A21 Character builds?

[Krougal]

So what is the new meta? I am trying to give A21 a chance instead of just writing this game off, but I can't be arsed to try and go through grinding a bunch of character builds. Do the A20 ones still hold up? I started playing and got a few levels but haven't spent any points yet. In A19 I enjoyed my agility build, in A20 stealth was so broken I didn't bother, but I can't even remember what my A20 toon was it's been so long.

[Ramethzer0]

After so many hours of playing this game, even in its current state I can honestly tell you from the bottom of my heart that there is no meta currently, and I like it this way.

 

Each attribute comes with something to the table.  Some perks are rightfully more useful than others, but that does not remove the viability of any one particular perk path.

 

PER is super surgical until its not.  Pick your shots and your battles carefully, and when all else fails, blow stuff up.

STR is tanky and has a lot of utility for early game.  It's the usual go to for a lot of first time and newbie players.  There is nothing bad in this tree.

FORT is also tanky (with medicinal help even moreso), but also versatile enough to engaged in savage mayhem while giving up less in survivability.

AGI is stealthy and surgical, but also affords heavy advantages for mobility.  AGI is also a go to, but stealth cannot be your answer to everything.

INT is about area denial, resourcefulness, and utility.  Masterminding your strategies is key to being great with INT.

 

I'll challenge anyone to say otherwise.  It's an illusion.  Choose what is fun and gets you what you need from the game.  If you're looking for the magic "I win" button, then I strongly suggest you keep on trying things out until you learn that on your own, or move onto a game that will give you that crutch.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Ramethzer0 (see edit history)

[Old Crow]

No meta as far as I'm aware, but I'm really enjoying my stun baton build. ALL GLORY TO THE HOLY STUN BATON!

[RipClaw]

4 hours ago, Krougal said:

So what is the new meta? I am trying to give A21 a chance instead of just writing this game off, but I can't be arsed to try and go through grinding a bunch of character builds.

Depends on your preferences. IzPrebuilt is doing an Intellect build in a series right now and it is absolutely OP. Not only did the Stun Baton get a massive buff in A21, but if you play it right, you'll have endgame stuff in no time. Motorcycle on day 5, Crucible on day 10, Gyrocopter on day 12 and a Q5 Auger on day 15.

 

[YourMirror]

5 hours ago, Krougal said:

So what is the new meta? I am trying to give A21 a chance instead of just writing this game off, but I can't be arsed to try and go through grinding a bunch of character builds. Do the A20 ones still hold up? I started playing and got a few levels but haven't spent any points yet. In A19 I enjoyed my agility build, in A20 stealth was so broken I didn't bother, but I can't even remember what my A20 toon was it's been so long.

We can't be arsed doing your research. So....do your own research. If you persist on being a lazy "hand everything to me", just quit. Better for all.

Edited July 31, 2023 by YourMirror (see edit history)

[theFlu]

7 hours ago, Krougal said:

Do the A20 ones still hold up?

Pretty much yes; the weaker things like spears and stun batons are stronger now, but neither really challenges sledges/clubs for early melee top spot. All the trees are usable, but I don't play insane difficulties; so I won't claim to know for real. Things like shotgun snaring are still in game and just as strong as before - I would assume that nothing really changed for the "absolute best" builds, but the contenders seem less weak.

[Krougal]

5 hours ago, YourMirror said:

We can't be arsed doing your research. So....do your own research. If you persist on being a lazy "hand everything to me", just quit. Better for all.

If you've got nothing useful to say son, then it would be better for all if you STFU

 

Ahem...so I reverted to A20 right quick, and this is what I had in my last game at lvl 59:

5 Str, 3 Boom/Pete/Sexrex, 4 Miner & Mother Lode

5Fort, 3 MGunner/Pain tolerance/Healing Factor

7 Int, 4 Barter/Daring/Engineer

1 Per, 1 Deadeye/Lockpick/Salvage

1 Agi, 1 Archery/Gunslinger/Deep cuts/Flurry/Parkour

So quester - main weapons baseball bat, shotgun, AR - Seemed to be working out well enough for me. I guess if the stun baton has been un-nerfed I might give it a try instead of my usual Louisville slugger.

Edited July 31, 2023 by Krougal (see edit history)

[DaKillaOfHell]

First of all, what I talk about is just insane difficulty. I am not bothering with anything lower than that.

Second of all, I am mostly talking about SP, in MP; rules may vary a bit because of people using complementary builds so not every player necessarily needs to upgrade for forge, cars and trader.

Third of all, I am talking about pure efficiency. It is by no means an idea of how-to-normally-go-through-POIs, killing tons of until getting final loot thing.

(Sorry for my bad English, but it isn't my first language). What I normally do is seeing a POI, I know many POIs, and then use building blocks and such to get to end loot, loot it - done. Same for quests. (We talk about that later)

 

And on insane difficulty, zombies have huge damage, huge life pools, as well as being far better at sensing you than at any other difficulty.

This only leaves a few valid strategies, early game is mostly using in melee wooden club - bone knife for bleeding, bow - pistol (if possible) for ranged. You can just run around, knife-tag mobs, run back, let them bleed out, repeat. If you need mob control, a club is quite good in the beginning but doesn't hold much to armored zombies.

Your first overall goal is to get a valid weapon. The ones I talked about above are just for emergency use only.

The best way to get a valid weapon would be either end-looting or trader. 

 

I didn't talk about all of this just to talk about basic stuffs, but I want to talk about this, because it is necessary to understand why I come to the conclusion that everything else than INT is either just secondarily nice or not even worth mentioning.

 

To show what I mean, an important point is the A21 changes:
 

Quote

• The unlocks are removed from perks, however, each level of a perk will give a probability boost to certain magazines. An example would be the perk Boomstick giving a boost to finding more of the Shotgun Weekly magazines. Boomstick will also boost shotguns, shotgun parts, and the various types of shotgun ammo found in loot.

 

This means and is proven, that any points not being spent in a tree will result in fairly reduced probability of finding such books you need to skill up.

Lets talk about the trees:

 

First, what can each tree produce:
 

PER: Rifle, Explosion, Spears. Also collecting items.

Secondary: Spy, Penetration, sniffing, lucky looting, treasure hunter

STR: Hammers, Clubs, Shotguns, Heavy Armor, Cooking, Tools

FOR: Brawl, Machine Guns, Crops (?)

Secondary: Survival skills, healing factor, iron stomach, stamina training

AGI: Bows/Crossbows, Knifes, Pistols, Light armor

Secondary: Stealth, hit/Run, Parcour.

INT: Batons, Robots, Forge, Cars etc.

 

Lets talk about the worst of them here:

Fortitude. Brawling is underwhelming compared to other weapons because of limited range. Since heavy armor is in STR, which is a must-have on higher difficulties, your armor will be lower too.

The only secondary being worth mentioning would be in survival skills, meaning pain tolerance. The rest, you simply don't need when having INT. We get to that point later.

 

Agi: might sound contradictional, but we have no crowd control, bleeding is available from the start without points so also no pre-requisite, Light armor is not really useful on insane, so therefore there is no point in investing here.

Secondaries are mostly being useless. Stealth is being useful when playing normally and looting houses (yes), but with powerlooting/powerquesting and especially 7-days-horde, it is just completely useless. 

Perception:

Spear is a nice weapon with very good range plus slowing, which makes it a valid choice against mobs.

The problem, however, comes with the rifles. This is a bit more a difficult one, because some talents are worth mentioning. Lucky looting is still very good, but it needs huge invest, therefore lot of levels in order to become useful.

Rifles are good weapons when talking about sniper rifles. Lower than that, it is kinda troublesome since tier 1 and tier 2 only have one bullet capacity each, which makes them a very bad choice on insane. So in order to be good with that, you can't even use rifles up to higher mid-game.

Collecting items are nice, but barely needed when having other choices such as tools or so.

 

Those three are - and I will say that - probably have good use on lower difficulties and in MP as well. But since we talk about this difficulty, there are basically only two starter choices. Strength or Intelligence. Both are not being mutually exclusive, since sooner or later, you will want to pick the other one as well.

However, in terms of getting fast progress, the clear winner is Intelligence.

The reason is: Every single trait is useful!

Stun Baton for example is - especially combined with something like repulsor mod - easily on par with sledgehammer in terms of cc. Plus it also has the ability to do dot, the only other weapon being able to do so is the knife. 

Robots are mandatory for any base, and also quite useful for setting up traps in the end of POIs for cleaning up fast. I always take two of them with me when I can such as hammer when being close to the edge of high buildings in order to kill zombies very efficiently. 

Trading as well as quests are still the de-facto-meta for fast progress since they give you a stable income of resources, weapons, as well as dukes and ammo. So also a no-brainer. Quests are still extremely good for progress.

Leadership is a MUST in MP.

Doctor is buffing your selfheal very hard, giving you medicine as well as far higher healing efficiency and a fantastic bonus on higher level with 10% insta-kill chance for batons.

Engineer and mechanic - I think I don't have to talk about that. Both are simply mandatory for progress via forge, workbench, chemistry station, as well as vehicles. 

and lockpicking - still extremely important, especially when quick looting as I do.

Strength: Also very useful, but it doesn't give us much base building abilities, especially towards defense. Still, it isn't a bad pick if you dont want to go for a base on Insane. If you do, however, you will need intelligence first. In a 2-player-insane, normally one picks STR first while the other picks INT first. That is at least meta for now. 

Edited July 31, 2023 by DaKillaOfHell (see edit history)

[Krougal]

2 hours ago, DaKillaOfHell said:

<good stuff!> 

Thanks for sharing! Even as a long-term player with many hours, I generally only play harder difficulty in MP so it is always very interesting to hear someone who does it SP's take on it.