Best way to level ____ Skill

[Pthalocy]

There was that recently discovered trick regarding tailoring. I half-expect it to be removed due to being exploit-y, but one could in fact practice their tailoring on a single piece of thread, as it’s material is technically fabric and thus a valid tailoring target.

[Litppunk]

you’ll have to explain that one better I am not familiar with that one.

[BeerBeer]

A few notes:

• Having Focus up is important. High Focus = faster learning. In that sense the question might become “What are the biggest Morale boosters?”
• Focus seems to go down fast when combat skills are used. Try not to fight too much or too often.
• Use weapons/ammo with the smallest Dispersion stat. The higher your skill goes, the higher bullet accuracy you need in order to improve further. You can safely use the crappy inaccurate ammo early but switch to better ammo later.
• Focus can be gained quickly back just by listening to music for 30-60 minutes, basically for the duration of a few cooking or crafting tasks.
• If fast learning is your thing, then you might want your character to have some of the relevant traits: Fast Learner, Fast Reader, Optimist… anything else?
• Full-auto weapons with high burst-fire bullet count can net you a heap of points in just one burst when surrounded by multiple zeds. P90 = 20 bullets / burst. Can anyone think of any other similar automatic weapons?
• NPCs can teach you skills as quest rewards. Potentially very fast and exploity. Got my bartering from 6 ->10 after four fetch-quests, all in the same day. The kicker? That NPC was the refugee center nurse!
• Attempt crafting tasks that are more difficult than you are capable of doing, let’s say 1 level above your reported skill level. Just be prepared to fail, sometimes wasting the ingredients.
• If you’re willing to grind for points en masse, you should be willing to just save time and use debugging tools to give yourself the points you want, and throw away the resources you expected to lose (with 20% interest, you filthy cheater).
• Since skill increase through repetition often requires materials, start collecting materials early. On the other hand disassembly can get you your parts back. Power stations and their structures can be deconstructed for unending electronics parts. Wrecked cars (all parts color-coded grey) can be blown to million junk metal pieces with just one charge of explosives, set down in the middle of the wreck. A single tree, in turn, can produce nearly 300 two-by-fours. Chop down the tree, saw directly to planks. Beds can be smashed or deconstructed to a heap of rags. For threads, collect all cottons balls and threads you come across from day 1. Cotton balls can be turned into threads fairly fast.
• For Dodging, I might suggest wearing decently protective armor (but not too encumbering) and then fighting a legion of weak creatures, such as zombie children. A little later you might need faster creatures to attempt to touch you in order to improve the skill.
• If maximum learning speed is the objective, then find all the right books ASAP, since reading is the fastest possible way (outside NPC teaching). Scour through mansions, schools, libraries, bookstores as fast as you can.

[Dlightfull]

a short rope is a great source of threads, it can be disassembled into long strings, which can disassembled into small strings (which are great since they have no volume) which then can be disassembled into threads. All this pretty fast.

At a later tailoring level, short ropes are craftable from 30 rags, this can be abused to turn rags into thread much faster than disassembling them.

training tailoring to about lvl 3 is fast once you have some threads and a neede, just start reinforcing the thread piece by piece.

[Litppunk]

I thought you couldn’t reinforce thread
huh Adding it

[Azrad]

[quote=“BeerBeer, post:6, topic:10133”]A few notes:

• Having Focus up is important. High Focus = faster learning. In that sense the question might become “What are the biggest Morale boosters?”
• Focus seems to go down fast when combat skills are used. Try not to fight too much or too often.
• Use weapons/ammo with the smallest Dispersion stat. The higher your skill goes, the higher bullet accuracy you need in order to improve further. You can safely use the crappy inaccurate ammo early but switch to better ammo later.
• Focus can be gained quickly back just by listening to music for 30-60 minutes, basically for the duration of a few cooking or crafting tasks.
• If fast learning is your thing, then you might want your character to have some of the relevant traits: Fast Learner, Fast Reader, Optimist… anything else?
• Full-auto weapons with high burst-fire bullet count can net you a heap of points in just one burst when surrounded by multiple zeds. P90 = 20 bullets / burst. Can anyone think of any other similar automatic weapons?
• NPCs can teach you skills as quest rewards. Potentially very fast and exploity. Got my bartering from 6 ->10 after four fetch-quests, all in the same day. The kicker? That NPC was the refugee center nurse!
• Attempt crafting tasks that are more difficult than you are capable of doing, let’s say 1 level above your reported skill level. Just be prepared to fail, sometimes wasting the ingredients.
• If you’re willing to grind for points en masse, you should be willing to just save time and use debugging tools to give yourself the points you want, and throw away the resources you expected to lose (with 20% interest, you filthy cheater).
• Since skill increase through repetition often requires materials, start collecting materials early. On the other hand disassembly can get you your parts back. Power stations and their structures can be deconstructed for unending electronics parts. Wrecked cars (all parts color-coded grey) can be blown to million junk metal pieces with just one charge of explosives, set down in the middle of the wreck. A single tree, in turn, can produce nearly 300 two-by-fours. Chop down the tree, saw directly to planks. Beds can be smashed or deconstructed to a heap of rags. For threads, collect all cottons balls and threads you come across from day 1. Cotton balls can be turned into threads fairly fast.
• For Dodging, I might suggest wearing decently protective armor (but not too encumbering) and then fighting a legion of weak creatures, such as zombie children. A little later you might need faster creatures to attempt to touch you in order to improve the skill.
• If maximum learning speed is the objective, then find all the right books ASAP, since reading is the fastest possible way (outside NPC teaching). Scour through mansions, schools, libraries, bookstores as fast as you can.[/quote]

The pneumatic assault rifle has been amazing at increasing rifles skill late game. Accurize it, add an ergonomic grip, rifle scope, and adjustable stock and both sight dispersion and dispersion will be zero. No recoil as well. Rapid blowback will increase dispersion, but adding a tuned mechanism puts it back to zero.

So far, I’m killing nearly everything, and rifles went from 11 to 15 in a pretty short time, and still increasing.

As for NPCs, you don’t need to do quests to get them to teach you. Give them items that’s higher than the cash they have, and they become completely willing to teach you. Once they teach you a skill, tell them to guard the position, and wait around 8 hours and they’ll teach you a skill again.

[deoxy]

Dodging: the broken cyborg is pretty good - it stinks at combat, but it’s a pretty safe way to get to level 2 or 3 dodging (forget which).

However, hands down, my favorite way is the boomer. It does VERY low damage and doesn’t bite, so you won’t get any infected bites. Lure one away on it’s own, then sit and let it swing at you until you get to level 4 dodging (that’s as high as you can get from them). Easy, easily available, nearly painless, doesn’t hurt your armor much, if at all.

[BeerBeer]

[quote=“Azrad, post:9, topic:10133”]The pneumatic assault rifle has been amazing at increasing rifles skill late game. Accurize it, add an ergonomic grip, rifle scope, and adjustable stock and both sight dispersion and dispersion will be zero. No recoil as well. Rapid blowback will increase dispersion, but adding a tuned mechanism puts it back to zero.

So far, I’m killing nearly everything, and rifles went from 11 to 15 in a pretty short time, and still increasing.

As for NPCs, you don’t need to do quests to get them to teach you. Give them items that’s higher than the cash they have, and they become completely willing to teach you. Once they teach you a skill, tell them to guard the position, and wait around 8 hours and they’ll teach you a skill again.[/quote]
Whoa! o_O. Ok. Sounds awesome.

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Pistols: The most accurate pistols (calibers) I know are FN Five-Seven (5.7mm) and H&K UCP (4.6mm). Fully modded LACP laser pistol might be nice, too, since ammo for it is basically infinite.

Shotguns: Since I’m unsure if inflicted damage is a factor in learning, you might want to consider beanbag ammo. Shotguns being the high damage guns that they are tend to kill targets quickly, leaving little chance for follow-up shots, meaning less training opportunities. In that sense beanbags might make better training ammo, since they do less damage, providing more training. Birdshot rounds, too. Alternatively, you might pump all your beanbags into a lone brute and watch it stumble helplessly, or a hulk, assuming hulks aren’t immune to beanbags. Later on you might need to use slug rounds and a shotgun modded with a rifled barrel, since AFAIK range is a factor when developing shooting skills. This is all highly hypothetical. Getting shotguns to 8 doesn’t require any special tricks, and can be done with just buckshot in a nice time frame.

Submachine guns: I’m currently popping and spraying around with a fully modded P90, including a .22 cal conversion kit, and LR ammo. Low recoil, dispersion 0, and the ammo seems to be everywhere. Downside is little to no armor piercing capability.

[Azrad]

[quote=“BeerBeer, post:11, topic:10133”]Whoa! o_O. Ok. Sounds awesome.

---

Pistols: The most accurate pistols (calibers) I know are FN Five-Seven (5.7mm) and H&K UCP (4.6mm). Fully modded LACP laser pistol might be nice, too, since ammo for it is basically infinite.

Shotguns: Since I’m unsure if inflicted damage is a factor in learning, you might want to consider beanbag ammo. Shotguns being the high damage guns that they are tend to kill targets quickly, leaving little chance for follow-up shots, meaning less training opportunities. In that sense beanbags might make better training ammo, since they do less damage, providing more training. Birdshot rounds, too. Alternatively, you might pump all your beanbags into a lone brute and watch it stumble helplessly, or a hulk, assuming hulks aren’t immune to beanbags. Later on you might need to use slug rounds and a shotgun modded with a rifled barrel, since AFAIK range is a factor when developing shooting skills. This is all highly hypothetical. Getting shotguns to 8 doesn’t require any special tricks, and can be done with just buckshot in a nice time frame.

Submachine guns: I’m currently popping and spraying around with a fully modded P90, including a .22 cal conversion kit, and LR ammo. Low recoil, dispersion 0, and the ammo seems to be everywhere. Downside is little to no armor piercing capability.[/quote]

The pneumatic assault rifle is also pretty damaging. Right now, the 11-shot burst can kill a hulk. Still, much like .22 ammo, it doesn’t offer a lot in ammo pierce and is completely useless against tank drones and shoggoths.

[Dlightfull]

One can easily train archery to level 3 just shooting a slingshot at point blank range at empty space, no need to expose oneself to danger.

At archery 3 and some fabrication, one can make a long bow and fletched wooden arrows, that’s the best one can get up until archery 5, when the best arrows become craftable - fletched metal arrow.

In order to craft the best bow - the reflex recurve bow - one needs a book though.

Don’t forget that bows can hold some mods too, fully craftable when one has a soldering iron. And bows can be accurized too, but there’s a pretty big mechanics skill needed to do that, apparently (i couldn’t accurize my reflex recurve bow at mechanics 6 using a gunsmith kit).

[Dlightfull]

Construction

Screwdrivers can be difficult to come by in the early game, as well as the duct tape needed to craft one so, usually, in early game deconstructing furniture is not an option.

One of the best ways to train it, imho, is chopping down trees and, after one gets to lvl 1, chop tree trunks into logs and at lvl 2 chop them trunks into planks.

It’s time consuming, heavy work, a lot of food and water needed, but one gets a hefty supply of logs and two by fours to last for many days ahead. After getting to lvl 3, one just needs to gather 80 rocks and build a charcoal kiln and smoker, and start the building of that food supply for the winter, since the logs for the kiln are ready to use and the planks are very useful in feeding that stone fireplace one built at lvl 2.

I haven’t find a need to train it more than lvl3, because of my playstyle.

[Azrad]

Like seriously, something is up with the pneumatic assault rifle. In one night, got it from 17 to 19, and right now I can barely get unarmed combat to level 10.

[Dlightfull]

Mechanics

Yeah, mechanics can be a bit tricky, but getting those critical few levels becomes pretty easy with a soldering iron, by reinforcing any metal/kevlar/plastic item. Easiest with metal, since there are so many of them and scrap metal is plenty enough (you can’t reinforce the scrap metal itself though).

It can be trainable with lockpicks too, but finding so many locked doors can be a problem.

Tailoring

Besides the reinforcing thread trick, there’s also the reinforcing long strings trick.

After the reinforcing succeeds, the long string can be disassembled into small strings, which can be reinforced too, then those small strings can be used to craft another long string, which can be reinforced and disassembled again (into reinforced small strings now, though) and so on until boredom.

[Submarine]

Mechanics can be trained with a crowbar and a door if your really need to. You need only one door that doesn’t have to be “locked” either. Very slow progress tho.

When I spawn a new char in ( I never put any points in skills ) I find a dog, get as encumbered as much as possible then I try to "pet " the dog. The dog wont go hostile as you will keep missing him while ranking up your melee skills pretty fast.

[Litppunk]

^^^^ oh clever.

[deoxy]

[quote=“Submarine, post:17, topic:10133”]Mechanics can be trained with a crowbar and a door if your really need to. You need only one door that doesn’t have to be “locked” either. Very slow progress tho.

When I spawn a new char in ( I never put any points in skills ) I find a dog, get as encumbered as much as possible then I try to "pet " the dog. The dog wont go hostile as you will keep missing him while ranking up your melee skills pretty fast.[/quote]

Combine this with my tip about boomer zombies, and you can train melee and dodging at the same time.

[Litppunk]

except that then you aren’t leveling dodging becuase your getting hit every time from all the encumbrance. Not to mention you gant get away without dropping ALL the things, which means your going to take alot of damage trying to get out.

[Dlightfull]

except that then you aren’t leveling dodging becuase your getting hit every time from all the encumbrance. Not to mention you gant get away without dropping ALL the things, which means your going to take alot of damage trying to get out.

i think you actually can drop everything fast in the latest experimentals. Just dropping the backpack will also drop some items, to let you unencumbered

[Litppunk]

i think you actually can drop everything fast in the latest experimentals. Just dropping the backpack will also drop some items, to let you unencumbered

oh sweet! Can’t wait till next time I feel like updating ^.^
but you would still have to level melee or dodging, not both at the same time. I would recommend dodging first I think

[ShinQuickMan]

In addition to doors, you can also level up mechanics with a crowbar by popping crates open. It’s much faster than with doors, too, as you only need to 'e’xamine instead of 'a’pplying then selecting the crate. Use a makeshift crowbar for maximum effect. This could level up mechanics to 2 easily, if you could find at least a dozen crates to work with, that is. Past that, use vehicles.

For electricitronics levels 3-6, crafting and deconstructing directional antennas is the fastest way to level the skill outside of books itself. This does require the book Amateur Radio for Enthusiasts, but this technique does make a nice stopgap in-between that level gap.