Wasteland 2 - Impressions start page 8

$iljanus · Post by **$iljanus** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 11:15 am

stimpy wrote:Ha!!! Seems the armor is the issue. Whats weird is the armor requires a strength of 6 and he has 8.
It does have a -.08 effect on combat movement, which I thought should be extremely minimal, but I took the armor off and voila......he can move.

Thanks for the help!!!

Sounds like a bug since one would think he'd be able to move but just not as far, especially since he fulfilled the strength requirement. Unless it was cursed armor...

Zurai · Post by **Zurai** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 12:40 pm

Heavy armor is junk in this game, alas. It has such a huge movement speed penalty that it makes the characters who can use it useless. Melee characters are the only ones with the strength to use heavy armor and they're the ones who need movement speed the most. Just a dumb design.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Mon Oct 20, 2014 12:45 pm

Zurai wrote:Heavy armor is junk in this game, alas. It has such a huge movement speed penalty that it makes the characters who can use it useless. Melee characters are the only ones with the strength to use heavy armor and they're the ones who need movement speed the most. Just a dumb design.

It's mitigated somewhat by end-game energy weapons that do more damage the more armor you have anyway.

astyanax · Post by **astyanax** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 7:07 pm

stimpy wrote:Ha!!! Seems the armor is the issue. Whats weird is the armor requires a strength of 6 and he has 8.
It does have a -.08 effect on combat movement, which I thought should be extremely minimal, but I took the armor off and voila......he can move.

Thanks for the help!!!

You're welcome! Now Chisel, off with that neutronium plate!

It does seem a bit odd since he meets the STR requisite, but I guess that for armor like that, you're better off without.

As for energy weapons, I sort of like they do more damage to higher armored enemies- I abuse the heck out of it on my end, and I make darn sure to take out enemy energy weapon users ASAP. It also avoids making PCs and enemies into nigh-invincible tanks.

That being said, I only have one piece of heavy armor, and I haven't yet finished the game-- there's plenty of time for me to change my mind. :p

Grifman · Post by **Grifman** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 1:34 pm

Just a note, achievements are coming soon, probably with the next patch. You can see them on Steam now but they are not activated and have no details. Hoping this will make the next patch.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 2:45 pm

I think I finished the AZ part of the game, but I think I am going to start over. I missed some stuff, ran into a bug where one NPC, said thanks for not doing X, so we don't have to kill you, then they tried to kill me.

So I felt a little bad, as I got the rewards for not doing the bad thing, but then get to kill them all and get the XP, and weapons that they had on them.

Plus I messed up some of the choice to make things better between some of the factions, and I want my skill mix to be slightly better.

Has anyone else started over after getting through a significant portion of the game?

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Mon Oct 27, 2014 2:59 pm

I’m waaay too far in the game to restart at this point but it has crossed my mind a couple times. The skill sets I’ve found on party members just don’t gel well with my starting party and as such, I have a lot of overlap in skills. It doesn't help that it seems like they gave all the recruits that actually use guns the same skills, so if you don't want a bunch of melee guys you cant optimize your party.

If I had one complaint with the game at this point it’s really that the game encourages waiting to skill up instead of committing to a build. Right now I have 3 characters in my party that have over 20 unused skill points. The reason being that I never know which situational skill I am going to need one more point in so I don’t level up until I actually need to in order to pass a skill check.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sat Nov 01, 2014 12:32 am

I think I am in the last area of the game now. Things seem to get really buggy near the end of the game. In the last couple hours of gameplay I’ve encountered at least 5 major bugs, 2 of which prevented me from completing quest and one of which made me reload a major section of combat because a rogue character refused to finish his turn after climbing a ladder.

I still hold that the game is great and well worth your time but if you haven’t started yet you may want to wait for at least another patch or two before jumping in.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Sat Nov 01, 2014 12:36 am

Ladders have been nuts throughout the game. I have lost track of the times a character has fallen through a building, climbed up the back of a ladder to get out, then climbed back down in mid-air ten feet in front of the ladder.

Archinerd · Post by **Archinerd** » Sat Nov 01, 2014 12:08 pm

Lordnine wrote:I think I am in the last area of the game now. Things seem to get really buggy near the end of the game. In the last couple hours of gameplay I’ve encountered at least 5 major bugs, 2 of which prevented me from completing quest and one of which made me reload a major section of combat because a rogue character refused to finish his turn after climbing a ladder.

I still hold that the game is great and well worth your time but if you haven’t started yet you may want to wait for at least another patch or two before jumping in.

So it's exactly like Fallout 2 then?

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sat Nov 01, 2014 12:15 pm

Archinerd wrote: So it's exactly like Fallout 2 then?

Actually, yes.

Wasteland 2 is probably as close to a traditional Fallout 3, as made by the original team, as we are ever likely to get. All that is missing are Pipboys and Deathclaws.

astyanax · Post by **astyanax** » Sat Nov 01, 2014 12:31 pm

Archinerd wrote:So it's exactly like Fallout 2 then?

War... war never changes (unless your franchise gets bought up by someone else)

I kind of agree with you about waiting for a patch, Lordnine, but I must be used to playing the old Black Isle games- I have a high tolerance to bugs. I mean, heck, I have reboot to even enter certain areas due to the game's handling on 32-bit systems, but I don't find it to be onerous. Gotta say, though- you're fast! (or maybe I'm slow... yeah, that's more likely).

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sat Nov 01, 2014 1:08 pm

I actually didn’t run into that many problems until about the 40 hour mark, at-least none that stopped my enjoyment of the game. Unfortunately though, Hollywood with a buggy mess. In looking for solutions to my problems I discovered that mine were just a handful of the complaints about the area. Once it is patched I’m sure that area will be amazing because it has some of the most interconnected and interesting quests in the game. But that also means it has the most things that can break if you play them out of order.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Sat Nov 01, 2014 1:12 pm

Wasn't that area dramatically patched recently? I don't think the patch worked that well if you were already there, but for those who still hadn't gotten to Hollywood, it would fix plenty of issues.

Not that I know by personal experience. I'm almost at the end of Arizona, but have put the game on hold for a while to finish other games that have been released recently. I figured that of all those games, Wasteland 2 would probably be the one to benefit the most from a few rounds of patching.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sat Nov 01, 2014 2:28 pm

Yeah it did receive a number of fixes but evidently not enough. The patch hit before I went to California so I would hate to see what it was like before.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 1:03 am

Finished the game tonight. An excellent RPG and well worth the 51 hours I spent with it! I really loved that your actions throughout the game actually come back to affect both the end game and the epilogues…unlike certain other games. ME3, I’m looking at you.

One thing about the ending bugged me a little and also makes me think it was a bit rushed.
Big spoilers but may save you some frustration in the final encounter if you read. Will try to keep somewhat vague.

Spoiler:

DOS=HIGH · Post by **DOS=HIGH** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 7:28 am

I didn't hit any major bugs in California but there is definitely some disjointed stories depending on the order of quests. As far as the final encounter:

Spoiler:

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:21 pm

DOS=HIGH wrote:I didn't hit any major bugs in California but there is definitely some disjointed stories depending on the order of quests. As far as the final encounter:
Spoiler:
Rose was the only person in my group with an implant at the time but the number of friendly NPCs more than offset the loss. What really pissed me off was I didn't save the game after the big fight. Went into the next section and a timed event occurred that I wasn't really paying attention too and 'lost' the game. What I still don't understand is when I replayed the final fight and went into the next section there was no timed event. I also dismissed Rose outside the last fight the 2nd time so she wouldn't be killed, making the fight slightly easier. Between the NPCs and my level 39 group at the time, it wasn't that hard a fight, just long.

Spoiler:

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 12:16 pm

New patch released the other day. I think I am going to start over with a better party mix, or at least one that will anticipate some of the NPC's and do some of the things I want to do instead of what I did in my first partial play through.

NickAragua · Post by **NickAragua** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 1:09 pm

It's a hell of a change list in that patch. Say what you want about the quality of the game at release (not too bad), but these guys are really working their asses off to polish it up.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 2:16 pm

I actually reloaded my last save game after this newest patch hit and redid the end. There were about 5 additional “epilogues” at the end of the game this time. Big thumbs up since I love that stuff.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Fri Nov 07, 2014 2:29 pm

I hit a few bugs that I just went through or worked around prior to CA.

So I think now is the best time to restart with the good patches, and I can switch up some things that I did and didn't like.

Lassr · Post by **Lassr** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 11:45 am

Uh, my whole team was infected with the pod infection. After reading some hints online it seems if you do not get the cure from the ag center it causes this and it's pretty much game over for me after hours of playing which kind of pisses me off. I tried to find the cure but never could find the lab where the cure was being developed (a bug or just not where I thought it would be). So I said screw it and moved one, now my team is toast after advancing the story a bit more...I go back to the Ag center to see if I could find the cure again and it is grown up and no one is there.

So my choice was to quit in frustration and move on to After Earth or hack the save file. SO I edited the save file to remove the infection. MY party is nice and healthy now...moving on to Damonta.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 12:30 pm

You get the cure when you complete the quest line in the AG center. You have something like 12 hours real time to complete the quest chain so unless you leave the area you should be fine.

There is a lot of content at the AG center, are you sure you entered the main facility? It’s a multi-part area with labs, expansive farms and underground areas. If you skip that all you are probably going to be under leveled for the rest of the game.

Lassr · Post by **Lassr** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 12:37 pm

Lordnine wrote:You get the cure when you complete the quest line in the AG center. You have something like 12 hours real time to complete the quest chain so unless you leave the area you should be fine.

There is a lot of content at the AG center, are you sure you entered the main facility? It’s a multi-part area with labs, expansive farms and underground areas. If you skip that all you are probably going to be under leveled for the rest of the game.

Yes, I was in the main part. I activated the dish that was grown over with the vines. I went back up to the area where Rose is located, but I could not find the women scientist. My log book said the next step was to head to the lab and get the cure but No matter where I went no one said anything about the cure. I finally left to complete a mission for the citadel and was going to come back but it was too late when I did.

I have found that some of the triggers do not work if you complete a quest a little differently. I wondered if that was the case here. I know at the Prison there is supposed to be a cut-scene after you do something but I did it differently and never got the cut scene but was able to complete the task anyhow.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 1:31 pm

Some of this could be considered spoilers.

Spoiler:

Lassr · Post by **Lassr** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 3:43 pm

I know I defeated everything in the East Field but it's been over a week now since I played that part so I'm trying to remember if there was a boss. Maybe I had not done everything to make the boss appear? I dunno, too late now as the Ag Center is abandoned.

Thanks for the info though. One lesson learned is pay more attention to the text info. There is so much sometimes that I skim through it fast and missed the vital piece of info about getting the cure before time expired.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 4:44 pm

Lassr wrote:I know I defeated everything in the East Field but it's been over a week now since I played that part so I'm trying to remember if there was a boss. Maybe I had not done everything to make the boss appear? I dunno, too late now as the Ag Center is abandoned.

Spoiler:

Lassr · Post by **Lassr** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 9:06 pm

Lordnine wrote:
Lassr wrote:I know I defeated everything in the East Field but it's been over a week now since I played that part so I'm trying to remember if there was a boss. Maybe I had not done everything to make the boss appear? I dunno, too late now as the Ag Center is abandoned.

Spoiler:
Huh, I guess if you don’t complete the quest everyone dies. The AG center became my base of operations for quite a while after I completed it because of its ease of selling stuff, access to a free doctor and getting water.

I think you would remember the boss if you fought him. He had enough AP to shoot about 6 times a turn and could easily decimate an unprepared party. If I recall he was in a small building behind the large cow pens in a room with large water tanks and a bunch of dead bodies. You didn’t need to do anything to make him appear.

Found a map. He was in the southern part.

Spoiler:

Mr. Fed · Post by **Mr. Fed** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 9:29 pm

Thinking of starting over.

How would people suggest building a party if they were starting over? I get the sense that one melee brawler is a good idea, and that I gimped my characters by giving everyone 8 or 10 INT for the skill points.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Thu Nov 20, 2014 9:36 pm

Mr. Fed wrote:Thinking of starting over.

How would people suggest building a party if they were starting over? I get the sense that one melee brawler is a good idea, and that I gimped my characters by giving everyone 8 or 10 INT for the skill points.

I went with a brawler/carry stuff/heavy weapons
2 skill guys, one that will be sniper/Physician/medic/pistols/Repair
One that will be Lock/Safe/Perception/Sub machine gun
Then my last guy is Assault Rifle/weapon smith

I branch out to demo for one of my skill guys, which both have 8 points in Int. I gimped Luck and Str to balance out other stats.

I also need to get more skill in Leadership and Animal Whisper.

But the extra people I pick up have some of the other skills I need.

I started over, and am just getting back to the Prison. But my second play through is much better than my first. Still having a great time with it.

NickAragua · Post by **NickAragua** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 12:15 pm

Mr. Fed wrote:Thinking of starting over.

How would people suggest building a party if they were starting over? I get the sense that one melee brawler is a good idea, and that I gimped my characters by giving everyone 8 or 10 INT for the skill points.

8 or 10 isn't too bad. For int, you want to avoid anything other than 1, 4, 8 or 10, the rest is useless.

Luck is a dump stat, so you can drop that all the way down to 1 for more points to use elsewhere. Charisma is pretty useless too, except for your leader, who should pump it up to keep the NPCs following your orders without having to stand next to them, and you'll want some more if you plan on recruiting NPCs.

This post should help you optimize your action points: https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com ... =7&t=10792
This is a nice, comprehensive discussion and analysis of the weapons in the game: https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com ... =40&t=9765

The takeaway for me is that melee weapons, heavy weapons and pistols are awful. So, for fighting skills, you'll want some selection of assault, sniper, smg, shotgun, brawling and energy weapons. Just don't try to do anything stupid like give a guy two weapon skills. It's better to specialize. Energy weapons start coming in really handy when you're fighting big robots and the vs armor damage multiplier kicks in. Assault rifles put out superior damage, but you're going to be using a lot of ammo so it's better to diversify. Brawling is ok, but give the guy some grenades or something so that he has something to do if it's a ranged fight.

For other skills, well, spread 'em out as best you can. You'll want a dedicated surgeon/first aid guy, and probably a secondary surgeon with one point or so just in case your main surgeon buys the farm. To reduce annoyance, I would recommend demolitions and perception as well (preferably on the same character), because, as I'm sure you're aware, every other locker and square foot of ground has a dynamite boobytrap or a landmine on it. Actually, to save clicks, I would stick as many door opening/trap disarming skills on one guy as you can (give him an int of 10), then give another guy the negotiation skills.

If you find skill books, save them until skills cost at least 4, preferably 6 points to level up.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 1:34 pm

I actually found sharp melee weapons pretty good as long as you have a character that can mod them. I modded an axe for my main character that let me do something like 15-30 damage a hit and I could attack 5-6 times with it per turn. I got this pretty early on and it carried me till pretty late in the game when I finally got an even better weapon.

Modded pistols are also OK. I ended up with three party members who used pistols (thanks game!) and they did fine once I kitted all of them with scopes, long barrels, and damage upgrades.

Heavy weapons I would agree are worthless. But note that things like rocket launchers are not considered heavy weapons, so anyone in your party can use them.

Having one person with energy weapons will make the latter half of the game a lot easier but I would just put it as a secondary skill for someone. No need to pump point into it early on.

Sniper rifles were the best weapons in the game that I found.

I managed to get every non-combat skill in the game. My thoughts:
Explosives is the most important non-combat skill in the game. Pair it with perception.
Computers are also important. (you can pick up an early NPC who is better in this than you will ever be)
Lock picking is nice to have but not essential.
Alarms not really needed unless you really want to avoid conflict.
Safe cracking will let you bypass a couple quests but is otherwise a waste since most loot is random.
Smart-Kiss-Hard Ass – All really good, oddly, you need all of them if you want the best outcome in a lot of conversations.
Animal Handling is fun and useful but not essential.
Force skill gives you a couple really cool options to bypass stuff but I only used it a handful of times in the whole game.
Wilderness skill will save you time on the mini-map by letting you skip random encounters. You will also find some cool Easter eggs and stat shrines. Consider it more convenience than essential.
Toaster repair gives you some alternate solutions to quests but is a lot of points for something only marginally useful.
Weapon Modding – Essential but a lot of NPCs have this.
Medical skills – Essential but a lot of NPCs have them. At least take field medic though.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 1:36 pm

RMC wrote:
I went with a brawler/carry stuff/heavy weapons
2 skill guys, one that will be sniper/Physician/medic/pistols/Repair
One that will be Lock/Safe/Perception/Sub machine gun
Then my last guy is Assault Rifle/weapon smith

I went with
1. Shooter: Assault rifle, perception, toaster repair, energy weapons, leadership.
2. Brawler: meele combat skills with high combat speed, demo, brute force, heavy weapons.
3. Medic: Surgeon, field medic, pistols, weaponsmith. Suprisingly good at doing a lot of pistol damage with low AP per attack.
4. Jack of All: High INT for lockpick/safecrack/repair/animal whisperer/electronics/etc, shotgun

May be missing a few skills in there but basically have a nice distribution of ammo types, most skills are covered, and NPC party members are picked primarily for combat.

NickAragua · Post by **NickAragua** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 2:09 pm

Lordnine wrote: Explosives is the most important non-combat skill in the game. Pair it with perception.
Computers are also important. (you can pick up an early NPC who is better in this than you will ever be)
Lock picking is nice to have but not essential.
Alarms not really needed unless you really want to avoid conflict.
Safe cracking will let you bypass a couple quests but is otherwise a waste since most loot is random.
Smart-Kiss-Hard Ass – All really good, oddly, you need all of them if you want the best outcome in a lot of conversations.
Animal Handling is fun and useful but not essential.
Force skill gives you a couple really cool options to bypass stuff but I only used it a handful of times in the whole game.
Wilderness skill will save you time on the mini-map by letting you skip random encounters. You will also find some cool Easter eggs and stat shrines. Consider it more convenience than essential.
Toaster repair gives you some alternate solutions to quests but is a lot of points for something only marginally useful.
Weapon Modding – Essential but a lot of NPCs have this.
Medical skills – Essential but a lot of NPCs have them. At least take field medic though.

Good breakdown. I disagree with your points on pistols, though, because late game pistols usually take 5 AP to fire, which means that you usually get two shots with crap damage and low armor penetration. The chart doesn't lie (and I also have plenty of experience with pistol users). The ammo may be cheap, but you're not going to be killing too many people with those things.

Computer science skill is solid not just because of the ability to open doors/locks but because you can hack robots in combat to turn them to your side. Very useful as you get further into the game.
Mechanical repair can help you finish up some quests and also lets you get a second crack at a lock or whatever when your lock picker guy crit fails.

Also keep in mind for "door opening" purposes that most doors/safes/boxes can be cracked open with explosive weapons. I'm not saying that you should use your 500 damage rocket launchers to open random loot safes, but that shitty 25 point dynamite that you've been hauling around since early Arizona is perfect for that purpose.

Lordnine · Post by **Lordnine** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 3:15 pm

Not going to argue that pistols are brilliant in comparison to other weapons, just that when modded they served me fine. They kind of had to since most of the NPCs I ended up with were either melee or pistol users. It helps that my pistols were all modded to have around 40% crit (just looked it up) chance which I assume accounted for a lot of extra damage that I saw with them.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 3:18 pm

Lordnine wrote:Not going to argue that pistols are brilliant in comparison to other weapons, just that when modded they served me fine. They kind of had to since most of the NPCs I ended up with were either melee or pistol users. It helps that my pistols were all modded to have around 40% crit (just looked it up) chance which I assume accounted for a lot of extra damage that I saw with them.

And if they are highly skilled enough, you can use the 'head shot' option to bump that crit % chance up higher.

I just used pistols on my guys as a close shot weapon when the primary was no good for the mobs right on top of them. I found I like them having energy weapons as the off hand pistol though because of the robots.

Grifman · Post by **Grifman** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 5:05 pm

Are their any ways to boost charisma? I know that there is some kind of fruit in the Ag Center but I prefer to save High Pool instead. I've read that there are dog collars that give 1 point each but I've never found one - where can I find these. I went with a low charisma group but was hoping to find a few boosts to allow me to pick up an NPC or two. Thanks.

Brian · Post by **Brian** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 5:07 pm

Grifman wrote: I've read that there are dog collars that give 1 point each but I've never found one - where can I find these.

Jeebus. I've got like, eight of them.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Fri Nov 21, 2014 5:24 pm

Brian wrote:
Grifman wrote: I've read that there are dog collars that give 1 point each but I've never found one - where can I find these.
Jeebus. I've got like, eight of them.

Yeah, they're pretty common, I have like 4. I think at least one was loot from an attack dog.