The Outer Worlds

[fragger]

There is a lot of really useful info here so far guys, good on you If I wasn't so heavily invested in my current game of FO4, I'd be jumping into this. But I've got a really good game going in FO4 which I don't want to get distracted away from - not after the eight months I've invested in it

But when I do pick up TOW, I'll know where to come for the best lowdowns

[Art Blade]

 

I just realised that I forgot to mention that when I went to that same vendor with other companions, I also only got 40% so only Felix and Parvati combined give me that 50%.

Both Felix and Parvati originate from the Groundbreaker, maybe that plays a role..?

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting about companions adding to or I suppose also, subtracting points as well from your stats. And really you'd not notice it otherwise unless you were watching those numbers closely. I know I'd be unaware of it, that's for sure.

[Art Blade]

yep, they can subtract from your numbers. Like, give two of them heavy armour with, say, +5 heavy weapons and -5 stealth and your stealth goes down and lockpicking with it as it is part of the stealth abilities. But if you give each of them a +5 lockpicking helmet, your stats for lockpicking goes up (better remove that heavy armour first so lockpicking won't get cancelled out, kind of) which means that your companions are actually acting as a proper boost or debuff for you.

Use them wisely

[Art Blade]

it occurred to me that I should visit that same vendor again this time with Ellie on the team because she's from the Groundbreaker, too. And I also wanted to check what would happen if I visited the vendor all by myself. Well, Ellie doesn't add to the % and when I went there with Felix and Parvati just to check whether I'd still get my 50% with those two, it still worked. When I sent them back to the ship one after the other, my discount dropped from 50 to 46 to 42. When I then went back to my ship and back out again to see the vendor, I had 40%.

So for some reason unknown, Parvati and Felix add 4% each and I gain 2% for myself so the three of us rack up 10% on top of those 40% which seems to be the max that I can get all by myself. What I don't get is why, after sending my companions back to the ship I keep my 2% making it 42%. And why apparently no other companion adds anything to it. Strange.

And something else:

I made quite a nice sum selling stuff and turning in missions that I ended up with 16,000+ bits to spend on.. tinkering. I actually managed to tinker weapons and armour of my entire crew including my own stuff worth.. 16k bits. Really. 16,000 odd in a single tinkering session. Just to give you an idea what tinkering actually means to your purse.

While I was at it, I also re-modded the two heavy body armours of my two favourite companions by swapping out something for a stealth mod each. Since both body armours are of the same type and brand, essentially identical armours, both debuff the wearer's stealth by -5 each and by adding a stealth mod with +5 stealth each, I cancelled out the debuff

That leads to better lockpick stats of my own character because now those companions don't debuff me any more. Before I did that I always had to give them different armour without stealth debuff when I wanted a high lockpick skill value. That also meant that I always had to carry two spare body armours with me and worse, when I was close to becoming encumbered, taking their heavy body armour with 5kg each more than once instantly encumbered me. Because of my flaw, fear of encumbering, all affected skill values dropped and that impacted my lockpick value. Really silly situation when that happens. Now I don't have to worry about that any more

All the tinkering and modding for the entire crew was necessary because until now I could never "just" pick a different crew member for my team and that was because none of them, except of course my favourite two, were properly equipped. Poor armour and weapons, essentially I had outfitted the others with random *bleep* I deemed unworthy for my two mates but that *bleep* was still better than the stuff those other guys had arrived with. Whenever I wanted a different crew member on my team I had to shift gear around, taking armour and weapons from my favourite guys and give it to the new guys and later I had to move that stuff around again.

Now I carefully chose ranged and melee weapons for each and every one as well as body and head armour. All properly tinkered up to the point where I'd have to spend more than 1,000 bits for the next level and I never do that. All of them got gear that either matches their special abilities or cranks up other stats, particularly combat-related. And weapons with really impressive damage values.

Which means, I spent quite some time getting my whole crew ready for action and I'll be able to just swap them out and rearrange my team either for fun or for purpose and I know they'll all be able to handle themselves, read: protect me.

My first "test run" with two random crew members on my team went really well. I saw a group of "rapts" (some dinosaur type of monsters) and ordered my team to move in and really, it went all so fast that it was over before I could actually fire a shot myself. And my team mates weren't even injured

[Dweller_Benthos]

Nice info, Art. I'll keep that in mind when getting companions kitted out. I also saw how much tinkering on stuff was costing me and had to stop experimenting with it pretty fast, lol.

[Art Blade]

Cheers

Not to poke fun at you but.. I'm not sure what to make of this:

how much tinkering on stuff was casting me

Was that a typo and you meant "costing?" Otherwise I don't quite get it..

[Art Blade]

guys.. I managed to get 150 lockpick without respec'ing my character and without cheating.


- use Felix and Parvati as companions because of their lockpick skills and don't debuff their stealth skills with "lousy" (heavy) armour unless you can debuff the debuff

- level up your Stealth>Lockpick to 55 (better 60 for a "preview" of the content)

- level up your Leadership>Inspiration to 60 (to get twice the skills from companions)

- get the tier 3 perk called "armor master" (top line 4th from the left) to get twice the skills from armour

- wear body armour that comes with +5 stealth and has been modded with a stealth kit for an additional +5 stealth

- wear head gear with +5 lockpick

All of that will boost you to 150 or 155 (depending on your lockpick being 55 or 60)

companions boost my lockpick to 150+
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Spoiler

Maybe I should mention that your companions' skills are level-dependent and they level up along with you. In the scenario mentioned above they only need to be level 24.......

just a few thoughts on "%" at vendors.. I don't think the numbers are correct. Was like that in FO games, is likely the same here. I don't think I can actually get 50% discount. And selling isn't discount, I only get 20%+ from a perk. But even then, buying and selling isn't exactly exact. Check it out yourself, you see small stuff like a cheap food item for say 3.6 bits but you get charged 4 because of.. there's no floating point in your balance. And so on.

I can't really compare prices because unfortunately the price tags are always taking into account any discounts and stuff so the same item may show a lot of different prices for sell/buy depending on your faction's standings (reputation) and perks.

[Art Blade]

Hmmmmmmm, "%" again, and this time the discount (when I buy stuff) worked while selling.. is still off.

For some reason, I get a whopping 56% (again with Felix and Parvati) discount at a certain other vendor of a different faction (not on the Groundbreaker) and I know I had helped him before when he was in an ugly situation. Maybe that's how it works, doing any vendor a favour increases their personal discount for you, on top of the faction discount. Well, I happen to know that some consumable called "Glacier Water" is normally worth 150 bits at 100% if you want to buy it. He sells it to me for only 66 bits which is indeed a 56% discount.

The only thing that I believe may play a role in getting high discounts when Felix and Parvati are on my team is the fact that all three of us are skilled at persuasion and it is a conversational skill. Just by the way, all three of us are also skilled at lockpicking.

However, I've got a perk that allows me to sell at 120% and an expensive weapon mod shows a 300 bits price tag for selling it to a vendor but I'd get 392 bits from that same vendor for it while it should be just 360 so I actually get to sell it for 130.67%.

I don't understand how it really works.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, Art, that was supposed to be "costing", bit of a typo there. I was all tinkering with stuff until I realized it was draining my money very fast, lol.

Interesting info, good to have, getting the right gear going to have the best bonuses seems like a thing to keep in mind. As for the discount at vendors, it's hard to say, there could be another thing effecting it that's not obvious or even mentioned, or they just did the math wrong in the code. For instance instead of a % discount, you're getting a subtraction or something.

[Art Blade]

there's definitely a bug, most likely only a visual bug, in the player stats. When I look at my abilities (those that you spend your points on when creating your character) with those 3 green arrows for "very high," I get red arrows (below average) in some abilities when my flaws kick in. So far, that's normal. The bug is that sometimes there are red arrows even though I'm not triggering any flaws, the values stay normal, however the red arrows show despite of that. When I click back and forth between other stats, the red arrows disappear.

More annoying is the stats screen with the lockpick skill, I've seen many times that bonuses don't show or show wrong numbers and craziest of all, particularly the lockpicking skill, when I hover over the base (grey) and adjusted (green) values and move my mouse left and right over those values, they keep changing and disappearing with every move of the mouse. Sometimes bonuses from armour don't show at all, stuff like that. It's irritating and confusing especially because I don't know whether those values are actually changing like that when I'm playing. I don't hope so but I can't be sure. Maybe the vendor stats, especially when I kick Felix and Parvati out of my team, are only visually affected, like getting either 40 or 42 percent on my own, and the shown prices on the price tags not making sense. What does w0#k is at a vendor, the expected total costs or earnings to the right where it adds to or subtracts from your balance. That's what you really get or pay for stuff. Only you can't be sure at what % discount or "added value" you do business, only the actual prices. It's impossible to keep track of that because of those many factors mentioned before.

As to gear and bonuses, you may have noticed in my vid (from 60 to 150) that I've got plenty of armour in my inventory. Most of it is there for different purposes, like becoming a tech god or a master thief or a battle monster, stuff like that. I change gear a lot depending on current circumstances just to meet them with best possible armour skill boosts.

Playing together with companions is both fun and useful for me. In all the time (level 24 now) I only had to use that medical inhaler a couple of times, not worth mentioning. I hardly ever take significant damage. It can be pretty hefty but it's almost never bad enough that I actually need to whip out the inhaler and take a deep breath. Most of the damage dealt and taken is linked to my companions, not to me

And here a little trick for battle XP: let your companions soften up opponents and just take the kill shot for maximum (instead of shared) XP.. in multiplayer they'd call that "to steal a kill"

[mandru]

 

I'm anxious to get into the game but the character stat set up has me seriously stymied.

I've mentioned before that I have a serious problem with numbers where there are sliding ratios that shift around as variables are changed and the character build comes across (for me at least) as a bunch of lubricated numbers ready to collapse in a direction that will impair my game experience in an unhappy direction if I make even one miscalculation in stat set up.

I want a build where I can grin in anticipation when confronting a mega mantiqueen, kick open any lock, and hack terminals without a second thought all while experiencing the full dialog and assistance from my companions and the game's varied NPCs I encounter.

I'd prefer to not have to run through the game four times to have the collective experience. 

My conclusions so far:

**The Paladin build is straight out as it uses zero companion cooperation.

**The Captain build is wimpy (the opposite of Paladin) with perfectly balanced core attributes requiring full dependency on companions.

**A maxed over powered Sniper is seriously weak to melee should the need arise.

And even if I find the right build there's constantly calculating re-balancing shared buffs from my companions based on the gear they are equipped with.

Too many choices.  Too many slippery numbers. 

[Art Blade]

Awww, mandru.. I think there's a way for you to get what you want.

First off, please consider that the whole topic so far is based on my choices and preferences. Yours are going to be different.

Second, most of the things I brought up here are really advanced, in detail, and kind of late game stuff. You won't be in those situations any time soon.

Third, don't worry about numbers.. yet. You'll be very busy at the beginning and probably very busy keeping your gear from falling apart and keeping yourself from dying. You won't even have a single companion to worry about and way too little ammo to go on rampage and way too little weapon/armour parts to repair wear and tear. It's just like that. It will change.

And then your game will develop, your character will evolve, you'll make money and gain experience. Both real experience and XP. And you'll have your first and only companion, Parvati, inevitably. She won't affect you negatively.

So by that time, you'll have made decisions as to which skills you want to develop because you'll have been in situations like, just a random example, a conversation with dialogue skills either available or locked. This will be the time to realise that "it's OK" or to specialise in certain dialogue skills.

You can't avoid making choices and there will be consequences so you really can't have the cake and eat it. You won't be able to be a master conversationalist and a combat ace and a brilliant thief.. Which is great for replay value if you want to know what it's like to play with a different build. And combat.. sniper preference? Why not, it's not as if you were unable to hold a stick to knock someone over the head with when you're a sniper build. You just won't be a close quarters combat expert and maybe that's when you should use your companions to do the wetwork for you.

I'm more of a sniper myself and I send my companions in to clobber everything while I keep in the back and take potshots. If something gets a tad too close for comfort, I use a light assault rifle and at close range I can fill anyone up with a ton of led even without special skills. I've never used melee weapons in combat. Only to smite a few random rats

So.. as long as you don't keep changing your gear all the time, your stats will be the same. Gear with bonus skills may increase or add skills but never really much, a +5 of anything isn't the world. Better than nothing, maybe just that tad needed to open a safe or to intimidate someone, but overall your own character build is the base, not the gear that you (or your companions) wear.

The game will always allow you to continue even if you don't have certain high skills. In conversations will be alternatives, it might take longer, but you don't have to have dialogue skills all around. If you can't open a safe or a door, then there will be other ways if it is relevant to the story and if it isn't story-related then you'll get different opportunities where your personal skills will pay off.

Again, it is impossible to get everything at once, you cannot have the cake and eat it but the game will drag you in and keep you busy no matter what your choices are.

So don't worry too much and get started. Don't expect to be an expert on your very first playthrough. I don't expect that from me, either. I'm learning, and I would like to try a different character build based on what I've learned but so far, I'm having a blast.. this game is great.

And by the way, there are THREE quick save files. Also unlimited manual saves and several autosaves. You'll always be able to quickly save at any point and get back to a prior save if you screwed up. In practical terms: You see enemies, quick save. Battle goes wrong? Reload, teleport to a different location (maybe where you stashed away some gear) and change your loadout, make adjustments, and return to the battlefield with new "stats" in order to do it better this time. You see, even IF your "numbers" didn't add up, there's always a savegame to sort out stuff.

[mandru]

Soo many numbers. 

I know that it is possible to set the core stats (that can't be adjusted later) in any the absolute worst possible assemblage and still be able to fight through to the good ending but every step would probably be a trudge and not very enjoyable.

I'm about 30 hours into viewing build combinations.  It looks like I need to put in some more time watching videos to make a choice.

A stealth sniper thief is how I usually played in the FO and FC games.  So unless I spot a better option I'll probably have to settle for that build.

[Art Blade]

I never checked out any vids on this game after a few episodes of that cigar and bowler guy which really annoyed me too much to try again. So I don't even know about "builds." I build my own build so to speak

When I fired up the game I thought I wanted all dialogue options to be open so I hit that with the max points and I thought "non-combatant" like.. a scientist? Saw the related/affected skills and thought, "OK, max that out as well." Now if I had to start over, I'd still leave the conversation maxed out but probably go more towards the tech aspects, not so much the science aspects. What I do want is lockpick and hack because I don't like locked stuff. However, there are special "science" weapons which was also a reason for me to use science but so far, I've come across only a handful of science weapons that were.. silly at best. Except one. And that one I gave Felix who handles it well as a heavy weapon. It makes targets start to float up into the air, even mantisqueens. And I pop them mid-air, like floating balloons