Overview
This will provide an overview of classes and skills and some tips for ways to build your character that will hopefully help people get the most out of the game.
Overview
Rather than looking at the different archetypes, I’ll be providing a breakdown of skills and their combinations.
My tier list for skills
God-tier: Firearms, medicine.
Good: Science, psychology, melee*, survival*
Mediocre: Stealth, occult, investigation, athletics.
Trash: Subterfuge*, speechcraft
*Skills are worth having a value point in, in the case of subterfuge maybe 1-2 points.
Melee is probably the easiest and most convenient skill for combat in my opinion, although firearms and occult magic have an argument. My reasoning is that guns require somewhat scarce ammo and have less synergy than melee attackers surrounding an enemy and hacking it to death. As enemies charge the nearest party member and cover/terrain isn’t much of a factor, you need characters that are able to take damage and handle enemies in their face. Gun builds don’t help with that. That said, I had a change of heart once I witnessed how broken a gunslinger build is. I soloed the Devourer King with snapshots because a bug resulted in both of my companions going insane. So melee has been demoted to merely good and firearms is now god tier.
Flanked enemies get defence penalties though, which pushes things back in melee’s favour. And the increase in defence and damage resistance from the core melee stats makes the game pretty trivial.
Occultism is the worst combat choice and with the removal of spell enhancements it is a pretty mediocre choice now. Spells cost sanity, their effects are often quite specific, and the damage/effects don’t necessarily justify the cost. You will want Outsider medic or a medicine main to help keep a magic user’s sanity high. However, the quest solutions occultism provides can make it an “I win” button, making it the most non-combat oriented option, especially combined with Stealth.
Medicine is a great skill: it has applications in dialogue, it increases healing on rest, and you can craft drugs! The arguable best non-combat skill in the game.
Science is cool for crafting and provides lots of interesting dialogue options/interactions, psychology is great as well for dialogue. Psychology lets you heal sanity damage during rest but this is less necessary than healing health damage most of the time. A high-level psychologist is virtually impervious to mental effects. Survival is really good for traversing the world map and preventing ambushes during rest, as well as getting a lot of unique crafting recipes.
Stealth is a trap option, you will be forced to fight in some occasions so avoiding it the whole game is a bad idea, but is ok combined with occultism. Athletics is a circumstantial pick (mainly for companions like the butler and the dog) but limited in usefulness.
Subterfuge and speechcraft have limited applications, usually only helping to save or gain a few cigs here or there or doing things that more generalised skills offer. Avoid investing lots of skill points into those, maybe stick to 1-2 points. A presence/charismatic character is better off being a generalist and a subterfuge character should probably respec into guns and investigation.
Designing your player character
Some suggestions for character archetypes:
Easy mode:
A young soldier with 9 physique/8 agility/rest into will, presence dump stat. I don’t recommend dumping mind or sense below 4. Max out melee, add points to survival and psychology to round out your resistance to physical and mental damage. My reasoning for survival over athletics is that survival increases your damage resistance, which should be sky high from all the physique anyway. You can select dodger in the perk tree to increase your physical defense (increased by athletics). Survival also has the benefit of recipes and keeping watch while resting/smoother travel on the world map, so I believe it is a strictly better choice. Equip a 4 ap weapon with high damage, like the indian’s machete or Colonel Grant’s saber, and you can do insane damage with a rear crit strike.
Adult non-combat scientist:
All stats 4 except 8 mind 6 sense 6 agility. You can dump presence if you want and free up a point. This choice is viable in combat as long as you stick to pistols with reasonably good handling and let your companions/henchman tank. Pick between medicine, science, psychology. Medicine was amongst the best choices until Outsider could craft. A value point in medicine is good, but otherwise get science and psychology.
Occultist:
Swap mind for will, 4 sense, 6 agility, 6 mind. You can buff up your firearm skill to have a more reliable source of damage. Upgraded, the Spit and Pazuzu spell are quite good in combat. Upgraded, the spell that lets you talk to the dead can be a win button against enemies vulnerable to sanity damage. I would recommend pairing Occult with Stealth because a lot of its applications allow you to skip combat, and Stealth allows you to skip even more.
Screw all that, just tell me how to build my character.
In my experience, building your character as follows should give you an optimal run through the game. Credit to kiril-budisow for pointing out the gist of this build.
Young Investigator, Humanist worldview, Ex-Cop. This is an all-in firearm build so the background is an obvious one, youth for more stats, humanism seems to get the most opportunities to gain back sanity and compassionate dialogue choices with your companions help keep them on side.
Stats: 4/10/9/4/4/3
Skills: pump firearms, value points as described below.
This build gives you 10 AP, and with your sky-high reaction, you will be getting 2 AP reaction bonuses often, for a staggering 12 AP. If you get the mania condition, this goes up to 13. Paranoia is not bad either for even higher reaction. You can max out at a base 12 AP and 14 ap on proc with the agility artifact. Then up to 14/16 AP with the use of drugs. You can dig out the sleeper in one turn, or snapshot 5 times in a round!
Level 1: 3 points in firearms, 1 in subterfuge. With your high agility, you should be able to open most containers, at least in the early game. Buy a couple of lockpicks from the junkseller for the bank. Pick open the truck at the start for a nice 4-6 damage pistol.
Level 2: 4 points in firearms, 1 in investigation, Alertness perk. You get this level up just in time to open the safe completing the bank quest. You can also later inspect the wax guy in the pawn shop to get a free pistol, although it’s not as good as the Depez. In terms of perks, the more reaction the better, why not?
Level 3: 5 points in firearms, take a value point in melee, snapshot perk! The melee skill will allow you to open the crates in the warehouse once you have a crowbar. Snapshot is part of what makes this build so insane. You can shoot 4 times a round with a reaction proc. Disgusting.
Level 4: 6 points in firearms, start pumping psychology. Gunslinger perk is the obvious choice, improving attack and damage with pistols.
Level 5: 7 points in firearms, 2 in psychology. I got the sniper perk. I haven’t really crunched the numbers but crits are good so I rolled with it. You could increase Alertness if you want to go all-in on bonus AP.
Level 6: 8 points in firearms, 3 in psychology, Controlled mind perk. Even more reaction and less chance of critical failure. Psychology also helps mitigate the main weakness of this build, sanity damage.
Level 7: 9 points in firearms, 4 in psychology, Sniper II or Alertness II.
Weapons: I like to get the 6-7 damage .38 caliber pistol after the early game and use it until Pilgrim’s Parish. I use the flintlock against the devourer king and then sell it because it’s kinda clunky and unreliable (45 damage crits though lol). At endgame I get the Vengeance 45 cal from Schmidt and the 10-15 damage shotty.
Artifacts: Bleeding badge of the marshall, Leprechaun Charm. Giving the +2 agility artifact means you have a base 12 AP and 20 reaction, 14 AP with a reaction proc. I wonder what will happen if this character pops a ferocity.
Picture of final build
The Outsider
Build this guy for melee! He becomes a top tier damage dealer by the end of the game.
Recommended skills: Melee, medicine
Recommended perks: Wrath of isolation, hollowing strikes (or whatever it’s called).
Recommended artifacts: claw of pazuzu, the mark that gives +2 agility, +1 melee artifact
Think of the Outsider as a rogue. He does a lot of damage, but he is relatively frail, more of a glass cannon. Keep him on the outside of combat until he can backstab. The damage output gets insane, especially if you drug him up.
Once the patch goes in and NPCs can craft, this guy will be a monster, a zombie Breaking Bad supplying the whole team with drugs.
Nameless Soldier
Skills: melee, survival
Perks: Affix the bayonets, U N D Y I N G physiology, the one that increases his chance of going berserk.
Artifacts: you can give him the +1 melee artifact, Mwengi’s heart that increases constitution, whatever else you like
With the nameless soldier, treat him like a skirmisher. Send him alone against the enemy. He has the tankiness to survive and his damage output, especially when he goes berserk, gets insanely high. Just keep enemies between you and the rest of your team. Also, while he might fire a shot at one of your guys at the start of the round, his firearms skill is low so hopefully not a big deal.
Assorted tips
Don’t leave home without a lantern, kerosene, a shovel, rope/grappling hook, or a crowbar. These are all useful items in the game and should be kept in your inventory.
Rations, laudunum shots, and camping supplies are all cheap and widely available. Don’t be afraid to stock up on these. Keep your sanity high. Once it starts to fall below half, smoke up/drink up.
To use spells and items in battle, right click on the character. Spells have to be added to quickslots in the grimoire and items to quickslots in inventory.
Keep Eduardo hired, he is well worth the money and a very reliable tank/okay damage dealer. If his health is low you don’t have to care, just dismiss him and rehire him at full HP.
When you come across the victim of the Arkham stabber, be sure to speak to the person standing next to the corpse and the 2 mafia guys that appear. In the hotel be sure to complete the dialogue with the weird old man when he appears. This will help you not sequence-break a key quest.
Turn vsync off and gfx settings on low/medium. I got far fewer crashes this way.
Good luck, have fun!