Are there viable melee builds in this? That was my option to save ammo in Wasteland 2 and I found the melee guy quite fun to play in the end. Always good to have some build variety to play with.
This is almost certainly going to be the next game I buy!
Are there viable melee builds in this? That was my option to save ammo in Wasteland 2 and I found the melee guy quite fun to play in the end. Always good to have some build variety to play with.
This is almost certainly going to be the next game I buy!
I found that melee builds are very viable in the earlier part of the game only. At that stage, the much higher attack rate of most melee weapons is an advantage. You'll be able to do 3-5 attacks per round when firearms users will be able to do 1-2 attacks per round and your attacks will do at least as much damage as theirs. You will also sometimes knock an enemy down and stun them for a couple of rounds, which is a massive advantage. But the rate of progress of firearms is much higher than that of melee, so the balance soon changes.
1) You have to close with an enemy to attack them. Not so bad in the early game, when enemies are using poor quality pistols with little range or are themselves using melee weapons. Very bad after the early game, when enemies are using firearms with a much longer range and/or full auto and those weapons are using more powerful bullets and using them more efficiently. An enemy 50 feet away has an AK47 pointed at you. You have a knife. You're going to get shot before you get close enough to stab them. It might be possible to overcome that disadvantage with a solo stealth build, but solo is a very hard way to play this game and a solo stealth sniper would probably be a better choice for it anyway.
2) Blocking your own party. Melee fighters must close with the enemy, which means they will always be blocking angles of attack for firearms users. At best, that will mean that firearms users will have to move, which uses up action points, which reduces the number of times they can fire. Say, for example, one of your party has 8 action points and the single shot attack on their gun takes 4 AP. They can fire two single shots per round. But the melee guy in your party is running towards the enemy and the closer they get the more angles of attack they block off, so your firearms user has to move to the side before shooting. Even if they just move one square, just 1 AP, that reduces the number of times they can fire that round from 2 to 1.
3) Friendly fire. Related to (2), obviously. Unless your firearms users are extremely skilled and they're firing single shots, your melee guy is going to get shot unless you change the firearms users tactics to absolutely never shoot at all if there is any chance of hitting a team mate...which means they won't be firing at all when the melee guy is in the way.
4) Armour. Bullets are much more effective against armour than a knife. Early game enemies have little or no armour, so it's not an issue. Mid and later game enemies do have armour. I haven't specifically checked the armour penetration values of melee weapons in Atom RPG, but it should be a problem. I found 1-3 so much of a problem that 4 didn't have time to beccome an issue.
One of the NPCs you can recruit to your party is already heavily specced for melee and he's well suited to it (huge strength and endurance). And he's still not much use by that stage and it only gets worse from there on in. Many players use the single available respec option to respec him (usually into full auto weapons, where his very high strength makes him a good choice for what the USA aptly calls squad automatic weapons). I didn't because I realised by that time that my setup for my main character was less than ideal (I'd specced her as a pistol specialist, another choice that's great in the early game but not later). Instead, I gradually built the melee guy into an automatic weapons guy, which is much less effective.
I think it's worth noting that even if you're going to grind somewhat (or if you're going to explore every nook and cranny and take every encounter in the wastes as you're travelling and explore every cave and basement and everything else) you're still not going to be able to fully rebuild a character. You can gain enough levels to train another combat skill, even all the way to the max of 199 for each skill, but you're not going to get enough levels to train the ability tree. Not even close to it. Nowhere near close to it. Every ability you take increases the cost of taking another ability by 1 point and you only get 2 points per round. So if you have 5 abilities taken in melee (or pistols) that's 15 ability points used and taking 5 abilities in another section of the tree will cost 40 ability points rather than 15. That's 20 levels required to get those 5 abilities in an area you want, as opposed to the 8 levels that would be required had you taken the right abilities to begin with. It's not really viable because level gain slows down as you progress so you'd need to do an awful lot of grinding.
I'd suggest that a good course of action is to
put every ability point of every character into the defensive part of the tree (top right) until they have the ability to wear heavy armour without a penalty ("Praetorian Guard") or at least the ability to somehow resist damage more as they're injured ("Think Like The Enemy"). I think that the defensive, damage-resisting, part of the tree is lot more useful than the other parts of the tree. If you get enough levels to fill that part of the tree, that's the time to look at other parts, probably rifles or automatic weapons. The crafting part of the tree is tempting early on because higher tier crafted weapons can be very good if you're skilled enough to make ones that won't jam, but I think it's not worth losing out on the defensive, damage-resisting part of the tree.
There are two different forms of melee in Atom RPG, labelled (in the English version) as melee and martial arts. I think it's an odd distinction to make because they're both melee and both use weapons. The only difference is that the weapons are labelled as "martial arts" or "melee" and thus required different skills. So if, for example, you have 100 melee and 20 martial arts you will be able to properly use a knife but not a knuckleduster with a knife blade attached to it. For some unexplained reason. So you need to watch out for that if you're planning on doing a melee build. Which I wouldn't recommend doing, especially on a first playthrough. Knife against gun is only a good idea if you're already very close before the fight starts and your enemy doesn't already have their gun in their hand ready to use. Which won't happen often in fights in Atom RPG.
Bought this on Saturday so very new and can't really help with that. Not got far yet and decided to restart last night as I messed up abilities between my characters and since I was only lvl4 decided to start again. I'll keep your advice in mind but if you're using it to craft ammo can't you just use the more common ammo and weapons while you're travelling/ doing easier things to save the rarer ammo? Sorry if you're already doing that.
You can and I am, but that's not good enough for the endgame areas. Pistol rounds (9mm and .30, the common ammo) don't cut it against heavy armour and swarms of fast-moving enemies with lots of hitpoints and enemies with full auto rifles and machineguns. The guns aren't a problem - I have dozens of guns in various calibres in my gun cabinet in my base - but the ammo is. Saving the rarer ammo isn't enough, especially since the rarest ammo doesn't spawn on encounters or in shops so you're limited to finding less than a dozen bullets in the entire game. Crafting is the only way to get enough to be useful and only if you've successfully recruited the ammunition maker at your base (your character can only make crude rounds for improvised guns) and that requires all the scrap metal you can find. I want hundreds of rounds of it and even more of the 7.62x54 which does spawn in the gameworld but very rarely and in small quantities.
I decided to keep buying all the ammo I come across and store it in the abandoned house you mention, especially from random folks since they have better prices than gun merchants.
Have you encountered the gun shop in Kroznamenenny yet? He'll give you about 1 rouble for everything and charge you about 10-50 roubles per bullet (depending on how rare they are). Want a really good gun? Sure, he has a selection. Yours for only 25,000 roubles! Each.
Later in the game, very few NPCs have enough money to buy from you. It's a matter of "That's a fine machinegun and I agree that it's worth 7000 roubles, but I only have 214 roubles." I have a dozen of those in my gun cabinet now, just can't sell them. So I'm roleplaying them as heavy defensive weapons for my home/base/settlement. Maybe I'll go and put one in a container in Otradyne with a few hundred bullets to roleplay my contribution to the defence of that village. I've put an SMG and a few hundred bullets there already for that roleplay reason. Anyway...later on, your least bad bet for bulk selling is the armour specialist in Kroznamenenny. His prices are very bad, but far better than the gun specialist and he has a lot of cash. I've seen him with >35,000 roubles. You can also do fairly well in the pharmacy, mainly by trading heavier items for drugs (high value, low weight so good for keeping on you in case you encounter a caravaneer or scavenger with stuff you want). Also, you can buy 400 condoms from the pornographer for the same reason. But money becomes of little importance towards the endgame because you'll be too rich already. I have ~80,000 roubles and the only thing I buy is rare ammunition. Even at the gun merchant's prices, that doesn't make a dent in my cash pile. Many traders must be smiling (or laughing) at me as I cheerfully trade stuff for a fraction of its value just to save weight. Yes comrade, have this armour worth 1000 roubles for 150 roubles and a potato!
Just in case you didn't spot this (as I didn't, which is why I'm mentioning it) - you can trade with most NPCs, including those that don't have a trade option in the dialogue. Near the top right of the dialogue window is a button labelled "barter". If it's there, you can click it to trade with them regardless of whether or not there's a trade option in the dialogue itself.
Have you encountered the gun shop in Kroznamenenny yet? He'll give you about 1 rouble for everything and charge you about 10-50 roubles per bullet (depending on how rare they are). Want a really good gun? Sure, he has a selection. Yours for only 25,000 roubles! Each.
Yeah been there in my first game and wanted to cry when I saw those prices.
Later in the game, very few NPCs have enough money to buy from you. It's a matter of "That's a fine machinegun and I agree that it's worth 7000 roubles, but I only have 214 roubles." I have a dozen of those in my gun cabinet now, just can't sell them. So I'm roleplaying them as heavy defensive weapons for my home/base/settlement. Maybe I'll go and put one in a container in Otradyne with a few hundred bullets to roleplay my contribution to the defence of that village. I've put an SMG and a few hundred bullets there already for that roleplay reason. Anyway...later on, your least bad bet for bulk selling is the armour specialist in Kroznamenenny. His prices are very bad, but far better than the gun specialist and he has a lot of cash. I've seen him with >35,000 roubles. You can also do fairly well in the pharmacy, mainly by trading heavier items for drugs (high value, low weight so good for keeping on you in case you encounter a caravaneer or scavenger with stuff you want). Also, you can buy 400 condoms from the pornographer for the same reason. But money becomes of little importance towards the endgame because you'll be too rich already. I have ~80,000 roubles and the only thing I buy is rare ammunition. Even at the gun merchant's prices, that doesn't make a dent in my cash pile. Many traders must be smiling (or laughing) at me as I cheerfully trade stuff for a fraction of its value just to save weight. Yes comrade, have this armour worth 1000 roubles for 150 roubles and a potato!
Would be nice if they re balance it, might have a look if there's at least a mod to give traders more money.
Just in case you didn't spot this (as I didn't, which is why I'm mentioning it) - you can trade with most NPCs, including those that don't have a trade option in the dialogue. Near the top right of the dialogue window is a button labelled "barter". If it's there, you can click it to trade with them regardless of whether or not there's a trade option in the dialogue itself.
Yup that's what I meant by random folks. Every time I see someone with a weapon I speak to them to see if they have that option and buy any spare ammo they have.
I found that melee builds are very viable in the earlier part of the game only. At that stage, the much higher attack rate of most melee weapons is an advantage. You'll be able to do 3-5 attacks per round when firearms users will be able to do 1-2 attacks per round and your attacks will do at least as much damage as theirs. You will also sometimes knock an enemy down and stun them for a couple of rounds, which is a massive advantage. But the rate of progress of firearms is much higher than that of melee, so the balance soon changes
...
I had a thought about a maybe possibly effective melee setup - spec your entire party for melee. Or martial arts - I don't know which is better. That would at least remove the problems of handicapping firearms users and friendly fire since you won't have any firearms users. Maybe with the best armour and the damage resistance abiliities they'd be able to survive long enough to engage the enemy. Maybe. But then they wouldn't have the melee/MA abilities, some of which would be very useful for a melee/MA character. At least melee and MA use the same abilities in the ability tree, so it's possible to max a character for both.
I doubt it because there is some realism in Atom RPG, but it might be worth a try if you really want to try melee/MA.
It is a great game. The interface works well enough at higher resolutions (I play at 2560x1440) and the game is actually finished. Not modern finished, where the "finished" version is actually a bug-laden beta to be patched later or never, but actually finished. The most irritating maybe-bug I've found is that you can't renovate the bedroom in your bunker. That's it. No crashes, nothing like that. There are even little extra touches such as quests triggered by listening to gossip resulting from your previous actions. Nothing key to the main story, just nice extra touches.
An example
After doing some quests involving the chamber of commerce in Kroznamenny, I encountered a chatty NPC in the market area in the city who told me some gossip about Yashin, who used to be a big cheese in Kroznamenny but is now reduced to a little shop in the little village of Otradyne. He's the first trader you encounter and there's no previous indication that he was much richer and more powerful before. He never talks about his past, but that's not unusual in the wastes. It didn't log a quest - this was just gossip. So I went back to Otradyne and talked to Yashin with my by now very high speechcraft and persuaded him to talk about his past and that triggered a quest to find out who ruined him and why.
This is a game made by people who know what they're doing, are allowed to do it and enjoy doing it. And it shows.
It's also made me rethink Wasteland 2. The type of user interface stopped me buying Wasteland 2, but that type of interface works fine for me in Atom RPG so I think I'll give Wasteland 2 a try afterwards.
I've accumulated quite a lot of 9x39 ammo and never found a gun that uses it. I found out that there are only 2 - Vintorez and AC "Val". The former is unique and AFAIK can only be obtained by murdering a specific NPC, so that's out for me. What about the latter, AC "Val"? Anyone know where I can find it? I can't find anything online. It's as if it was a random drop, but I've never found it and I'm level 20 now.
EDIT: The fickle RNG came to my rescue. I found one in the gun shop in Kroznamenny. Only 9500 roubles. It'll do well enough for my secondary full auto guy, to spread the ammo use over another calibre. I think we're just about ready to tool up with the big guns and go for the end game. I also found another modified weapon, this one a lightened heavy machine gun that fires 15 round bursts. Can't see that being very accurate, but it might serve as a room-clearer.
I had a thought about a maybe possibly effective melee setup - spec your entire party for melee. Or martial arts - I don't know which is better. That would at least remove the problems of handicapping firearms users and friendly fire since you won't have any firearms users. Maybe with the best armour and the damage resistance abiliities they'd be able to survive long enough to engage the enemy. Maybe. But then they wouldn't have the melee/MA abilities, some of which would be very useful for a melee/MA character. At least melee and MA use the same abilities in the ability tree, so it's possible to max a character for both.
I doubt it because there is some realism in Atom RPG, but it might be worth a try if you really want to try melee/MA.
.
I guess I'm hoping that when I play this I will be able to use one melee character much like I did in Wasteland 2. In that game you also had to mind characters blocking each other's aim, and it was sometimes tricky to get him into melee range without being cut down.
BUT - using my brawler strategically made him a real asset. Whole battles might go by in which he only got to throw one punch, but in some he could race up to someone and take them out in round one, and in others if I could put him in cover to wait for enemies to move past or at least to come close he could become a real whirlwind of crit-dealing death. Specced him to have super high crit chance, high action points, attacks of opportunity and a bonus to movement on first round. Enemies really didn't want to come anywhere near him!
Nothing like that going to work?
Either way I'm sure this game is going to be great!
I guess I'm hoping that when I play this I will be able to use one melee character much like I did in Wasteland 2. In that game you also had to mind characters blocking each other's aim, and it was sometimes tricky to get him into melee range without being cut down.
BUT - using my brawler strategically made him a real asset. Whole battles might go by in which he only got to throw one punch, but in some he could race up to someone and take them out in round one, and in others if I could put him in cover to wait for enemies to move past or at least to come close he could become a real whirlwind of crit-dealing death. Specced him to have super high crit chance, high action points, attacks of opportunity and a bonus to movement on first round. Enemies really didn't want to come anywhere near him!
Nothing like that going to work?
Either way I'm sure this game is going to be great!
I can't see why this wouldn't work, obviously I'm only in early game, but so far plenty of encounters have you surrounded from the start so closing the distance shouldn't be problem in those situation. On character creation put 10 into strength, dexterity and endurance at a cost of luck and personality. Don't be afraid to take distinctions at character creation. I went with glutenous and diplomat, food is plenty full
especially once you learn fishing and skinning animals in first village
and loosing few skill points in combat stats seemed a good trade for 2 or 3 extra attribute points
I guess I'm hoping that when I play this I will be able to use one melee character much like I did in Wasteland 2. In that game you also had to mind characters blocking each other's aim, and it was sometimes tricky to get him into melee range without being cut down.
BUT - using my brawler strategically made him a real asset. Whole battles might go by in which he only got to throw one punch, but in some he could race up to someone and take them out in round one, and in others if I could put him in cover to wait for enemies to move past or at least to come close he could become a real whirlwind of crit-dealing death. Specced him to have super high crit chance, high action points, attacks of opportunity and a bonus to movement on first round. Enemies really didn't want to come anywhere near him!
Nothing like that going to work?
Either way I'm sure this game is going to be great!
It won't work just like that because there "attacks of opportunity" don't exist in Atom RPG, crit chance isn't directly specced as a skill and there's no "bonus to movement on first round" skill or perk.
However...there are abilities in the melee abilities tree that would be relevant. Extra stun chance, +50% damage, +50% chance to bypass enemy armour, +10% chance to crit, 1st hit is always a crit...those abilities would certainly improve a melee character. Some of the crafting skills would be relevant too, particularly the one that increases the damage done by crafted weapons by 20%. You might well be using crafted melee/MA weapons. Or you might not...I've seen some melee/MA weapons in shops that might be better than ones you can craft. But the ones you can craft are good if you level your crafting skill enough to be able to make top tier stuff and/or you're willing to save scum repeatedly until you luck into making something your skill gives you only a tiny chance of making. The armoured spiked gauntlet with two pistols embedded in it so you will shoot your enemy while punching them sounds rather effective.
You'd definitely want to have 10 dex in order to get the maximum of 10 action points per turn. You'd need to be doing a lot of running. Strength directly affects melee/MA damage, so 10 there would be good too. I'd recommend starting with 8 (after an distinction effects you might choose) because you can increase your strength by 2 by early midgame and those 2 points will be useful in other stats. I'll spoiler tag stat increase stuff below. Endurance will be key too, so you can survive being shot as you run into enemy bullets so you can punch them. Which really doesn't sound like a good approach to me, but if that's going to be fun for you then have at it since that's the only point of a game. But all the stats matter. Intellect, Personality and Attention will unlock different dialogue options and different choices in some situations. Intellect will determine how many skill points you gain per level. Low personality will just flat out block quite a few dialogue options, locking you out of some sidequests. You can faff about with drugs and perfumes (if you can find them) to very briefly buff your personality to pass a check if you've spoilered yourself so you know that check is coming. Luck affects everything - hit chance, crit chance, chance of meeting caravan traders, you name it. But not all that much, so I would class luck as the least important stat with one exception - luck is relevant to obtaining a stat increase point and those are extremely valuable. More about those in the spoilered section below.
Distinctions are traits you can choose only for you main character and only on character creation. All of them have advantages and disadvantanges. You can choose none, 1 or 2. If you're going to use any, only choose those that increase stats and preferably don't nerf your primary skill. If, for example, a distinction gives -20 to a skill that will be constant so you will never be able to max that skill.
For a devoted melee/MA character, I'd suggest Technophobe and Glutton if you take 2 and Technophobe if you take 1.
Technophobe nerfs your technology and crafting skills by 30 points each, but that still means you can raise them to 169 each if you grind a hell of a lot. Technology doesn't matter much, you will never need more than 100 and you can quite quickly buy a toolkit that adds +20 to it anyway, so the nerf of -30 is trivial. You rarely have any use for technology skill and AFAIK none of the uses for it are significant. Crafting is irrelevant if you don't use crafting and the -30 skill in it can be compensated for if you do. You can use drugs (tobacco - a very common and very cheap drug) and an item (magnifying glass) to briefly buff your crafting skill and briefly is all you need. IIRC you can briefly gain +19 crafting skill that way. So it's somewhat bad...but it gives you +1 strength and +1 endurance and that's extremely good and all the more so for a melee/MA character.
Glutton doubles your food requirements. This will be a problem in the early game, but shouldn't be insurmountable. Just remember to always have a tool or weapon in your inventory that can be used for butchering an animal. Any knife will do and many other things will do as well. You don't need to equip it for that purpose, just have it in your inventory. That way you can get meat from any animals you kill. You can eat it raw if you have to, but you will get a bit of food poisoning from that. On the world map, you can just camp at any time and cook the meat there. You can also craft preserved corned meat with raw meat and salt. The biggest ongoing drawback with the glutton distinction is that you will only ever be able to rest for 6 hours at a time and that will be an inconvenience. So it's somewhat bad...but it gives you +2 to endurance.
But take a look at all of them and make your own decisions. Just don't take ones that are +skills and -stats. You can increase skills a lot and you'll max key skills anyway so the +skills will become useless. You can barely increase stats and they all matter.
So...stat increases. I'll just list the possible ones here, not exactly how to get them. You can look that up if you want to.
+1 strength from a specific helmet that's a guaranteed drop from a specific enemy during a specific quest given by a specific NPC you will meet if you explore Kroznamenny and talk to everyone. It's also very good head armour. Not the best head protection...but the best head protection doesn't give that very useful strength bonus.
+1 luck from correctly completing a ritual at the right place in the right location. The ritual is very simple and the location is very clear, but you aren't given very much of a clue what the ritual is. Hardly any clue at all, actually. In fact, what you're given doesn't even count as a clue IMO.
+1 to any stat apart fom luck as a gift from the godfish/goldfish you have a small chance of catching when fishing if your luck is extremely high and you're using the right bait or if your luck is quite high and you're using exactly the right specially crafted bait. A crafted bait I never found the recipe for or any clue about. I spoilered myself on that after repeatedly getting very drunk (which briefly increases your luck) on multiple different booze (each item stacks once and each different item applies, so I briefly boosted my luck from 5 to 11 that way) and using spider brains for bait (which fish love, apparently) without catching the godfish/goldfish. I became an alcoholic, but that was the only effect. I crafted the super-special bait and caught the godfish on my first attempt with only 5 luck. I would advise anyone who wants to catch the fish to look up how to craft that super-special bait because there's no recipe and no clue. Why would a doll be such attactive bait for a godfish?
+1 to any stat as a result of taking a special serum that's guaranteed to be in a specific location.
+1 to any stat as a result of taking another special serum that's guaranteed to be in another specific location but which is much harder to get as it requires passing a 6 perception check and either a 100 pickpocketing skill check or a lot of killing of non-hostile people.
+1 to strength as a result of intensive weight training. This requires you to have claimed your base and paid the handyman to fix and upgrade it. One of the upgrades adds a weights bench that you can use in various ways. If your strength is 8 or more (and you can briefly buff it with some drugs to reach 8) you can do a strength workout with 80Kg on the bar and gain the "Trained" temporary effect which gives +1 strength. Do that for 4 consecutive days and the effect will last for weeks. AFAIK you can then maintain the effect by doing the training routine. I pop back home every now and again and work out while I'm there and the effect hasn't run out yet.
So in total you have a maximum of 46 stat points if you go all out for them and more if you choose distinctions. With the ones I suggest, you'll start with 44 and can increase it to 50. So if I was going all out to optimise my main character as melee/MA, I'd take Technophobe and Glutton and start my stats like this:
Strength 7 + 1 (distinction) = 8 (with the stuff in the spoiler section above to get it to 10 by early midgame).
Dexterity 10. You really, really need those action points.
Endurance 7 + 3 (distinctions) = 10. You'll need as many HP as possible to not be shot to death before getting within punching range.
Intellect 7
Attention 4
Personality 4
Luck 1
(EDIT: On reflection, I think I'd start with a lower endurance and higher attention and personality, probably 4+3=7 endurance, 5 attention and 6 personality, then later use 3 of the stat point gains for endurance. That way you'll miss out on less but still have max HP in the later game when you'll have more need of it. Maybe even drop another point in endurance to get attention to 6 too, maybe).
With the first 3 being the key ones. The others, well, it depends on what you're willing to miss out on. If you don't mind a lot of grinding, make your intellect a bit lower...but then you won't be able to pass some dialogue checks and you won't even see some dialogue options and other choices. Such low attention, personality and luck will defintely have the same effect and you also won't spot some things in the gameworld. But if you're going all out for melee, you will need as much strength, dexterity and endurance as possible and that means handicapping yourself in other ways. Atom RPG is not a game in which you can become a shining inspiration in every way.
Also, be aware that one of the NPC companions you can get is already heavily specced for melee/MA. If you only want your main character as melee/MA, you might want to use the one dose of respec drug on him instead. His stats (which you can't change) make him well suited to heavy automatic weapons.
There are also some distinctions you can unlock by actions in the game, one of which gives you +6% damage resistance as a reward for completing a quest and one of which teaches you Russian criminal slang which is extremely important in several ways because passing yourself off as a criminal gives you some extra options that are very useful, including being able to respec a character (but only once).
But all this is just some semi-informed advice...and the best advice I can give is to do what sounds like the most fun for you. Put tinfoil hats on all your party and lead them into battle wearing a clown nose while being addicted to alcohol, opiates and amphetamines and spouting cheesy lines from action hero films if you like. And yes, those are options in this game. Not good options, but options
It won't work just like that because there "attacks of opportunity" don't exist in Atom RPG, crit chance isn't directly specced as a skill and there's no "bonus to movement on first round" skill or perk.
However...there are abilities in the melee abilities tree that would be relevant. Extra stun chance, +50% damage, +50% chance to bypass enemy armour, +10% chance to crit, 1st hit is always a crit...those abilities would certainly improve a melee character. Some of the crafting skills would be relevant too, particularly the one that increases the damage done by crafted weapons by 20%. You might well be using crafted melee/MA weapons. Or you might not...I've seen some melee/MA weapons in shops that might be better than ones you can craft. But the ones you can craft are good if you level your crafting skill enough to be able to make top tier stuff and/or you're willing to save scum repeatedly until you luck into making something your skill gives you only a tiny chance of making. The armoured spiked gauntlet with two pistols embedded in it so you will shoot your enemy while punching them sounds rather effective.
...
But all this is just some semi-informed advice...and the best advice I can give is to do what sounds like the most fun for you. Put tinfoil hats on all your party and lead them into battle wearing a clown nose while being addicted to alcohol, opiates and amphetamines and spouting cheesy lines from action hero films if you like. And yes, those are options in this game. Not good options, but options
Wow, what an incredibly detailed reply again! Cheers.
This kind of thing makes me want to play it even more to be honest. So many options and ways to approach things. No doubt I will spend 90% of my time with it planning builds and strategies. I always know I'm in a good RPG when I spend as much time mulling over stats and perks as I do playing!
Having made a first pass at the endgame, I've something else to add:
Automatic Weapons. If I was starting now, knowing what I know now, all 3 of my companions would be specced for automatic weapons. It's the best class of guns because of the way the devs categorise guns and what guns are in the game. I thought rifles and shotguns would be a good choice, but it isn't so for more than 1 character and preferably your main character and only if they have the right stats.
The issue I have found is that few long guns are classed as rifles in the game, even if they are rifles, even if they have the word "rifle" in their name or description. Rifles that have full auto capability are almost all classed as automatic weapons...and most of the good rifles have full auto capability. So, for example, the M-16 rifle (which is referred to as a rifle) is classed as an automatic weapon and not a rifle because it can be switched between single shot and a burst of several shots. The only exceptions are the experimental rifle and the AVS-36, which can be switched between single shot and burst but are classed as rifles. The AVS-36 uses very rare ammo and the VER uses ammo so rare that only a dozen bullets exist in the game. If you have recruited the ammunition maker he can make some more, but it will still be very rare.
Most of the other rifles in the game are bad to mediocre, with slow rates of fire for single shots and not much damage per shot. The other exceptions are the few sniper rifles (which are rare), which also use very rare ammunition and require high strength to use effectively.
The upshot is that you very likely won't have enough ammunition to support more than 1 person using any of the very few good rifles and only 1 of your companions is strong enough to effectively use all of the good rifles. Shotguns are rather meh by the endgame as they're weak in both range and armour penetration and require frequent reloading.
Automatic weapons, on the other hand, come in every type of ammo and companions will use them single shot at a distance (2 shots per round in some cases, with the right gun and a companion with enough AP) and burst mode at close range so they're the best of both worlds. You also have the option of giving them a full on machinegun as a second weapon to use when accuracy is less important than the number of bullets.
For my main character, I'm using a Dragunov sniper rifle as my main weapon because an aimed shot takes 5AP so I can do 2 per round. The range is enormous, so you can start a fight from a safe distance. The accuracy is extreme when you have enough skill, so critical aimed shots are fairly common. The ammo is very rare, but with just 1 character using single shots it's sustainable enough. The experimental rifle is my secondary weapon in the endgame, for when maximum DPS is needed or the enemy is too close.
Picked this up yesterday thanks to all your write ups @Angilion
Only had time to play for half an hour but its pretty much exactly what I've been looking for.
Bah, I somehow managed to lose the single M-16 I'd found in the game. I had Alexander using it while I ground for XP to max his automatic weapons skill before trying him with a machinegun again (at lower skill, he was shooting other team members sometimes as he sprayed bullets around). Then in one fight his gun jammed and I noticed he was wielding a rusty AK47 and no sign of the M-16. Either a bug or I'd mistakenly swapped his weapon and sold the M-16 to a travelling merchant. Bit of a bummer, since the M-16 is probably the best weapon to use the 5.45 ammo. I'd planned to have each character using different ammo so we'd each have plenty.
I think I'm putting off finishing the game because I don't want to finish the game until the sequel is released I'm grinding XP for skills and gathering bullets of rarer calibres and rad-x for the Dead City, but I think I have enough and I'm putting off finishing.
Bah, I somehow managed to lose the single M-16 I'd found in the game. I had Alexander using it while I ground for XP to max his automatic weapons skill before trying him with a machinegun again (at lower skill, he was shooting other team members sometimes as he sprayed bullets around). Then in one fight his gun jammed and I noticed he was wielding a rusty AK47 and no sign of the M-16. Either a bug or I'd mistakenly swapped his weapon and sold the M-16 to a travelling merchant. Bit of a bummer, since the M-16 is probably the best weapon to use the 5.45 ammo. I'd planned to have each character using different ammo so we'd each have plenty.
I think I'm putting off finishing the game because I don't want to finish the game until the sequel is released I'm grinding XP for skills and gathering bullets of rarer calibres and rad-x for the Dead City, but I think I have enough and I'm putting off finishing.
Yes, but I've done everything else so there isn't anything to do after the main quest apart from grinding. Although I would be slightly tempted to try to grind enough to be able to slaughter the big slaver gangs that you can get as random encounters in the SE part of the main world map. They're the hardest fights I've encountered so far and with my general runaround loadout I usually get killed by them. There can be 8 of them and they can use sniper rifles and grenades and they're skilled enough for aimed critical shots.
I've just learned that you can unload weapons in traders inventories and then just buy the ammo.
Oh yes, I'd forgotten about not knowing that. It's very useful to know, although I feel slightly bad about leaving the traders with empty guns they would have trouble selling Except for the gun merchant in Kroznamemmy, of course. With his prices, he gets no sympathy.
I've found another oddity of the weapons classifications. I mentioned the M-16 rifle being classed as an automatic weapon before, but there's another odd classification that's relevant. The HK33 submachinegun is classified as an automatic weapon and not as a submachinegun. More relevantly, the HK33 submachinegun is a better rifle than the M-16 rifle. It has slightly larger effective range and does slightly more damage per shot and it has single shot mode. So if you have a character trained in automatic weapons and you want them to use 5.45 bullets, the HK33 is a better choice than the M-16.
I found out something new today - if you're disarmed, you can pick your weapon up during the fight by clicking on a nearby corpse - your weapon(s) will show as being on the ground. I'd tried clicking on a weapon I'd dropped during the fight to no avail and had to resort to using the knife I use for butchering animals before chancing on the right way to pick up a dropped weapon during a fight.
Also, I'm now even more skeptical about a melee build. I'm doing the Dead City area and the difficulty is much higher than anything before it apart from the top of the range slaver gangs with the PTRD anti-materiel rifle. My least armoured companions are wearing 6B2 body armour (the best you can buy) and STSH-81 helmet (the best you can buy) and they're still taking heavy damage in some fights. In one fight, we faced 3 boss mobs and ~100 other mobs. It took ages just for the enemies to move and attack and a key part of winning was the fact that we all had ranged weapons and 199 skills lots of HP from grinding many levels and the mobs were coming in from a distance. I was sniping mobs further away (modified Dragunov sniper rifle - two aimed shots per round at any visible target and a 99% hit rate in the eyes) while my 3 companions kept the number of mobs attacking me down with full auto weapons (two of which are unique and better than anything that can be looted or bought). With melee...I don't think it could be done. I got 2089 XP for that one fight alone.
There's also an escort mission and (as is traditional) the NPC you're escorting is suicidal. No armour and a revolver and they're determined to be in the thick of the fighting. Against 12 well armed and armoured enemies surrounding us all. The only way to keep them alive is to be a meat shield for them while shooting the enemies. Which you can't do if you're using melee.
Although neither of those is part of the main questline, even the random encounters seem unsuited to melee to me. I'm making heavy use of that sniper rifle to kill enemies before they can attack me.
The Dead City area is huge, by the way. I'd guess about half the size of the entire main map, in terms of number of locations and size of locations. I haven't even started on the main questline location in the area.
Also...Trudograd. Count how many NPCs mention Trudograd, often to say they're going there. Everyone+dog is going to Trudograd! The next game in the series is...Trudograd! Surprise!
I finished it tonight. A couple of really hard fights towards the end. I was L27 and my companions were similar and we all had top end kit and 199 weapon skills and we still had to drug up with all the buffing drugs for the final 2 fights. I had far more bullets than I needed, so my previous concerns were unfounded. On the plus side, my settlement now has the greatest arsenal in the wastes About 50 high end guns and about 10,000 rounds of assorted ammo. It's also the richest, since I finished with ~220,000 roubles. The economy of the game is a bit broken.
I failed to win a tattoo contest because the judge didn't like my choice of art to surround the main theme. Bah, I thought it was an appropriate choice.
The main bad guys turn out to have a very good reason for their actions, which is another nice touch, and it's possible to talk them out of it without a fight. I tried that and failed despite having a speechcraft skill of 150, but the option exists and if you play as a persuader rather than a fighter you'll have 199 speechcraft by the endgame.
I never was able to get the bedroom in my bunker fixed up. That niggled at me every time I went home. A working shower, but no bed.
The end game narrator who describes the results of your actions sounds a bit odd to English ears. His English is excellent, but clearly not his first language. He sounds drunk (presumably his accent rather than actually being drunk, although maybe he recorded it whilst celebrating finishing the game) and he pronounces 'v' the way that 'w' is pronounced in English. I was tempted to replay while making different choices to see the different endings, but settled for watching videos of them on Youtube instead.
A great game, lots of fun for the money. I'm looking forward to any further games or DLC. Or maybe I'll try a party of melee fighters to see if I can make that work...
Planscape torment
Baldurs gate 1+2
Divinity original sin 1+2
torments of numeria
tyranny
pillars of eternity
disco elysium
pathfinder
i think theres plenty of crpgs in this genre atm that i'd really struggle to go for one which isn't top tier [unless you've already completed all of them]
Only 2 of them are turn based tbf, Atom is turn based which is a lot different. I can play just about any game to a good standard but you put me in Baldur's gate or a similar real time crpg and I'm dinner. I couldn't even get out of the first dungeon lmao.
Just got into this game, its great buy really brutal at some points
Just got to the part where you go in the bunker, and the three guys rob you on the way out, I tried fighting them a few times but way outmatched.
Now I have nothing lol.
Its good though, basically Fallout 1/2 with modern graphics set in Russia with different artwork etc, but gameplay wise its basically identical. Nothing wrong with that though as I loved the original 2 fallout games.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
