Guide to Wasteland 2 (Name Changed)

Overview

Updated for RTM so that you don’t die at the beginning and don’t run out of supplies! I’ve also compiled weapons statistics, NPC locations, skill needs and other information about the game. *I have started adding spoilers by including detailed maps of each location and markers of important items but I have not added any mission information in*. Information on LA is starting to be added but all existing content has been updated!I changed the name to better reflect the contents of the guide.

Wasteland RTM

I’ll be adding a section about the most important stats and what order you need to get them in to make the game as smooth as possible. I’ll still try to avoid any hints as much as I can. The game was a blast and I intend to play it again at a somewhat slower pace this time 🙂

All existing sections have been updated including the character creation with hints that will help you with LA and the end game. Please note that many weapons are not available until you get to Los Angeles.

At this point I’ll be adding the remaining missing maps and one new section as stated above.

I’ve finished the NPC section and believe it to be complete for all paths now. If I’m missing anyone, please send me the location, stats and situation.

Character Creation

To start off with, where you put your skill points matters a lot. However, having played the game through I’m going to offer some words of caution here. Without the right skills, you will not succeed later in the game (or it will be ridiculously hard regardless of the level you play on). When picking skills, try to map out which NPC’s you want to get and what skills they have. For example, now that I’ve played through saving Highpool, I tend to always save Ag Center because of Rose. Rose has the Computer Science skill (which you will need to get to 10 if possible) so I no longer give that skill to one my core team members at all. Also, she has an intelligence of 10 which means she’ll get lots of skill points per level so it will be easy to level her up.

These are the types of considerations you have to make. And another point on this – even though I don’t have a section on character creation (there are enough of those in other guides), the two most important attributes are Coordination and Intelligence. Remember that you will have three opportunities to raise other attributes (one every 10 levels and you finish the game around 37/38 so you don’t quite get to 40 unless you really work for it). Coordination because most fighting is long range (there are close combat situations but I’ve taken the approach of not doing this) and Intelligence because you need those skill points.

Look at Scotchmo – he has a coordination of 6 but an intelligence of 3 and he’s level 14 so you can only add two attributes to him over the course of the game. Take him or not? It depends on how you want to play. And of course because of this guide you have some foreknowledge. Use it wisely!

First off, where you put your points in the Combat Skills section determines what weapons you start off with (and what type of ammo you need which is critical). In the beginning I wanted everyone to have an assault rifle so I gave everyone that skill. Bad idea – that means everyone needs 5.56 mm ammunition which is not only hard to come by but expensive so I kept running out of ammo. Even worse than that, when you run out of ammo enemies tend to get too close to you and they will kill you quickly.

My next approach was to give everyone a point in the blunt or bladed weapons skill. That started everyone off with a pipe or machete! Not the result I wanted because I got killed long distance almost immediately.

The solution – give everyone a different skill. This is still the best approach however ammo isn’t quite as scarce as it was in earlier iterations of the game. For the best mix I gave my characters the following:

• Assault Rifle
• Energy Weapon
• Sniper
• Submachine Gun

This results in everyone having more than enough ammunition without running out. That problem was solved and gameplay-wise I’ve had a superior experience.

One thing I will note is that there really is enough ammunition to give folks many of the same weapons. What I did to take advantage of this was to give my NPC’s the Sniper Rifle or Assault Rifle skill and left only one player each with the Submachine Gun and Energy Weapons skills.

Doing this you should take the first long barrel modification and modify the submachine gun so it has a better range otherwise that player is only good for short range fighting and while there is a lot of that, they’re out of the fight for long range gun battles and there are a lot of those.

You might ask, “why not a shotgun?” The short answer is that is that you tend to do more friendly fire damage than anything else. In addition, if you go to Ag Center you’ll pick up Rose who uses shotgun shells (although I almost immediately give her another skill like Sniper or Assault Rifle or I give her a normal handgun so she doesn’t kill my guys!).

I am unimpressed with the performance of the high-end submachine guns – they simply don’t do enough damage for many of the fights you’ll find yourself in. I may look at the shotguns again because the high-end shotguns do a world of hurt and they have a lot of penetration.

For this one, the important items are lockpicking, safecracking, alarm disarm and computer science (all four are used to open locked items and obviously to disarm alarms – and there are a lot of them depending on where you are – as well as other items for the computer science skill). Toaster repair is useful and there are many toasters to be found but it isn’t a required skill. You won’t survive without the first four skills.

The Mechanical Repair skill is only used in two areas so far and a fairly high skill level is required in the second area. Only one player needs this and you have some time to build it up.

The Perception skill combined with the demolition skill is very useful all over the place. In fact there are so many booby-traps that the perception skill is now a required skill (to detect them) and demolition (to disarm them) that you can’t survive without these skills either.

Only one person really needs the Medic skill. This is most useful at higher levels where you don’t level as quickly (every time you level you are healed to 100%) so at lower levels this isn’t needed as much but it’s still helpful.

The surgeon skill is incredibly useful in LA. If you pick up Rose then you’ll have two players with the surgeon skill. You’ll get into a lot of battles where someone needs a surgeon either during the battle or afterwords. In addition it eases some paths through the game as you can save people who will make others see you in a favorable light.

Weaponsmithing up to a level of five is necessary to be able to apply the long barrel weapon modification. Get it. Weapon mods really do make a big difference, especially in the Jam rate and range. See the weapon modification page for more information. You don’t need this skill right at the beginning – if you pick up Angela Deth she has a weaponsmithing skill of three which will keep you going for a while. At a certain point you will lose Angela so make sure someone else eventually gets this skill. Eventually having this skill at 8 will be required but you can get a trinket that will add +2 to this skill if you don’t want to allocate the points directly.

If you are going to keep NPC’s in your party, you must have the leadership skill. The higher the skill the less likely the NPC’s will “lose control” and go off and do something stupid. Make sure one of your characters is higher in this skill. This is especially important if you have scotchmo who uses a shotgun – you will blow holes in your other characters if you can’t keep him under control.

Finally there’s the outdoorsman skill. In this incarnation it is used (as far as I can tell) only to run away from enemies as you’re travelling in the wastelands. But why run away you may ask? You want to fight every bad buy that comes along you say? Yes, that may be true for the purpose of experience but hordes of roving animals don’t drop anything useful.

The Smart A$$, Hard A$$ and Kiss A$$ skills aren’t required but they open up communication paths that are otherwise denied to you. When you get to LA having a Hard A$$ skill of 10 (or 9 + a trinket that raises it by one) will make things way, way better. Having 8 in the other two will help also. While problems can be solved in different ways, it can be more expensive. Also, in many cases, if you don’t have the skill at the right level at the beginning of a conversation, you will not be able to go back and unlock that conversation path later on.

Hopefully this small start will get people over the hump.

Non-player Characters (NPC’s)

This section of the guide is still mostly wrong. I will be updating it shortly. Sorry for the inconvenience! I’m updating it slowly and I’ll remove the header when I’m finished.

You can get one NPC at Ag Center.

She is very effective in combat and if you are a moral player (I try to be a “good guy”) she works fine. If you like to shoot everything up, she’s probably not a good choice.
Replace her weapon with an FFS handgun (the most powerful one in the current beta) and she won’t damage your team like she does with Rose’s Thorn.

Here you can get one NPC. Vulture’s Cry is a native american jailed in a cell being taunted by people from Highpool. To free her you can buy some coffin nail cigarettes from the vendor in the town hall, talk to the kids and give them the smokes. Then they’ll leave Vulture’s Cry alone, you can unlock the door and get her to join.

You can get here if you rescue Highpool or if you visit Highpool after it is destroyed and talk to the one survivor you found. There’s no one here to get but vengence feels good!

At the rail nomads you can get three NPC’s.

You can get one NPC in Lil Lupe Mine.

You can get one NPC in Damonta and one other “NPC” although I’m not sure you would call him that. In addition to Lexcanium you can also repair the discobot Jamie (in the shop with the vendor Hopi and Magee as noted on the map for Damonta). Jamie has no stats and just follows you around but he helps in battle. He is not a member of your party – more like the guy who follows you around in the Rail Nomads camp.

NPC’s (continued)

Only available if you send the missile to DBM and have high party charisma

Only available if you send the missile to the monks

Starting Weapons

This information assumes you put one or more point in only one weapon skill. I have not tested different combinations to see which weapons you actually get. All weapons stats are also listed in their respective sections.

**Damage is damage multiplied by the number of shots which hit the target

Armor

Locations

I’m going to try to detail as much information as possible for each location. If there are things missing please let me know.

Some locations do not have mini-maps for them (when you click “m” it shows the screen it should, but the map is black and it happens all the time on specific locations so I believe it is either by design or the maps weren’t ready). These locations are noted below (for completeness) but no map is shown for them.

Arizona

This is an overall map of Arizona with all locations marked. Note that I have not marked the Oasis’s and the Hidden Cache’s yet (and I may not, I’m debating!).

There are four “Shrine” locations in Arizona:

• West of Leve L’upe Mine
• South of the Prison
• Southeast of Damonta
• East of the Radio Tower

These are experience shrine’s – They seem to give a random number of experience points from 115 to 240 in my experience.

Abandoned Railway

For those who played earlier beta’s this is the old “Robots!” area. It was moved and renamed but is still the same.

Ag Center

Ag Center is broken up into different areas. Each area is detailed separately.

The killing fields are the entrance to Ag Center. You can get here whether or not you decide to save Ag Center.

The Central Complex is where most of the story takes place and leads to all other areas of Ag Center. You can get to this location if you choose not to save Ag Center but almost all areas are cut off except the radar dish and a direct path to it.

This location provides access to the east and west fields.

Damonta

Damonta is where you have to set up the next radio tower in order to complete the triangulation.

* A couple of quick notes here – I have not yet been able to keep Red alive long enough to find the Sierra Madre. There is also a nightclub here which I haven’t marked because I forgot to note the location. It isn’t critical.

Darwin

No introduction should be necessary for those who played Wasteland 1. Darwin is now just a shell of its former self.

Highpool

This, along with Ag Center, is a starting location in the game after the Robot Tower is complete.

Infected Farm

This location is only available if you save Ag Center and get the mission from Sue.

Infected Village

This location is only available if you save Ag Center and get the mission from Sue.

Leve L’upe Mine

This location has no real bearing on the story but is good for experience and you can pick up an NPC here.

Prison

The Prison is one of the stops on your way to Damonta and it’s a required stop. You aren’t required to do anything there but it’s a lot of good experience points and a good part of the story.

Note that I’m leaving out spoilers where possible.

Please note that at this time I know of no way to finish this map (the prison proper specifically) the first go around. The story works but the order of events no matter what you do is fixed and they don’t make sense in my opinion.

Pump Station

This location is only available if you save Ag Center and get the mission from Sue.

Radio Tower

This is the first location you head to in the game and you’ll end up returning here later.

Rail Nomads

This area is broken up into the Rail Nomads camp and the Atchinson’s camp. The majority of the story takes place in the Rail Nomad’s camp.

Ranger Citadel

This is where you start the game and is your homebase for the first half of the game.

Please note that this is something new that I’m trying. If you like it or not, drop me a note in the comments, this is generally a lot of work.

Silo 7

There isn’t much here. The exterior is basically a path to the silo and the interior is just the missle bay.

Temple of Titan

Please note that after sending the missle to DBM this area changes drastically. For the end result see the section, “Titan Canyon”.

One note here, after sending the missle to the DBM this becomes inaccessible.

Titan Canyon

After you complete Silo 7, if you send the missile to the DBM then the two locations are combined into one fairly small location as shown in this map.

Los Angeles

This is Los Angeles after Patch #1. Either I missed a bunch of stuff on my first playthrough or the map changed fairly significantly. Anyway, here it is now.

More details on the various locations coming as I have time.

Angel Oracle (New!)

Cerritos (New!)

Hollywood (New!)

Note that #13 is the where the currently broken mission is so you’ll have to get all three other chamber of commerce members to vote in your favor.

Inglewood (New)

Long Beach (New)

If I remember correctly, there is a bag of kittly litter past the scorpitron.

Los Alamitos (New)

There is also a bag of kitty litter here.

Rhodia (New!)

Santa Fe Springs (New!)

Santa Monica

There really isn’t much here except to rescue a boy from church militants. Helpful hint – get the Lobber’s first then the Commando’s second.

The “loot” by the gas station is relayed to you by the mayor of Rodia’s cleaner (in the mayors office) if you rid the town of the punks. This is one way to discover Santa Monica – another is a simple radio call from Woodson telling you there’s been a request for help.

Trinkets

Weapons and Weapon Stats (Newly Updated!)

All you wanted to know about the weapons available to you.

Assault Rifles

All assault rifles except for The Lariat have a 10% chance to apply Bleeding Wound

Bladed Weapons

All weapons have a 10% chance to apply Bleeding Wound except for the Shu-Model Ranger Combat Knife

Blunt Weapons

All weapons have a 10% chance to apply Concussion

Brawling Weapons

Energy Weapons

Explosive Weapons

Handguns

All weapons have a 10% chance to apply Bleeding Wound

Heavy Weapons

All weapons have a 10% chance to apply Bleeding Wound, except “The 3” which has a 9% chance

Shotguns

All weapons have a 10% chance to apply Bleeding Wound except Mississippi Mule which has a 15% chance
In addition, The Roach has a -10% Chance to Evade modifier

Sniper Rifles

All weapons have a 10% chance to apply Bleeding Wound

Submachine Guns

All weapons have a 10% chance to apply Bleeding Wound

Weapon Modifications