1. Ranged is incredibly gimped by the low range of the bows, AND the need to distance from enemy for making some attacks (such as the first tier precision special attack, at least). This basically removes the main tactical advantage of ranged weaponry (range, duh) and makes ranged units constantly waste stamina on either advancing or retreating from enemy. Compare e.g. with Baldur's Gate 1/2, when bows could snipe across the screen. In any case, a bow that literally shoots for only 14 steps makes zero sense.

2. For the same reason as above, stealth doesn't do much good, either. What's the point of "sneaking up", when all you do is either engage in melee anyway, or make one ranged attack from virtually point-blank range with a meagre bonus (+1 damage at 50 Stealth skill).

3. There are not enough Traits (Distinctions), and some of the existing ones make no sense or are needlessly opaque. Like for example losing your helmet slot because you have good eyesight? How does that make sense? And considering you cannot know what kind of helmets will there be in the game, how can a player even consider if this Distinction is worth it, or if it will gimp their character?

4. Some skills can be used by companions, but not others. E.g. companions can use lockpicking, which means the player doesn't need to invest in this skill because it can be covered by a companion. (But this is unknown to new players.) However, dialogue skills and Outdoorsmanship cannot be used by companions (which is also unknown to new players.)

And this is just off the top of my head. Plenty of other issues too. The game's fundamentals clearly need polish.

So basically what's exactly the current dump stat?

Endurance is what I have been dumping. It doesn't interact with enough skills to be super relevant and the HP per level loss is easily compensated for with gear, defensive skills or the sole survivor trait.

Originally posted by LArc7thHeaven:

So basically what's exactly the current dump stat?

Luck, since it gives a small bonus to everything, which is worse than a bigger bonus to things you will actually use, and its special stats are nothing much.

I'd also say Personality, but unfortunately with the way this game uses dialogue skills and Haggling, only the protagonist can invest in them and the thresholds for being useful are pretty high. So while you can dump Personality, that effectively means not using dialogue skills and losing a whole lot of money in trade.

All other stats are important one way or the other. As much as I love minmaxing, this game just doesn't seem to be built for it - even combat-wise too many important secondary stats (like Actions Points/Stamina, Initiative, damage bonus, damage resistance, etc.) are spread across various primary stats.

The better approach is to search for the most efficient "watershed" levels of a stat. E.g. Endurance gives a maximum of +3 Stamina and +3 Damage Threshold at 9, so there's very little sense in bringing it up to 11. Strength, however, adds an extra point of damage at 11 (apart from other bonuses), so might be worth maxing.

I am also usually inclined to max Intelligence for the skill points, but this benefit will only show after multiple levels, and its big bonus to Crafting is wasted now since Crafting sucks so far.

A few patches ago I had a pretty tight combat-focused build where I dumped Luck, Personality and Intelligence, getting 11 Strength (max damage bonus), 9 Endurance (max damage threshold), 9 Dexterity (together with STR and END = max Stamina) and 9 Awareness. This build allowed me to get either Blades or Martial Arts to 90 at level 1, high Initiative so I nearly always went first in a round, and 30 Stamina for five dagger strikes per round. I had a pretty easy time clearing the first few maps. Used a knife for maximum number of attacks, leveraging the damage bonus from Strength. But it wasn't much use for anything except combat; no dialogue checks (except Intimidation, which I had at a hefty 61 at level 1), no thieving skills, etc. Still, it felt pretty good being competent at combat from the get-go.

Of course, in the full game when you're going to level up a lot the low intelligence will come back to bite you; but most of the time in an RPG, the earliest levels are the toughest, so if you want to have an easier time with combat, you can do this build.

Originally posted by Jale:

Endurance is what I have been dumping. It doesn't interact with enough skills to be super relevant and the HP per level loss is easily compensated for with gear, defensive skills or the sole survivor trait.

Sole Survivor absolutely sucks. With 4 or 5 companions, you'll be losing so much party HP and combat efficiency that SS's meagre bonuses will never compensate. And playing the game solo will be brutal at early levels, especially if you invest in dialogue skills/Haggling (only protagonist can).

Good gear is rare/hard to come by. And combat is pretty brutal at early levels that every bit counts.

Endurance gives a number of very useful things:

1. Stamina (i.e. Action Points) - only Endurance, Strength and Dexterity give it. Very important for combat
2. Damage Threshold (unique)
3. HP bonus (duh)
4. Weapon skill bonuses (Axes/Blunt actually stacks with bonus from STR, letting you double-dip)
5. Outdoorsmanship (only player skill is accounted for)

Overall, it's among the better stats in game, I think.

I ditch luck basically to 1, and put strength to 5, just enough to fight without the damage bonus and pump the rest. Endurance is important i think because devs change the system from AP to stamina which means more stamina is more attack per turn. What i'm surprised is you can't neglect personality in this game and missing personality check means lots of missing xp and the economy in this game s*ckd*ck and i think for gear you need to resort to crafting, also i like the crafting part, remind me of good ol' DOS 1 where you can craft a sword/axe.

Alright to for sharing some of my experience:
Stats:
Strength: 5/6
Reason: Just enough, melee damage bonus not that important, HP growth is subset by increasing our Endurance stat and through underarmor

Attention: 6/7
Reason: Usual attention check needs at least 6 but more won't hurt but no need to pump it further, it seems affecting ranged combat accuracy more the higher the number is.

Endurance: min 6
Reason: You want that sweet 2 damage threshold (DT) for starter because you need everything that reduce damage and the bigger they're the better

Personality: 7
Reason: Lots of personality check in this game and lots of mini xp from asking people names and lots of opportunity opened through personality check so keep this at least 7

Intelligence: 6/7
Reason: More numbers mean more skill points per level BUT the number points increased is pathetic (only 1). Keep it 6 or 7 for more intelligence dialogue option to appear/pass the intelligence dialogue check

Dexterity: min 7, pump for more
Reason: For melee character it contribute to higher accuracy somewhat but still it depends more on your specific weapon skill but still you need high accuracy or you'll ended up missing attack A LOT and that's never good. Higher initiative won't hurt and forget about dodge, just wear heavier armor and put on shield. High DT + Heavy armor DT + Shield and you can facetank all kind of enemy the game throw at you

Luck: 1
Reason: Your dump stat. Dodge is useless, armor piercing (critical in this game) is meh/okay at best but you can subset crit with spear that grants you more armor piercing. it adding +1 to all skills but you really want to focus on certain skills instead spreading them

How you want to build your character? You only need to focus on combat and "face" so pump that weapon skills and if you can get at least 70 for nice base accuracy vs the lizard in the beach and persuasion. Why persuasion? It's more or less your "good" dialogue option and yes there are other but persuasion is the most useful if you want less bloodshed. Forget crafting, pickpocket, stealth, medicine, that's your companion job not yours. Outdoorsman is pretty meh so far, reduce attack chance on world map? When you can facetank enemy just kill them, hunting? WTF are you doing man, when you first out from the village you should've had enough ration for days.

Now to distinction. most of them were nice flavour BUT the most useful i found is heavy handed and fortunate fate. Heavy handed add points to your combat skill making you can hit enemy more accurate but reduce your life skill which as i mentioned above useless for you aside some pretty meh check (repair bridge, build campfire). Fortunate fate add large amount of points to bluff and haggling, while +1 luck is bad, the points to bluff and haggling will help you pocketing some more cash by getting discount and sold loot at higher price. Also for devs, some distinctions cuts your carry weight and you're not mentioning on the tool tip.

Best background in my exp. is noble because of fiona with ranged option. Mandatory combat skill for her is bow skill "bullseye". Why? You love to fight bees with 50% or less accuracy and see dodged every single time? Then sneak around and use bullseye on them and keep her on crossbow path for dealing with enemy since it produce better damage number vs stamina spent.

Now to weapon, you can pick anything as long as you can pump the skill numbers BUT for me personally the best weapon is the one that can gives enemy knock out effect, because 1 enemy knocked out means 1 less enemy attacking you and the biggest pro is 100% accuracy means you can't miss and your companion which isn't the best hitter can hit them, so every advantage for your friend hitting them is making combat finish faster

Both dexterity and attention contribute to melee accuracy in a big way. Of the two i find attention more useful because only the main character can do attention checks to find hidden loot or in dialogue.

The least useful stat i feel is strength followed by luck, because they are rarely used in dialogue, doesn't add to accuracy and melee damage / dodge / armor pen isn't important.

The best "combat stat" so far is endurance because DR is very important.

Both intelligence and personality feels really important in terms of dialog options, but I've never tried to dump these stats.

The good skills are persuasion and haggle, followed by bluff and outdoorsman for the carry weight. Intimidation seems to often produce bad outcomes. Haggle gives good dialog XP, better prices and better selection at merchants. A benchmark to aim for is 40 (for smith in first town) - 42 (innkeeper). Persuasion can be as low as 35 because you find a lot of boosts along the way.

As for backgrounds i always pick ample arbiter. I get 30 useful skill points (barter and persuasion) at the cost of 10 skill points in a combat stats. The ones that drop your outdoorsman means you lose too much carry weight.

Adventurer / Nicodemus is without a doubt the best companion. He has the highest intelligence of 8 and a special attack that heals allies for 18 HP. I use him as a skill monkey for lockpicks and crafting and on level 2 give him the spear ability that guarantees a hit. That way i don't have to invest in his martial skills.

Fiona would be the second best but she starts with a bad skill in the crossbow tree (not the knockback one) and she has a low int of 5.

The other two are useless because they are melee and also have low int.

The best way to do combat is to hit something once and run backwards, making them chase you and waste stamina. Most of the time the enemies will hit once or not at all.

Trying to "tank" enemies usually result in quick death, and that's why melee companions are bad. Main character with 6-7 DR can tank some hits but also he will die fast if surrounded, especially with low luck (high chance to get armor pierced, enemies high roll more often on damage).

As for weapons, the best is 1h sword because of parry and AOE attack. If you kill the guy on the bridge at the beginning he drops a good sword with 8-14 damage. So far the only way i found to aggro him is to fail the bluff check, meaning bluff must be below 35 to get the sword.

All in all, combat is an afterthought in this game and you don't have to engage in it if you don't like, because 95% of EXP comes from dialogue and the violent option is always much less rewarding.