points, which is fine and not a criticism, but not a way you need to play this game at all and he was making it seem very crucial. I think there are LOT of viable ways to successfully play this game from what I've found, which is what makes it a lot of fun. You don't really NEED anything over anything else, it's just a matter of how you want to play it and then going about figuring it out with how your skills are set up. The thing that matters is to have a balanced group, but if you forgo a few skills or double up on a few skills, you're not going to screw yourself, you may just have it a little bit harder or easier depending on the varying situations, but nothing bad at all; unless you're only used to playing WoW and Skyrim.

If you go with Rose, then you don't need any of your starting 4 characters to have computer science, surgeon, and if you can get away with it, field medic also. I was able to survive Ranger difficulty without a field medic until I had Rose in my group and she leveled up and now she is my field medic and surgeon and it has freed up my other characters nicely. Once I had her and finished Ag Center then we went back to the Radio Tower and got the device from the synth in the cave, that was the only thing I couldn't do right away that was "needed." I only have 1 character with 8 INT, Rose with 10, and then my other main three have 4INT each, and I'm finding this to be PLENTY of skill points. I'm just sitting on them for the most part.

As for your medic with 11AP, that could probably come in handy in some situations to keep your group all alive through battles, but you shouldn't be wasting APs on any round. Give them a weapon and some points in a weapon skill and shoot those mofos. Use the APs to get into ideal positions and set to ambush. I love the AP rollover mechanic, take advantage of it. That was one of the things in that video, he was so concerned with matching APs with weapon types so you could get the maximum number of rounds off equalling out, but I find that to not matter at all for my play style. I'll use extra points to move, re-crouch, take a headshot chance (it pays off, too), reload weapon, ambush, or save until my next turn and then get an extra shot off in that round.

People bash luck and charisma, but I find them to be quite useful. The overall charisma really adds up in XP for the whole group, which adds up to more skill points more often as well. I'm constantly getting lucky crits, lucky misses, evades, and critical successes. I also almost always get extra con on level up (though, I understand that isn't working?)

I find CI to be mostly useless, but I understand how it could be highly useful as well, depending on how you want to play. I "pull" most of my encounters with a melee scout (I love roleplaying it too: a giant asian woman, Pem-So, jumps out from behind cover with a shotgun in her hands, she yells "hey, scum" and fire off a close-range round into the face of her enemy), if I had higher CI with my other chars, then I'd be wasting APs and turns because they're too far from combat when combat starts for the most part. If I'm not sneaky enough and my scout doesn't get the first shot off, it's really fine, she has 9STR and a shitload of CON and is highly skilled with blunt weapons, I use a few APs to bash on the enemy, and then the rest to run back to my team, who then set to ambush and wait.