Wasteland 3 Range-All

Just in case anyone wanted a cheesy way to make money early on, I believe chests (safes, large containers etc) have random loot generation so if you have enough patience you could, for example, quickload your way to more expensive loot then try your luck at random vendors on the world map.

By way of example, at the Bizarre there's a few loot chests and testing them I could get the cyborg implant that goes for $2000; a few of those and you can buy as much consumables as you desire.

Ugh, man as long as this game takes to load, you would need a lot of patience for that strategy.....

I spend a lot of time staring at multiple loading screens when I f*ck up and accidentally shoot one of my rangers and have to reload.

I have to say, not looking stuff up makes this game pretty wild. I'm sweating pretty much every decision, and I've found that more often than not choosing a more morally correct course of action results in less high-end gear. To the point where I sort of feel like my team (upper teens in level, with my leader having just hit 20) feels like some people have older equipment. I kind of like it!

Basic turrets and sawpups don't do much damage, but they tank like crazy. I've also got Major Tom, Billy & Jean, the Provost, and the Party Pal all rolling with me. B&J are the best tank in the game, hands down. There are more than a few fights where that cat and that (those) goat(s) have saved the party.

Major Tom almost burned to death at one point, but I hit him with a snowball. He had literally 1 hp, in the middle of a crazy firefight. My medic BOLTED out of cover to apply healing items on the little guy. She was downed, and had to be revived by my backup medic (the leader) but it was very worth it to save the little guy. He's barely ever gone below half health since.

I'm a terrible person. My response to Major Tom was "you got yourself into that puddle of flaming napalm directly in front of a turret, pal, you get yourself out"

OMG I could not let Major Tom die, that little cat is the backbone of my team! Freaking random Grizzly cub though? No heals for you.

Am I the only one who thinks Party Pal is totally useless? If he didn’t look so cool he’d be out. And God is he good at blocking doors....

Party Pal has saved my ass a few times with timely ranged heals.

Am I misremembering, or is this game waaaay different than Wasteland 2? I remember that being very similar to D:OS and POE, whereas this seems clearly to be XCOM with more RPG elements.

You are misremembering. The biggest differences between Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3 is party size (2 less squad members in W3), UI treatment, and perk & weapon skills.

Aside from the heals - which I find super useful - Party Pal will hit enemies with freeze attacks and debuff them (usually "blind" I think.) I find him pretty darn useful! I'd take him over the Provost but not as high as Billy and Jean or Major Tom (I can't imagine how hard this game would be without those two tanking for me!)

Ok I haven’t had him for long so maybe just need to give him more time. And I don’t know who the Provost or Billy and Jean are but probably haven’t gotten to them yet. Am getting ready to take down Liberty...

Docjoe wrote:

Ok I haven’t had him for long so maybe just need to give him more time. And I don’t know who the Provost or Billy and Jean are but probably haven’t gotten to them yet. Am getting ready to take down Liberty...

Provost you get for clearing the warrens in The Bizarre and opening a locked door. Billy and Jean you can tame if you chose the Hoon Homestead over the Arapaho Convoy when you leave Colorado Springs.

Dammit wrong decision on the Homestead and must have just missed the Provost.

Wait is the Provost that foul tempered parrot?

Docjoe wrote:

Dammit wrong decision on the Homestead and must have just missed the Provost.

Wait is the Provost that foul tempered parrot?

That's Polly. Provost is behind a locked door and will automatically start following you around if you free him. He's a dude in a white suit. If you've cleared out the Warrens, there's the main centre area with all the locked doors mostly accessible through either lockpicking or finding keycards. He's behind one of those doors.

He's from Wasteland 2. He just speaks Latin and inexplicably follows you.

Cool guy!

I lost all my bonus followers except Billie & Jean. Vale, Provost.

I agree about the hard choices though -- Wasteland 3 will not let you sit on the fence between factions and weasel your way to getting the "best" outcome. I learned an early lesson with the Bizarre:

Spoiler:

After getting in, doing the quests to clean out the Warrens etc, I leave the Bizarre on good terms with the Monster Army and then get a call from Charley to attack the Bizarre and take it over. I agreed to do it, because I didn't want to put the Cartel off side, but I didn't want to kill the Monster army either, so I warned the Monsters about it. The next step was to meet somewhere for the showdown. I put that off to do other quests because I wanted to keep my options open.

Some time later, I returned to the Bizarre to sort this out, and everyone is dead. I dilly-dallied and missed the chance to have any say in what went down.

I'm curious to see how many of you chose the code to get into the locked part of your base like I did

BlackSabre wrote:

I'm curious to see how many of you chose the code to get into the locked part of your base like I did :)

I'm ashamed to say I did -- was too curious!! By then I had Ironclad in my team, so figured I was already compromised.

Ironclad’s all right. He’s probably the third evilest companion you get.

I’ve been making a point of not leaving some quests too long. Already been warned about the consequences of procrastination.

I think I've missed a whole boatload of companions. I killed Ironclad and lied to both [Redacted] and the Patriarch about it. LOL, I'm sure that's going to bite me. I haven't picked up anyone other than Bell, Wesson, and Kwon. Oh, and Scotchmo. I had an option to invite Pappas, but I'm not sure if he's a "be at the base" kind of Ranger or potential party member. I went a different route (his role in that mission made me think he has a character that we don't need at Ranger HQ.)

I'm trying to thread the needle in the main mission, and I have a suspicious that might be a disastrous choice. The choice parameters tend to be "compromise your values and get something you want" or "be true to your values but lose opportunities." It makes me... concerned. (in a good way, at least so far.)

Pappas is not a companion. You've definitely made some choices.

Minor unrelated sidequest spoiler:

Spoiler:

I didn't realize how the cloning machine worked. Basically will make a nude unarmed pink copy of a ranger. An actual meat shield. When they die you need to pick up the goo they drop to make another.

Now up to 6 followers: Major Tomcat, Waste Wolf, Party Pal, The Provost, Bill & Jean, and the Clone.

Vector wrote:

Pappas is not a companion. You've definitely made some choices.

Minor unrelated sidequest spoiler:

Spoiler:

I didn't realize how the cloning machine worked. Basically will make a nude unarmed pink copy of a ranger. An actual meat shield. When they die you need to pick up the goo they drop to make another.

Now up to 6 followers: Major Tomcat, Waste Wolf, Party Pal, The Provost, Bill & Jean, and the Clone.

Ok I had no idea that was a thing. Man I’m already planning my next play through and I haven’t even finished!

I have Gamepass until November. Should I make Wastelands 3 a priority to play now? It seems like most people like it quite a bit. I'm just worried about bugs ruining the experience.

I’d wait until a few more patches. I really like it but the bugs (mostly small but annoying) and incredible load times have made it difficult for me to pick up every night.

Do you have it on a SSD?

I do not. Apparently load times are still bad on an SSD but not as bad as I've been getting. The biggest issue is just the bugs. They release 1 or 2 patches every week so there's been good progress made. So far I haven't encountered anything that couldn't be done without taking a viable route but there's just so many little annoying bugs and inconsistencies. Typically I'm very forgiving.

On the other hand it's an excellent game with a fun story, good character customization, and excellent combat.

I played a bit on the Xbox and the load times made me put this down. The story heavy parts in town with crashes in menus it felt like I had as much time loading as playing.

I'm on an SSD and the load times aren't bad. Compared to Wasteland 2 at launch the game is pretty tight in the bug department. The main bugs I've seen have been little things (like the icon for your vehicle being swapped out for a different icon on the world map.)

That said, you have a month and change. I'd estimate the game at 80-100 hours (at least the way I'm playing it.) If you are on an SSD, probably a good idea to wade in now, but I imagine we'll get another patch within a week or so if you want to wait.

What seems to be a good difficulty level for people with experience with this type of game? Is Wastelander too easy or hard enough so the player needs to play intelligently?

I would guess "Ranger" for what you describe.