Hello, recruits and welcome to the Desert Rangers. I’m Lieutenant Xelian and I have spent over 130 hours wandering the Wastelands with my boys. I can give you a few tips before old Vargas throws you to the dogs.

This guide is for all the people like me who like to experience everything in a game. In Wasteland 2 though, your initial stats choices, may prevent you from doing so. That’s why I have decided to write that guide and share what 130 hours of playing and reading information over the web have taught me.

I want to apologize for my not so good English. It is not my native language so I do few stylistic mistakes and I have the habit of omitting a word or two at some places. Also this is my first attempt to write a guide on steam so It may be a little messed up.
Second – The guide will contain minor spoilers mostly related with follower’s recruitment but believe me – you want to know them beforehand.
Third - I will only focus on character creation, weapon and skill choices and follower choices. There are detailed guides for both achievements and quests out there ( I would recommend Gamepressure)

- Followers, sir? Shouldn’t we start with something like Attributes or Skills? It us our squad we are talking about not some NPC’s?
- In the Wastelands the only thing it matters is who have your back, recruit. Whether it will be old Scotchmo, Rose, Lady Deth or the hairy friend sitting next to you it doesn’t matter. You are calling the charges but there are people on the wastes with much more fighting experience than you, boy.

Unlike some other games experience in Wasteland 2 is not given to followers who are not in the team (or who are incapacitated at the end of a combat for that matter).
Second reason to start with followers is that each of them comes with a predefined set of skills. In general you only need one expert per skill in the group, so your initial group set up should be one who compliments your followers skill set. Also this prevents you from using followers who you can recruit late in the game because you end up with two experts at one skill and missing another skill completly. So you have to have chosen your followers beforehand.
Third reason to start with followers is that across the map there are a lot of skill point and experience shrines who can only be visited once. So you really want to visit those with the group you plan to continue towards endgame. Of course you can always postpone visiting a shrine but this will only make your game harder.
There are 4 followers you can recruit rather early in the game and can customize most. There is huge gap between those 4 and the next batch you can get. Also to recruit followers in late game you have to have a certain amount of charisma total in the group so you have to spend attribute points there which is a bit of waste.

You can recruit those two on Rail Nomad Camp relatively easy










Rose and Vulture’s Cry are mutually exclusive so you can only chose one of them. Keep two things in mind though – In order to get 100% achievement on one playthrough you have to pick Rose and do her quest. Her quest is much harder and longer though and you will have to be more careful with ammo on it.











There is one last follower you can recruit right after you start before leaving the first zone - Her name is Angela Deth and she is a pretty strong NPC. However you don't want to keep her in your team for long because she will leave you at some point and if you do like me on my first playthrough you will end up with a gap on your team without a proper replacment. So ditch her as soon as possible

- Choosing the right weapon and having someone with the right skill can save you a lot of trouble out there in the Wastes, recruits. But even if you don’t – there is always a way. Even if it means that some bullets may fly.

As I have mentioned before you will want to have one expert per each skill. Talking from experience here - some skills are much more useful than the others and much more used.
In Wasteland 2 skills are expressed in a range from 1 to 10 and are divided into three separate branches: Combat, Knowledge, and General Skills. Also the skill costs increase with the level of the skill- Increasing a skill from: 1-3 – cost 2 skill points, 3-6 – cost 4 skill points, 6-9 – cost 6 skill points and 10 – cost 8 skill points.


• Alarm Disarming – There is one achievement which requires you not to trigger an alarm and a few quests on which certain paths may be locked if you cannot disable the right alarm to sneak by.
• Computer Science – Must have. A lot of terminals and safes out there to crack. Also useful for hacking enemy robots.
• Demolitions – Another must have. There are a lot of minefields and trapped safes which nets a very decent amount of XP.
• Field Medic – Very useful in the beginning, loses usefulness mid game (if you do things properly)
• Lockpicking – Must have. 70% of the things out there are locked. Also needed for a few achievements.
• Mechanical Repair – Must have. Needed for a lot of side quests.
• Safecracking – Needed for at least one achievement I can think of (probably more)
• Surgeon – If you do things properly you will need this skill very very rarely. Still you cannot go without it as losing a teammate pretty much kill the purpose of this guide. It is also needed for saving some NPC's around.
• Toaster Repair – Needed for the best Energy weapon in the game and a lot of other secrets. Pays off big time although the checks are usually not very high.



• Animal Whisperer – Relatively useless in combat (you lose the XP for killing the mob) there are a few side quests which require it. It is also needed for 2 achievements. Also the animals which follow you grant the character a bonus attribute point and occasionally fight for you.
• Brute Force – Required for a few side quests. Good to have around for cutting some shortcuts although explosives work as well as it usually.
• Barter – Useless. May help a bit in the start but later you have way too much money.
• HardA*s – The most useless from the “social”ass skills. Sometimes it can help, but the chance of that is pretty much the same as the chance it's use will get you in combat. Better use Kiss or Smart ass if possible.
• Kiss A*s – Must have. Needed for a few achievements and quite a few paths on sidequests.
• Leadership – Must have. Apart from lowering the chance of your companions going rogue (acting on its own) it gives 2% accuracy per level to everyone in range.
• Outdoorsman – Used primary for avoiding encounters. Some people have mentioned that it is required to find some of the hidden caches in the game but I can’t confirm it. Not a priority at leveling.
• Perception – Must have. Used to detect traps, hidden passages, shrines, caches, bonus conversations and so on
• Smart A*s – Must have. Needed for a few achievements and quite a few paths on sidequests.
• Weaponsmithing – Must have. Biggest money maker in the game. Used in augmenting weapons making some of them really op. It is not necessary a priority to level it fast but you need it. Most of the time you will save and load while using it in order to get the part you need from the broken weapon.


- Do you know when swords became obsolete, recruits? When humanity invented gunpowder. If you think that a nuclear apocalypse changed that and charging into a line of assault rifles armed with a plank with nails have somehow gotten more effective you are up for an unpleasant surprise.

In short – melee is close to useless. There are a lot of reasons for it but the main one is that moving a character or two into the enemy line of life usually get them focused and killed by the NPC’s who are a behind. Also Heavy armor slows you down and there are actually NPC’s who does more damage to you.

• Assault Rifles – The bread and the butter of this game. Mainly because of their burst fire which allows you to do 3 hits for a lowered hit chance. Also they have 4 modification slots which allow you to turn an assault rifle into a 40 meter burst sniper. Very good armor penetration as well.
• Bladed Weapons – Melee. Useless.
• Blunt Weapons – Melee. Useless.
• Brawling – Melee. Useless.
• Energy Weapons – Energy weapons do more damage to armored enemies. In the beginning those are rare and at the end of the game the assault rifles usually outdamage energy weapons. Only exception is the Gamma Ray Blaster which is a unique weapon (there is only 1 of those). So it is good to have one guy with high Energy weapons but don’t start leveling the skill from the start. Also Energy weapons does not crit
• Handguns – Good old pistols - nice critical chance and hit chance, relatively low damage. Low armor penetration.
• Heavy Weapons – Very heavy, cannot be modified, uses a lot of ammo (same type as Assault Rifles), jam often and do less damage than Assault Rifles. Don’t take it. Despite what it says you don’t need this skill to use explosives.
• Shotguns – Shotguns are decent to finishing low level clustered mobs but even than you are usually out of ammo or out of range or the aoe is going to hit one of your characters as well. End game shotguns are better and do a lot of damage so I suggest having at least one guy with it (if you follow my guide this will be Scotchmo anyway)
• Sniper Rifles – Good damage but no burst fire. Good for finishing low health mobs and it doesn’t clash with Assault Rifle Ammo. Good to have one guy with it.
• Submachine Guns – Better damage than Handguns, less than Assault Rifles. Pretty useful as back up weapons on your Assault Rifle wielders for the situations when the enemies are too close to you. Submachine Guns have higher critical chance on point blank range.

To be completed...