Hey I was wondering what kinds of character skills traits, etc you have for your characters that are geared towards certain builds, like for example, a melee build or guns build?
To crosspost:
[quote=“Endovior, post:14, topic:846”]The safest start I can find is taking all the speed perks, and a point in throwing and survival. Pick up some rocks early and throw them around until you’ve got the inventory space to burn on spears (then upgrade to javelins asap). If you’re patient and don’t let yourself get surrounded, you should be able to kite and destroy medium-size groups of zombies without any weapons but found rocks, with minimal risk. So long as you find a pot, at least two containers, and a water source that isn’t infested with monsters, you can last quite a while if you take minimal risks. For that matter, the ‘find a pot’ part is optional, if your hunting goes well enough to make your own out of rock and sinew. Using this method, I almost never have trouble with spiders. Enough javelins to reasonably engage in combat take up a lot of space, but murder most things, provided you’re careful to balance throwing at range and retreating a lot.
Still tend to die from bears, though; they tend to be beefy enough to take your ranged javelin hits and fast enough that you can’t safely kite them. Since this build tends to not develop much melee skill, you tend to die when forced into it.[/quote]
That talks more about the long-term trickiness of staying alive than the actual build, but getting the mentioned perks eats up all your points as is, so…
Generally speaking, I pay for all that with some low-impact disadvantages, rather than reducing base stats (indeed, I’d usually want a point or two of dex and per). For cheesy flavour, take Ugly and Truth-Teller, which do nothing and so are literally free points, so long as NPCs remain disabled. Alternatively, I’m a fan of Lightweight and Addictive Personality; so long as you Just Say No, they won’t affect you.
you really need both melee and range to survive. remember if your having trouble you can go to option and raise yourself up to 24 points.
also the negative traits related to npcs are harmless so that is like extra points.
must have: night vision. always.
I like to start with archery. Bows are found in sporting goods stores, but are not that common and with static spawns its hard to get to them. You can find crossbows at crossbow traps, but that is hit or miss. with 1 archery and 1 survival (easy to get to 1 by just butchering corpses) and finding 2, 3 inch string strings you can craft a bow. then break the bench for arrows. the arrows can often be picked up.
i like to raise INT and perception over str and dex.
I’m glad for the feed back and I’ll try some of those kinds of builds when I get the chance. Any other kinds of oriented builds you guys have to offer? Also Endovior, couldn’t you use the spears as an emergency maneuver using windows and at least train your guy to at least a skill of three to take on a horde or two?
I’ve shown my screenshots a few times complaining of temps:
I usually get up to 11/12 of the main stats. Animal Empathy, Night vision, Optimist (I’m hoping it gives me more XP over time), Robust Genetics (who doesn’t like scumming and abusing), for negs I take Heavy Sleeper (not a big deal so far), poor hearing (I assume I’ll see the turrets before they start shooting), glass jaw (if my head is that injured I’m usually dead anyways), Trigger Happy (I haven’t really gotten to guns yet), Smelly (for the extra bonus points, although it may attract wildlife it definitely doesn’t make the more hostile), and then truth teller and ugly because lolbroken. No points in skills makes it a slower start, but the animal empathy REALLY helps reduce the risk of horribly dying to animals constantly, as well as making it easier to go after rodents or deer for skills/food.
Probably, but I’ve not been doing this for too long. Need to figure out how to handle the transition properly.
I don’t know that it’s really a “build”, but I’ll show you what I like to do.
Stats:
Strength: 14
Dexterity: 8 (I feel its benefits are spread too thinly to be worth it)
Intelligence: 14
Perception: 10
Positive Traits:
Fleet-footed or Quick. A lot of the other ones have cool effects, but are painfully expensive. You might try Light Step+Inconspicuous instead though, or try something with Robust Genetics and hope for roadrunner.
Negative Traits:
Heavy Sleeper (situationally a benefit. It sucks being safe, but being unable to sleep because of a wolf spider lurking outside)
Glass Jaw (The times that damage killed me, it was always the torso. Also, you can encumber your head with no penalty. Headgear is plentiful)
Addictive Personality (I’ve rarely had to use drugs, and by the time I have them, I also have a shelter to sweat out withdrawal)
Truth Teller and Ugly (Duh)
And Either:
Trigger Happy (full autos eat too much ammo for my tastes anyway)
or Wool Allergy and Weak Stomach (in which case you might want to save your sinews and train tailoring to make fur equipment. Also, don’t eat rotten things.)
Skills:
Dodge. If you want to tweak, archery and mechanics (and maybe survival) are the other things you’ll hurt for in the beginning, but dodge is a very safe investment.
General strategy: Check the evac shelter for meds or a weapon. Rush the town (I play without static spawn) and assess that the starting town includes a gas station, tools to weld with, batteries to do it with (seeing an electronics store on the map is usually sufficient) and at least an unfinished chassis to do it on. Also watch for reading material - Archery for Kids and Under the Hood are most desirable. If you can’t train archery this way, you’ll have to find and disarm crossbow traps or settle for throwing.
Only scout at first. Keep your torso encumbrance at zero so you can fight, and leave copious loot notes on your map. Weapon-wise, a crowbar is ideal since it pulls double duty, but any decent melee weapon is fine. Eat/drink as you go and resist the urge to hoard anything that takes up volume. You can generally deal with zeds by simply choosing not to engage, but in a pinch, use terrain to your advantage. Hit them while they are bottlenecked in a broken window or are struggling through bushes, monkeybars, wreckage…
When you are satisfied that the town can get you started, egress to an evac shelter and read/sleep (edit: don’t sleep in town. Even when you’ve taken considerable precautions, you often wake up with a smoker zombie up your flush pipe). Spend experience making arrows (or throwing rocks if you aren’t doing archery) and butchering corpses, so you get stable food and sinew income from wild animals (and can protect yourself decently). Then train mechanics until you can add a muffler to the chassis you found.
From there… do what you like. The character is pretty close to a blank slate and will quickly learn whatever you want. Personally I go heavy with archery, wear multiple backpacks and start hunting bionics, but… that’s just me. 
Really depends on if you are playing with static spawn on not imo.
If you are you will probably want skills to use and make a bow early on, they can be damn handy.
I usually go STR 10-12
DEX 8-9
INT 12-13
PER 11-13
Ranged build that can melee in a pinch.
At least semi decent PER is a must imo so you dont step on land mines. High int helps gain skills faster, always good. High dex can be good, but you want to build your char around it and probably do some stuff like grind up dodge, bit of a hassle imo. STR is good to have a few points in for any char, more HP is always good, more carry weight. Melee tank wants more than what I usually take, but this guy can still bash hordes at a window with a hammer.
Perks, Quick is a must, always take quick. Night vision as well. From there, optimist is nice, so is fast learner, poison resistant I usually take, again handy. Robust genetics if you want to play with mutagen. Light step and inconspicuous are good for non-static spawn, but fairly useless for static imo. Pretty much all the +ve perks have their uses, none are really crap.
-ve traits I take Heavy sleeper, poor hearing, glass jaw, trigger happy, wool allergy, ugly and truth teller. Ugly and truth teller are pretty much free points without npcs. Might have missed one, but I always take 12 points of -ve traits.
Unless im going for an archer, im probably not taking any skills, other than a point in dodge sometimes.
Loadout I generally use is .22 marlin, Redhawk as backup/hulk killer. Grab a savage for turrets/lab raids. Hammer for melee. Static spawn I just grab any guns I can and use them till out of ammo, then grab another, though I love the SKS with a few mods.