Tips for playing oddity

[BiocorpShill]

I recently stared a stealth sniper/smg build on hard with oddity exp. However It's been much more frustrating compared to previous runs as leveling seems to be less frequent. Are there any tips that veteran players can share about how stealth focused characters can get by? maybe where to go to find certain oddities as they are getting difficult to find.

[Tamior]

Assuming you can get to depot A quest (find drill parts) without any major issues, there is a HUGE shortcut you can take as a stealth build by just skipping pretty much all of depot A:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/398609044

And then you just open up the rest of the map and go collect oddities from trash  bins (lockers, boxes, under rocks, etc, etc) in and around every major hub (Core City, Foundry, etc). That will get you 2-3 levels right away practically for free. As you go collecting oddities, you also shop for new equipment.
At that point you are 3+ levels higher and with much better equipment and can go back to depot A and breeze through it getting all the oddities you missed initially.

[TheAverageGortsby]

What Tamior said is right, but I'd like to generalize it one step further: on Oddity XP mode, you should be ready to walk away from the hardest content in most areas and circle back later to grab what you missed.  There's more backtracking and careful dancing around problems until you get your build really going with some choice feats and equipment, usually somewhere around level 14-16.  After that typically your character has come together well enough that clever play is more significant than character power.

[BiocorpShill]

Assuming you can get to depot A quest (find drill parts) without any major issues, there is a HUGE shortcut you can take as a stealth build by just skipping pretty much all of depot A:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/398609044

And then you just open up the rest of the map and go collect oddities from trash  bins (lockers, boxes, under rocks, etc, etc) in and around every major hub (Core City, Foundry, etc). That will get you 2-3 levels right away practically for free. As you go collecting oddities, you also shop for new equipment.
At that point you are 3+ levels higher and with much better equipment and can go back to depot A and breeze through it getting all the oddities you missed initially.

Thanks for the advice. I'm currently at lvl 11 and just did the missing train quest. Didn't think to take a shortcut like that because I didn't want to miss any oddities and ended up wasting several hours going the normal way.

What Tamior said is right, but I'd like to generalize it one step further: on Oddity XP mode, you should be ready to walk away from the hardest content in most areas and circle back later to grab what you missed.  There's more backtracking and careful dancing around problems until you get your build really going with some choice feats and equipment, usually somewhere around level 14-16.  After that typically your character has come together well enough that clever play is more significant than character power.

How necessary is pickpocketing in oddity? I thought about investing some points in it to steal oddities from NPC's but decided to invest more in crafting as making better equipment seemed more useful.

[TheAverageGortsby]

How necessary is pickpocketing in oddity?

It's never necessary.  There's enough Oddity XP to get you to 30 without ever pickpocketing anybody.  That said, if you're playing sniper/SMG then you're going to have rather high ammo costs throughout the game, and pickpocketing can really help in the earlier stages when you're mostly just broke.  Plus, it'll get you up to those mid-levels just a little faster.  General consensus is that 50 or so is enough pickpocketing to get ammo and most of the pickpocketable oddities; when I've played builds with pickpocket skill, that's as far as it goes and it pays off nicely.

[harperfan7]

You need around 100 pickpocket minimum to pickpocket all the pickpocketable oddities.

[harperfan7]

Anyway, the main trick to oddity is just doing everything and going everywhere.  You're an intrepid explorer, both physically and socially.