DOMINATING Laser Pistol Critical Build: 7 shots/rd., 5+ dead, not a scientist ;)

[TheAverageGortsby]

I have hard time deciding when to invest in crafting - around what level / progress you generally begin to craft gas granades, incendiary etc? I assume crafting pistol with crit thingy is pure late game correct?

Generally speaking, crafting should come last.  You should usually try to raise crafting only when you need it.  Incendiary and gas grenades have tiny requirements though and can be done fairly early.  Likewise, it can be very helpful to rush 25 or 50 effective skill in Tailoring and Mechanics just to be able to break some things down and make repair kits.  But aside from those early low thresholds, crafting should usually be the thing you invest in only when you have points to spare.

At the very least you should probably wait to craft your own pistol until after you've completed the Depot A quest.  No sense blowing all your money on expensive parts that will only be half or even a third of the quality you can get just a few hours of playtime later. 

[DerivativeZero]

Sorry to hear you have a hard time in Depot A with the build. It's the part that annoyed me the most, too, with this specific char, as I wanted to use Laser as much as possible, but it did hurt a bit here.

In general, as all the experienced posters before mentioned: try to get as much done outside to level up. I usually even try for Abram's Maura quest etc. Playing only on experience, not oddity, so I don't really know how much you could do.

Meta helps as well: for instance, the dog maps usually have good choke points (the one with the turrets has the control room door, lure all dogs there, open, force field, wait, grenade, close, repeat; the old trick really takes the edge off). Many other groups also can be put into choke points with doors, where two or three bear traps help with CC.

As said above, with Critical Power LPs become powerful (Sharpshooter, Blindsiding, Opportunist around that level mitigate the fact that you cannot craft the best Amplifiers yet), before you have to rely on nets, traps, nades, and all and finish the trapped enemies off with a far from powerful laser pistol. Things get much chillier after Depot A, but tbh Depot A is really a bit of a spike.

Crafting on this char is the biggest disappointment for people playing higher INT characters (that and lack of Premeditation). You can really wait a bit. To give you a sense: I did level only Electronics below Lv10 on a regular basis. On Lv10 I had Elec 45, Chem 30 and Mech 25. It's not a crafter. Later on, Bio 20 for Gas Grenades, more Electronics, but INT 3 always means you are late to any crafting party and will want to rush the housing bonus.

Hope this helps a bit. I can post more damage numbers on different levels from my OCD excel sheet if that is of interest

EDIT to add: The one thing I always crafted whenever money and parts allowed was a new laser pistol with the best amplifier I could put into. You cannot find laser pistols with higher crit damage bonus than 100.

[DerivativeZero]

Quick tinkering would be missing for me. It is useful at any level and helps to block enemies on a door.
It is also important to have enough hacking for disrupting plasma turret (55-60 needed?).

IIRC correctly all turrets can be attacked with laser pistol and then moved out of their range. Might be a bit grindy if you have to use Electrokinesis to get some more time for that, but hacking would not be strictly necessary. But I think it is hacking 60 that is needed for the console.

I get the point on Quick Tinkering, but this seems QoL, especially now that it costs AP. Conveniently placed bear traps beforehand go a long way.

[Phyriel]

Thanks for replies guys.

I left depot A for now to grind some more exp (im on classic exp).
I went for Silent Isle quest first but quickly deserted from there too, need some more on demand punch for that place and when I saw Goliath right at the start I was like "yeaa nope". I went exploring around GMS compound and just cleared a big group of Lunatics using about 10 traps and 6 granades, I put some points into traps because there are a lot of traps around these tunnels than can be recovered.
Anyway most of my money goes into restocking on bear traps and nades atm but it pays off as I get investments back killing big packs of psychos who carry meds, nades and more money.

I think I'm back in tracks for now.
Will report back after Depot A.

[Sat]

Quick tinkering would be missing for me. It is useful at any level and helps to block enemies on a door.
It is also important to have enough hacking for disrupting plasma turret (55-60 needed?).

IIRC correctly all turrets can be attacked with laser pistol and then moved out of their range. Might be a bit grindy if you have to use Electrokinesis to get some more time for that, but hacking would not be strictly necessary. But I think it is hacking 60 that is needed for the console.

I get the point on Quick Tinkering, but this seems QoL, especially now that it costs AP. Conveniently placed bear traps beforehand go a long way.

You are right about turrets, you can do without hacking them. Plasma are very very long to get down. It is QOL definitely, it will save a lot of resources.

For quick tinkering, it is more than QOL. It helped me to CC Depot A enemies with guns or crossbow. It is one of many solutions to clear peacefully some maps. It depends on your playstyle, you can finish the game without using it. I found it very convenient for early stages as your damage output per round is low.

[DerivativeZero]

Quick tinkering would be missing for me. It is useful at any level and helps to block enemies on a door.
It is also important to have enough hacking for disrupting plasma turret (55-60 needed?).

IIRC correctly all turrets can be attacked with laser pistol and then moved out of their range. Might be a bit grindy if you have to use Electrokinesis to get some more time for that, but hacking would not be strictly necessary. But I think it is hacking 60 that is needed for the console.

I get the point on Quick Tinkering, but this seems QoL, especially now that it costs AP. Conveniently placed bear traps beforehand go a long way.

You are right about turrets, you can do without hacking them. Plasma are very very long to get down. It is QOL definitely, it will save a lot of resources.

For quick tinkering, it is more than QOL. It helped me to CC Depot A enemies with guns or crossbow. It is one of many solutions to clear peacefully some maps. It depends on your playstyle, you can finish the game without using it. I found it very convenient for early stages as your damage output per round is low.

I don't want to diminish QT at all, but for the build it's not necessary and there's not a lot of room for feats. For Xbox, counterintuitively, QT did not a lot for me, as the Shock Bolts are so great at CC, I stopped using traps altogether on that build

[DerivativeZero]

Thanks for replies guys.

I left depot A for now to grind some more exp (im on classic exp).
I went for Silent Isle quest first but quickly deserted from there too, need some more on demand punch for that place and when I saw Goliath right at the start I was like "yeaa nope". I went exploring around GMS compound and just cleared a big group of Lunatics using about 10 traps and 6 granades, I put some points into traps because there are a lot of traps around these tunnels than can be recovered.
Anyway most of my money goes into restocking on bear traps and nades atm but it pays off as I get investments back killing big packs of psychos who carry meds, nades and more money.

I think I'm back in tracks for now.
Will report back after Depot A.

Phyriel, that's definitely a good idea, I never thought of these Lurkers, but there is a lot to be found on the maps.

Let me add one other thing (I don't think you wrote what difficulty you are on): Even on dominating, many areas can be also stealthed for better gameplay. If you gone for the build I sketched and maxed stealth, and maybe found some stealth gear, here is what you can also do:

Silent Isle can be completed without killing anyone (or only the rats) and you stealth either west or east (depending a bit on luck) to the the west coast oddity and north west coast quest object plus oddity. You can always come back later to kill the bugs. Or not. Just make a named save before entering the Isle as stealthing can be a bit luck dependent. Grenades can also lure the bugs on one end of the isle and you go the other way.

Depot A can also be stealth without killing anyone (!!!). A guy did it in 15 min or so on youtube and I stealthed it in my pacifist walkthrough. If you don't kill everybody, all of the sudden, Depot A gets much much much less daunting. For instance: The acid dogs on the mine field map (not Wyatt's map) can be ignored. You just sneak into the control room, open the two computer operated doors and leave the map. The mutant and dog map that you access from the gangster's hideout (not the one from the wormhole) by going North twice, is completely optional, too. When you enter that map from the fenced off area, acid dogs and mutants team up and completely destroy most builds, so why bother. (Entering it from below ground in the north gives you a better choke point, but it still sucks as hell and half my builds just ignore that map.) You can even sneak past the acid dogs and mutants on Wyatt's map, but it also takes some luck and practice. The dogs and muties below ground are all that remains and they are much less troublesome.

And you can always come back later, but on oddity, why bother killing them at all?
Hope that also helps.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Plasma are very very long to get down. It is QOL definitely, it will save a lot of resources.

OPs build has Temporal Manipulation, so all you really need to do is dance in and out of LOS and lay down 4-stacks (should be 7-stacks but without Tranquility and Premeditation, 4 is the best you can do without buffing AP) of Temporal Distortion.  It takes a while but it's resource-free.  There are no turrets in early-game that can't be easily LOSed.

[Phyriel]

Well I'm playing on Dominating because I wanted to go for hardcore experience having played pure psi build only before up to Core City, and on normal so yeah... on normal I wasn't really forced to utilize many tools nor plan ahead that much.

But I'm here to report I finished depot A and got haste and imprint which are massive boost to my fighting capabilities, also got parts for first crafted pistol - only 169% crit but I bet it will be a huge boost also. I'm probably gonna do harold and big bret quests now before heading to rail station.

[DerivativeZero]

Well I'm playing on Dominating because I wanted to go for hardcore experience having played pure psi build only before up to Core City, and on normal so yeah... on normal I wasn't really forced to utilize many tools nor plan ahead that much.

But I'm here to report I finished depot A and got haste and imprint which are massive boost to my fighting capabilities, also got parts for first crafted pistol - only 169% crit but I bet it will be a huge boost also. I'm probably gonna do harold and big bret quests now before heading to rail station.

Congratz! I think the worst is behind you.

With the open world now there is a lot that can be done. Harold and Hathor are a sane choice. On the more insane level, you could also rush Core City now, the electronics dealer can have stuff for the laser pistol. In Core City, CoreTech faction missions are doable but require cheese and open up the best electronics dealer. For that you need mercantile 90 and having access to gas grenades for the third CoreTech warehouse mission, which is amongst the most difficult missions on low level without directly beartrapping the entrance cheesing the crap out of that one. Core City Gorsky preparation missions should also be doable for a shield emitter and good XP. Marty in upper underrail might also sell good stuff. The world is your oyster from now on

[Phyriel]

Core City it is then Don't have quite enough chemistry to craft gas nades yet but will do in one level, one question regarding gas nades, I found liquid nitrogen at vendor is SGS but where do I get fillers for toxic gas granades? on wiki it says its in toxic barrels but havent found any yet. Can you buy them somewhere?

About cheese, man this game is made to invent new ways to cheese stuff, I hardly even fight anything yet without completely blocking choke points with traps, feels kind of bad sometimes but snipers one shot me and xbow lunatics net -> stun is nasty. Atleast those kind of enemies can be cheesed, however I decided to explore some caves with TNT and got myself into caves filled with death stalkers, well... I reloaded pretty fast to say the least. I don't have good energy shield yet for mechanical/slow stuff, I only found some generic high energy shield so far so I think gorsky mission is my first stop in Core City.

[TheAverageGortsby]

where do I get fillers for toxic gas granades?

Sometimes general goods vendors like Harold (I think that's his name) on the Engineering level of SGS will have them.  You can also sometimes loot them from toxic barrels in the world.  For example, if you go into the Underpassages near SGS, there's an area with some toxic gas spewing out of some barrels. One (or maybe more?) of those barrels has what you need.

[Phyriel]

Went for Gorsky mission but I need to pass it... I have to go through vent system and get past guess what... death stalkers. I can't deal with them at my level, they just molest me in 1 turn.

Edit: not when I pass stealth check and drop few traps for them to walk in and then pour some gasoline over their heads. Nasty fuckers.

[DerivativeZero]

Yeah, DOMINATING is about cheesing and meta. Think about Newton directly at the beginning, how can you kill all the bugs in a "normal" fight?!

Different builds do different things, so tin cans might not get one-shotted or stunned, but a glass cannon like this build will never deal well with getting hit at all. Shields may later mitigate some damage, a good tac vest, too, but the better strategy is not get hurt at all. Know where the mines are etc.

Same for Crawlers. Once you know where they are, you cheese around it. It's fun to think about these strategies though, even if role-playing immersion is gone, but I think most people have played the game a couple times before they go dominating, so the story is known and the tactical aspects become more interesting.

The closest toxic barrel is in the Core City Sewers (entrance at dock map), once in there, go West once and there's a steaming barrel. Gets enough grenades but there's also more barrels down there.

If you have trouble with the CoreTec missions, I can give you some hints, but you seem to have things covered now

[Phyriel]

Yeah thanks for all the tips tho. Now I stockpiled on cryo, toxic nades and magnesium nades so I got tools to push forth. Proly will have to reload here and there but its not as hopeless as depot A felt where I had no damage, no money for more traps, nades and it all felt like end of the line. I have a feeling enemies that have a jump on you will make me reload the most and also scripted fights where you can't setup your fight properly maybe?