Messages

871

Builds / Machetes and You!

« on: July 22, 2019, 05:31:03 pm »

So, you want to use a machete, champ?  That's great!  Just like your old pop!
I'm already sick of this shtick, so here's the info.

A few things to know:

-machetes ARE NOT light weapons; they do not get the dex ap reduction
-straight machetes have a tighter damage range (especially a higher low end) and slightly higher crit chance, but lower crit damage (usually by 20%)
-curved machetes have a wider damage range (a slightly higher max, but a much lower low)
-as usual, tichrome machetes have 1 less AP cost (most melee weapons have 1 less AP with tichrome; machetes have 2), tungsten ones do more damage/have higher crit bonus/higher str requirement, etc
-the main strength of machetes comes from your feats (and through them, specializations)

You want Flurry.  You also want onslaught.  Decapitation is nice but not vital.  You also want Ripper; not vital but boy it's nice.  Get expose weakness if you know what is good for you.  I would also get cheap shots, critical power, and any crit-chance boosting feats. 

Flurry is your bread and butter.  It costs 35 ap to use, makes three separate attacks; if any of those attacks miss, the flurry ends immediately and goes on cooldown for a several rounds.  The ap cost is 35 regardless of what kind of machete you're using or what you're wearing; so it's best to use a heavier one (and you dont even need tabis!).  Each hit of a flurry lowers the ap cost of the next flurry by 4 (which stacks up to 5 times for a 20 point reduction).  There is a specialization to lower the AP cost by up to 5 points, and another to reduce the cooldown.  You can get flurries as low as 10 ap if you can keep them up; you always want the highest to-hit percentage you can get. 

Flurry goes very well with onslaught.  Onslaught increases the damage of following attacks every time you land an attack, by 5% and stacks up to TWENTY times (and you can up to double the bonus with specialization points), but like flurry, if you miss even once, you lose all of it (no cooldown though).  Sit and think about the math for a moment; let it sink in.  Now imagine that you had the highest crit chance you can get, as well as ripper, opportunist, cheap shots + critical power....

Yeah.  Have fun, but be careful, if you miss on a flurry in the middle of a dangerous battle, you might be effed.  Have a plan B, and a plan C, and it helps to have a lot of move points, or the stasis ability, or morphine, or a forcefield, or whatever makes the most sense for your build. 

Be careful when making your character; tungsten machetes need 6 strength, decapitation needs 7 strength, dex affects crit chance, you need 5 will for ripper, 5 int for cheap shots/expose weakness, 6 int for weaponsmith, and you'll probably want sprint at least which requires 6 agi.  Good luck; I've had a lot of fun with mine, especially later in the game.

872

Builds / Re: What will be your first build in Expedition and why?

« on: July 20, 2019, 12:39:48 am »

As soon as you get eletrokinetic imprint you can literally just place it in the patrol path of a robot and deal damage without even going into combat.
It's about as foolproof as it gets.

And before you can get eletrokinetic imprint you only have to fight security bots. Which deal whopping 0 damage if you have a half-decent tactical vest.

There's at least three plasma walkers before depot A, and you can run into industrial bots before getting the imprint.

873

Builds / Re: What will be your first build in Expedition and why?

« on: July 19, 2019, 10:12:14 pm »

I played a tranquility psi right before expedition, and while I only got to the mid-game, I did find that robots were one enemy I wasn't equipped to deal with very well.  I mostly did what epeli says; premeditation + doors spam.

874

Builds / Re: What will be your first build in Expedition and why?

« on: July 19, 2019, 08:17:28 pm »

Elecktrokinesis stuns them, sure, but unless you've got some crit stuff going on, it takes a while to kill even sentry bots with it.  I haven't played a psion far enough to comment on the other abilities.

875

Suggestions / Re: Leather Helmets

« on: July 19, 2019, 03:39:42 pm »

This is pretty good. Though not sure how soft padding on your head (which increases stealth for body armor and boots) would work; I can't visualize it unless your character is a bumbling idiot ;p

Soft padding in helmets is basically just a placeholder; it does nothing except it doesn't raise the armor penalty like other paddings do.

876

Builds / Re: What will be your first build in Expedition and why?

« on: July 19, 2019, 03:38:19 pm »

Permastealth-Psi builds probably abusive. The coupling of Thermodynamic Destabilization + doubled TK punch and/or Cryo Orb will massacre 99% of opponent clumps in the game, if you build correctly.

Cryo orb doesn't ruin thermdest?

877

Suggestions / Leather Helmets

« on: July 19, 2019, 03:17:02 pm »

I think there is room in the game for leather helmets.  The first thing I want to say before you read all this is these would be a kind of item you have to make rather than find or buy, like tasers or blast/kevlar balaclavas and tabis.  So keep that in mind while reading. 

If you're not wearing metal helmets, you're wearing balaclavas, psi-headbands, goggles, or some specialty thing like gas masks.  There's no particular item for lighter-armored characters who aren't psi and aren't ranged, except for some specialty resistances from the various balaclavas. 
Edit:  I guess if your armor penalty from armor is low enough, and you have nimble and armor-sloping, you can wear a tichrome or super steel helmet, but that's taking a feat for just a few extra DT/DR, and then there's kevlar balaclavas with their 2 DT (6 vs bullets).

A leather helmet would have two slots; leather and padding.  I see them as not protecting the face/eyes, so no visor (which would infringe on metal helmets too much, I think), so while they give a crit chance reduction, it's not as much as with metal helmets.  I think a detection penalty is okay, but not a perception one.  Uninfused leather wouldn't do much, and they'd give protection no higher than un-reinforced boots, and probably even less. 

>cave hopper:  low mech resist, low penalty
>rathound:  low mech resist, low cold resist, tiny persuasion penalty
>pig:  moderate mech resist, higher penalty
>siphoner:  low mech resist, low acid/heat resist
>mutated dog:  low mech resist, moderate acid resist, moderate persuasion penalty
>ancient ratound:  moderate mech resist, small amount of DT, highest penalty, moderate cold resist, moderate persuasion penalty

>soft padding:  default
>solid padding:  raises mechanical DR and crit chance reduction, higher penalty
>insulated/galvanic:  obvious

But infused leather would give the benefits of regular leather of it's type (in addition to the higher quality):
>cave hopper:  +1 agility
>rathound:  higher mech/cold resist, small mech/cold DT, higher than what it's higher quality would indicate compared to the uninfused version
>pig:  +1 con, small mech DT
>siphoner:  moderate acid/heat resist/small DT, bonus to dodge/evasion like uninfused boots/armor
>mutated dog:  higher acid resist/moderate DT, small mech DT
>ancient ratound:  higher mech/cold resist/DT, higher than what it's higher quality would indicate compared to the uninfused version

And then we have some new leathers to consider.

878

Suggestions / Re: Shopping Rounds Take Too Long

« on: July 19, 2019, 02:15:19 pm »

you're in the wrong thread. We aren't talking about legwork optimization but rather about its elimination.

Thread title is "Shopping Rounds Take Too Long"; they don't. 

879

Builds / Re: Please help with shotgun build

« on: July 19, 2019, 02:24:40 am »

Thanks for advice on SS armor, but it needs 8min STR, should i drop int(gun nut) to hit that req?

You want at least 8, because there are things that can lower your strength and that would cause you to be encumbered and lose action/move points.  However I think you're better off with a light set of armor for speed.

Gun nut is not a very good feat. 

880

Builds / Re: What will be your first build in Expedition and why?

« on: July 19, 2019, 12:05:14 am »

If what I saw in that old old devlog is still correct, swords get a bonus of 7% per point of STR over 6. So, assuming 18 STR, (18 - 6) -> 12 x 7% -> 84% damage bonus. Almost double damage by end game.

Am I misunderstanding something? That's how I thought STR worked when I played a sledgehammer character too (the numbers were different with sledges of course).

Somewhere I heard there was a katana; did you find it? (definitely not asking for spoilers if you did, just if you did or not)

That's what I thought about strength too, which is why I went with it over dex, but I was mistaken.



With end-game drugs, the strength guy could have 20 str and 9 dex, while the dex guy could have 20 dex and 13 str, so the effective top-end difference is even smaller than this.

There is a katana, but I haven't seen it.

Also, "fast attack speed"; machetes are not light weapons if that's what you were thinking.

881

Suggestions / Re: Shopping Rounds Take Too Long

« on: July 18, 2019, 10:05:32 pm »

Drop whatever gear you normally carry that you don't need on the trip (watch out for random encounters), use str-boosting or carry-weight boosting stuff, use the built-in speed-up thing, use the under passages to get around, and select your loot intelligently.  Like, heavy inexpensive items should be recycled, excess scraps should be made into advanced repair kits and sold, make sure to repair expensive items before selling them if the math adds up, only carry what you think you can sell in one or two trips, carry a variety so you can hit all the vendors.  I like to take my jetski into core city docks, sell jetski parts, go to the merchants and on lvl 3, then up to marty, then down to metro and walk the railroad to foundry, then walk back up the railroad and split off to rail crossing, then take the underpassages to free drones base (if you went with them) and then blaine/SGS, then take the ferry to junkyard and back, then take the underpassages back to core city and the docks back to my jetski.  Takes like 10-15 minutes.

882

Builds / Re: What will be your first build in Expedition and why?

« on: July 18, 2019, 04:17:35 am »

Oh man. So many good feats with swords. Which awesome thing do I want soonest?

So your killer build goes high DEX. I was thinking high STR. Obviously there's pluses to both--is there a strong reason you prefer high DEX?

Yeah, swords seem to want high crit. I was thinking to take Recklessness as a starting feat.

Was Riposte lots of fun? It seems kind of cool, but you have to take Parry to get it and it's another feat that only works if you're blocking melee. Still, if it's super fun, that's an argument for it.

Is it easy to get swords going from the beginning of the game? I thought it might take a while before you could get rolling with them. (Another playthrough where I'm hoping for an early TiChrome bar.)

Five. More. Days.

High str only increases your damage by like 1/7th or 1/8th at max level; not worth it.  The only other benefit is carry weight.  High dex gives you crit chance and initiative, as well as bonuses to many skills. 

I don't have riposte yet.

You can persuade lucas to give you one at the start, or you can just buy one from him like I did.  I went to Blaine over a dozen times in the early game and I never saw a single tichrome bar; I had to wait until foundry.  That said, for flurry, you want a curved tungsten machete (assuming your crit chance is good, otherwise a straight tungsten), since it has a set AP cost.

 

883

General / Re: High initiative build (Expedition) feels really broken. Am I missing something?

« on: July 18, 2019, 01:56:21 am »

I've done the math; you can get into the 90's.
The old cap used to be about 50ish.

884

Builds / Re: What will be your first build in Expedition and why?

« on: July 18, 2019, 12:31:01 am »

Well, since the new character builder is up, I can post my full build.

But instead, I'll post the ultimate "kill shit with swords" set-up. 

885

Suggestions / Re: tacvest x3 DT for other projectiles

« on: July 17, 2019, 10:32:40 pm »

Don't they already do this against burrower projectiles? Well, at least I think that's what caused 0 damage from burrower projectiles before, wearing an anti-rifle overcoat.

No, they just do something like 20-25ish damage, and your tacvest probably had 25-30 DT.