Side effects of min-maxing stats

[Wayticus]

Dex and Per do a bit more then is obvious

http://dev.narc.ro/cataclysm/doxygen/Effects_Stat_Dexterity.html

http://dev.narc.ro/cataclysm/doxygen/Effects_Stat_Perception.html

[Unawares]

Yes, I have found those lists very helpful. Thanks for posting them here, good reference.

For Per nothing in the list is really worthwhile to me, at least for a melee focused character. I can’t comment on ranged combat yet, I just don’t know. I was really interested in the critical chance benefit recently, but digging into it I learned that effect is (sadly) extremely small. The sight bonus at night can be nice, and that’s been mentioned here. You might want to adjust your Per slightly aiming for a multiple of 3 to get the extra square of night vision, I do consider that.

Dexterity is a bit more interesting to me. I think you can do fine with very low Dex, it makes combat more difficult early on, but you’re fine later when your skills become high. (Again, I don’t know for sure about ranged combat, haven’t tried that.) There might be some good uses for high Dexterity though. I’m trying a very high Dex run right now testing.

[Wayticus]

Guess I should of shared the Str, and Int ones too

http://dev.narc.ro/cataclysm/doxygen/Effects_Stat_Strength.html

http://dev.narc.ro/cataclysm/doxygen/Effects_Stat_Intelligence.html

[Tamior]

The problem with those lists, they really don’t give you an idea of how actually important those modifiers are.

I mean, with night vision CBM, you can compensate for pretty much ALL “negative” effects of per 4 with some skill training.
Similar situation with dex.

Low strength, on the other hand, can’t be compensated for with skills. More importantly, high str helps you with ACTUAL survival early on as you can tank more damage, break out of grabs, resist poison and infections, etc, etc.
Heck, having high strength means you are waaay better at just looting places or riding a bicycle or many other things where being quicker/better is a difference between getting hit/spotted or not.

[Tamior]

So, yea, about that Bionic solder with
Str 18
Dex 4
Int 8
Per 4

Works like a charm.
Craft a crossbow and some metal bolts, destroy EVERYTHING from range after sunset with pretty much zero retaliation.

[Eastwardrope91]

A stat min-Max I use all the time is:

Addictive personality
Heavy Sleeper
Insomnia
Sleepy
And pyromaniac

The addictive personality is basically harmless so it’s free points. The heavy sleeper makes it so insomnia won’t wake you up randomly as often and sleepy makes you get tired faster disabling insomnia’s effect so you sleep at about the same rate and pyromaniac is more often than not a buff to your mood and is therefore free points. I then typically pick night vision for slightly higher night vision(also sets you on some of the nicer mutation paths) I then have intelligence 10 as I can’t seem to craft without it.

[Tamior]

The thing about Bionic solder start, you start with night vision CBM.
So you don’t need perception OR night vision trait.

[Sanehatter]

That’s a solid list.

Animal Discord
Trigger Happy
Weak Stomach
Poor Hearing
Junkfood/Wool Intolerance

Are great negative traits too.

[Erk]

I found junk food intolerance super annoying actually. Plenty of foods you can craft and wouldn’t expect to have it use the junk food tag.

[Tamior]

• Animal Discord
• Hates Books
• Heavy Sleeper
• High Thirst
• Poor Healer
• Poor Hearing
• Slow Reader

There, 12 points of “negative” traits that have barely any impact on actual performance.

Replace

• Poor Healer
  with
• Pyromaniac + Slow Healer

For even more broken combo that actually has no noticeable negative impact on the gameplay.

Now for the “maxing” part:

• Fleet-Footed
• Parkour Expert
• Quick

for speed domination.

• Robust Genetics

For late-game shenanigans with mutations.

• Night Vision

if you don’t start with night-vision bionics

• Gourmand

if you DO start with night-vision bionics. Gourmand is great, you can get easy extra +1/+2 to intellect with it (for bionic installation, etc) just by eating something tasty. Or you can live by eating nothing but cattails from the local spawn and only suffer a minor morale penalty.

[Krisu]

Since everyones sharing their builds I’ll share mine
Negative:
• addictive personality
• If you have skill rust off this might be cheating: Forgetful
• Insomniac
• Heavy sleeper
• Poor Hearing
• Squeamish
• Thin Skinned
• Truth Teller
• Weak Stomach
• Trigger Happy(Unless you plan to use guns)
• If no trigger happy, go with animal discord

Positives:
If you REALLY want to min-max, you gotta pick traits you cannot get via mutation that are very useful. The only truly neccessary one I can think of is Robust Genetics. Decently useful ones are tough, parkour expert, packmule, optimist, and stylish but all are unnecessary if you know what you’re doing. Well, even Robust Genetica is unnecessary if you’re patient/lucky/save scumming.

Then just put the rest into stats.
If you play multipool, might as well pick skills that will speed your way to mid game. Or pick dodge.

[Erk]

I consider robust genetics, packmule and strong back necessary QOL traits. I usually add stylish because it is fun for roleplay, otherwise there is all that nice bling and it does nothing.

[Tamior]

Streaming a bit more of Str 18 Dex 4 Int 8 Per 4 start just to explore the gamepaly of heavy min/maxing some more.

[AskaHope]

Am I the only one that play as 5/5/14/12?

[Erk]

Seems like a weird array, what do you gain from that?

[AskaHope]

I usually pick these traits:

Fleet-footed - gotta go fast
Quick - gotta go faster
Packmule - carry more books
Fast reader - read books quickly
Light step - no noise while night raid
Less sleep - sleeping is annoying
Night vision - for night raids

And these:

Flimsy/Frail/Fragile - because the base HP is too much for me.
Imperceptive Healer - for Bionic Patient runs only.
And some random stuff if I need to balance thing out.

And I pick a character w Integrated Toolset CBM and start reading/crafting.

I usually end up with a overpowered Deathmobile by the end of the week, but get too bored and end up commiting suicide and restarting with more challenges. (Sometimes I do this before even looting a Lab, can’t help it).

Do anyone have some challenge suggestions for me?

[AskaHope]

For example, once I’ve played as a Lab Technician obssessed by bugs.

The objective is - Try to turn at least 3 friendly NPCs you find into post-treshold insect/spider mutants.

[Unawares]

The objective is - Try to turn at least 3 friendly NPCs you find into post-treshold insect/spider mutants.

Hahaha

Have you tried a lab start lately? There’s a lot of new content in labs lately, which has made it more interesting.

[Tamior]

Streaming some more of Str 18 Dex 4 Int 8 Per 4 start, now with extra “cars to wrecks” mod.

Streaming continuation of the previous start, making my first “proper” vehicle:

[Eastwardrope91]

I got a challenge for you but it requires a bit of debug to do properly. If you teleport yourself in a electronic store try to break out using only the items in it and beat of the horde that WILL form outside also no lock picking too easy.
Attributes for this are Max crafting skills unlimited power but NO combat skills not even trapping. If you escape the horde and the store you win if you starve or die in any way shape or form before escaping the horde’s grasp you lose.

I’ll tell you this from personal experience you can most definitely build a car from a electronic store use this how you will.