Wasteland 2

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Simply put, Wasteland 2 is an amazing cRPG.

I enjoyed it during the beta, and I'm enjoying it even more in the full release. I created an album that I will probably continue to add to.


Here is an "inspiring' screen to get you all in the mood for some post-apocalyptic joy:

It looks around 10x better in game, in its full, glorious resolution.

 

Hmm... looks like that's something they overlooked. That would be worth reporting on the inXile boards so it can be fixed in an upcoming patch.

I rarely use Animal Whisperer, so that approach never occurred to me before.

 

Almost bought it this weekend but then I read a bunch of reviews warning for bugs and crashes. This made me wait but I think I will just buy it next weekend, Divinity Original Sin didn't disapoint so I think these Kickstarter games are worth our time.

 

For what it's worth, I've got around 200 hours clocked in on WL2, between the beta and final release (about to end a 4 day binge of near non-stop play).

I've had a total of 1 crash, and that was much earlier in the beta. No crashes since final release.

 

A sequel to this classic from my childhood?
http://www.mobygames.com/game/wasteland
ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/rpg/wasteland/

I know what I'm putting on my Christmas list.

 

Yep, some 25 years later the long awaited sequel is actually released.

That said, I will admit that I never played the original Wasteland back in the day. I now have it on Steam, and have played a bit of it just to get a feel for what it was like. Pretty amazing considering what games were like 25 years ago. One day I will have to try to take the time to complete it.

 

Depends on what you mean by "back in the day". I didn't get my hands on it until the mid 1990's, from the Asimov site. By then it was past its heyday, but I used to take several disks to the library and fill them up with all the games I never got to play. Yeah, I knew it was piracy, but I made a point to only download games that were out of print, which was easy by that point as almost nobody sold Apple II software anymore.

Money was tight as my father lost his job the year after my parents got an Apple IIGS, and I would only get new games at Christmas and for my birthday. Not always my choice since it was relatives getting me gifts.

We had some hard times for years after that, and like me he struggled on and off with unemployment until he died.

 

A sad tale. The fact that you look back on the game so favorably seems to indicate just how much you enjoyed it back then, in the midst of what sounds like were some hard times.

Sometimes these games can be a source of sanity in difficult periods, providing a bit of much needed escape. I know that games have helped me get through some difficult times in my life.

 

I am itching to play this game as well. Just need to finish my current play-through of the Witcher series in preparation for the third game first .

 

I played for escapism to help deal with depression during hard times. Often I've had to make do with obsolete hardware. If you look back, I posted a thread asking about old games a few years ago since I hadn't been able to afford new hardware or new games for a few years due to financial trouble.

Yeah, back then, I downloaded quite a few abandonware games to play on my obsolete Apple IIGS that I was stuck with as my only computer through the mid-90's.

I got Dragon Wars the same way, which I liked just as much, if not more. Question wasn't bad either. I also got the Wizardry series from there and the Ultimas I hadn't played. The Wizardry series was mostly before my time (1988 is when I got my first computer, if it wasn't still in stores then, I wouldn't have played it before Asimov. ) but they were great games, and the father of the RPG genre.

However, talking about games I remember fondly that I got via an Abandonware site in the '90s is hijacking this thread.

There are other games I own legitimately to this day that I also remember fondly, like Might and Magic, Magic Candle, Bard's Tale, the Gold Box games, and others.

 

Another weekend of longer than usual playtimes and I'm still not to LA yet. And even though I'm dying to see that part of the game, it's bloody fantastic that a heavy 4 day weekend followed by a 2 1/2 day weekend and a smaller amount of time played each evening during the week, still hasn't gotten me to the halfway point, even though I know the Arizona content very well.

This is a biiiig game. Going the "completionist" route is a big commitment. I'm still digging every moment. It's like this game was made exactly to suit my tastes.

As I'm going up in levels my team is becoming increasingly deadly. Our gear is improving and many of our weapons now have 0% chance to jam. Headshots are a more viable form of attack, and an assault rifle firing a 3 round burst while headshotting is pretty darn deadly. I don't regret including 2 assault rifle users in my team for a second.

I think my team has overall scaled faster than the AI, so while combat still has it's challenges, I'm feeling that I definitely have the upper hand in most battles. I'm hearing that things get a lot more difficult in LA. Can't wait to see what's in store there.

The only problem is I'm going to run out of favors with the wife before I wrap the game up. I haven't binge played like this in a long time, so she's been good with overlooking my recent excesses. But I may start incurring goodwill debt pretty soon here. Will have to come up with a plan to avoid, since I also have PoE on the horizon.

 

Must have. True that.

 

I'm starting my first play-through tomorrow. Any advices on party creation?

 

Here are some things I've posted elsewhere:

Having a highly skilled party is going to eliminate A LOT of headache, and maximizing skills can be accomplished via INT (bump to 4 for 3 survival points per level, 8 for 4 and 10 for 5, below that you get only 2). But you can't just expect to throw all of your points into INT and expect to do well. In combat, what is most important is your character's Combat Initiative (CI) followed by Action Points (AP). A character with high CI might be able to take 3 turns in the time that a character with low CI can. It doesn't matter how skillful your character is if they don't get to fire their weapon.

Non combat skills that you are going to want to have, in a very, very general order:

• Leadership (give to a high CHA character for a large radius of influence, increase hit chance for all party members, and decreases chance of your "hirelings" going rogue. When you hirelings go rogue, they are generally going to F up your tactics, so you don't want that to happen.
• Field medic (XP) - this is your heal ability, give this to at least one of your team members. You can't use this ability to help a dying character (i.e. knocked below 0 CON), so you also need:
• Surgeon (XP) - when a character is "dying", bleeding out, diseased, etc. etc. this is where you need a surgeon.
• Lock Picking (XP) - there are LOTS of locks
• Safe cracking (XP) - there are LOTS of safes with good items, ammo, and other stuff that you're not going to want to have to pass up
• Awareness - Allows you to see traps, find hidden stashes buried in the ground, and increases your sight radius. It also allows you to notice things about people that you otherwise might not. Very important skill
• Demolitions (XP) - basically this is a disable trap/landmine skill, and there are A LOT of traps in the game now.
• Computer science (XP) - This comes in handy a lot. There are plenty of electronic locks (doors/safes), and you are occasionally going to find computers that you can hack into to make your life easier. In some cases this skill is needed to complete a quest with a positive result.
• The Ass Trio - Smart Ass, Kiss Ass, Hard Ass (Group XP) - Opens up options in dialogue that you wouldn't otherwise have. Sometimes this means you can get an item donated to the group, convince a leader to go along with your idea, or just generally get more information out of someone. Useful to have all 3 in your party. The whole group gets XP when used.
• Outdoorsmen (XP) - Allows you to avoid random encounters encounters on the world map, as well as solve certain problems that require outdoorsy knowledge.
• Alarm disarm (XP) - there are a lot more alarms in the game now. Not nearly as many as traps, but you're going to want to have someone who can help you bypass them.
• Weaponsmithing (XP) - trick out your weapons with mods that make them far more effective.
• Mechanical repair (XP) - there aren't a ton of direct uses for this, but it comes in handy several times. I wouldn't prioritize this immediately, but make sure to throw at least a few points into it. Also it was recently "buffed" to allow a chance to repair safes/doors/etc if your "infiltrator" character critically fails in their attempt to get past them. Otherwise, a critical failure means that you've lost your opportunity.
• Toaster repair (XP) - fairly useful. Generally toasters allow you to find a unique item, that if you give it to the right person you will get a reward. Don't sell the items you get from a toaster.
• Animal whisperer (XP) - Not essential, but can provide some decent stat bonuses to a character. A goat, for example, gives "devil eyes", +1 to awareness.
• Barter - not super critical. Maybe give a few points to a hireling to get better buy/sell rates with vendors.

Unless indicated, having a single character assigned to each skill is sufficient. Skills indicated with (XP) give your character XP when used (just the character that used it) I should also point out that my observations are based on playing the Arizona portion of the game. I haven't gotten to CA yet, but I imagine a well built party is going to do well there also.

I generally try to have 2 smarties (10 INT), 1 ranged god, usually a sniper (high coord/agil), and one melee god (high str/agil/speed). Higher strength also means more carrying capacity, which unlike in PoE is a big deal in WL2.

As previously mentioned, spread out your combat skills, so you can spread out who uses what ammo. A few comments here:

• Having a sniper is essential, but their weapons are only effective at long range. They have excellent range, but are slow to fire. Choose either a pistol or a melee weapon as a secondary.
• Assault rifles are the most "general purpose" weapons there are. A couple of guys with this weapon is a good idea. It has great range (not as good a sniper rifle, obviously) and is effective up until point blank range. More advanced assault rifles have different firing modes, making them even more tactically advantageous.
• SMGs - An effective short-ish range weapon. Not essential to have, but I always try to have one person spec'd in this.
• Energy weapons - Effective only against high armored targets, like synths and a few others. I wouldn't start with this skill, but you're going to want one or two of your squad to add it later.
• Handguns - A great short ranged weapon that can fire quickly. Usually not a good choice for a primary weapon, but it's an excellent backup weapon.
• Heavy weapons - Includes machine guns, RPGs, and grenade type weapons. It's a fairly expensive category, so I would only assign as a secondary weapon skill. Best to give to one of your melee characters IMO, since the weapons are very heavy. A high STR character can handle the weight though. Not an essential category, since you can still lob grenades without it. I usually give it to one particular hireling you can meet in the game and add to your squad.
• Shotguns - can be your best or worst friend depending on the situation. They damage an area, so as long as that area doesn't include friendlies, not a bad way to go. Also has low armor penetration.
• Blunt weapons - a great weapon for your main melee tank character, with a devastating critical hit.
• Bladed weapons - less overall damage than blunt weapons, and less critical damage, but higher chance to critically hit.
• Brawling - A very quick way to attack, but with low armor piercing, so best against low armor targets.

Remember, you start with 4 characters that you can pre-generate, but you can add up to 3 more for a total party size of 7. You can use your hirelings to cover some of the skills. Some NPCs wont' join if your party's overall CHA is too low. Also, remember that CHA grants a bonus to non-combat XP, so it's good to have some CHA for your characters who will do a lot of the non-combat skills. For your leader/face character, shoot for 8 - 10 CHA.

That should at least get you started....

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A couple more tidbits:

• Always remember to reload your weapons after combat. Not doing so can be disastrous.
• Make full use of ambushes. If your enemy isn't in range of your weapon yet, don't necessarily be hasty to run to him. Set your weapon to ambush so when he arrives in range you get an immediate attack against him, and your squad's line is in tact.
• Do a bit of quick math. It might make sense to do a burst fire with your assault rifle, and then switch to a handgun for a follow up shot. Or start with a burst fire, and switch to a single shot. Try to get as much lead out per turn as possible. The best defense is a good offence, and all that.
• Pay attention to those action points you store when not all used in a single turn. They can give you additional options during your following turn.
• Always have a backup weapon. If your primary weapon jams in combat, you're going to need this. Hint: melee weapons and energy weapons don't jam.
• Weapon mods are your friends, especially the magazine that lowers jamming by 4%. This is another area where luck helps (i.e. with weapon jamming), even though I don't believe it's documented. Increased range, accuracy, etc from other mods are great as well. You're going to want to have someone skilled with modding weapons.
• On the topic of weapon mods, selling weapon parts after stripping a weapon is a great way to earn cash.

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Don't forget to pick up a shovel!

 

You get an additional attribute point every 10 levels. In the previous beta version you could also get some from shrines, but that has been removed, at least from AZ.

If you're really unhappy, the save files are XML based, and not too hard to edit. I managed to add clothing to 2 of my cNPCs. as I really didn't like seeing Takayuki running around half naked.

EDIT

Here's a discussion on theories about stat distribution from the inXile forums. I haven't really read it very closely, as I'm perfectly happy with the distribution that I came up with on my own.