Wasteland Wasteland 2 DC + Weapons and perks rebalance

[Darth Canoli]

Started to (re)play WL2DC with this mod : https://www.nexusmods.com/wasteland2/mods/64?tab=description

It's great because i usually like to use as many builds as possible.
Playing on the third difficulty level (Ranger i believe) maybe i'll raise to the last one, it's itching me already.
Didn't remember the quirks were so fun, out of this list, i picked one for each team member

Spoiler

After finishing the DC here's my take, hope it helps. (Edited after major dumbfuckery, you can take only 1 quirk).

- Animal Husbandry - terrible, Animal Whisperer is an useless skill and a total waste of skill points
- Ascetic - bad, +5 skill points is a pittance, read up on meta and half-way through you'll have more points than you can use, +1 Attribute is nice but not being able to use trinkets is bad
- Asshole - the Ass skills are generally just cosmetic, giving you a handful of XP or loot here and there or saving you a couple of fights (the only exception is the Smart Ass check at the end of the Ag Centre rescue that'll give you a permanent healer which in that stage of the game is very useful) so this Quirk is kindda whatever. I still wouldn't pick it because doing the Ass checks is fun and you'll have more than enough points to max them all out anyway.
- Brittle Bones - excellent, take it for you Assault Weapons users, so they have 12 AP total, and they'll tear shit up. Movement penalty is not very important in their case. Don't take it for your sniper (won't be able to shoot twice per round anyway since a sniper shot is 7 AP per pop) or melees obviously.
- Delayed Gratification - terrible, you'll need all the skill points you can get in the first 1/3 of the game. And half-way through you'll have more points than you'll need.
- Disparnumerophobia - potentially great (haven't tried) if you level up only every second level. Delayed levelling might not even be that much of a problem since you generally level up quite fast.
- Fainting Goat - on Ranger and Supreme Jerk very good, could be an annoyance in AZ since the mobs are not that dangerous but from LA on when most mobs can two-shot you it can be a lifesaver. On lower difficulties bad.
- Manic Depressive - haven't tried but it looks like an excercise in masochism. In the case of Attributes 1 point can make a big difference for all sorts of stats, including AP, initiative or skill points per level.
- Mysophobic - quite good if you develop the Field Medic skill for at least two of your toons, which I strongly recommend anyway.
- Opportunistic - terrible. You're basically throwing away 2/3 of your average damage for no good reason.
- Psychopath - irrelevant, after a couple of levels your melees will have full hit chance AND very high crit chance anyway.
- Raised in the Circus - nice for your melees. They don't need the leadership bonus since they have 100% hit chance from very early on anyway and evasion is extremelly important for them, expecially from mid-game on.
- Repressed Rage - terrible, not being able to crit normally is just an awful malus and from mid-game on, on higher difficutlies, a crit in your face often means speedy death.
- Thick Skinned - excellent for your snipers, assault gunners (if you don't take Brittle Bones for some reason) and even shotgunners (if you take a shotgunner which I recommend against since shotguns in DC are terrible). Being able to constantly keep ahead of enemy penetration capability is extremelly useful.
- Twitchy - quite nice for your melees, hit chance is not a problem for them, but Raised in the Circus is probably better.
- Two-Pump Chump - on higher difficulties you WANT to end most fights within 3 turns anyway so it could be potentially good for your assaulters. But Brittle Bones is probably better.
- Unlucky - can't say, haven't tried.
- Way of the Squeezins - terrible, Squeezins are very rare and expensive. Worth considersing maybe for your energy weapons users but energy weapons are bad in DC, or more precisely Assault Weapons are much better.

So, here's the team :

Sniper / energy weapons + animal husbandry
- was able to get two goats to follow me giving me a +2 awareness bonus but they explode after a while, couldn't do it with more dangerous animals yet, turned a wolf into neutral once and he disappeared (along with my XP )

Sniper + Two-Pump Chump
- very good quirk because usually the first two turns are decisive

Assault rifle / medic + Fainting goat
- probably not the best one to get it as it's my only medic (fired Rose in Ag center after she lost it and run into close combat with 2 pod persons in Ag center ) but it's fun, only happened once for now, though.

Shotgun / brawler + Way of the Squeezins
- didn't lay my hand on any alcohol yet so he's got a permanent debuff
He's the most useless one so far but i think he'll get better eventually when i pick the destroy cover perk, for now, i use him as a meatbag, mostly.

Also using the female ranger, forgot her name, also using Assault rifles but trying to get her to use Heavy weapons at some point, she gets not quirk, unfortunately, i wish i could get her the psychopath one, even if it's probably not that useful.


The game is really good, of course, there is these weird camera angles from time to time but there is some very good encounter design and the combat is amazing.

My advice : Avoid Ag Center and pick Highpool (the exploding pods in Ag center are a real nuisance), also, fighting mankind is way more fun.

 

[Sykar]

- Raised in the Circus - nice for your melees. They don't need the leadership bonus since they have 100% hit chance from very early on anyway and evasion is extremelly important for them, expecially from mid-game on.

It is even better on your character with Leadership since he does not benefit from leadership in the first place.

 

[Gunnar]

It's been a while but I remember it's a good idea to give everybody some medical skills, so if somebody gets knocked out you can use anybody to revive them. If you only have one medic then you're fucked if he gets taken down.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

It's been a while but I remember it's a good idea to give everybody some medical skills, so if somebody gets knocked out you can use anybody to revive them. If you only have one medic then you're fucked if he gets taken down.

Not to mention you'll eventually be drowning in points anyway, no need to specialize down the road.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I remember always sitting on my points in case there was a skill check that needed them

 

[Doktor Best]

It's been a while but I remember it's a good idea to give everybody some medical skills, so if somebody gets knocked out you can use anybody to revive them. If you only have one medic then you're fucked if he gets taken down.

Not to mention you'll eventually be drowning in points anyway, no need to specialize down the road.

Maybe in vanilla, but def. not in DC on higher difficulties atleast.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

It's been a while but I remember it's a good idea to give everybody some medical skills, so if somebody gets knocked out you can use anybody to revive them. If you only have one medic then you're fucked if he gets taken down.

Not to mention you'll eventually be drowning in points anyway, no need to specialize down the road.

Maybe in vanilla, but def. not in DC on higher difficulties atleast.

Ah, was wondering if they fixed that shit.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The shotgunner/brawler was a real piece of shit until he wasn't anymore, cc multiplier are frightening, this + the back attack (perk) and eventually aim the head and he os all the regular henchmen.
I also stockpiled squezzin but it's disappointing, i was hoping for the bonus to last one hour or so, even 10 minutes but instead, i think it's 90 seconds and you have to think about it before the fight as it cost 6 AP to drink it during it ...

Animal husbandry is useless as you can only enroll neutral animals and they explode after a while (it's fun to try animal whisperer but some NPC have it anyway)

Two pump chump is still powerful and fainting goat is quite fun; happened only twice though which makes me think the "retaliation turn crit " is probably not very good either.

As for the combat.
+ Prison area is very well designed (the last fight is extremely easy by the time you come back though)
+ I really like the wrecker fortress map and fight, they should have used it again and again (stronger gangs claiming it over time)

- Random encounters are to avoid, almost no loot and you don't need the xp.
- cultist fights are fun at first because of their specific suicide bomber attacks and the use of explosive but why don't they have more hp ?

+ Robots are quite fun too, specially the giant ones

I'm still in arizona, i know the codex hates level scaling but i wish they used some smart level scaling system, wizardry 8 like because the combat isn't that challenging after the prison, a few encounters excepted.

It's also really nice to have 4 PC + 3 "hirelings" and some non-controllable characters being able to follow and to fight alongside.

Medic / surgery
I didn't need a second medic so far, except in some tough fights but it added to the difficulty (mostly in the prison which i raided before the rail nomads) but a backup surgeon might be useful in case your surgeon is KO, which happened once during the Ag Center Boss fight.
That goatfucker took me by surprise, i really thought the quest was over ...

Wasteland 2 <> Fallout

Wasteland 2 does a lot of things better than Fallout 1 & 2
+ The combat and its smart use of covers, flanking, back attacks, attacks from above
+ Maps are nicer but also far better designed (they used and re-used some maps to the bone in F01/2)
+ Inventory is well design
+ You don't get rich that easily, most of the enemies don't drop their weapon which is a disappointment at first but a smart move because you can't buy everything at first
+ Most skills and perks are not as powerful, which is better as well
+ Quirks are fun, even the useless / bad ones
+ Dialogs don't influence the world (and quests), actions do
+ Modding weapons is also well designed
+ "Full" party creation (at least 4 party members creation), you can even replace the dead ones (i think)
+ pathfinding is really good

On the other hand, some mistakes were made
- Full rotation brings its share of pain, specially in Ag center and the 3 infected locations
- The fallout dialog quests resolutions was quite nice even if they might have push it a bit too far, would have been nice to have it on a lesser scale here.
- Wasteland 2 isn't linear but compared to Fallout 1 & 2, it is, the lack of freedom or the apparent lack of freedom impacts the re-play value.
- The Ranger background is interesting but it also affects the re-play value
- We can't use a car (or any vehicle )
- i was hoping for genetic / cybernetic implants but nothing so far, maybe later if/when aligning with Titan ?

 

[Gunnar]

If you play on highest difficulty there are some really hard fights, but they're mostly in the second part of the game. That boss fight in Ag Center is next to impossible, though. I remember he would move first and kill like 3 of my guys right off the bat. That was the only fight I had to turn the difficulty down to second highest.

 

[Darth Canoli]

If you play on highest difficulty there are some really hard fights, but they're mostly in the second part of the game. That boss fight in Ag Center is next to impossible, though. I remember he would move first and kill like 3 of my guys right off the bat. That was the only fight I had to turn the difficulty down to second highest.

Fainting goat + lucky miss saved my ass but i admit i had to re-launch the fight once or twice before it happened, that guy was a real butcher.
As for the tough fights in the second half, i'm begging for it.

 

[eXalted]

Will be playing Wasteland 2 for the first time. Should I bother installing this mod?

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I don't agree with the energy weapon changes. All he had to do was give Children of the Citadel and Gods Militia conductivity, because those motherfuckers are clearly wearing power armor.
Energy weapons aren't useless, they just have a clearly defined role that's rendered next to useless late game because the devs forgot to balance LA. Again.

Against Dugan's workbots they are still effective.

If you want to fix EW weapons, you just need to do the following -

- Give humanoid enemies that have armor above 7 the conductivity trait, as the only way you can get that high is by wearing heavy armor + hardened (unless you mean to tell me everyone in LA invested in weaponcrafting...which is dumb)

- Give the gamma ray a non-conductivity mod of 0.9, as a rare requisition item should not have a pathetic rating of 0.6. I don't care if it has high base damage; its damage per AP is too low to make it worthwhile.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Will be playing Wasteland 2 for the first time. Should I bother installing this mod?

Nah, play it vanilla first. The only time it becomes bullshit is pretty late in the game, and even then you could just abuse explosives. If you were diligent you should have enough cash to get a stockpile of them.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

- i was hoping for genetic / cybernetic implants but nothing so far, maybe later if/when aligning with Titan ?

Nope, unless that got modded in. In vanilla you get no enhancements of any sort...for good reason. I won't spoil it, but let's just say getting a kick ass cybernetic hand to bitchslap badgers with is not a good idea in this universe.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Will be playing Wasteland 2 for the first time. Should I bother installing this mod?

You should check the mod's description and decide for yourself, if you don't plan on replaying it, it might be worth it.