Overview
This is a basic guide for beginners who want to play as an unarmed Physical Adept.
General
This is a basic guide for beginners who want to play as an unarmed Physical Adept. If there is any mistake please let me know. Special thanks go to the insightful individuals in the forum threads such as Hex, di eshor ribly, and Zadok.
As an unarmed Physical Adept, you need to focus on 4 skills or attributes: Strength, Close Combat, Willpower and Qi Casting. Those four things are likely the only things you will be putting your karma into for the whole game.
This is the Willpower attribute page:
Your Qi Casting skills can only be unlocked when you have the appropriate amount of Willpower above. Unlocking a Qi Casting skill does not mean you get the skill automatically. You have to go to a merchant called Spider Shen to buy the skill to equip it before you can use it in combat. You should prioritize Willpower and Qi Casting before Strength. You would want to start pumping Strength and Close Combat when you find that your attacks miss a lot.
Another very important attribute for unarmed Physical Adept is Strength:
The higher your Strength the more painful your unarmed attacks. Close Combat is used to calculate the hit chance of your unarmed attacks so you should definitely put as much karma into it as you possibly can. You must not put any karma into the Unarmed skill below, because your Qi attacks will not use it to calculate critical chance but will use Willpower for that.
Qi Casting Skills
These are some of the more useful Qi Casting skills you can buy from Spider Shen:(I cannot find all skills image sorry)
Some skills have active and passive effect. Activating the active effect of a Qi skill will give extra benefit but will make it go into cooldown before it can be used again. All skill that share the same cooldown must NOT be equipped together because you can only use one of them at any time. For example when you unlocked and bought the Celestial Mana Fist, you must first sell your old Mana Fist before you go and equip your newer and better Celestial Mana Fist. The passive bonus of the same skill line does not stack for example the passive Movement bonus of Stride and Bonded Spell: Killing Hands & Stride does not stack, so you should always use the better version of the skills.
Tips
The first tip is to buy and equip some healing items before going to missions. You really attract enemy fire as a melee character.
Second tip is to buy the Shock Glove in the mission Outsider. It is the only place to get it. It is considered an unarmed weapon that can stun enemies, rendering them sleepy and open to attacks.
Third tip: To get the most tanky skill Martial Defense 2 that makes you totally un-killable, Do not choose Human, Elve, Orc, and Troll. Choose Dwarf as your race because it is the only race to go to 10 Willpower and above. Using cyberware cannot push over the hard limit set by race, so always choose Dwarf if you want Martial Defense 2.
Fourth tip: This tip is very important to those who want to max out their Qi Casting skill. The tip is, do not I repeat do NOT buy and install any cyberware that increase your Willpower. If you want to get your Qi Casting to the maximum 11, you will need to increase Willpower first using your hard earn Karma points anyway. The Willpower increases that came from cyberwares will be wasted if you decided to install them.
Have fun!