Wasteland 2

I'm running energy wep, melee, sniper, assault, assault, handguns. 80% of my damage is done by the 2 guys with assault rifles, 20% by the sniper. The others hang around and scratch their butt. The melee guy is too squishy, the energy weapon guy does 5 dmg / shot and the handguns have a very short range.

At lvl 10-12 atm, still trying to figure out how to get pass the turrets to enter the prison.

gogusrl_sl said:

At lvl 10-12 atm, still trying to figure out how to get pass the turrets to enter the prison.

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You'll have to leave and come back later. You can't get by them the first time you get to them.

And yeah, in my party I'm running assault rife, assault rife, energy weapon/handgun, handgun(my medic, low AP weapon to heal once + fire once per turn), shotgun, submachine gun

The shotgun sucks for single targets, but is amazing if you can get 2+ enemies in the cone of fire.

I just got to California(I think I'm level 22-24ish on my characters) and the shotgun is a life saver in some of the random map encounters. 5 enemies with 250-300 health instantly up next to my party(too many HP to mow down with assault rifles in 1 turn before they get in range). 1 well placed blast from a 3-burst shotgun and they all lose 50% of their health. Heck, I even let it hit 1 party member if I have to in order to hit 4+ enemies, it's still worth it.

I kinda wish random map encounters would have scaled up slowly while in Arizona. I went from still getting attacked by animals and bugs with 20 HP, to hitting california and the random encounter mobs having 10-20x that amount of HP. Damn near completely wiped to the first random encounter I hit in California, before any of my armor or weapons were upgraded. The mobs completely put down 5 of my 6 characters(thank god my medic was the 1 left standing)

Dandain_sl said:

Shotguns are rape machines when - the combat shotguns appear (8ap 3 round burst) for example - with enough skill - this will cremate groups of enemies as good as the simple explosives. Second thing about shotguns - manually target them like you would a grenade. You can adjust the cone of fire to be ideal to sneak in an extra mob or barely shave an ally outside the cone to avoid friendly fire. The game does not require you to target an enemy directly to fire a weapon - in the case of shotguns and explosives - its what makes them so very good. Shooting the ground with your sniper rifle however - not effective.

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I didn't know you could do that!
I know explosives are extremely effective but didn't know I could target "nothing" while firing a shotgun...

gogusrl_sl said:

I'm running energy wep, melee, sniper, assault, assault, handguns. 80% of my damage is done by the 2 guys with assault rifles, 20% by the sniper. The others hang around and scratch their butt. The melee guy is too squishy, the energy weapon guy does 5 dmg / shot and the handguns have a very short range.

At lvl 10-12 atm, still trying to figure out how to get pass the turrets to enter the prison.

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My Melee guys are the main source of dmg, surprisingly.
Especially my brawler (10 strength, full brawling) every hit IS A CRIT and she NEVER misses. Things just melt in front of her. With 10 ap (I think now 11) and ~13 combat initiative she tends to be dealing a lot of dmg in every combat.

My sniper was a main source of dmg in the first half, slowly starting to diminish. Two hits (maximum) for ~50ish non critical dmg is not impressive when my Brawler dish out ~100 x3 (100 dmg compared to 300 per 10 AP).

Assault Rifles starts good, then stale, then start to be good again. Never amazing.
Heavy Guns, in the other hand, are nasty but ammo expensive.
Sub-machines are okay.
Energy Weapons in Act 2 are hilarious. Too powerful, my EW guy is almost exceeding my Brawling character's dmg.
Blunt are okay because you don't get that level of Crit % as brawling. Blades are better iirc because it has more crit %.
Hand Guns are not bad but not excellent.

If you haven't done weaponsmithing you must - I'm pretty sure the most broken weaponsmithing mod in the entire game are the griptape mods that are -1ap to attack. 2ap melee attacks are massively more efficient than 3ap melee attacks.

Submachine guns are good on characters with high ap and a lot of mobility - my 11 12 AP submachinegun users can both output very high damage against lower armor targets. And when you reach 12 ap for example - you can fire a 6ap burst twice in one turn, it scales well - a bit ammunition heavy. Its definitely not a good casual secondary weapon if you can't spend all your AP firing (2 bursts) from a stationary spot.

Dandain_sl said:

If you haven't done weaponsmithing you must - I'm pretty sure the most broken weaponsmithing mod in the entire game are the griptape mods that are -1ap to attack. 2ap melee attacks are massively more efficient than 3ap melee attacks.

Submachine guns are good on characters with high ap and a lot of mobility - my 11 12 AP submachinegun users can both output very high damage against lower armor targets. And when you reach 12 ap for example - you can fire a 6ap burst twice in one turn, it scales well - a bit ammunition heavy. Its definitely not a good casual secondary weapon if you can't spend all your AP firing (2 bursts) from a stationary spot.

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I didn't know it was even possible to achieve natural 12 AP

Energy weapons are godly in Cali - make sure to have 10aps on the character who uses them. Upgrading armor is tricky, because a lot of mobs in late game use energy weapons as well. Maybe staying at 4 AC is the best solution.

Dandain_sl said:

If you haven't done weaponsmithing you must - I'm pretty sure the most broken weaponsmithing mod in the entire game are the griptape mods that are -1ap to attack. 2ap melee attacks are massively more efficient than 3ap melee attacks.

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This, Griptape is pretty insane. Put some on a crowbar and it puts you at 2ap for 8-12dmg Armor Piercing hits.

DrLifetilt_sl said:

Energy weapons are godly in Cali - make sure to have 10aps on the character who uses them. Upgrading armor is tricky, because a lot of mobs in late game use energy weapons as well. Maybe staying at 4 AC is the best solution.

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Why 10AP ? The gamma ray is 8AP for burst and I can't imagine why you would use anything else.

Laura_sl said:

I didn't know it was even possible to achieve natural 12 AP

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Do keep in mind that reaching 11ap - gives you access to the +1ap save on turn end into 2x6ap attacks the next round. 12ap requires you to hunt the the +ap breakpoints in each stat tree - and probably have 10 in coordination as it is worth ap every 2 stat points (the best of any category).

velk_sl said:

Why 10AP ? The gamma ray is 8AP for burst and I can't imagine why you would use anything else.

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Neutron Projector x2. Gamma Ray can be tricky to get, most people will miss it (i did).

Do you ever reach a point where you can respec? I have so many redundant skills on my team.

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I'm pretty sure you can simply edit your save games in some way if you want to do that. Someone mentioned it on a previous page - asking for a trainer - if I recall someone said it was unnecessary and the save file or something is simple to do yourself. I'm sure if you google it you'll get a hit.

Maybe this will do.

How to Edit the Save Files, for science of course... : Wasteland

Maybe this.

inXile Forums View topic - Wasteland 2 Ranger Editor

Energy weapons get good when you get a certain weapon, but you have to open a toaster for it. You get it near the end of Arizona and it's basically the best energy weapon in the entire game, which is retarded. It has an armor threshold of 2 which is a bit crap for Arizona because half the enemies don't have more than 2, but as soon as you move on, it's godlike for the entire middle part of the game, and viable in the end. The game's general design is horrendous so you have to use these little unbalanced things if you want to do shit your way, otherwise it's hard to justify using anything other than assault rifles.

Brawling also gets strong once you're in your 20s as it gets +1 damage per level and ends up with 100% crit chance, so it's actually fully viable in California and onwards. Make sure you have 10 strength as you get .1x crit dmg per point of strength, not the 1% that the tooltip says, so you gain an entire 1.0 multiplier from 10 strength which is more like +50% crit dmg--overpowered on a weapon that always crits. Other than that, any party that isn't full assault rifle (and optionally one energy weapon; this is a good idea for reasons of ammo distribution) is gimping itself for no reason.

Shotguns and SMGs would be okayish if close quarters combat was really a thing, but it isn't unless you actively refrain from positioning your party properly. Snipers would be decent if assault rifles weren't so broken and superior in every conceivable way. Bladed and blunt weapons are inferior to brawling and have no redeeming qualities of their own while heavy weapons are so useless that I question the mental faculties of whatever developer ever deemed this ready for release. Pistols aren't really a primary weapon and the AP cost is too high later on to be good, and unfortunately the skill points budget doesn't really warrant skilling up a backup weapon. Even if it did, I'd take SMG or shotgun for that purpose. Some skills frankly should cost half the points.

Wow, the ending to this was a giant 'fuck you' from the developers to my team ;p


Based on final fight where everyone is maxxed out, the weapon balance doesn't shake down too badly. AR with G41 would do 200ish bursts, brawling would do 3 hits for 450ish total ( assuming brawler was right next to them for their turn ), Sniper would do headshots with Dragoon for 210 ( and could actually use range advantage over AR for once ! inconceivable ! ;p ), Heavy weapons with 'The 3' would either hit for 60 or instantly kill things, the range was still unbelievably terrible though, Energy weapons with gamma ray would do 280ish burst.

Weapon balance through the early parts of the game was awful though, sniper starts average then drops to useless in california until the barrett. AR starts strong and goes to godly overpowered and then other stuff starts to catch up a bit. Blunt and bladed are junk throughout. Heavy starts awful, stays awful, gets even worse, and then a useable weapon shows up 2 fights from the end of the game ;p SMG starts ok and becomes junk, shotgun is junk start to finish.

A few simple fixes could really even things out - allow headshots to crit, no headshots for burst, sniper gets higher tohit bonus from skill than AR, energy can headshot, significantly higher tohit penalty for burst. I don't know what to do about heavy weapons though - it'd have to be drastic - quadruple the range, lower the tohit a lot and triple the damage would be a good start.

So, I just got to California and am getting my ass handed to me. I finished up Sante Fe without much issue, but as soon as I head out to any of the locations I get wrecked, like the quest to save some kid getting executed by the God's Militia for eating shrimp. Guys have 200-350 health and hit like a truck. My AK-47 and M24 just can't handle these dudes. Same with random encounters on the map. Am I missing something?

Frenzied Wombat_sl said:

So, I just got to California and am getting my ass handed to me. I finished up Sante Fe without much issue, but as soon as I head out to any of the locations I get wrecked, like the quest to save some kid getting executed by the God's Militia for eating shrimp. Guys have 200-350 health and hit like a truck. My AK-47 and M24 just can't handle these dudes. Same with random encounters on the map. Am I missing something?

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At some point (before doing Rodia - don't remember the exact trigger) a vendor with next tier weapons will show up at Santa Fe (you'll get notified by radio) and things will get significantly easier.

DrLifetilt_sl said:

At some point (before doing Rodia - don't remember the exact trigger) a vendor with next tier weapons will show up at Santa Fe (you'll get notified by radio) and things will get significantly easier.

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Interesting, because I'm in Rodia now-- not because of any quest, but because I had nowhere to go and just stumbled across it. After finishing up santa-fe I had one quest to save some cows at a nearby town, and that was it. So I just started wandering the map and found Rodia and started working the Jerk quest there. That's when I got the call to save the kid and got my ass handed to me. I wonder then what the trigger is for the vendor..

Frenzied Wombat_sl said:

Interesting, because I'm in Rodia now-- not because of any quest, but because I had nowhere to go and just stumbled across it. After finishing up santa-fe I had one quest to save some cows at a nearby town, and that was it. So I just started wandering the map and found Rodia and started working the Jerk quest there. That's when I got the call to save the kid and got my ass handed to me. I wonder then what the trigger is for the vendor..

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He was there when I first went back to the ranger base in california, so it's something pretty early.

velk_sl said:

He was there when I first went back to the ranger base in california, so it's something pretty early.

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Yeah it was weird. I ended up going back to the farm with the stolen cows (despite having already completed it), and that triggered the call from HQ that Pistol Pete had arrived. I think the trigger was talking to the vendor on the farm, which I had missed the first time.

I'm really enjoying the California act so far. I'm working on Rodia and the story/quests/dialogue are top notch.