Wasteland Wasteland 2 - Character Builds

[Monkeyfinger]

you take heavy weapons for mortars and rockets not machine guns

 

[Pope Amole II]

Decided to respec following the advices of my own guide and in one of those four ranger HQ mounds:

Hello, mr. Frog!

But nah, I'll try to save it for that fucker Larsen, of course.

(the party is 9-1-1-2-10-4-1 assault gunner, 2-1-7-6-10-1-1 brawler, 2-1-4-2-8-10-1 shotgun wielder and 2-1-2-2-1-10-10 leader, if you're curious)

 

[Baron Dupek]

Is it possible to make non-combat character with pumped Charisma and Intelligence and keeping him on leash (out of combat)? Just out of curiosity.

Anyone mention that potato translation is utterly garbage? If not, now you know.
What's worse - translators of D:OS who didn't finished or WL2 where it sucks? And both of them are old veterans in term of translations :mindblow:

 

[Pope Amole II]

Is it possible to make non-combat character with pumped Charisma and Intelligence and keeping him on leash (out of combat)? Just out of curiosity.

There's no need to keep him out of combat - in easy fights, he doesn't matter and he doesn't really risk, in hard fights, he can lob grenades and shoot rockets like everyone else. With the explosives in this game being so powerful, there are no non-combat characters.

And I really love that 10 cha + 10 int build as it allows you to put 6.5 skills on one character (6 decent ones + a little dip into leadership) without paying that much for it (like, spreading those skills across the party is much more tasking, I think). And, if you put toaster repair on him, you may even transfer some of that skill point goodness to your other chars.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Is it possible to make non-combat character with pumped Charisma and Intelligence and keeping him on leash (out of combat)? Just out of curiosity.

Anyone mention that potato translation is utterly garbage? If not, now you know.
What's worse - translators of D:OS who didn't finished or WL2 where it sucks? And both of them are old veterans in term of translations :mindblow:

Quite possible. My team leader has 10 int,8 cha and 4 for a bit more HP/armor usage, using a SMG he even got kills rarely.Also he is our granader.
You can even make everyones Int at least 8 for a really good party. 4 skill points per level really helps.

 

[Baron Dupek]

There's no need to keep him out of combat - in easy fights, he doesn't matter and he doesn't really risk, in hard fights, he can lob grenades and shoot rockets like everyone else. With the explosives in this game being so powerful, there are no non-combat characters.

Why did you reminded me about these grenades....


Like that (pseudo) sequel of JA2 called Hirred Guns where enemies throw grenades at your general direction like a maniacs.

And yeah, that 8-10 Int difference is quite itching even for me that grow up from min-maxing times.

So just go collect portraits (hard to find in the amount of try-hard metrosexuals and naked plastic chicks) and go.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Why did you reminded me about these grenades....

Sorry, mate, but I just can't give the improper answer, y'know. And yeah, like Cyberarmy have said, you can give him a weapon and he'll work more or less ok. Not as good as the 100% combat char, but they can't all be winners.

You can even make everyones Int at least 8 for a really good party. 4 skill points per level really helps.

TBH, I so much hate int 8 in this game - 10 is only 2 attribute points ahead and, well, the gain of another skill point per level is immense. Even if you don't need extra noncombat skills, you can just invest into another weapon skill (which is certainly an option for anyone who's not using assault guns).

 

[Zombra]

Is it possible to make non-combat character with pumped Charisma and Intelligence and keeping him on leash (out of combat)? Just out of curiosity.

One strategy is to spec this character for the lowest possible Initiative. That way you won't have to skip their turn as often

 

[Konjad]

Is it possible to make non-combat character with pumped Charisma and Intelligence and keeping him on leash (out of combat)? Just out of curiosity.

I made one of my characters 10 INT 10 CHA and 4 coordination, gave him a sniper rifle and he's not even much less useful in combat than the rest combat focused team members. Go for it, imo it was a very good idea to do so.

 

[Ovplain]

My party

It is what it is.:S

 

[circ]

It's shit is what it is. Don't leave coord at uneven numbers. Should have gone with 6 and put that extra into speed.

 

[Ovplain]

It's shit is what it is. Don't leave coord at uneven numbers. Should have gone with 6 and put that extra into speed.

Thanks for the tip!

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Do rockets really need the heavy weapons skill? I use them with any character with no problems.

Also, are safecracking and toaster reapir woth it? The loot seems to be completly random and I'm not investing 12SP to get some clothes and broken toys...

 

[Pope Amole II]

Also, are safecracking and toaster reapir woth it? The loot seems to be completly random and I'm not investing 12SP to get some clothes and broken toys...

Of course they are. Safecracking is a must simply because it's a part of this game's economy and, well, combats in this game are extremely economy-based. Take those 540 hp atrocities at the abandoned railway - almost impossible to beat with the convenient means, but add one RPG-7 into the mix and suddenly they're beatable. But each RPG-7 is 700 dollars (yeah, more like RPG-700, lol) - gotta get those money somewhere.

And toaster repair is awesome because you can give that junk to the right persons and get good rewards for that. Some of the rewards are skillbooks, btw, so it's a skill which pretty much pays for itself. Maybe not to the same character who have developed it, but still. Gotta find the right persons, though.

Does anyone have any hard data or experience on Unarmed vs Blunt vs Melee? Are any of these even worth picking up? I was using an Unarmed strength girl in my squad who was pretty tank-like and usually picked up a kill while soaking up some hits. She seemed decent, but as the enemies started using more long-range weapons I felt like she was becoming more and more irrelevant.

All melee characters absolutely must have their speed maxed out (which isn't hard to do as it is pretty much the best attribute in the game ATM). Once you do that (and if you avoid using heavy armors), getting into melee is not that hard. I also have found that melee is optimal for the 1 INT characters - it's just that those extra attribute points saved give the most benefits to them. And it seems like brawling is the best here - adding your level to your damage (with constant critical hits) is just way too good. Blunt is the second one (it gets solid once you get the good weight mods, though, but brawling is probably still better) and bladed is probably the worst one in terms of damage output. It has the unique side of actually having debuffs, though, but I think that would be better given to some kind of bladed NPC (like Takayuki, for example).

 

[Jaesun]

Something Awful likes Wasteland 2: http://www.somethingawful.com/video-game-article/wasteland-character-tips/

I Wish I Had Known These Wasteland 2 Tips

Wasteland 2 is the sort of enormous, complex PC RPG that you can lose yourself in for weeks. You will smell bad. You will forget to eat, and hurriedly make up for it with poor dining decisions. It's fantastic.

It's also intimidating. Being confronted with the party creation screen feels like landing a space shuttle that has its buttons and readouts printed in dwarven runes. There are a ton of opaque choices to be made, and you don't have enough information to make most of them.

What follows are a few things I wish I had known when I began playing the game for review. For the record, this isn't one of those facetious articles that completely abandons the premise after a few lines. These are real tips.

Character Creation

- No matter how you decide to spread out your attribute points, you will want each character to have at least a 12 in the Combat Initiative derived stat. Anything less and enemies will frequently get their turn before you. They will use their turns to shoot you in the face. This is bad.

- How many skills do you want to focus on with a given character? With average Intelligence you can handle three or maybe four skills, just like real life. If you want five skills you'll have to stretch and invest in more Int. The breakpoints are 4 Intelligence for 3 skill points per level, 8 Int for 4 points per level, and 10 Int for 5 per level.

- If you want to free up attribute points, you can drop Luck to 1 without suffering consequences like stepping on rakes or having post-apocalypse psychos find out your cool spikey armor is made of pleather. If you don't care about recruiting NPCs, feel free to do the same with Charisma. Normal quest-solving dialog checks are handled by dialog skills, which are wholly independent of Charisma.

- Speaking of Charisma, when the game checks the stat it looks at the average of your entire party. This means that using Cha as a dump stat with three characters and having one super charismatic guy/girl with really great hair is effectively the same as having a party with fairly low Charisma. It's sort of an all-or-nothing proposition where your entire party must give up a bit of combat effectiveness and/or access to other skills. You'll have to decide if the tradeoffs are worth it.

- Take the Perception skill. It spots alarms and traps. There are a lot of these things because making lethal traps is apparently the national pastime in blown-up America. Disabling them grants a significant amount of XP which really adds up. I'd suggest putting the Demolitions skill (which disables traps) on your main character, to save yourself the hassle of constantly switching between characters.

- Most of the outfits (and, let's face it, character models) are pretty ugly. Don't worry, you'll spend most of the game with the camera pulled way out, and will find all sorts of cosmetic items as loot. Unfortunately, I have yet to come across the hockey mask that defines my trademark style in real life.

General

- Energy weapons are incredible against armored enemies, but otherwise fairly weak. You might want to pair them with a backup like SMGs or shotguns, which are both inherently strong against opponents with low armor. I shouldn't have to tell this to you if you spent any time in the Boy or Girl Scouts.

Just quoting the build related info.

 

[Jaesun]

2-1-2-2-1-10-10 leader, if you're curious)

Why the 10 CHA?

 

[Pope Amole II]

2-1-2-2-1-10-10 leader, if you're curious)

Why the 10 CHA?

He has demolitions, lockpicking, safecracking, weaponsmithing & field medic skills, i.e., all the high-XP yielding ones. So he gains that huge chunk of xp and multiplies it on his huge 45% bonus, resulting in a considerable amount of extra levels for him. And that gives him even more skill points that he spends on those skills (and also some toaster repair so he can redistribute some of the goodness to his party). Pretty much, makes him an uber-skilled character (and also takes a huge burden from the rest of the party).

 

[Jaesun]

Interesting. Thanks.

 

[Volourn]

"It's shit is what it is. Don't leave coord at uneven numbers. Should have gone with 6 and put that extra into speed."

He can always boost it when he gets points at certain level ups. It's not like the stat is frozen.


"All melee characters absolutely must have their speed maxed out"

Define 'must'. My melee chaarcetr is doing well despite not having near max speed. He still hasn't even found the uber melee weapons either. 'Must'. L0L


"pretty much the best attribute in the game ATM)"

INT and STR rival it.

 

[Deitti]

Anyone have good tips for a solid sniper build? I was thinking of a CLASSIC consisting of 2-1-6-4-4-10-1 mainly im trying to make this guy not only the long range support but as my second 10 INT guy so he and the leader can cover as much skills as possible with the two of them, so the other two can just pick handy combos(like perception and demo) and then focus on weapons/melee skills. Also, would spending the attributes you get from leveling up be smarter to use in Speed alone or evenly split between Awareness and Strength, feels like Awa and Str gives the same amount of AP and CI bonus but also give more carry weight, more CON and more damage with brawler skill for my snipers inevitable close range combat needs.

 

[Pope Amole II]

You have too much strength on him, IMO. 2 is just fine - redirecting those points to the Coordination would give you 9 AP (so you can do 1 headshot per turn) and then you push your level 10-20-30 attribute points into the awareness and he'll do great.

Or an alternative build here would be 1-1-5-6-4-10-1 - not as fast, but somewhat tankier. Level up attribute point into coordination so you still have 9 AP and then awareness for the higher CI.

 

[Greatness]

Just some observations after completing the game:

It's probably optimal to make a full squad of 4 INT rangers and make good use of companions for many skills. I ended up with way too many skill points in the end. Companions will never have the combat prowess of your rangers so you might as well use them as your skill monkeys.

Another thing about INT, either do 4 or 10. Those give the best return per point (0.33 skils/point) having 8 is unoptimal (0.28 skills/point).

Ammo is only scarce in the very early game. Not a good enough reason to diversify weapon choice between characters. Assault rifles are best by a large margin. Late game ARs have the same range and more damage per AP than sniper rifles (pretty stupid). Pistols are pointless. SMG's can be decent but worse than ARs for range and worse than shotguns for close. Blunt is best melee skill, but you might as well use pointblank shotgun instead since it's more damage and AoE.

Combat Initiative is retardedly strong and there's really no need to go above 8 AP for AR users. Thus the "best" combat build is probably 2,1,8,2,10,4,1. Do this on all 4 rangers and you'd have 20 initiative after your first 2 attribute points, giving you basically 2x as many turns as your opponents.

 

[cvv]

Copypasting my char creation tips from the general thread, for what it's worth to anyone.


- do NOT put any points in toaster repair; it's a useful skill but you'll find a good companion with a high-level TR skill early on; so just note the locations of toasters you find and collect them later
- as for putting anything in surgeon and computer, depends on the route you choose in the beginning; if you go save AG Center, don't put anything into either, Rose has you covered, if you save Highpool create a computer-focused character for sho; for surgeon 1 or 2 points is enough
- great skills to have and level up from the get go are lockpicking, field medic and safecracking (afaik you won't find any companions with those)
- alarm disarm and demolitions are nice-ish but you don't reallly need any of those; there are only a few places where tripping an alarm is inadvisable and tripping a booby trap does only pitiful damage anyway
- mechanical repair is very weird I don't think I've encountered more than 2 places where you can actually use it and I'm deep into California now, plus you can find a +1 MR trinket very soon and +2 MR toolbox right at the start of California
- the ASS skills are nice but you can mostly do without them just fine; they'll give you a bit more XP, dialogue and equipment but I found most of the benefits cosmetic
- don't rely with Brute Force on Angela, she'll leave soon-ish and you'll want a good Brute Force level on somebody else too
- Leadership is quite nice actually, I'd definitely create one char with high CHA and Leadership
- high-ish Outdoorsman is nice if you don't wanna constantly fight random mobs while traversing the overland map - and you probably don't, especially on higher diffs those fights always drain more ammo and resources than you can get back from the drops
- Animal Whisperer can be completely disregarded, it's relatively useless and you'll find a companion with high AS skill very soon (in the Highpool branch)
- Barter is completely useless, don't bother

Attributes:

- lotsa people recommend dumping coordination, luck, charisma or awareness and maxing INT; it's up to you but I wouldn't do that; if you dump COO and AW, your AP and initiative will suffer and relying on Speed only is not good enough
- I'd keep COO at 4, that gives you +2 AP
- Luck can be safely dumped
- Awareness is ok, I'd keep it somewhere between 3-5
- don't underestimate strength, it doesn't have to be maxed but don't dump it either, you'll need a reasonable HPs and carrying capacity
- Speed is tricky you'll get +1 AP at lvl2 and then another one at lvl6, personally I wouldn't go that far, 3 or 4 is probably enough, except for melee chars, those should go all the way to 6
- INT is the most important attribute but I don't think you have to max it, I'd say 5 is absolute minimum (that gives you +1 AP and +1 SP/lvl). Anything higher is obviously nice but not absolutely necessary. The chars level up very quickly and if you go with full party and read up on meta beforehand you don't need ALL DA SKILLZ POINTZ!!1!!; there are books, shrines and trinkets that will raise your skills too so don't fret about it too much
- I wouldn't completely dump charisma either, the bonus XP is not huge but it adds up over time (right now the difference between my CHA 6 guy and CHA 1 guy is 3 levels, at the beginning of California, that means 9 more skillpoints); plus a toon with high CHA and Leadership is a VERY nice addition to your team; plus some of the cooler companions you'll meet are Charisma locked (counted across your whole team) so if you make all toons with CHA 1, you'll be able to recruit only chumps

As for weapons:

- in my next playthrough I will go with two melee chars with high speed and strength and only INT 5, they'll be my main dmg dealers and they'll focus mainly on Brawling and Blunts which on higher levels are godly; Blunts have a higher armor penetration and start to shine later on; I wouldn't bother with Blades
- Handguns is the worst weapon skill dmg-wise but compared to Submachine guns it uses a lot less ammo; and if you play on anything higher than Seasoned you will have trouble feeding that early on, especially if you go with the "save AG Center" branch; if you choose to go with handguns, don't bother with levelling it up too much, it's just something that will carry you through the beginning and can be dumped afterwards (even the .45 guns later on are extremelly meh)
- Assault rifles and submachine guns are great but start to lose out in the 2nd half of the game against robots and armored mobs; against those Energy Weapons are godly so I'd probably level up assault up to 5 or six and then start levelling up Energy
- Heavy weapons are nice and on lower difficulties you can even sustain them ammo-wise; but you'll get them late-ish and by that time most opponents will be armored, I'd definitely level up Blunts or Brawling first and only then throw in Heavies for some additional fun
- Shotguns are matter of taste, I found them awful for the majority of the 1st half, then awesome for a while and then again meh, as soon as you start encountering armored mobs; I'd probably still get it for one char (only with the Highpool branch though) because at least the ammo is plentiful

 

[Greatness]

- lotsa people recommend dumping coordination, luck, charisma or awareness and maxing INT; it's up to you but I wouldn't do that; if you dump COO and AW, your AP and initiative will suffer and relying on Speed only is not good enough

Speed is more efficient than a combination of the other two. AP has some pretty bad diminishing returns so it's not worth taking it all that high. Keeping it at 8 or 10 is best. Of course you shouldn't rely on speed alone, but speed+awareness and dumping Coord to 2 or 4 is best.

- Speed is tricky you'll get +1 AP at lvl2 and then another one at lvl6, personally I wouldn't go that far, 3 or 4 is probably enough, except for melee chars, those should go all the way to 6

The AP gain from speed is tied into the trio of STR/SPD/INT. There's no bonus at level 2 or 6 for speed, instead you divide the total of those 3 attributes by 4 to see how many APs you get.

- INT is the most important attribute but I don't think you have to max it, I'd say 5 is absolute minimum (that gives you +1 AP and +1 SP/lvl). Anything higher is obviously nice but not absolutely necessary. The chars level up very quickly and if you go with full party and read up on meta beforehand you don't need ALL DA SKILLZ POINTZ!!1!!; there are books, shrines and trinkets that will raise your skills too so don't fret about it too much

5 is a terrible score for INT. Either go 1, 4, 8, or 10.

- I wouldn't completely dump charisma either, the bonus XP is not huge but it adds up over time (right now the difference between my CHA 6 guy and CHA 1 guy is 3 levels, at the beginning of California, that means 9 more skillpoints); plus a toon with high CHA and Leadership is a VERY nice addition to your team; plus some of the cooler companions you'll meet are Charisma locked (counted across your whole team) so if you make all toons with CHA 1, you'll be able to recruit only chumps

An extra 3 levels isn't worth the 5 more points into a combat attribute IMO. Leadership also gives 1% hit chance instead of 2% as the tooltip says. Still it can be nice to stop the annoying rogue companions.

 

[Dickie]

- great skills to have and level up from the get go are lockpicking, field medic and safecracking (afaik you won't find any companions with those)

I could've sworn Scotchmo had lockpicking and safecracking, and he's really easy to get early.

Edit: http://wasteland.wikia.com/wiki/Scotchmo

 

[Decado]

I hope they patch Coordination. It is really the only glaringly obvious dump stat, imo.