The GWJ CRPG Club - Game 11: Wasteland 2

deceivious1 wrote:
tboon wrote:

Question: Let's say I found a weapon mod and one of my characters has the requisite weaponsmithing skill, do I have to unequip the weapon, give it and the mod to my weaponsmith and have them do the work, then give the weapon back to the original character? Or is there some shortcut that I am totally not seeing that will let me do this "in place"?

I don't think so. Having the highest skilled party member perform the skill check wasn't in the original (non-Director's Cut) release because "the game would play itself at that point" (citation needed, but I remember that vaguely from an interview), so I would think that's left over from that line of thinking.

It's odd that this is the way it is, because in other places the game points you to the right character for the job.

My crew has cleared out the surrounding areas around the prison, including the farm. I hate the RSM so, so much, and I find it cathartic giving farmer Jim his much-deserved karmic retribution. Since we're not ready to hit the prison itself yet, it's back to Ranger Citadel to check in and take the next steps. The party is closing in on level 10, which I'm excited about so that my doc (who has the Delayed Gratification perk) will start getting his full bonus. At 10 IQ, he's going to start getting six skill points per level.

Nice work! Sounds like I’m just a bit behind you.

I went with Delayed Gratification on 3 characters. Curious to see how it works out, and yeah, looking forward to Level 10.

I finished Ag Center and fixed Sue's mess. Went back to Ranger Citadel and turned in stuff I didn't know were quest items (they weren't marked as Junk so they had some purpose). I spent a lot of money on ammo until clearing out Highpool and the Wrecking Crew Stronghold, where I finally found more bullets than I used. Now back at Ranger Citadel to sell off more stuff. Characters are level 7/8. I think my money problems are now solved since

Spoiler: selling weapons

Guns are worth more deconstructed than whole at Ranger Citadel? Or at least that's what it seems like.

deceivious1 wrote:
tboon wrote:

Question: Let's say I found a weapon mod and one of my characters has the requisite weaponsmithing skill, do I have to unequip the weapon, give it and the mod to my weaponsmith and have them do the work, then give the weapon back to the original character? Or is there some shortcut that I am totally not seeing that will let me do this "in place"?

I don't think so. Having the highest skilled party member perform the skill check wasn't in the original (non-Director's Cut) release because "the game would play itself at that point" (citation needed, but I remember that vaguely from an interview), so I would think that's left over from that line of thinking.

I meant to say thank you for posting this when I read it but got distracted. Anyway, thank you for posting this, I do appreciate the information.

tboon wrote:

I meant to say thank you for posting this when I read it but got distracted. Anyway, thank you for posting this, I do appreciate the information. :drink:

You're welcome! I see I mangled the answer anyway; I answered the second question but not the first, if that's not obvious.

I spent some time tonight in Highpool, clearing out everything up to the Prison entrance, then hoofed it back to get access to the Ranger Citadel.

We seem to be doing pretty well in combat at the moment. That AP Monkey build get 3 shots off most turns, and with Assault Rifle skill picking up, can really deal some damage.

I'm not sure what perks to get, outside of Tinkerer on everyone. For other perks, I've picked up Full Metal Jacket on the AP Monkey, Hardened on two other characters, and Handyman on one more character.

Ammo supply seems to be tilting in our favor quite a bit now.

That's good to know that the Wrecking Crew Stronghold is doable now. It was bright red on my map. I figured that was a clear warning that I was underleveled for it. Also nice to know that breaking down weapons is a profitable action. I've just been selling the ones I don't need whole.

Really enjoying this so far. Fun combat, really enjoyable skill progression and character development. Light on story, but there's enough of a skeleton there to carry the plot.

Completed Highpool and am off to save Agcenter, though from the radio messages I got while in Highpool there may not be anyone left alive...

I'm really enjoying this one. Using skills constantly, and with lots of options for the same outcome, feels very good. Combat feels pretty easy but I expect/hope for it to get harder and more tactical. I really like the setting, especially compared to the comedic idiocy that Bethesda's Fallout has embraced.

Finished Ag Center and off to the remnants of Highpool. Level 5 all around. This game is so much better than I remember it at launch.

This game is definitely a bit rough around the edges, but I'm liking it. I appreciate that the gun combat feels sufficiently deadly/powerful, especially the sniper rifles. That's something that absolutely ruined Fallout 3 for me. I should not have to shoot a raider several times in the head before he dies. Come to think of it, Oblivion had a similar problem. A flaming Daedric claymore should cut a goblin in half in one strike. I don't want to repeatedly whack it a dozen times. Did they fix that for Skyrim? I confess I've never played it. Shocking, I know. But I digress.

So I was cruising through the game with ease. Probably took more damage from stupidly running into minefields repeatedly than from combat. Then, I ran into a group of three slicer-dicers. Oof. Half my party was bleeding out on the ground, but I was able to take down the last one as Doc hurriedly stabilized them before they died. Good times.

Rangers don’t pay silly made up gun taxes, the “negotiations” over this did not end well for the other party.

WizKid wrote:

Rangers don’t pay silly made up gun taxes, the “negotiations” over this did not end well for the other party.

I'm trying to think if I've ever given in to something like that in any RPG. I did the same thing. And made them pay as well.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
WizKid wrote:

Rangers don’t pay silly made up gun taxes, the “negotiations” over this did not end well for the other party.

I'm trying to think if I've ever given in to something like that in any RPG. I did the same thing. And made them pay as well. :)

I'm surprised they didn't want to talk about it more before negotiations with 6 heavily armed rangers started.
IMAGE(https://www.magicalquote.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Im-a-Mandalorian.-Weapons-are-part-of-my-religion.jpg)

I spent some time today getting oriented at the Ranger Citadel and updating quests, etc.

I like a lot of the subtle touches they put in the game. Breaking down/upgrading weapons, finding historic items, etc. Lots of fun little distractions that flesh out the gameplay quite a bit.

Next step, go get some rad suits.

Got a couple of hours to play over the weekend. The group has thoroughly explored Ranger Citadel now, and there is a growing consensus that Snake is an ineffectual stuffed shirt. Fortunately, they were able to make a deal to resulted in netting some rad suits, but they still don't know quite where to look for Demonta. So, they're doing a little wandering in the vicinity of RC, taking care of problems, including an overrun farm and a collapsed mine. Everyone has made level 11 now, which means Neil is getting his six skill points per level, which is going to be niiiice.

About a week ago I started over a second time. I split my weapon skills up a little differently, going with brawling, AR, sniper, energy.

Making more difference I think was going to Highpool first. Human enemies meant more ammo and other drops. By the time I reached a vendor I had lots to sell to buy even more ammo and other stuff I wanted. Finished up Highpool and feel like I’m in a good place.

Highpool / Ag Center:

Spoiler:

I like that you can’t save both. Nice change from most games where you have multiple simultaneous crises and all of them can wait until you show up.

Agree with the spoiler.

One difference between the Director's Cut and the original release is the (spoilered, just in case anyone cares)

Spoiler:

timer on being infected. IIRC it was a lot more punishing in the original release such that you did not want to get infected and so had to spend (waste) a lot of precious ammo shooting the pods. Or waste a lot of time reloading when you accidentally got infected. In the DC the time lasts so long that getting infected is not really that big of a deal - I just went ahead and let my guys get infected, there was plenty of time left when the cure became available. You still have to waste some ammo, as far as I can tell, to get the pods for the cure. But the ammo expenditure is a lot less than it would have been, which is really important early on when ammo is scarce and you need pretty much every bullet.

I just finished the Rail Nomads and the outskirts of the prison stuff off this weekend. I need to get the means to get to Damonta next. Everyone is level 11 or 12. The combat is fun, my team is pretty lethal from a distance now and my melee guys are seldom used now, unless there is a surprise encounter rounding a corner and the enemies are super close. I have been mostly focusing combat skills when levelling up. I have started to pay for this a little with locked/alarmed/trapped boxes being a little too hard for my guys to easily open. But I have so much junk/unused ammo/broken weapons parts to sell all the time that I can afford to pass a lot of that stuff by without feeling too much regret.

The non-combat parts of the game are a little tedious (like most examples of this style of game) with a lot of running around on the too-big maps and silly figure out the right things to say to get an outcome. The Rail Nomads was the most egregious one of these so far in that regard. The stories were vaguely interesting but the traversal after the map was cleared of bad guys was really not worth the time and effort to run back and forth. And getting out back to the wastelands after everything I wanted to do was wrapped up was just not great.

Another key, wonderful difference between the director's cut and the original is that the install footprint is larger on the original.

Still working my way through the steam summer sale stuff, but I've made a party. I don't remember enough I to know if I've gimped myself, but here they are.
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/BthZ50f.jpg)

I'm probably set up for disaster here, but I made a custom squad, not really having any clue what I'm doing.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/0tDKm7p.png)

I try to avoid the whole min/maxing thing, but one item to keep in mind with this game specifically is that breakpoints on Intelligence determine how many skillpoints your characters get per level. You're best off setting intelligence to:

1 (2 skill points/level; I'd avoid this)
4 (3 p/lvl)
8 (4 p/lvl) or
10 (5 p/lvl)

You do get a bonus attribute point every tenth level, so you might set Int just a point beneath (3, 7, or 9) and plan to bump it up at level 10. Personally, I prefer to have them on the breaks at the start (leaving that value locked in for the game) and then use the eventual bonus attribute points to boost other attributes.

If you really want to get into the weeds with party builds, consider what weapons each party member will specialize in and try to rig the action points they have to accommodate that type. For example, I think sniper rifles are generally 6/7 APs per shot, so getting your sniper a base of 12 APs per round (with an eye toward boosting that to 14 over time) can be worthwhile. I may have this wrong, but I believe two points of coordination gives an extra AP, as does three (four?) points spent on any combination of Strength, Speed, and Intelligence.

Lastly, having decent combat initiative (I'm never too sure on what the floor/ceiling to hit is) seems a big one because it can give a party member an extra turn during combat (which can be more valuable than having extra action points).

I lied. One more. Most of the guides I've seen indicate you want one party member with relatively high Charisma (like a 6 or 7), but for the rest, treat it as a dump stat (literally a 1). It doesn't affect success for the dialogue skills (Kick *ss, Kiss *ss, Smart *ss), but is useful in one party member for combat purposes. (Luck can also be a dump stat for all party members.)

Scattered thoughts/progress:

  • Cleaned out around the prison, scouted around on the world map a bit, then went to the Rail Nomads camp maps, which feels like they are taking forever to explore/clean out. I preferred the map with submaps approach of the Ag Center vs the large maps of the Rail Nomads and Prison Valley.
  • Had ~$3000 until I ran into a wandering vendor selling weapons a few grades above the ones I had.
  • I like that most human enemies drop the weapons they were using (and that it doesn't break the economy)
  • I was leery of the companion who was good at explosives until I realized I had collected quite a stash from disarming land mines.
  • Replaced Angela with Scotchmo to diversify weapon/ammo types (main party is 2 x assault rifles, 1 x sniper rifles, 1 x energy weapons)
  • I figured out by accident that you can escape random world map encounters if one character can make it to the exit (at least outside of combat). So now I treat those as stealth side missions when possible.

Wrapped up a bunch of random quest to-dos today. Party is level 15-17. My leader character is running away from the rest of the party in terms of levels due to him doing all the demolitions, lockpicking, safecracking, and weaponsmithing. Since my party does a lot of all that, he gets a lot of XP the other don't.

I guess the next session will be getting on with the main quest.

Nice progress, tboon and deceivious1! Sounds like things are going pretty well.

I'm digging back in to playing tonight. I'm hoping to get to a point soon where I can get the party to a full seven members.

I just killed a gila monster that dropped a human foot and other body parts. For a split second, I opened my inventory intending to give them to Sebille to eat them.

My Wasteland 2 adventures began this weekend, with my attempts to start the game. The program clearly runs. I get audio, and an icon displayed on the task bar, but no video. And I can’t Alt+Tab into the game, either. So I’ve now acquired a new main quest: Troubleshoot the Software.

LastSurprise wrote:

My Wasteland 2 adventures began this weekend, with my attempts to start the game. The program clearly runs. I get audio, and an icon displayed on the task bar, but no video. And I can’t Alt+Tab into the game, either. So I’ve now acquired a new main quest: Troubleshoot the Software.

Check the WL2_Data folder inside the Wasteland 2 install directory for a file called output_log.txt; that file might give you a clue. If you find something that sounds error-y there, post it; I can try to help here or in DMs.

LastSurprise wrote:

My Wasteland 2 adventures began this weekend, with my attempts to start the game. The program clearly runs. I get audio, and an icon displayed on the task bar, but no video. And I can’t Alt+Tab into the game, either. So I’ve now acquired a new main quest: Troubleshoot the Software.

I didn't get that one. That must be a pre-tutorial quest for advanced players? I wonder if it might lead to an epic side quest: Build a New PC?

I've spun out a little on this one heading into the Rail Nomads camp. I remember this one as being a bit of a slog (and on my last play I wasted a half-hour following a turtle, which didn't help), so my time has been going into finishing up XCOM: Chimera Squad (it was fine, for the price). Hope to get back in a groove with Wasteland 2 this week!

I got a bit sidetracked with some life stuff and work. I am very much looking forward to getting back into a grove too. I should be good to resume tomorrow.

I am badly stalled on this. Have not played in almost 2 weeks and am having a hard time getting psyched to play. I know what I need to do, just not sure I want to do it.

This is how most games in this club have tended to go for me - start OK, set the game aside for a bit for various reasons, then have a hard time getting back into it. I may over long-form games or at least am in a slump with them.