the obvious poor choices are stuff like downward genetic spiral (assuming you arent gonna savescum it for benefits… but i guess a playthrough of that can be fun in its own way, cause you dont know if you’ll suddenly be a lot stronger or a lot weaker.)
personally… i’m never gonna take the XXXL overweight trait ever again… it takes SO LONG to get away from it… and the entire time you have negative health stats across the board… you get sick constantly, you cant do anything very long… you still have to eat a lot to not have malnoutrition (which will make you lose even MORE hidden health.)
Assume “average” strength to be useful, and think bumping it up to 9 would be good.
A strength of 9 is far too low because:
Any pain below the minimum level causes an STR debuff, which effectively disarms my character (using a 9 STR bow as the main weapon).
When fully armed and armored up, the remaining carrying capacity is pathetic (about 5 kg, or about the difference between STR 8 and 9), which means looting is a constant painful weight management juggling struggle.
Can’t smash a lot of things without having to go through multiple rounds of hitting them with a sledge hammer until exhausted and then sit in a corner for 10 minutes to recover.
High tier bows are completely out of reach (STR 12) unless mutated (bionics can give you two additional points).
Can’t move a blasted crate without over exertion.
Of course, lower STR means less melee damage, but that, at least, is an anticipated result of the decision.
I’d considered taking XXXL overweight for my next character. The warning will definitely get me to consider that very carefully. Thanks for the tip.
Taking a slow healer trait, never again. I want to actually be able to play the game. Ursine vision is another rough one. microscopic vision range during the day and don’t start with glasses, the big oofs if you want a char to survive day one. Leaky bionic as well, just mod that one out of any start with one, that things is just plain impossible.
yeeahhh… starting with a bad bionic is asking for a bad time, because if you’re taking hits from it theres almost nothing you can do until you find a good working autodoc AND have enough medical skill to properly remove it.
i figured XXXL would be great, considering the current meta is ‘oh god i have to eat so much food.’ but i checked debug… you’re like 200,000 calories obese… you lose mabye 2000 per day, 4000 if you’re doing intense work.
So 50-100 days if you manage to just eat vitamins and calcium tablets (plus drink water, of course) to get from XXXL to a healthy weight (plus an inability to ride any of the scrawny mounts in the game)?
plus having to survive that long with basically 0 health regen (you’ll be at -190 health and -190 health factor the entire time you’re obese) high chance of getting sick, and get tired faster.
Could do a start with a gun like sheltered militia. Nice winter start with highly evolved zombies to make it fair. That sounds like a terrible idea though, those infinitely duplicating bullet resistant hounds would be the death of you lol. Guns may be good but when they don’t work they REALLY don’t work.
even better, do the start i did recently, the stranded in a military base one. you’re locked up nice and tight in a warehouse full of food, clothes, bedding, batteries, lights, books…
but you gotta move out of there eventually. and the armory (full of really nice guns and ammo) is only 2 hacksaw-able doors away~