How do you make agi viable? or is it just a late bloomer?

[Scyris]

I don't know if I did something wrong here or what, but I am trying an agi build, so far I have 3 in str, 3 in miner 69'er 2 in sex t-rex, and 1 or 2 in sledge as its my prefered melee weapon. I worry more about block damage early game as it makes looting go MUCH faster when you can bust into things in a few swings. My agi is at 3, with 2 in the one that makes sneaking better and 2 in pistols. However, I still cannot seem to sneak into melee range even in full padded armor. Should I have gone archery instead of pistols this early is that where my mistake was? Because so far i'm finding the points I have spent in agi completly worthless. The weapon issue is another reason I wish weapons were not tied to stats, I loved archery in a16, but in a17/18 I never use it, as agility doesn't seem really worth it in the long run. Then again I feel a16's skill system was the best it just needed tweaks.

 

So is it a very late bloomer?

[ktr]

Depends on your standard here, I'd say. I play primarily AGI and PERC - Bow is my main range, spear for melee. The primitive bow can be painful to use, making that first wooden bow a true glory find. In my MP game, I'm still using iron arrows (our crafter made a few too many) and I'm one shotting most zombies. Lucky Looter + Salvage operations provides a ton of resources to use or sell. The biggest drawbacks IMO are the little to no sneak damage on hoard night (I can get it here and there, but not reliably) and building materials. If you want to build bases from scratch, it's a harder build to use, but not impossible.

 

Pros:

Minimal ammo usage: Seriously, save ammo for hoard night. Once you're one shotting with arrows, iron arrows will treat you well a steady supply of steel arrows feels godlike.

POIs: You fear nothing as long as you sneak and pay attention. You might wake up the occasional zombie that's tucked hard behind a door but between the bow and the spear, it won't be an issue. Lock picks are plentiful, making safes fairly easy to open. If you're the only AGI person in MP, it's hilarious to watch the zombies wake up, stroll right past you and b line for your friends. Later levels of sneak mean that when zombies *do* wake up, they have a hard time locating you. You're return on investment in POIs tends to be super high with this build between the loot and all the things you can break down to sell.

Trader: A couple of points in SO and LL give you lots of things to sell off to make up for what you're lacking

Books: A lot of the books support sneak/looter builds

Backup weapons: For raiding/looting the pistol is a great back up, better with a silencer. Those roof tops filled with zombies and irradiateds later on? Pish. Drop regulars and ferals with your iron arrows. Drop the glowy ones with the pistol.

 

Cons:

Books: Very reliant on them for crafting

Carry space: The lack of inventory space can be harsh. This is definitely not a build that you want to run around encumbered in. But boxes placed around cities and finding/buying storage mods helps a lot.

Building: You rely a lot on POIs and fortifying them vs building from scratch. Personally, I love fortifying POIs, but that's not everyone's cup a joe.

Damage: Not a lot of huge damage until you get the rifles beefed up, but this is typically a late-mid to late game priority.

Trader: They're your best friend.

 

One thing I've really like about this build in SP is the experience gain. You get maybe 1-2 levels per day early on which paces out your gamestaging pretty nicely. I find the ramp up very satisfying. I do recall some mentions in the Dev thread of possibly tweaking sneak damage so that at higher levels of Hidden Shadows it might be possible to get a second sneak damage shot and that sneak damage might see some love on hoard night. Both of which I think would be great additions, if we get them.

 

All that said, if you want high damage, this isn't the build. Early on, you're pretty squishy and it's more about patience than speed.

[Scyris]

Sounds like I should have went archery instead of pistol at first. I'll try that next game. As for the books, I've never bothered with intel in a18, I rely on books/trader so thats normal for me. My current game I am on day 5 and I already have 2 chem labs due to finding the book, and a few trader quests gave me beakers. Don't got a workbench yet though, but my local trader has one I can use for now. Don't really need it this early anyway. Chem lab thou gotta have that glue. I'll stick with my current str/agi build and leave pistol at 2 for now and spec more into archery, since you'll eventually get both I am assuming.

[ElCabong]

I working on a second agi build now. At level 13 I have one point in strength and it's master chef. Harvesting is a late bloomer, it does take me longer to harvest but not that much longer. I have looted level one iron tools and a steel fire axe. I break into buildings using a stone axe. It doesn't need iron for repairs.

 

Harvesting is a pain until you loot higher level tools that you can mod to get more output. Even I think you would still be disappointed because you would be gathering even faster than you are now. It doesn't bother me to take a few minutes longer to get the iron or lead or whatever it is I need.

 

Agility is a stealth build. My greatest satisfaction is sneaking up on prey and one shotting them.

 

I was the same way you were with intelligence on my last agi build. I was obsessed with getting a motorcycle so I put agility on the back burner until I built my hawg.

 

This time it's the opposite and I'm concentrating on agility and getting by with a bicycle. I have put four in intelligence for advanced engineering and grease monkey. I hate running.

[Scyris]

Yeah I might do the same focus more on agi/archery at first, maybe put 1 or 2 points into miner 69'er just to speed that up a bit.

[meganoth]

The stealth perk doesn't allow you to directly stand in the block beside a zombie unless you have it really at 4 or 5. In the early game you have two options (usually I use them both, as the situation affords:

 

1) Use the bow, hopefully the wooden bow

2) Sneak as near as you can without waking the zombie (after a few tries you know how far that usually is) . Stealth-run or even run to the zombie and hit him in the head while he is waking up. Obviously this isn't that easy and you need a good weapon and any point in the stealth perks is valuable for that. And often the zombie isn't dead with just this one hit, so you have to follow this up with another one or two hits, in or out of stealth depending on the situation

 

Very important: Stuff like paper, garbage piles or broken glass makes a lot of noise if you walk over it (unless you read a specific book). Avoid or remove that stuff.

 

Also important: I often forget to turn off my head lamp in the day and that makes my stealth very unstealthy. If you seem to wake zombies a lot, check your headlamp

 

 

On your skilling: I suspect if you had put the four points you invested in sledge and pistol into knife or bow or stealth damage or stelath move speed instead, agi would feel better as well. Pistol is an excellent weapon, but not stealthy before you find the silencer.

[theFlu]

The early stages for AGI is quite weak, but not much more so than the others.. the hunting knife doesn't really do much, but the machete is usable. Usually I go iron club until I can buy a machete - pretty much the same feel for combat.

 

Part of the issue is, AGI has zero utilities, so if you spend half your points in other trees, your combat will suffer. Focusing on AGI keeps it roughly on par.

 

There's pretty much two separate play styles for AGI: stealth or run&gun.

 

For stealth, it's a bit of a learning curve.. not for getting stealth kills, but getting used to fighting in stealth - you can melee zeds down now without waking any more up, but only as long as you don't stop sneaking. Which of course makes you slow and highly at risk of taking damage. It's more of a slow motion fight in comparison. Trying to stagger zeds without a weapon that actually staggers...

 

For run&gun; well, it's almost your standard issue spray & pray. A little difference is, getting headshots will be critical, whether using a handgun or a bow. Same goes for all combat in 7dtd of course, but AGI seems "just that much weaker" making it a little more critical there.

For r&g, get parkour 3/5 to navigate jumps the zeds can't. There's plenty of places to utilise that for a rest or safe offense, and in a bad spot a simple flagstone block on a wall will do you good. Will take some time to see intuitively what you can do in a space. But it is pretty powerful. You can also utilize it for horde nights.. not exactly unique, as you can easily make the AI derp for all kinds of easily navigable "entrances", but parkour turns every 2-block rise into an AI-disadvantage.

 

Now, of course, you will combine the two, taking stealth shots whenever easy and r&g for getting the f out when something failed... but they are quite distinct.

 

As for weapons.. the bow is self-sustaining for ammo, as long as you pluck some of the birds you kill. Pistol isn't too bad either, usually end up in a surplus unless stubbornly using "only the pistol". Magnum is arguably better than a marksman rifle, just a little rare for ammo. And in my opinion overkill for any normal targets (at difficulties up to default+2 or so). SMG? Seems my info is outdated, removing my mistakes..

Some people like it, it's .. fine. But the pistol gives better damage per round with not that many drawbacks - and at least I personally tend to stop aiming for heads with the SMG, which is just throwing ammo away, but yeah, personal issue..

 

 

Rapid firing bows is .. buggy. All kinds of buggy over A18. Good power for a very cheap tool, but getting the hang of the patch-by-patch-mechanics is annoying, and necessary...

[Scyris]

Smg was actually buffed to match pistol base damage I thought?

[theFlu]

Hmm.. you made me check. And yeah, they seem to be doing pretty similar in 18.4 creative menu. Live and learn, thanks

[meganoth]

Smg was actually buffed to match pistol base damage I thought?

 

Yes, after some protests from players they did correct that, as far as I remember. It was at that point I actually used SMGs again

 

 

[Scyris]

 

Yes, after some protests from players they did correct that, as far as I remember. It was at that point I actually used SMGs again

 

 

I was also one of the ones who complained about that for many alpha's and finally in a18 they buffed it. I felt it silly especially in a18 where smg is a higher tier pistol yet it did less damage per shot than the pistol. I never used them either till a18, as I'm more about a decent clip size and decent damage per shot. Its the main reason I dislike the rifles, clips are too small for the marksman rifle. I mean early game i'll use a hunting rifle if I loot one if I do not have a ak47 already. For the SMG if I can, i'd honestly mod it with the semi-auto mod, and it'd just be a pistol with double the clipsize for me, much slower reload though. I do wish the M60 could take the semi-auto mod but it doesn't, so I generally prefer the ak47 due to that. Body shots can kill but later game? its going to take 3-4 times the ammo to body shot something to death.

 

I'll continue with my current game and put the next 2 skill points into archery and see how it does. As eventually i'd plan to level most guns. Shotguns, the fort ones and agi. Sadly I never really bothered with feathers once I picked a pistol up, so going to have to run around hitting up birds nests for a while.

[Scyris]

Hmm.. you made me check. And yeah, they seem to be doing pretty similar in 18.4 creative menu. Live and learn, thanks

 

Issue is though Smg's are MUCH MUCH more rare, so you'll usually find a pistol with a high roll on damage long before you find a smg with one. Then again with a bandolier mod, pistol reloads damn near instantly. Even more so if you got perks in it.

[theFlu]

Yeh, there'll be other issues between pistol and SMG - I'll have to reserve judgement until I get to test a proper SMG.. haven't played properly in a while though, so might end up being in A19..

 

For the feathers, as you're "swapping" from pistols, and as such not in dire need; don't bother going out of your way for nests. Just harvest the birds you come across naturally, maybe buy about 50 iron arrows from a trader, they'll last for a couple of POIs. They're Not cheap, but for a one-time expense to get a convenient start, it's justifiable.

[Scyris]

Yeh, there'll be other issues between pistol and SMG - I'll have to reserve judgement until I get to test a proper SMG.. haven't played properly in a while though, so might end up being in A19..

 

For the feathers, as you're "swapping" from pistols, and as such not in dire need; don't bother going out of your way for nests. Just harvest the birds you come across naturally, maybe buy about 50 iron arrows from a trader, they'll last for a couple of POIs. They're Not cheap, but for a one-time expense to get a convenient start, it's justifiable.

 

Dukes is something I do have I got over 8000 and thats after i blew 4k on a bike with a discount booze active. I do a ton of trader quests, going to love it in a19 when they are changing it a bit so you can basically have a few from every tier you unlocked so you can pick and choose what you wanna do, I hate Tier 5 quests, I never do them, to much of a time commitment for too little reward, unless its a Fetch one, then its deff worth it. Tier 3's are usually the best duke for time ratio I find.

[Scyris]

So I started a more agi focused build at first, and on day 1 9:30 AM I found a t1 steel pickaxe in a destroyed workbench, oh and a tier 2 wrench out of a toolbox right beside it. This is a good start so far

[AKMrTumnus]

This is interesting. I primarily play Agi builds. They are the strongest, the four skills; Run n Gun, Flurry of Blows (I'm not looking currently could be something else), Light Armor, and Parkour are some of the most overpowered skills in the game, again IMO. As they allow for use of almost any melee weapon better and faster, reloading of any gun faster especially while moving, wear armor that protects you and doesn't limit mobility, and allows you to jump 3-4 blocks high and escape even the most precarious situations!! How does any other skill tree even compare??

[Scyris]

This is interesting. I primarily play Agi builds. They are the strongest, the four skills; Run n Gun, Flurry of Blows (I'm not looking currently could be something else), Light Armor, and Parkour are some of the most overpowered skills in the game, again IMO. As they allow for use of almost any melee weapon better and faster, reloading of any gun faster especially while moving, wear armor that protects you and doesn't limit mobility, and allows you to jump 3-4 blocks high and escape even the most precarious situations!! How does any other skill tree even compare??

 

Last I checked Flurry of blows only worked on 1 handed melee weapons only, no tools, no 2 handed weapons. So Knife and club and stun baton mainly, as I think the rest of the melee's count as a 2 hander, unsure on spear though. I agree on light armor though, I didn't notice it can almost completly negate the move penalty on the armor. I used to play a heavy armor wearing build, and I'd pray to get the urban combat book I think its book 6 maybe? that makes it so if you are in combat (hit something or get hit) it gives a 20s buff that makes it so the movement encumbrance doesn't take effect. So you can move at 100% speed in a fight in heavy armor, its a game changer when you get that if you use heavy armor. Run n Gun, i've never felt a need for it, with a bandolier and perks in the weapon most weapons reload decently fast other than maybe the m60 and the crossbows.

 

Speaking of crossbows I heard they are louder or as loud as a unsilenced pistol shot? They should be pretty much silent like bows. The downside to them is the slow reload I thought?

 

Worse thing I find with bows is its very hard to get mods for them, as they only use a small selection and most of them seem pretty damn hard to find. Crossbows is a bit easier since they can use some of the gun mods like laser sight, scopes, flashlights, stocks etc. Day 8 and only mod i've found that works in my t4 (soon to be 5) Primitive bow is a structural brace. Using a t3 wooden bow currently, but a primitive bow will out damage it once I can make t5's even without mods. Its kinda amusing too, Usually when I play I come across archery stuff like crazy, the one time I spec into agi and archery I ain't finding crap lol.

[Tombuilder]

Agree with Mr Tumnus,

 

Agi is perhaps my favourite build. Great skills, particularly parkour with the extra jump height to get out of trouble. The extra safe fall height also saves time getting out of taller POIs and skyscrapers. Just hop down the sides in absail style sections. The silenced pistol and sneak together makes poi clearing a cynch, and the speed rebuff on light armour applies to military armour which is great.

 

Only downside is it does make you quite reliant in schematics early on so you don't have to waste points diversifying.

[meganoth]

@Sycris: Saw your post in the other thread that you wake up zombies even with stealth4 and not stepping on trash. What does your stealth meter say at such moments? I can't really explain why this is happening for you, my experience is totally different: Zombies generally do not wake up when I step into the room, not with stealth4.

 

Incidentally I play a strength build in my co-op game and even with stealth at 0 or max 1 and heavy armor without noise reduction I can stealth into rooms and only wake up zombies if they are near me, for example directly beside the entrance

 

 

[Scyris]

@Sycris: Saw your post in the other thread that you wake up zombies even with stealth4 and not stepping on trash. What does your stealth meter say at such moments? I can't really explain why this is happening for you, my experience is totally different: Zombies generally do not wake up when I step into the room, not with stealth4.

 

Incidentally I play a strength build in my co-op game and even with stealth at 0 or max 1 and heavy armor without noise reduction I can stealth into rooms and only wake up zombies if they are near me, for example directly beside the entrance

 

 

Yeah I don't know what was going on, I know that last room in military post 7 is rigged for the 3 zombies to bust out the second you cross the door no matter what, but this was a house poi. Gauge was at like 5-15 at most, second I cross the door, the entire room would wake and chase after me somehow. even stuff 20+ blocks away way on the otherside. Also no, I made sure my headlamp was off as thats just a beacon saying HEY I'M HERE!. I kinda dislike agi build thou, you have to give up too much to make it actually viable early game. When you get those instances like me where entire rooms wake up your then in a OH CRAP moment as Agi doesn't really have a great way to deal with mass aggro without making a ton of noise. This was with normal walking zombies, if that was a room full of ferals i'd have been in real trouble with only a bow and a unspeced pistol. Str build though does, sledgehammer aoe knockdown is win lol. There is also the fact I notice even with bows most of my kills in poi's are fairly close range, and would have gone better with a sledgehammer due to its knockdown almost every swing if you can get it hitting hard enough, a T2 steel sledgehammer you can get from quests can have upwards of 57 damage unmodded/perked. Which I may add was more than my t3 wooden bow with mods and perks combined. The sneak attack damage was very nice though I'd always grab level 1 in that perk even if not going agi as its a flat 50% bonus, but thats the problem, thats really all it has going for it. If you can't get a sneak attack off, most of your perks in the stealth/sneak attack perks are a complete waste. Late game it's fine but early game it gimps you horribly to try to be a stealth build. Believe it or not with how wonky stealth was for me, I actually take less damage just running thru and clearing a poi with a sledgehammer. A knocked down zombie doesn't do much and sledgehammer is king at knocking most things down on the first hit, especially if its a headshot. As a bonus a iron/steel sledge does a pretty good chunk of block damage that you can use it to bust doors and open those sealed boxes without needing to switch to tools and such. I do wish perking into sledgehammer upped its block damage though. I loved it in a17 when miner 69'er would effect the block damage on sledgehammers.

 

For all the points I dumped into agi to make it actually viable I could have gotten str and fort to 3 or 5, and gotten sledge hammer, miner 69'er, motherload, healing factor up as well as maybe shotguns or machine guns a perk or 2, its more than enough for early game and single ferals. I usually play on warrior difficulty myself. Has a good balance between zombie kill speed and zombie damage. I think its zombies deal 50% more entity damage, and takes 13-17% less damage from players attacks. For guns I prefer shotgun and the machine guns personally. Though I do use a pistol even unperked as I usually have so much 9mm ammo lying around might as well use it right.

 

Agi would be much better if the stealth perks didn't rely on such high agi and didn't have so many levels, or if they were combined into 1 perk, so it costs 5 points to max both instead of 10.