I’d say both packmule and strong back are quite op. 40% inventory volume/weight is just too high a bonus to make any sort of sense.
Good Traits that are too good
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If you build martial arts for the specific weapon, then you can get OP really quick…
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Pack mule is very excellent.
One I think lots of people seem to ignore is Spiritual. Get two religious books and you can rock +150 morale easily. You can also wear a holy symbol to stop and meditate for a very slight boost. I like using spiritual on any of my “out of time” characters. Like churls, Vikings, and crusaders.
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I think the “too good” perks for you are the ones that target something you like to think about and plan around, and elevate it to a level well beyond human.
For instance, I never take the +weight or +volume traits because I can’t get behind roleplaying a character loaded with much more stuff than I could comfortably carry. But I always take Night Vision, because to me, having to plan carefully around lighting is something fiddly I’d rather not be bothered with.
Somebody else might never take night vision, because they don’t want to roleplay a character who can see twenty feet in near pitch black light, but dealing with how much weight and volume they’re packing is fiddly nonsense they don’t want to bother with… even if it means jogging around dodging zombies while hauling around 130 pounds of gear.
So for me, Night Vision is a quality of life gimme, while Strong Back is way too good and I never take it. But to my hypothetical you, it might be the opposite.
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This might need some lateral thinking. You can choose negative traits based on the mutagen you intend to take. After all, if you will have them anyways you might as well think of them as free points when they are countered by other traits. It may also be possible, yet I don’t have proof, that you can do something similar with positive traits. If you wish to remove glass jaw or bad back, you might have a bad time just using purifier. Their counters can be limited, difficult to get, or only in the starter set. The trick is to use the purifier to not only have a chance to get rid of bad mutations, but to have a chance to reclaim the mutations that also counter those bad mutations. Toughness and strong back are two traits I use to that effect. Preference should probably be towards traits that can’t be easily included through mutagen.
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I usually use traits as a means to roleplay, without giving much thought to balance.
If a character is not cut out for survival, I guess a miserable and untimely end was bound to happen. On the other hand, surviving against all odds is a hell of an adventure.
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Gourmand is incredibly good.
Due to how morale works, this traits essentially:
- makes you capable of surviving on raw cattails from the nearest swamp with little to no penalties
AND - allows you to get huge bonuses to skill training rates just by eating
AND - allows you to easily get STAT boosts by eating a pile of snacks (very important when installing CBM’s etc)
AND - allows you to “store” more food and water in your body (because why not? Clearly this trait needs more positive effects.)
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Wow, great responses. I would never have suspected packmule of being so desirable mainly b/c of the travois and drag-box being so easy to create right away. I’ll admit when I play most games (like fallout) I will always grab any sort of strong back or pack mule quirk, but mostly that is due to a weird compulsion I have to “loot all the things!”
Also I did not mean to suggest any of the good traits were broken or misadjusted–it was more of an idle thought from a newish player. I don’t have a lot of time to play the game. I often listen to “lets plays” (my version of sports radio) where people are talking about certain aspects of the game or who are very entertaining while they are playing. It seemed like each time there was a new character, they were choosing Quick, Night vision, parkour expert, and/or fleet footed after weighing themselves down with interesting ‘bad traits’ that could be mitigated easily and/or ‘bad traits’ that make a play through interesting or challenging. I’ll have to go back and see if my perception matches reality.
QoL traits are interesting. I didn’t view them as such initially but thinking about it now, I can see how there are just certain aspects each of us don’t like dealing with in our gameplay. The QoL traits allow us to fix that nicely. It’s nice to see there are so many people that do avoid Nightvision or Quick.
I’ll have to look into playing with some of the other QoL traits I have completely skipped over in favor of my normal choices.
I think the great way to expand this is by making meal-time more time-consuming, rather than consuming a third of a pie in a matter of seconds, and gourmand would cut it back down to seconds too…
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I would expect a gourmand to take his time to enjoy his meal not eating it faster than a normal person.
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Well, I always took a gourmand as a mainly the people who compete in those weird eating contests… Maybe that could be the trade-off with taking such a hidden god trait, have to take more time eating and such.
(Sorry for getting a little more OOC…)
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The most valuable traits are the ones that can’t get gotten any other way.
Parkour expert, for instance, gives you a fairly nice bonus (nothing massive, but really useful for kiting) that cannot be gotten literally any other way. Strong genetics is another REALLY good one like this. Strong back/packmule are, IMO, pretty weak (quality of life, not much else), but they do go in here. Weak scent goes here, but it’s really not that useful past the early game. Light step DEFINITELY goes here, and can be a real life saver in night raids.
Night vision is stupendously nice, but for quality of life, but also for surviving on night raids, so it’s REALLY good early game… but it can be acquired fairly easily by mutation or equipment in mid game, so if you’re trying to optimize for late game, it’s not a good choice. (I usually take it anyway.) Most of the traits martial arts are in this category, too, though they can be REALLY useful (as actually finding any one book is rare).
That’s how I think about it, anyway.
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You can get robust genetics through mutation 
but your not wrong.
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You CAN get Robust Genetics through mutation, yes… but you can just as easily lose it again with purifier, defeating the purpose of Robust Genetics. When it’s a trait, if you mange to mutate it away, you can get it BACK with purifier. Robust Genetics (trait) >>> Robust Genetics (acquired).
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True, I guess I’m biased cos I didn’t really have any trouble keeping it the few times I’ve gone down the mutant route. I tend to stick with the medical/elf-a and alpha branches and I usually mutate/purify until I start with it then work my way up from there.
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Lets see, many of my previous builds have been full ninja-style builds:
- Night Vision
- Light Step
- Martial Arts: Ninjitsu
and then a couple others to round things out. The combination of light step and ninjitsu’s silence effect on melee strikes makes it extremely easy to whittle down hordes of zombies at night, as disengaging from them becomes very easy. I’ve taken quick, packmule or parkour occasionally, but I rarely feel like I need them.
My current build is a Bookworm/Fast reader/High int type, which is a departure for me. I have to say, you do mow through books at an impressive rate with this kind of layout, with even lvl 8 skill ups generally taking significantly less than a day. Not the best fighter though - going to rely on guns a lot more in the late game.
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Wait, eating 917 cheese wheels isn’t realistic?
Anyways, I think one of the more OP are the ones that reduce maintenance - if you need less sleep, eat or drink, then you get more time to do stuff without getting a yellow tag nagging “hey u ned snack”
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Nice try Kevin, I know that’s you 
No but seriously most of the traits fall under 3 categories…
Required to survive consistently: night vision,
Free points: like ugly or truth teller
And flavor traits: stylish, jittery, or cannibal
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Oh yeah, my bookworm has Less Sleep - that is a very powerful trait, as it makes your average day considerably more efficient. More time up scavenging/working, less time sleeping and burning through food and water doing nothing at all.
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If you really need a boost of morale without doing anything basically, take:
Masochist
Albino
Basically become your own source of joy…
Masochist is still really nice, as a survivor wont miss from morale penalties during battles and such, plus not 100% sure but i think the survivor misses less from in pain