Wasteland Wasteland 2 Thread - Director's Cut

[D!!]

And did you feel Wasteland 2 is a worthy spiritual successor of Fallout?

No. It is a worthy successor to the first Wasteland. California part is more fallout-like in terms of exploration freedom and quest design, though.

On Normal, you shouldn't have any problems if you go with assault rifles. It is most versatile weapon category in the game, just be sure that you have enough ammo. And don't underestimate the Leadirship skill, it is really useful and completely protects your team members against going rogue.

 

[the_shadow]

I've made it to California, and holy moley is there a difficulty spike. After getting gud in Arizona, my squad is getting curb stomped repeatedly. The only exception to this is the Leather Jerks who I can take out easily via a direct attack, which is rather ironic considering numerous side quests exist to weaken their sub-bosses before you decide to launch an all out assault.

The Gods Militia are particularly nasty, where they pack handguns that hit for over 150hp per shot. I only just scraped through the battle where they are about to execute some poor wastelander for eating shellfish. I got shredded at the brothel until I cheesed it with a couple of well placed explosives.

My major gripe with this game is that you need to pretty much max all your skills if you want to access most of the content. You need max lockpicking/electronics/safe cracking to open most safes and containers in California without reloading, max brute force to kick down walls, max explosives to clear mines in areas you want to access, and max weapon skills if you want to hit reliably with aimed shots.

I've installed the Repeater Units in both Rodia and Angel's Rest, and have almost all the bags of cat litter I need, but am starting to get really burnt out. Something similar happened in the Deep Caverns in Underrail. It sucks not developing your PCs optimally, only to hit such a huge difficulty spike late in the game. I'd rather hit a difficulty spike early, so I don't lose much time restarting and developing a new party with my metagame knowledge.

 

[D!!]

I've made it to California, and holy moley is there a difficulty spike. After getting gud in Arizona, my squad is getting curb stomped repeatedly. The only exception to this is the Leather Jerks who I can take out easily via a direct attack, which is rather ironic considering numerous side quests exist to weaken their sub-bosses before you decide to launch an all out assault.

The Gods Militia are particularly nasty, where they pack handguns that hit for over 150hp per shot. I only just scraped through the battle where they are about to execute some poor wastelander for eating shellfish. I got shredded at the brothel until I cheesed it with a couple of well placed explosives.

My major gripe with this game is that you need to pretty much max all your skills if you want to access most of the content. You need max lockpicking/electronics/safe cracking to open most safes and containers in California without reloading, max brute force to kick down walls, max explosives to clear mines in areas you want to access, and max weapon skills if you want to hit reliably with aimed shots.

I've installed the Repeater Units in both Rodia and Angel's Rest, and have almost all the bags of cat litter I need, but am starting to get really burnt out. Something similar happened in the Deep Caverns in Underrail. It sucks not developing your PCs optimally, only to hit such a huge difficulty spike late in the game. I'd rather hit a difficulty spike early, so I don't lose much time restarting and developing a new party with my metagame knowledge.

Well, you will be able to faceroll California as soon as you get high-level gear such as Plasma Hammer/Proton Axe or AK-97 even if your party composition or skill builds suck. Normal is pretty forgiving. Just endure. In enduring, grow strong.

 

[the_shadow]

I've made it to California, and holy moley is there a difficulty spike. After getting gud in Arizona, my squad is getting curb stomped repeatedly. The only exception to this is the Leather Jerks who I can take out easily via a direct attack, which is rather ironic considering numerous side quests exist to weaken their sub-bosses before you decide to launch an all out assault.

The Gods Militia are particularly nasty, where they pack handguns that hit for over 150hp per shot. I only just scraped through the battle where they are about to execute some poor wastelander for eating shellfish. I got shredded at the brothel until I cheesed it with a couple of well placed explosives.

My major gripe with this game is that you need to pretty much max all your skills if you want to access most of the content. You need max lockpicking/electronics/safe cracking to open most safes and containers in California without reloading, max brute force to kick down walls, max explosives to clear mines in areas you want to access, and max weapon skills if you want to hit reliably with aimed shots.

I've installed the Repeater Units in both Rodia and Angel's Rest, and have almost all the bags of cat litter I need, but am starting to get really burnt out. Something similar happened in the Deep Caverns in Underrail. It sucks not developing your PCs optimally, only to hit such a huge difficulty spike late in the game. I'd rather hit a difficulty spike early, so I don't lose much time restarting and developing a new party with my metagame knowledge.

Well, you will be able to faceroll California as soon as you get high-level gear such as Plasma Hammer/Proton Axe or AK-97 even if your party composition or skill builds suck. Normal is pretty forgiving. Just endure. In enduring, grow strong.

Thanks, that's rather encouraging. The high difficulty of the combat by itself doesn't bother me, but constantly having to make one of the multitude of skill checks that have an 8+ difficulty wears you down a bit.

Also, is it just me, or are the Desert Rangers complete incompetents? They have an active nuke with a big red button in a public area, they don't have enough staff to protect surrounding settlements, and they allow the RSM (who are openly hostile to the Desert Rangers) to expand unchecked.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I've made it to California, and holy moley is there a difficulty spike. After getting gud in Arizona, my squad is getting curb stomped repeatedly. The only exception to this is the Leather Jerks who I can take out easily via a direct attack, which is rather ironic considering numerous side quests exist to weaken their sub-bosses before you decide to launch an all out assault.

The Gods Militia are particularly nasty, where they pack handguns that hit for over 150hp per shot. I only just scraped through the battle where they are about to execute some poor wastelander for eating shellfish. I got shredded at the brothel until I cheesed it with a couple of well placed explosives.

My major gripe with this game is that you need to pretty much max all your skills if you want to access most of the content. You need max lockpicking/electronics/safe cracking to open most safes and containers in California without reloading, max brute force to kick down walls, max explosives to clear mines in areas you want to access, and max weapon skills if you want to hit reliably with aimed shots.

I've installed the Repeater Units in both Rodia and Angel's Rest, and have almost all the bags of cat litter I need, but am starting to get really burnt out. Something similar happened in the Deep Caverns in Underrail. It sucks not developing your PCs optimally, only to hit such a huge difficulty spike late in the game. I'd rather hit a difficulty spike early, so I don't lose much time restarting and developing a new party with my metagame knowledge.

Well, you will be able to faceroll California as soon as you get high-level gear such as Plasma Hammer/Proton Axe or AK-97 even if your party composition or skill builds suck. Normal is pretty forgiving. Just endure. In enduring, grow strong.

Thanks, that's rather encouraging. The high difficulty of the combat by itself doesn't bother me, but constantly having to make one of the multitude of skill checks that have an 8+ difficulty wears you down a bit.

Also, is it just me, or are the Desert Rangers complete incompetents? They have an active nuke with a big red button in a public area, they don't have enough staff to protect surrounding settlements, and they allow the RSM (who are openly hostile to the Desert Rangers) to expand unchecked.

Sounds like any type of Military operation.

 

[the_shadow]

I think I'm on the home stretch. I've completed all the major main and side quests in California and am about to assault the Citadel of the Syncs, but am just clearing up a few minor loose ends (eg. toaster items). I've had to reduce the difficulty only once, and that was for the synthetic ambush after you obtain the required amount of cat litter. It's blatantly obvious before you arrive at the farm that you're walking into an ambush, but unfortunately there is no way to avoid or deal with it intelligently. You have no time to seek cover before you are surrounding on all sides by synthetics, including several who have some sort of gauss rifle that can easily one-shot kill your characters.

If I were to rank weapon type from best to worst, it would be:

Assault rifles - Best mix of range and damage per shot and AP.
Sniper rifles - Best damage per shot and range, although burst fire with assault rifles can exceed them in damage per AP.
Handguns - Surprisingly good damage per shot and AP, poor range
Blunt weapons - Great damage per AP and per hit
Shotguns - Great damage per AP if you get your hands on one with does burst fire, otherwise not that good.
Heavy weapons - Decent damage per AP and good range, but assault rifles beat them on both of these without chewing up valuable ammo.
Bladed weapons/hand to hand - Decent damage per AP, but not as good as blunt weapons
Sub machine guns - Inferior damage and range to assault rifles/heavy weapons
Energy weapons - Only good versus robots, and even then you're better of using a rifle.

 

[Jimmious]

Ah yeah the farm ambush. Good times. :p

 

[the_shadow]

I finally beat this game and accomplished 'good' outcomes for most of the main side-quests, excluding the Mannerites who remained cannibals because I didn't make a speech check.

My first thoughts are... it's a pretty good game, possibly one of the best RPGs I've played that have been developed in the past 5 years. There are only two things that really detract from the enjoyment:

1. Having percentage success/fail results for skill checks, along with critical fails. You spend a lot of time reloading after critically failing a skill check, which draws out what is already a very long game. I've never really liked have percentage success/fail results for skill checks, and prefer automatic successes if you have enough of a particular skill. This excludes combat, where a bit of randomness is nice. But let's face it, you're going to just reload until you finally pass that skill check to unlock a safe/disarm a trap.

2. Sudden difficulty spikes. I'm all for an increase in difficulty over the course of the game, but some of the fights in this game just come out of nowhere and curbstomp you. And the funny thing is that once you've limped through them, you'll encounter enemies that are a complete cakewalk.

I also have a minor third gripe, and that is...

3. In order to get the 'best' outcomes for some missions, you need to do some counter-intuitive things. There's also a point where the quest giver will want to accompany your party, and they are as tough as wet tissue paper, meaning that you should clear a path to the objective *before* you talk to them.

Some other observations:

1. I was fiddling around with brawling near the end-game, and boy oh boy did I underestimate it. I was doing ridiculous amounts of damage with a character who only had about 6 points in it. From a quick reading of the inXile forums, this is due to character level getting added to the damage, and the high critical multiplier. I doubt brawling is that good early game, though.

2. Strength is a dump stat, even for melee characters, as it doesn't add much in the way of hand to hand damage.

3. You get an awesome assault rifle near the end of the game that fires 5x burst rounds, as if assault rifles weren't already overpowered.

4. There's a heavy weapon at the end game which has a 15x (!!!) damage multiplier, although the base damage sucks. Still not a good enough reason to go with heavies.

5. I mentioned earlier that heavy weapons aren't that good. I'm even more set in that belief now, since they guzzle ammo that is better used in assault rifles.

6. I received a special semi-machine gun as a reward for a toaster item that actually outputs amazing damage.

7. Energy weapons are garbage.

8. Perks in this game are nowhere near as useful as they are in Fallout, with 9/10 providing negligible benefits.

9. I regret not creating my party with speed/initiative in mind. In every battle the enemy moved first, which really put me at a disadvantage. Being able to find cover or take out the enemy's sharpshooters before they can react would have made my life much easier.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Like the proverbial broken clock, sometimes backer content...

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Holywood graveyard offers quality grave inscriptions.

 

[Sykar]

Say which difficulties do you guys like best? For me Rookie and Normal were too easy but Supreme Jerk felt too bullet spongey so I go with Ranger most of the time.

 

[Zombra]

Say which difficulties do you guys like best? For me Rookie and Normal were too easy but Supreme Jerk felt too bullet spongey so I go with Ranger most of the time.

I can't remember if I played on Normal or Ranger. Ranger? I don't know. Anyway, I felt like the game had decent resistance while still allowing me to do stuff like have one character with no combat skills, not use Assault Rifles, etc.

 

[Jimmious]

Ranger was hard enough to provide challenge in harder fights but not too hard so that I rage all the time

 

[T_zi]

Say which difficulties do you guys like best? For me Rookie and Normal were too easy but Supreme Jerk felt too bullet spongey so I go with Ranger most of the time.

I think ranger would be ideal for the 1st playthrough. Supreme jerk would force you to forgo allocating points in general skills, especially dialogue related ones, in order to max out combat skills, given the huge bonus the ai gets in hp and damage dealt.
Does anyone know if avellone's novella is still in the works?

 

[Goral]

Does anyone know if avellone's novella is still in the works?

Yes, just like his Arcanum playthrough.

Spoiler

The official version is that he's working on it and that he plans to finish Arcanum but that's just talk.

 

[Sykar]

Am I by the way the only one who modifies some recruitable NPCs via save game editor so they have tolerable stats instead of horrid like DanQ for example?

Say which difficulties do you guys like best? For me Rookie and Normal were too easy but Supreme Jerk felt too bullet spongey so I go with Ranger most of the time.

I think ranger would be ideal for the 1st playthrough. Supreme jerk would force you to forgo allocating points in general skills, especially dialogue related ones, in order to max out combat skills, given the huge bonus the ai gets in hp and damage dealt.
Does anyone know if avellone's novella is still in the works?

Imho it is not worth it to play SJ. All it does make the enemies feel like bullet sponges and your own team feels made of paper tissue if not in cover. If all they could come up with is fiddeling with damage numbers then 100% extra damage from enemies was perfectly sufficient just like in BG series for example.

 

[Zombra]

Am I by the way the only one who modifies some recruitable NPCs via save game editor so they have tolerable stats instead of horrid like DanQ for example?

I left their stats alone but changed some of their outfits

 

[Sykar]

Am I by the way the only one who modifies some recruitable NPCs via save game editor so they have tolerable stats instead of horrid like DanQ for example?

I left their stats alone but changed some of their outfits

There are quite a few NPCs which I leave alone stat wise. The worst offenders however are so mind boggelingly stupid even under "RPG flair" premise so I feel completely justified to change them to a small degree, just enough to make them actually useful.

Marie Brygo: Who in the flying fuck thought it was a good idea to give her not one not two but freaking three combat skills? I can get behind the idea of Sniper and SMG one for long range and one for short range since her Speed is on the low side it might be nice for her to switch to it against enemies who come to close or whom she want to finish off at low health. But why oh why does she have Heavy Weapons skill, why? It is so mindbogglingly retarded I wonder what her creator was thinking or smoking or injecting intravenously.

Then there is the aforementioned DanQ. Why in the flying fuck does he have 7 intelligence? There is no real difference from a role-playing perspective between 7 or 8 ntelligence yet 8 gives a huge benefit with that extra skill point per level while 7 gives you nothing compared to 3 additional points in either speed or strength. To add insult to injury he already is high level so he has lost a load of skill points and cannot be fixed anymore. His CI is so bad that you have to spend at least 2 points on Awareness and waste a CI trinket on him or he will do jack but that will not happen before level 40! His 8 AP are nothing to write home about either.
I feel perfectly justified to move a point from charisma to intelligence for example . This will have no real impact on gameplay or "flair" outside of a ever so slightly lower leveling speed.
Of course his high charisma would be great if there were more characters to recruit which require high team charisma. Unfortunately there are like two in the entire game who have charisma requirements north of 20. His barter is fairly useless and due to high charisma and intelligence his combat stats are abysmal. He fails as a complementary character entirely which was his entire selling point and constantly going back to Ranger Citadel to sell some scraps and shit is not worth it.

Lexicanium is in a similar boat. He is level 20 already yet he has intelligence 7?! There is no excuse for him not to have intelligence 8 already. Rook also has for an inexplicable reason intelligence 6. Why not 4 or 8 depending? Or if you have to let us waste a point on intelligence at level 10 why not either 3 or 7? Waiting 20 levels to fix his intelligence is idiotic.

Gary "NaCl" Wolfe misses 3! attribute points? Why? There is no one else who lacks 3 points? To top it all off he is actually fairly difficult to recruit and you have to meet a few requirements before he will join you.

There are also characters who have utterly redundant skills like Perception. Outside of getting Tactical positioning perk which is useful only to melees and close ranged characters there is no reason to have it on any NPC.

Of course I do not touch characters like for example Scotchmo and Ralphy. Both are obvious flair characters and can be made decent over the course of the game since they start at a low level and they start with skills which can complement your party well and are available early on.

Overall a lot of the NPCs scream "clobbered together lazily" to me and I doubt the developers spend more than an hour on them. Most even use standard character creation assets which make them look very differently from their portraits. Rose would be the a good example. They actually give her a cyberarm yet cannot be arsed with giving her properly long black hair like on her portrait. Instead she gets a blonde "afro"?! And I am not even asking for glasses...
Pizepi was apparently not even worth getting a proper portrait so they just gave her a character model photo and tinted that green. Hooray!
What is even more stupid is the fact that the DC version seems to have cut out some portraits from the selection alongside a few customization options like the ski mask from the original.

 

[Zombra]

Yeah. Honestly, I don't mind a few wasted skills (pretty sure every recruit of mine had at least one skill I never used) but the Intelligence thing is damn stupid. Really they should have made an effort to make every Int point matter ... incredibly obnoxious that there's no difference whatsoever between a 4 and a 7. Why not simply allow fractions of a skill point to be earned? Fix that and many of the horrible companion problems would be solved.

 

[T_zi]

Am I by the way the only one who modifies some recruitable NPCs via save game editor so they have tolerable stats instead of horrid like DanQ for example?

Say which difficulties do you guys like best? For me Rookie and Normal were too easy but Supreme Jerk felt too bullet spongey so I go with Ranger most of the time.

I think ranger would be ideal for the 1st playthrough. Supreme jerk would force you to forgo allocating points in general skills, especially dialogue related ones, in order to max out combat skills, given the huge bonus the ai gets in hp and damage dealt.
Does anyone know if avellone's novella is still in the works?

Imho it is not worth it to play SJ. All it does make the enemies feel like bullet sponges and your own team feels made of paper tissue if not in cover. If all they could come up with is fiddeling with damage numbers then 100% extra damage from enemies was perfectly sufficient just like in BG series for example.

Supreme jerk is for min-maxers. I have no interest in playing that way.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't think you really need to min-max your stats to succeed on Supreme Jerk. The most important thing for giving yourself an edge is to make sure you have the best weapons available to you at any time, to cut through the damage sponges. That means save-scumming to get the weapons you need from gun crates, and running into the weapons vendor random encounter in Arizona ASAP.

 

[Sykar]

Yeah. Honestly, I don't mind a few wasted skills (pretty sure every recruit of mine had at least one skill I never used) but the Intelligence thing is damn stupid. Really they should have made an effort to make every Int point matter ... incredibly obnoxious that there's no difference whatsoever between a 4 and a 7. Why not simply allow fractions of a skill point to be earned? Fix that and many of the horrible companion problems would be solved.

It boggles my mind that they failed horribly to balance the stats even after DC and it would have been easy. For once Awareness is too good in terms of giving CI. Likewise Speed is almost universally the best stat in the game, it gives you everything you want, movement speed, CI, AP, Evasion and it is useful at every even number. The CI should be gained only ever 4th level just like AP for S/S/I combined. Awareness should give CI every odd level. Add the lost points as a base to the CI-formula and viola there would be a significant reduction in terms of CI between characters and while pumping Speed and Awareness for CI and other stats would still be beneficial there would not be such an absurd cliff in terms of combat efficiency.

Charisma would have been great if it was a requisite or even vital for a couple of crucial speech checks. That and maybe every 4th level give a bonus to Kiss Ass by 1 and reduce the Perk to give only 1 as a bonus as well. Do the same for Strength and Intelligence for Hard Ass and Smart Ass respectively.
Then change skill point gain for Intelligence: 1-> 1SP, 3-> 2 SP, 5-> 3SP, 7-> 4SP, 10->5 SP. Much smoother progression and 4 and 8 Int are still useful if you want that bonus to Smart Ass.
Luck might be fixed if it affects all those perks as well which give a chance for bonus loot. Alternatively make it a little more predictable and the boni stronger at high levels. Like instead of just getting +1 AP for your turn give +2 AP and +2CI for this turn to calculate when you go next at higher levels like 6+ Luck.

Same goes for skills. Barter could have been easily fixed by introducing some reward negotiations and other checks regarding business talk. Perception could function like Charisma, in that certain secrets need a combined Perception of x with x > 10. With that recruits which have Perception are actually valuable.

 

[Zombra]

TLDR. I'll trust you that your changes are awesome, but I'm skeptical of any "If they'd only done what I think everything would be great!" rebalance.

However I am confident in my observation that using the amazing idea of fractions could have only been good for the system. Instead of +5% Dodge bonus for every 3 stat points in Agility, why not +1.67% Dodge bonus for every 1 point in Agility.

 

[Sykar]

TLDR. I'll trust you that your changes are awesome, but I'm skeptical of any "If they'd only done what I think everything would be great!" rebalance.

However I am confident in my observation that using the amazing idea of fractions could have only been good for the system. Instead of +5% Dodge bonus for every 3 stat points in Agility, why not +1.67% Dodge bonus for every 1 point in Agility.

Considering that almost every post I saw here or on the inXile forum agrees with my assessment that CI is king followed by AP and therefore makes speed the king of stats while luck and charisma are dumpster fires I am confident that these changes are an improvement over the mess we have now were:

Speed: The best
Awareness: close second
Intelligence: just get Rose as skill mule, leave it at 4 for the core party
Charisma and Luck: Dump stats except for charisma for the leader character
Strength: Leave at 2 unless melee character where six is sufficient, 8 if you feel like you want to wear heavy armor.
Coordination: Leave at 2 unless you need to get an extra AP to hit a sweet spot and you cannot get it from the s/s/i combo anymore.

Same for skills like Barter which are utterly useless. More so due to game design like making it far too easy to get filthy rich relatively early on.
Some skills like Toaster Repair are so niche you do not want them on your main squad and delay the development of crucial skills.

Quirks are the same we have the triumvirate in:
Brittle Bones: 2 AP is godly and the movement speed penalty gets partially compensate with high speed and using long range weapons like Snipers and Assault Rifles.

Thick skin: 2 Armor makes a big difference and makes your melee tank noticably tougher.

Disparnumerophobia: Even after the justified nerf it is still one of the best Quirks giving you 7 additional attribute points and the negative can be circumvented by leveling every 2nd level up.

Some are situationally useful:
Way of the sqeezins: Good for energy weapons since they cannot crit anyway and the combat speed modifier is annoying but nothing more.

Twitchy: Good for close range or melee characters with decent survivability who want to make use of the Tactical Positioning feat.

Psychopath: Good for rapid fire weapons like SMGs and Heavy Weapons though these are not the best weapons. Needs high leadership and a bit more in coordination to compensate for the penalty

Ascetic: Good for low int characters because skill points are the hardest to come by early on while by late early to mid game you usually have that combat skill at maximum anyway.

The rest are just aweful like Two-Pump Chump for example.

Does that mean that my suggestions clobbered together in a 5 minute post are the best which could be achieved? No. But if for sure would take that idiotic dominance of speed and awareness down a notch and up the value of the other stats.

 

[DavidBVal]

Finally my queue reached this game. Never played the original release, just the DC at Supreme Jerk.

I was veeeery skeptical as I usually am with modern games, but I am pleasantly surprised, after 25h in including a few restarts. The game is a bit easy, but I love the pacing and flow, the skill system is robust and combat is fun enough. Writing ranges from very good to tolerable, although the constant references to WL1 feel sometimes a bit forced and pointless. How many different times do I need to re-read the Cochise story from different NPCs?

I find the combination of AP and CI a bit strange. The game already has APs to represent characters' ability to make actions, putting CI on top feels wrong (and a bit game-breaking, a party with starting CI 13-15 is OP).