Wasteland 3 Before you roll out for Colorado

Before You Create Your First Team...

Correctly building your team has a great impact on how you game will look like.

However there are couple of things that are hard to find out until you complete your first game.

Below you will find a bunch of "I wish I knew it before" tips I found crucial to successful team building.

1. Characters stats could be reset in-gameWhat more important it works not only for Rangers you have created but also for companions you will meet. Met Scotchmo but you don't need his predefined lockpicking skill? Reset his stats - you can have him in you team with whole personality he is famous for but with skill and stats that really help you team. Each Ranger creation/reset after first two (not the first two you create/pick up at the beginning of the game, but additional two you can create when new base is established at the beginning of the game) costs money and each one costs more than previous but you can easily afford first 5-6 changes (i think 6th change costed me 3000 Colorado Dollars)

You don't have to have 4 Rangers in the teamGame says that at most you can have 4 Rangers and 2 Companions in the team. It is true, but if you like team of individuals with history and interactions then you can have more Companions and less Rangers - like 2 Rangers and 4 Companions. With possible skill resets you won't be hapered with Companions predefined setup.

Team members left in base level all the same as field teamEven more - newly created Rangers will have the level you team has from the start.

When it might come handy (besides the obvious situation when you just want to replace a team member)? Because you might like to have a team member that will have only crafting skills. This guy will be sitting in the base and you will get him to the team for a couple of minutes to upgrade your stuff. This way "field team" will focus on skill needed during gameplay.

Most required skilsIf you don't like to "miss out" some content that requires skill check then your team should have them all. But most frequently used skill is Lockpicking. You should reach 6th level as soon as possible - as locks with this level appear very early in the game. Then is Demolitions (disarming mines), Mechanics (engine fixing and disabling) and Nerd Stuff (computer hacking). Other skills are not that frequently checked as those above mentioned. At the beginning of the game reaching 6th level in them seems more important than leveling combat skills (hit chance is a percentage while skill check is yes/no - either you have required level or not). Because you would like to level those skills ASAP it is recommended to distribute them among different characters.

They said Charisma means faster levelingYou might find some min/max character builds that would advice to create starting character with 10 Charisma, because it will level much faster then others. Looking at stat's description it might seem true - extra experience to everything. However such advice misses one important point - at the beginning the most extra experience does not come from quests/combat but from personal skill checks. Let me explain - when you complete a quest all team member share experience and Charisma guy just gets x% more of it. The same when team downs some enemies in combat. But when you use Lockpicking, Nerd Stuff, Mechanics, Sneaky ♥♥♥♥ or Demolitions on world map only character that has this skill will get experience.

All that said - at the beginning the fastest leveler will not be 10 Charisma guy but Lockpicker. Things start to change around level 20 when lockpicking still yields the same experience but quest and enemies yield much more. But by level 20 you will probably have all primary skills maxed out.

Animals and Flamethowers do not come alongAnimals are valuable addition to you team. Not as pets but damage dealers/debuffers. It makes Animal Whisperer quite nice skill to have on many characters. Just to give you some figures. At level 27 my brawler 400+ HP but Major Tomcat (first animal you can tame) has 2700 and 26 armour.

But it comes at cost... The cost is that you don't control animals so they attack whomever they like. It means that after first turn using AoE weapons (like flamethrowers or shotguns) is very difficult if you don't want to hit your own animals in the process.

Game is long enough to max 3 skill and attributes barsWhen distributing skill among team members keep in mind that most probably you will end up game with characters around 25th - 27th level. Which means enough points to max 3 attributes and 3 skills and have some extra for skills like wierd weapons or animal whisperer that more than one character could use.

Brawling is not so awesomeIts description says that it starts weak and gets potential later on. I would say it becomes fun very late in the game, when you have 1 AP attacks using some nice weapons. But until then... damage is not so great and itemization is horrible - I think I changed brawling weapons 3 times in the game - so most of the time you will be using obsolete stuff.

Who is DPS hero?At the beginning I would say it is a sniper. But from the mid game (around level 10) it is becoming apparent that sniper with sneaky ♥♥♥♥ is still a great battle opener but then Automatic Weapons Rangers start to shine - with modified Reaper SMG they can dish 1000 damage per 3 AP burst and have 4 bursts in turn (or more with high luck). And all of that with high mobility (with skill giving free shot after moving 5 squares)

Because I like to have many animals in the party I might have missed power of flamethrower - but for me Automatic Weapons dudes made most of "wet work"

Luck is not optionalIt might look like this attribute is for those who like to have some nice surprise from time to time. But with high luck it becomes "very frequently". And what you get with luck? For example lucky actions - actions that costed no AP points.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2667511235

Before you roll out for Colorado - first team building tips

Before You Create Your First Team...

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