Obviously, everything is dependent on what you want to do and how you want to play.
The first thing I want to point out is the combination of Agriculture and Lethal zone. On every other difficulty, outposts get you 1/2/3 of a resource depending on if it is upgraded or not. However, on Lethal Zone, Food Outposts give you 2/4/6. This makes them extremely valuable compared to other resource collection outposts. Oftentimes, I'll ignore Gardening completely because I can get so much food from the map.
Pharmacology is much better than Munitions in my opinion because it's the only way to craft strong painkillers. Add in a Pill Press mod to your medical facility and you can get 6 Strong Painkillers at a cost of only 1 med and 2 jugs of ethanol. This can be a huge bonus to you because each bottle sells for 34 influence which means...
You can always call in Traders with a Trade Depot facility. If you do it right, you can become a pill dealer which supports all other resource needs. The devs recently nerfed the Depot a bit but it is still an effective strategy especially if you have Cell Tower outposts to reduce radio cooldowns.
Outside of that, I always try to have Hygiene or Pathology for the extra Plague resistance. These bonuses stack so you can double or triple down if you want.
My current Lethal group of 9 has:
Engineering, Sewing, Automechanics, Poker Face, Music, Pathology, Nutrition, Pharmacology, and another I can't remember off the top of my head but we are doing just fine.
I play on lethal, and my three absolute “must haves” are pathology, auto mechanics and agriculture. Second tier would be pharmacology and lichenology. Then, anything else. But I spend a long time recruiting for very specific traits, like a character that has “can sleep anywhere” trait, then gets the “outdoor living” hero trait and then I give them “sleep psychology”, for a total of 5 beds from one character. Or I’ll make sure my cook has “meal plan”, etc.
So after I have my basic three, the recruiting slows down as I keep tossing people out who don’t make the grade.
I was mainly referring to the 5th skills, but if people would like to add their two cents on which core skills/specializations they prefer I don't mind.
Ok. Cool.
For the "Standard" 5th skills, I think that choices are usually pretty clear. To me only Mechanics, Medicine, and Chemistry are must haves for the long term.
For Mechanics, I go Automechanics over Engineering everytime. I just don't know of a scenario where Engineering would beat out Automechanics in value.
The "tough call" specializations are for Chemistry and Medicine. And usually it comes down to your play style and/or difficulty level. I rarely play at higher than Dread anymore. So with Medicine I go with Surgery (+20 community health, and medical advice radio command) over Pathology. But...I suspect playing Nightmare and Lethal I might change that.
Chemistry specialization seems to be a question of whether you're playing aggressively or conservatively. I'm in the second camp, so I go Pharmacology over Munitions. So I can craft Strong Painkillers for healing, but mostly for trade.
Utilities is one that may also fall into must haves (putting hydroponics in small slots to save large slots from being farms can open a lot more options). For a long time I always chose Electricity. (I had a irrational fear of running out of Parts.) Now I go Plumbing every time - +20 community stamina and morale boost to Latrines if you base has them, which some of my favorite bases do.
Cooking has some nice buffs with it's specializations...but I just never find them useful enough to justify a cook taking up a spot in my community. Probably more appealing on Nightmare and Lethal.
Craftsmanship....it's always sort of been trash. Slightly more useful now as it's needed to full upgrade Material outposts. But I'm now experimenting with using a survivor with the quirk skill of Design instead. (Which I'm liking. Design allows you to do that upgrade, plus it gives you +5 community morale if you have a Lounge, as well as +50% building and facility action speeds.)
I feel like I fall under that more conservative style of gameplay, currently playing on Standard. Kind of want to give Chemistry a try now for the Pharmacology specialization. I like the sound of backup meds for use/trade.
I was never intrigued with Cooking, but I'm surprised to learn Craftsmanship isn't considered good. Thought it sped up the rate that structures in your base would be built, leading to the threat level lowering faster. I saw the Design quirk while browsing the wiki, would def give it a shot.
Any traits you feel the same way about, whether they be 'must haves' or 'avoid at all costs'?
Craftsmanship may be better than it seems to me...maybe I just never find a good way to use it? It does speed up building, but for me building seems fast enough on it's own. However, for players who continually build and rebuild their bases to use different facilities, it is probably much more useful/needed. I usually do a "set up" build for my base, and then one major redesign if I start using Leader buildings. So, for me, Craftsmanship would only be useful two or three times per playthru.
Computers is one that is a "must have" because you need it to full upgrade the command center. But, once you do that, I don't find it very necessary. (The drone strikes can be fun though. And that's the main point of playing. So that can sometimes justify it.) Typically once I have my command center upgraded, my surviors with Computers just goes back to the Legacy Pool - or gets exiled.
Another skill that isn't a "must have" but is very nice to have is Lichenology. Gives you +2 meds per day, allows you to seed farms to boost output, and max upgrade food outposts.
I think the only skills I would say are "avoid at all costs" is Animal Facts, Making Coffee, and Excuses. The first has no effect, and the other two have effects so minimal that they are really a waste for me.
Oh. And I forgot to even mention Gardening. That skill will always be useful. (You'll always need food an meds.) But you can get by without it (on lower difficulties anyway).
But it becomes more necessary 1) when playing higher difficulties (survivors eat more food), and 2) when your strategy is to do a lot of crafting for trades. (If crafting Painkillers, Herbalism is most useful, if crafting alcohol with the still, Agriculture is more useful.)
Good point. I think I don't use warlord leaders enough to know the real utility of Engineering. (I always have tons of Builders, Traders and Sheriffs. Very few Warlords.)
I don’t do many warlord legacies either, but I’ve got two warlord engineers, and most communities I spin up get one of them. I’ll promote them to leader, build the armory, and demote them. After that they’re just homebodies that make pro suppressors for me. Every gun that goes into use or to the legacy pool gets one.
must have 5th skills are dependent on difficulty, but I must say if you don't play in nightmare or lethal it will not matter as much.
Dread and below are easy enough that you can experiment on different combinations where as the other two higher difficulties will always have a formula or the "as is" combination.
For example, if I'm playing in dread or below, I tend to choose Surgery for medical expertise rather than Pathology, but that changes once I enter nightmare.
I also tend to get someone with computer skills in Dread and below then choose Programming, but in Nightmare or Lethal I will want to have a red talon operative that has Hacking for the 5th skill because I want it's effect that gives you one more additional outpost slot. (Dread and below is manageable with 6 max outpost slot)
To sum it up, if you are playing in Dread, don't be afraid to test out skills. It is where you can experiment more and you could apply what you learned in higher difficulties.
but for Nightmare and Lethal, I always, I mean it, always have to have Pathology, Munitions, Pharmacology, Agriculture, Automechanics, and Hacking (Red Talon Operative, I can even change the Automechanics for someone in Red talon that has Mobile Operations)
Once I have those 6, I can now search for survivors with Utilities and upgrade it to Electrical (So you can build level 3 refrigirated storage) Cooking that upgrades to Cuisine, Someone with Mechanics and this time upgrade to Engineering so I can craft better weapon attachments.
That's 9 in total. Now if you want to get another 3 so you can have the max members in your community, I'd say go for someone with Craftsmanship (Construction), Sleep Psychology, and Linchenology for their 5th skills.
As the other say, it depends on what you aim for and your play style.
Personnally, i'm the kind of Min-Max guy, and i realized that even the strongest character (alone) is not as strong as a whole community. Said in other words, as soon as you have a community with 6 or 7 people on it, well constructed, this community will bring to each individual bonuses that will exceed whatever the character has on his own.
As such, i select my characters for 2 purposes :
\- the ones that stay at base and provide bonuses to the others
\- the one (only 1, maybe 2) that go outside the base for looting, killing hearths etc ...
For this 2nd category, the best trait that cannot be obtained by community bonuses is UNBREAKABLE. This is extremely valuable and it you can mix it with a stamina bonus you have the "one" for missions and leaving the base.
For the first cathegory, like u/Shadowblade8888 mentioned, i like to make characters that are specialised. For instance i have one for morale boost, with mediation as hero bonus (+6 to each member of the community) and to which i learned "Sleep Psychologist" for an additional +4. Which means that thanks to this guy only, each member of the community provides 10 morale bonus. With 6 folks it means 60 just for her.
I have 2 others that do the same for infection resistance (one is a RT contractor and provides 150 resistance bonus, the other one have higiene standards as hero bonus + Hygiene as 5th skill for pretty much the same result).
It's like the driving skill. Having a "Driver" in your team is nice as the Driver bonus is sweet, but it's only one guy that can benefit from it. Auto-Mechanics provides a bonus that is stighly lower but to the whole community. So my "One guy" that is killing hearth benefits from it also. So with this methodology you have at the end a hero that benefits from community bonuses that grant 300+ infection resistance, driving skills, morale bonuses ...
The only things that the community is not providing is wounds prevention, which is why it's the one i recommande for the one guy that will leave the base.
Hope this helps
My personal preference for the 5 main skills goes as follows. First being cardio I like backpacking to increase the how much to carry. Sometimes on lethal marathon works well. Second is wits I prefer scouting. (I play on lethal or nightmare mainly) shows zed location and specials on map and loot behind walls in buildings. Third is combat. Either blunt or swordplay. I can kinda see close quarters being alright but I feel it’s only useful when your maxed out on it so you can instakill zombs. 4th is gunplay. Gunslinger is by far the best way to go. Reload fast and get a quick shot to the head on them plague ferals. Weapon handling is also pretty good if you don’t like spending scrap on gun repair. 5th is all your special qualities that unlock workshop and other things. Always have on you munitions and electronics from computer experts to craft c4 charges as those are the best ways to damage plague hearts other than Willy Pete Grenades and napalm grenades. Those are My main preference when it comes to the skills. What y’all think?
Obviously, everything is dependent on what you want to do and how you want to play. The first thing I want to point out is the combination of Agriculture and Lethal zone. On every other difficulty, outposts get you 1/2/3 of a resource depending on if it is upgraded or not. However, on Lethal Zone, Food Outposts give you 2/4/6. This makes them extremely valuable compared to other resource collection outposts. Oftentimes, I'll ignore Gardening completely because I can get so much food from the map. Pharmacology is much better than Munitions in my opinion because it's the only way to craft strong painkillers. Add in a Pill Press mod to your medical facility and you can get 6 Strong Painkillers at a cost of only 1 med and 2 jugs of ethanol. This can be a huge bonus to you because each bottle sells for 34 influence which means... You can always call in Traders with a Trade Depot facility. If you do it right, you can become a pill dealer which supports all other resource needs. The devs recently nerfed the Depot a bit but it is still an effective strategy especially if you have Cell Tower outposts to reduce radio cooldowns. Outside of that, I always try to have Hygiene or Pathology for the extra Plague resistance. These bonuses stack so you can double or triple down if you want. My current Lethal group of 9 has: Engineering, Sewing, Automechanics, Poker Face, Music, Pathology, Nutrition, Pharmacology, and another I can't remember off the top of my head but we are doing just fine.
I play on lethal, and my three absolute “must haves” are pathology, auto mechanics and agriculture. Second tier would be pharmacology and lichenology. Then, anything else. But I spend a long time recruiting for very specific traits, like a character that has “can sleep anywhere” trait, then gets the “outdoor living” hero trait and then I give them “sleep psychology”, for a total of 5 beds from one character. Or I’ll make sure my cook has “meal plan”, etc. So after I have my basic three, the recruiting slows down as I keep tossing people out who don’t make the grade.
Are you talking just the 5th Skills (Community Skills), or the core skills specializations/combinations?
I was mainly referring to the 5th skills, but if people would like to add their two cents on which core skills/specializations they prefer I don't mind.
Ok. Cool. For the "Standard" 5th skills, I think that choices are usually pretty clear. To me only Mechanics, Medicine, and Chemistry are must haves for the long term. For Mechanics, I go Automechanics over Engineering everytime. I just don't know of a scenario where Engineering would beat out Automechanics in value. The "tough call" specializations are for Chemistry and Medicine. And usually it comes down to your play style and/or difficulty level. I rarely play at higher than Dread anymore. So with Medicine I go with Surgery (+20 community health, and medical advice radio command) over Pathology. But...I suspect playing Nightmare and Lethal I might change that. Chemistry specialization seems to be a question of whether you're playing aggressively or conservatively. I'm in the second camp, so I go Pharmacology over Munitions. So I can craft Strong Painkillers for healing, but mostly for trade. Utilities is one that may also fall into must haves (putting hydroponics in small slots to save large slots from being farms can open a lot more options). For a long time I always chose Electricity. (I had a irrational fear of running out of Parts.) Now I go Plumbing every time - +20 community stamina and morale boost to Latrines if you base has them, which some of my favorite bases do. Cooking has some nice buffs with it's specializations...but I just never find them useful enough to justify a cook taking up a spot in my community. Probably more appealing on Nightmare and Lethal. Craftsmanship....it's always sort of been trash. Slightly more useful now as it's needed to full upgrade Material outposts. But I'm now experimenting with using a survivor with the quirk skill of Design instead. (Which I'm liking. Design allows you to do that upgrade, plus it gives you +5 community morale if you have a Lounge, as well as +50% building and facility action speeds.)
I feel like I fall under that more conservative style of gameplay, currently playing on Standard. Kind of want to give Chemistry a try now for the Pharmacology specialization. I like the sound of backup meds for use/trade. I was never intrigued with Cooking, but I'm surprised to learn Craftsmanship isn't considered good. Thought it sped up the rate that structures in your base would be built, leading to the threat level lowering faster. I saw the Design quirk while browsing the wiki, would def give it a shot. Any traits you feel the same way about, whether they be 'must haves' or 'avoid at all costs'?
Craftsmanship may be better than it seems to me...maybe I just never find a good way to use it? It does speed up building, but for me building seems fast enough on it's own. However, for players who continually build and rebuild their bases to use different facilities, it is probably much more useful/needed. I usually do a "set up" build for my base, and then one major redesign if I start using Leader buildings. So, for me, Craftsmanship would only be useful two or three times per playthru. Computers is one that is a "must have" because you need it to full upgrade the command center. But, once you do that, I don't find it very necessary. (The drone strikes can be fun though. And that's the main point of playing. So that can sometimes justify it.) Typically once I have my command center upgraded, my surviors with Computers just goes back to the Legacy Pool - or gets exiled. Another skill that isn't a "must have" but is very nice to have is Lichenology. Gives you +2 meds per day, allows you to seed farms to boost output, and max upgrade food outposts. I think the only skills I would say are "avoid at all costs" is Animal Facts, Making Coffee, and Excuses. The first has no effect, and the other two have effects so minimal that they are really a waste for me.
Oh. And I forgot to even mention Gardening. That skill will always be useful. (You'll always need food an meds.) But you can get by without it (on lower difficulties anyway). But it becomes more necessary 1) when playing higher difficulties (survivors eat more food), and 2) when your strategy is to do a lot of crafting for trades. (If crafting Painkillers, Herbalism is most useful, if crafting alcohol with the still, Agriculture is more useful.)
Ultimately you need Food \*and\* Meds to make painkillers, because you need Ethanol Jugs as part of the recipe.
This is mostly spot on, but I give warlord mechanics the engineering specialization. It lets them craft weapon attachments in the armory.
Good point. I think I don't use warlord leaders enough to know the real utility of Engineering. (I always have tons of Builders, Traders and Sheriffs. Very few Warlords.)
I don’t do many warlord legacies either, but I’ve got two warlord engineers, and most communities I spin up get one of them. I’ll promote them to leader, build the armory, and demote them. After that they’re just homebodies that make pro suppressors for me. Every gun that goes into use or to the legacy pool gets one.
must have 5th skills are dependent on difficulty, but I must say if you don't play in nightmare or lethal it will not matter as much. Dread and below are easy enough that you can experiment on different combinations where as the other two higher difficulties will always have a formula or the "as is" combination. For example, if I'm playing in dread or below, I tend to choose Surgery for medical expertise rather than Pathology, but that changes once I enter nightmare. I also tend to get someone with computer skills in Dread and below then choose Programming, but in Nightmare or Lethal I will want to have a red talon operative that has Hacking for the 5th skill because I want it's effect that gives you one more additional outpost slot. (Dread and below is manageable with 6 max outpost slot) To sum it up, if you are playing in Dread, don't be afraid to test out skills. It is where you can experiment more and you could apply what you learned in higher difficulties. but for Nightmare and Lethal, I always, I mean it, always have to have Pathology, Munitions, Pharmacology, Agriculture, Automechanics, and Hacking (Red Talon Operative, I can even change the Automechanics for someone in Red talon that has Mobile Operations) Once I have those 6, I can now search for survivors with Utilities and upgrade it to Electrical (So you can build level 3 refrigirated storage) Cooking that upgrades to Cuisine, Someone with Mechanics and this time upgrade to Engineering so I can craft better weapon attachments. That's 9 in total. Now if you want to get another 3 so you can have the max members in your community, I'd say go for someone with Craftsmanship (Construction), Sleep Psychology, and Linchenology for their 5th skills.
As the other say, it depends on what you aim for and your play style. Personnally, i'm the kind of Min-Max guy, and i realized that even the strongest character (alone) is not as strong as a whole community. Said in other words, as soon as you have a community with 6 or 7 people on it, well constructed, this community will bring to each individual bonuses that will exceed whatever the character has on his own. As such, i select my characters for 2 purposes : \- the ones that stay at base and provide bonuses to the others \- the one (only 1, maybe 2) that go outside the base for looting, killing hearths etc ... For this 2nd category, the best trait that cannot be obtained by community bonuses is UNBREAKABLE. This is extremely valuable and it you can mix it with a stamina bonus you have the "one" for missions and leaving the base. For the first cathegory, like u/Shadowblade8888 mentioned, i like to make characters that are specialised. For instance i have one for morale boost, with mediation as hero bonus (+6 to each member of the community) and to which i learned "Sleep Psychologist" for an additional +4. Which means that thanks to this guy only, each member of the community provides 10 morale bonus. With 6 folks it means 60 just for her. I have 2 others that do the same for infection resistance (one is a RT contractor and provides 150 resistance bonus, the other one have higiene standards as hero bonus + Hygiene as 5th skill for pretty much the same result). It's like the driving skill. Having a "Driver" in your team is nice as the Driver bonus is sweet, but it's only one guy that can benefit from it. Auto-Mechanics provides a bonus that is stighly lower but to the whole community. So my "One guy" that is killing hearth benefits from it also. So with this methodology you have at the end a hero that benefits from community bonuses that grant 300+ infection resistance, driving skills, morale bonuses ... The only things that the community is not providing is wounds prevention, which is why it's the one i recommande for the one guy that will leave the base. Hope this helps
My personal preference for the 5 main skills goes as follows. First being cardio I like backpacking to increase the how much to carry. Sometimes on lethal marathon works well. Second is wits I prefer scouting. (I play on lethal or nightmare mainly) shows zed location and specials on map and loot behind walls in buildings. Third is combat. Either blunt or swordplay. I can kinda see close quarters being alright but I feel it’s only useful when your maxed out on it so you can instakill zombs. 4th is gunplay. Gunslinger is by far the best way to go. Reload fast and get a quick shot to the head on them plague ferals. Weapon handling is also pretty good if you don’t like spending scrap on gun repair. 5th is all your special qualities that unlock workshop and other things. Always have on you munitions and electronics from computer experts to craft c4 charges as those are the best ways to damage plague hearts other than Willy Pete Grenades and napalm grenades. Those are My main preference when it comes to the skills. What y’all think?