It takes some getting used to, but if you take it slowly you start to get the hang of it and see what works and what doesn't. It's tricky at the beginning because there are so many skills that are almost useless. The first time I played the game I think I restarted it several times before I made characters I wanted to keep.

One thing I remember that helps a lot is to have at least one or 2 characters with level 2 brawling and using melee weapons rather than the pistol. They do just as much (if not more) damage and they get to attack twice, which is a huge advantage near the beginning.

This guide is excellent and will tell you everything you need to know:

[url=http://user.tninet.se/~jyg699a/wasteland.html]http://user.tninet.se/~jyg699a/wasteland.html[/url]

Your guys will be terrible shots with pistols in the beginning, and do lousy damage. You won't have pistols for too long though, so I wouldn't waste much time trying to level up the Clip Pistol skill. Don't try and shoot anybody farther away than about 20-30' with a pistol. It is definitely a short-range weapon. Close the distance by running the party toward the enemy, or you'll just waste all your ammo by missing.

I agree with the brawling skill recommendation given. You can do more damage pistol whipping jerks with empty guns than you can with the bullets it seems. You can also get multiple attacks per round once your brawling skill improves, which is a huge benefit.

About the time you start getting SMGs and assault rifles, brawling becomes a bit less useful as you'll find enemies are distancing themselves more and will get a lot of shots in on you if you have to run up to them. Plus gunfire takes priority over melee attacks in the combat order. This changes again later in the game when you get better armour.

It's also advised to play the game in the order the story takes you, which is Highpool, Ag Centre, Quartz/Desert Nomad Camp. If you wander into certain areas too early, like the Guardian Citadel, your guys will be taking a dirt nap. Once you've played through the game once, you will realize where you can take some shortcuts.

Also, hire other characters to join your party and help out. There's a kid in Highpool who will join you. He's pretty inept, but makes for a good meat-shield.

There's a lotta good info here, which I really appreciate.

One thing I'ds like to know is if I should grind in the very early places, like the Ag Center, and spend a lot of time upping my chars on the easy kills and wandering the desert for random encounters or if the game is meant to be played more naturally, by going through the areas and advancing the story.

So, I guess it comes down to whether it's better to play it as a story or a game? I'd rather play the story than power game, but I don't want to get caught later on with weak characters.

This game doesn't require any grinding, really. If you play through the storyline, your characters will quickly level up their skills. Once you understand how skills get leveled up, it makes it easier and you'll waste less time.

A skill can only be leveled up to the level of the enemy you are attacking. This means that even if you shoot 1000 lizards with your clip pistol, you'll never raise that skill to level 2. You have to successfully hit a level 2 or higher enemy to get that chance of raising the skill's level. It's also worth noting that an enemy's level is also equal to their armour class, and this maxes out at 7. So you can never raise a skill higher than 7 through regular use.

Since AC reduces damage by the same number of hit dice (a die being six sides), you can wind up facing enemies that you cannot damage at all with your current weapons, no matter how many times you go full auto on them. ie. if you have a Nato assault rifle (damage 6d6), you still won't hurt Brother Goliath (AC 7) at the entrance to the Citadel, but you can raise your AR skill to level 7 by attacking him repeatedly.

This is great news for me! Thanks! I like how the games back then didn't require power gaming to win.

I think that it's important to mention macros-feature you can use to get out of some routine actions. For example, to make a perception check on a certain place you have to press "U" key, select character, select what to use (item, skill, stat), select perception, select direction. After some uses it becomes a little bit annoying.
So, you can setup a macro for this action pressing Ctrl + one of "F"-keys. A hint that macro is recording will appear and you can start making actions. To stop saving press same combination of Ctrl + "F"-key. Now pressing this "F"-key will play all your recorded actions.
It's very handy during encounters. For example, I use this macro for melee attacks: a1a1a2a2y. This means that first two rangers will attack first pack of mobs and other two will attack second pack then confirm selected actions. If there's no packs the game engine ignores symbols (1's and 2's here) and all 4 rangers attack the existing pack. Since there are a lot of encounters this macro is very helpful.

Forget pistol and rifle skills and use those points for level 2 in brawling. Until you are strong enough to get to the shops that sell assault rifles, equip some crowbars and commence bashing. you will have more attacks and do more damage. Later in the game you can get a Proton Ax that does the most damage in the game with multiple attacks. Late in the game I use it with Power Armor to conserve ammo. especially in random map encounters. Use it and have your party evade,

Make sure each character has a canteen .to survive in the desert. this is important because the desert is one of the few places you can rest and recover without random encounter interruptions. Go to a location that says "Very Hot" and rest.

Some things aren't obvious from the manual, or gamefaqs, or the guide listed above. The guides are all full of odd tidbits except for things that may be baffling, and even the spoiler walkthroughs don't help if you don't know how to do things.

Some things are a slight puzzle, using items in your inventory. Others weren't clear at all; like what to do if you're next to a character on the screen but nothing happens. There's no command to look at a square really, but if you're next to a character you can use "E" for encounter, and you'll be told what it is, and you can fight or just evade to do no fighting.

You also Hire characters this way in encounters, and that's the way to get one lost person out of a cave.

Also use your Perception skill if there's an interesting description of the ground or floor.

Basically use all your skills and try them out. Things like "climb" get you over obstacles. These can be a bit cumbersome with several keys to do one thing, but you can use the trick listed above to make some macros. Keep one function key free so that you can create a new macro for something you'll use more than a couple times in an area.

Maybe use one macro for attacking, one macro for climbing (don't put the final direction in the macro), one for perception on the ground, one for picklock, and so forth.

Is there a straight up, key by key, what does this do list anywhere? The manual was only slightly helpful.