How Do Ya'll Treat Your NPCs?

I shepard them to the nearest refugee center or ranch usually. It’s nice to feel like you’re building up a little community and having them all in one centralized place without having to worry about maintenance is great for learning skills.

it depends how they treat ME!

be nice and im going to be nice too
but most survivors are stupid enought to attack well armed bionic survivor with just pipe rifle what cant even penetrate my light armor

I haven’t played in a few months so if there’s been any significant change in this part of npc behaviour I might be wrong, but I played around with npcs a lot and found that 2 missions was generally the point where npcs would have enough trust to give you full access to their inventory and accept any item you wanted to give them (as long as they are able to carry it).

Unfortunately like you said sometimes they won’t give you any more missions after the first one and the only reliable way I found around that was using the debug cheat menu to add missions.

Meatshields with a modest reuse value.

A Distraction at worst, a pain in the ass at best. Indifference usually.

but theyve gotten a lot better. I may one day actually respect them.

An excuse for failure, or to do something stupid mostly.

Ah, that crosbow weilding M$%&(*#$&% stole my blanket off me in the middle of the night while I slept in the basement… AND he left a door and a window open, oh that does it, I’m chasing him down with my iron pipe to teach him a lesson.

crossbow NPCs are the hardcoded default NPC.

If you removed every NPC from the game’s jsons, and turned on NPCs, theyd be crossbow armed npcs

Of course, if your hungry you could also treat them with a bit of red wine, rosemary, and garlic. Let them marinade in that for a bit and then slow roast in their juices for a few hours over a low flame. Drain off the juices and set the NPC aside, wrapped in foil, to rest. Use the juices to make a gravy. Serve with mashed potatoes, roasted onions/carrots, and a chilled can of chocolate drink.

I simply preserve my npcs or cooked them if hunger is there.

And if you really want a fine meal, fatten them up with your favorite fruit or juice first, and roast them over apple or hickory wood to add a delicious aftertaste. Remember to kill them by beating them over the head with a bat so you don’t accidentally hurt the meat!

Shouldn’t you boil them alive? I’m pretty sure the fear and adrenaline makes the meat taste better.

adrenaline makes them tight and stringy.

You want them relaxed. Like they were taking a nice bubble bath.

I tend to treat my npcs well.
I won’t go horribly out of my way to complete a quest. But I’ll kill a zombie mom or two, and then see if they’ll join me. If they do, spiffy, I’ll arm them with some kind of spear and some armor, tell them to only attack stuff they can attack without moving. And there we go, I can run around with a bow or something to train archery from useless to godlike, and just duck behind my tank when stuff gets near.

They also quickly help train non-integral but still useful skills that I wouldn’t bother spending time with a book on. If they have reasonable melee skill you can even toss them a backpack and then use them for what everybody used skyrim followers for. (Yes lydia, you are indeed sworn to carry my burdens).

All for the price of handing them a plastic bottle of water, and a can of soup or something every couple days. Seems like a great trade.

Only the ones that steal from me get murdered. But remember kids always remember to go into the chat menu to tell them to GTFO first. That will make them hostile(and usually fleeing instead of fighting) so you can kill them without crippling depression to get your stuff back.