Ultimate hammer guide

[Hammer Wizard]

Hello, I have come to share my rather encyclopedic guide I have been cooking for some time, depicting my knowledge and experiencie on my 3 hammer runs I have done recently, targeted to both rookies and veterans.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zQSM74I8lvzYsGQzfn19-UXWsWiMTAYnnewBNuN_K38/edit?usp=sharing

Discussion and opinions are greatly encouraged, any observsation or contribution is highly appreciated.

[harperfan7]

[suspicious]Snort.[/suspicious]

Play a hammer wizard. 

For real, the first build listed is a very solid build with few weaknesses and plenty of options. 

[Bruno]

Really nice guide. Thumps up!

I like the Berserker variant, though all 3 examples are interesting.

I wonder what Oligarch to support with these hammer guys?, Leaning towards JKK for the Berserker, and Praetorians for the other two.

[Sat]

Nice guide and good initiative, I went through it but not deeply. It will be good to see the builds in the character creator or indicate how to build them fully. You are offering a lot of possibilities, it may be good to narrow them to the most efficient ones based on your runs. It will be nice as well to have a short introduction on what hammer are good at and not good at
Few remarks/questions:
versatility does not increase throwing.
you do mention about critical damage on Tungsten build but not how to increase critical hit chances? And if it is or not a relevant way to build your sledgehammer.
for Nimble Leather build, it looks like you are maxing dodge and evasion, why not considering greater siphoner for max evasion and dodge? you could even reduce your con to reach 10 Agi.
with SS metal armor at 40 threshold and a low quality shield emitter, you will resist smgs, pistols, knife, most assault rifles. Most poison will also not reach you.

[Hammer Wizard]

Really nice guide. Thumps up!

I like the Berserker variant, though all 3 examples are interesting.

I wonder what Oligarch to support with these hammer guys?, Leaning towards JKK for the Berserker, and Praetorians for the other two.

Correct, Praetorians is always a choice for metal armor wearers because Lt. Straford also sells carrier vests, besides explosives and other goodies that, despite being a hammerer, you will still find Praetorian gun shop still good
And I was kinda at lost for my Berserker, I went JKK because I assumed it has good stealth stuff, and since JKK are quests mainly revolving Stealth, I went for them

[Hammer Wizard]

Nice guide and good initiative, I went through it but not deeply. It will be good to see the builds in the character creator or indicate how to build them fully. You are offering a lot of possibilities, it may be good to narrow them to the most efficient ones based on your runs. It will be nice as well to have a short introduction on what hammer are good at and not good at
Few remarks/questions:
versatility does not increase throwing.
you do mention about critical damage on Tungsten build but not how to increase critical hit chances? And if it is or not a relevant way to build your sledgehammer.
for Nimble Leather build, it looks like you are maxing dodge and evasion, why not considering greater siphoner for max evasion and dodge? you could even reduce your con to reach 10 Agi.
with SS metal armor at 40 threshold and a low quality shield emitter, you will resist smgs, pistols, knife, most assault rifles. Most poison will also not reach you.

>versatility does not increase throwing.
Noted, will change.
>you do mention about critical damage on Tungsten build but not how to increase critical hit chances? And if it is or not a relevant way to build your sledgehammer.
There's no much you can really do to increase critical hit chance, 3 DEX you can't get Cheap shots, you can Weaponsmith sure, but I'm not sure if it's worth it. This is my opinion tho.
>for Nimble Leather build, it looks like you are maxing dodge and evasion, why not considering greater siphoner for max evasion and dodge? you could even reduce your con to reach 10 Agi.
At first I mainly ignored Dodge and Evasion due how skill point hungry this build was, so it made no much sense to go for Siphoner.
Besides, I don't like to be at RNGesus mercy, you can be the highest Dodge and Evasion, but more often than not enemies will still hit you, it's not reliable; however, being tanky, with a lot of HP, is always reliable.
Besides, while still lightweight, you're still a tank, you still favour endurance over dodge and evasion. Dodge and evasion are just 'side bonuses'. Again, my opinion.
>with SS metal armor at 40 threshold and a low quality shield emitter, you will resist smgs, pistols, knife, most assault rifles. Most poison will also not reach you.
Once again, not always reliably, knife users tend to critical hit a lot with crippling strike I noticed, while I do helps, I'd not bank my survival on it. Still, is always advisable to have a Low Low shield and a High High shield

[destroyor]

Solid guide - maximum effort.

Couple comments:
Disagree with Super Slam being a core feat, especially on Dominating. At Con 10, with psi empathy, Juggernaut, not using sturdy vest you have 550 hp. Super slam will get you 110 extra mechanical damage every three turns (two turns with LTI) which is usually reduce by enemies' mechanical resistance. There are usually better feat choices other than Super Slam.

... Pummel feat, its ability to reduce enemy dodge/evasion to 0 is already useful, despite its half damage penalty, it has a very low Action Point penalty

I think you meant "Action Point cost"

[Bruno]

Really nice guide. Thumps up!

I like the Berserker variant, though all 3 examples are interesting.

I wonder what Oligarch to support with these hammer guys?, Leaning towards JKK for the Berserker, and Praetorians for the other two.

Correct, Praetorians is always a choice for metal armor wearers because Lt. Straford also sells carrier vests, besides explosives and other goodies that, despite being a hammerer, you will still find Praetorian gun shop still good
And I was kinda at lost for my Berserker, I went JKK because I assumed it has good stealth stuff, and since JKK are quests mainly revolving Stealth, I went for them

Inspired by your guide, I have started the "Berserker" hammer variant, now lvl 11 having returned the drill parts. (Hard difficulty, Oddity mode)

So far, I love the combination of being a nimble, agile, dodgy character who rely on stealth and traps, and the ability to full berserk in hand-to-hand, drugged up and quite tanky.

I consider a decent traps skill important, in order to detect and not step on all the mines.
It is not that it hurts that much with 10+ CON, good evasion for the level and damage resistance, but the noise alert all the enemies on the map, wich is not cool. (Also you can recover a bunch of useful traps to set yourself, wich is very cool.)

Skill distribution is indeed very tough, I have so far sacrified all social skills, tailoring, throwing and electronics in order to have decent dodge, evasion, traps, stealth, biology and mechanics. Working on improving tailoring first.

Feat distribution/lvl:

1 - Sprint
1 - Nimble
2 - Doctor
4 - Interloper (+1 AGI)
6 - Conditioning
8 - Fast Metabolism (+1 STR)
10 - Thick Skull

[Hammer Wizard]

Really nice guide. Thumps up!

I like the Berserker variant, though all 3 examples are interesting.

I wonder what Oligarch to support with these hammer guys?, Leaning towards JKK for the Berserker, and Praetorians for the other two.

Correct, Praetorians is always a choice for metal armor wearers because Lt. Straford also sells carrier vests, besides explosives and other goodies that, despite being a hammerer, you will still find Praetorian gun shop still good
And I was kinda at lost for my Berserker, I went JKK because I assumed it has good stealth stuff, and since JKK are quests mainly revolving Stealth, I went for them

Inspired by your guide, I have started the "Berserker" hammer variant, now lvl 11 having returned the drill parts. (Hard difficulty, Oddity mode)

So far, I love the combination of being a nimble, agile, dodgy character who rely on stealth and traps, and the ability to full berserk in hand-to-hand, drugged up and quite tanky.

I consider a decent traps skill important, in order to detect and not step on all the mines.
It is not that it hurts that much with 10+ CON, good evasion for the level and damage resistance, but the noise alert all the enemies on the map, wich is not cool. (Also you can recover a bunch of useful traps to set yourself, wich is very cool.)

Skill distribution is indeed very tough, I have so far sacrified all social skills, tailoring, throwing and electronics in order to have decent dodge, evasion, traps, stealth, biology and mechanics. Working on improving tailoring first.

Feat distribution/lvl:

1 - Sprint
1 - Nimble
2 - Doctor
4 - Interloper (+1 AGI)
6 - Conditioning
8 - Fast Metabolism (+1 STR)
10 - Thick Skull

Yes, that's the long hardship of a Berserker, you will be always be starved on skill points, myself I get 50 Stealth and then I'd try to get 50 more stealth by gear bonuses, such as Soft Padded/Black Cloth leather armor and Black Balaclava, and I left Evasion mostly unattended, and from time to time raise dodge
In my opinion, what urges more is getting a good TiChrome hammer and a good L L shield and a H H shield, which will help you survive.
I dont think investing in traps is a good idea, you can just memorize where they are and just avoid them, and in reality you just regular bear traps, they will do the job just fine. In any case, caltrops are the ones that do most of the heavy lifting, specially crawler caltrops. Sure Step is highly suggested, makes life much easier.

[munchkinomatic]

Hey, I just want to say that, as a complete noob to this game and having restarted multiple times because of build, I must say your tungsten can hammer wizard is the most beginner-friendly build I've tried. Unlike the Psion build which requires you to properly juggle all the tools at hand to achieve best result or the tin can AR build which kinda suck until you get a real AR and solve the early game ammo shortage, your build get online the moment I got a hand on a sledgehammer and only get better from there.

What do you think about adding temporal manipulation to the hammer wizard build? Currently it is working out fantastically for me due to a combination of Sprint + Temporal Contraction eliminating almost all mobility issue for a few rounds. There is also Entropic Recurrence which I theorize will work great for echoing and amplifying the big boy crits, but I haven't been able to get much use out of it because I've been using a shockhammer. I plan to ditch the shock component eventually, but right now I'm not critting very often so they make up a pretty big part of my DPS.
 

[Hammer Wizard]

Hey, I just want to say that, as a complete noob to this game and having restarted multiple times because of build, I must say your tungsten can hammer wizard is the most beginner-friendly build I've tried. Unlike the Psion build which requires you to properly juggle all the tools at hand to achieve best result or the tin can AR build which kinda suck until you get a real AR and solve the early game ammo shortage, your build get online the moment I got a hand on a sledgehammer and only get better from there.

What do you think about adding temporal manipulation to the hammer wizard build? Currently it is working out fantastically for me due to a combination of Sprint + Temporal Contraction eliminating almost all mobility issue for a few rounds. There is also Entropic Recurrence which I theorize will work great for echoing and amplifying the big boy crits, but I haven't been able to get much use out of it because I've been using a shockhammer. I plan to ditch the shock component eventually, but right now I'm not critting very often so they make up a pretty big part of my DPS.
 

>What do you think about adding temporal manipulation to the hammer wizard build?
Time Magic makes everything a little more viable, regardless of build, so yes, you can in theory slap TM on a hammer wizard to get even a little more of it. I personally not use TM so I can't say much.
>but I haven't been able to get much use out of it because I've been using a shockhammer.
>I plan to ditch the shock component eventually, but right now I'm not critting very often so they make up a pretty big part of my DPS.
Why would you ditch an electroshock hammer? If you think it works like Energy Edge weaponry, you must know that electroshock generator does not reduce mechanic damage from your melee weapon, like Plasma Spears, Swords or Knifes for example, thus it doesn't reduce your damage output, even less critical damage, so there's quite literally no reason, whatsoever, to ditch a good lighting hammah.
The purpouse of a electroshock hammer is to cause splash damage, and not really add direct hit damage, that'd be plasma melee weapons, but sadly hammers dont get such thing.

[harperfan7]

Don't ditch electroshock just for entropic recurrance; chances are if you crit with an electroshock sledgehammer, they're likely dead anyway.  If you used Balor's hammer, you wouldnt have to worry about it ruining the spell, but again, they're not going to survive the crit. 

[Threeeightnine]

So I decided to try the heavy armor build but I went with grenades instead of psi since I've never done much with them before. I went with
9 str
9 cons
7 dex
6 agi
And 3 for everything else.

I made it to level 8 and spent my first 2 bonus attribute points on bringing both con and str to 10. Should I spend my next 2 building up int for expose weakness or focus on getting str as high as possible?

Also, I'd love it if you'd mention what the core skills we should be leveling are.

[harperfan7]

A sledge doesnt *need* expose weakness, but it sure helps.  Since you won't have high enough str to reliably use balors hammer, I suggest getting it.  If you take improved strength you'll still have 14 at the end, before food and drugs.  That's enough. 

Core skills are melee, throwing, all crafts (but not maxed), and then whatever you like.  Hammer Wizard likes to have Persuasion and Lockpicking, whereas I prefer Lockpicking and Hacking. 

[Hammer Wizard]

So I decided to try the heavy armor build but I went with grenades instead of psi since I've never done much with them before. I went with
9 str
9 cons
7 dex
6 agi
And 3 for everything else.

I made it to level 8 and spent my first 2 bonus attribute points on bringing both con and str to 10. Should I spend my next 2 building up int for expose weakness or focus on getting str as high as possible?

Also, I'd love it if you'd mention what the core skills we should be leveling are.

I always suggest to take Expose Weakness, the reason why being enemies with very high mechanical DR will be hard to take down without EW, such as Bladelings, Industrial Bots, Naga Protectors, etc; some hammer builds can get away without Expose Weakness but these are the kind of builds that dump all stat points into STR, betting on raw brute force, in this case, you dont have enough STR to brute force your way out (15 STR and above), thus highly recommending to pump int to 5 to get EW.
If you're going as a tin can, you always boost mechanics along melee, and in your case, throwing; also electronics is a good candidate to boost, as well mercantile and/or persuasion, in reality you just need Melee/Mechanics/Throwing maxed every level , the rest you figure out and adapt as you progress the game.
Like Harper said, I personally like Persuasion, Lockpicking, and obviously Mercantile, also hacking helps too, but the more important thing is finding a playstyle that personally suits you the most.