Tips:
- Barter is actually useful. You will be short on money for most of the game and being able to upgrade your weapons and armor earlier will help in combat.
- Be smart about ammo usage; Energy Cells are especially expensive.
- Major Tomcat is an additional companion that you get at the beginning of the game. It does not take the place of a normal animal companion (just dismiss it, charm the animal you want, then talk to Major Tomcat again to recruit them) and does a surprising amount of damage. He's also quite tanky.
- For exploration, you definitely want Mechanics, Nerd Stuff and Lockpicking maxed out. It's best to put them on separate characters to make it easier.
- First Aid comes up fairly often in skill checks, but isn't required to be as high; 5-7 will get you through most of the game.
- Survival, Weird Shit and Explosives can safely be ignored; there are few situations where anything is truly gated behind either of these.
- Toaster Repair isn't really necessary. Usually it gives you more money, but you can eventually collect four Tarjan Tokens. It does unlock the best armor in the game, but only requires a Toaster Repair level of 7.
- When you use medical items in your inventory ("use on self") it uses the highest First Aid skill of your party members. It also gives any additional buffs that that character has (e.g. Overhealing).
- When you equip a weapon from your inventory and it's not your active weapon it will not be loaded. Remember this before you get into a fight!
- SMGs do more damage than rifles, but are shorter ranged, have lower penetration and use more ammo.
- World Encounters are surprisingly dangerous; don't sleep on how difficult they can be. Don't forget that your vehicle is very strong though, and running over enemies is very effective.
- Every world encounter map also has a chest that you can loot after the battle is done. Some battles even have two chests!
- World encounters scale with you. Towards end game you will be fighting enemies that have 2000+ health and will deal 2-3 attacks per turn for 200-400 damage per hit. If you are surprised at the start of combat that's often a party wipe.
- Cyborg chickens can be dropped off at Ranger HQ in the yard by the chicken coop. If you collect them all there's a special follower you can recruit.
- Tarjan Tokens can be traded in at the Bizarre fortune-telling machine for permanent perks. It's a random chance though, and each perk can only be gotten once.
- When you level up skills and have equipment that boosts that skill, it will cost you more as though your skill level was actually higher. Or more simply: it's more expensive to upgrade skills that are boosted through equipment. Make sure to take off the equipment first before increasing the skill.
- Every skill has one book in the world that will upgrade it once. To be most efficient, only level your skills to 9 and then use the book (or wait to find it).
- Brawling is very underpowered until rank 10, at which point you get a perk that reduces your attacks to 1 AP. Brawling is quite strong at that point, but I wouldn't say it is overpowered. Being forced to close with the enemy means you will often be focus fired and killed. However, it's useful having a melee character in your party who can be built to be tanky and draw fire from your squishier back line.
- Armor is an important mechanic in the game and something you probably don't pay a ton of attention to early on. Later you can run into situations where enemies will soak 50-75% of your damage. You should either use energy weapons (which ignore armor) or break the armor. All of the precise shots (strike abilities) can be used to drop armor by -75%. Brawling attacks also reduce armor by 1 per combo (for teammates as well!), but this is less useful in the late game when enemies have 30-40 armor.
- When opening with a sneak attack, consider moving all your characters as close as possible. It's a common rookie mistake to open fire at long range with a sniper, but then the rest of your characters waste most of their AP closing the gap. This effectively allows the enemy to attack you first.
- Skilling up two different weapons is almost always a waste. You're better off using the two weapon slots for a high damage, low-penetration weapon and a lower damage, high-penetration weapon.
- Make sure your characters use a broad range of ammo types to avoid running low. It's tempting to create a bunch of riflemen, but that's both boring and suboptimal. In particular, make sure you have at least one Ranger using a shotguns and one using a pistol.
- You will hit the final mission somewhere between level 26-28, mostly varying based on your Charisma.
