In this post I'll be introducing my underlings NPCs devoted to the rebuilding of human civilization.
Part I is available here.
NOTE: If some pictures are too small, open image in new tab to see the full size.
Some of these screenshots I only took now, so their skills are already boosted to high levels of competency. So when I talk about how bad their skills are, know that I was talking about pre-textbook levels. Just focus on their traits and stats in the picture.
Here's the background. The "mundane" scenario starts you off in an abandoned evacuation shelter, possibly with one NPC. There is a console that will direct you to a populated refugee center on the map, where survivors have set up a fortified camp and basic means of commerce.
To expand on this, each large "overmap" tile is comprised of 180x180 smaller tiles. One of the small tiles contains a specific location, whether it be a building, road, river, forest, etc.
Each overmap has special generation for "unique" locations to make sure they stay rare. It's possible for some unique locations to not even spawn in the overmap, so your best bet is to travel to the next overmap and hope map generation RNG is kind to you. Overmaps will always have one refugee center.
Once you reach the refugee center, you can find beggars in the lobby denied entry into the main group.
And onto the introductions!
Here is the list of my current followers. They're ordered by hire time with one exception, top NPC being hired the earliest. The exception is the beggar group, they joined after I already got Orville Goff.
Floretta Stahl (refugee center merc)
My first hire. She's the merc for hire available in the first refugee center. It looks like each refugee center has a merc available so you can get a guaranteed NPC with decent gear for the right price. The mercs come with guns and ok firearm skills.
They're also extremely expensive to hire, 750 Merch (the refugee center scrip). You can slowly accumulate Merch by dropping off long shelf life goods like smoked meat, dehydrated vegetables, cornmeal, flour, salt, etc. Once you have a good farm or hunting setup, it's only a matter of transporting everything for dropoff.
The beggars
Brandon Garder
I don't think there's a single NPC in my list as useless as Garder. You can see his awful traits and stats for yourself. 2 perception. The baseline stat numbers are 8 for everything.
His biggest problem, for reasons I can't figure out yet, is that I've grinded him up to decent skill levels now (beyond this screenshot), but he is incapable of picking up any tools and doing work. So his only function in the camp is sorting out loot or the "disappear from world and reappear in a few days" crafting or foraging missions. Really hurts that he can't chop trees or cut logs, but at least the base missions are purely skill level checks, and there's a designated warm body to sort loot.
Luo Meizhen
Proof that being an academic doctorate won't help you in a post-apocalyptic world. I remember that most of her skills were 0 during recruitment. After grinding her skills up, she's pretty good around the base doing almost anything.
Reena Sandhu
She's the NPC running around with the blue blanket wrapped around her. You can see her in the first post's screenshots and the second refugee center's lobby in this post. Initially near Garder's level of uselessness, because her trait makes her mood constantly fluctuate. At early points of the beggar skill grind, she fell behind because she was "too sad" to join a group textbook read-along session. I almost couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that status (too bad I don't have a screenshot of this).
Since joining the camp, it seems like her mood has mostly stabilized...? I just left her to read by herself and grind skills. I think she's also incapable of picking up tools and doing work just like Garder.
Stacey Templeton
A merc I found from the commune ranch's bar. After doing a few quests given by an Old Guard representative in the refugee center (Old Guard claim to be members of the old government and military before the Cataclysm hit) you'll be directed to a commune ranch to further help civilization rebuild.
He took whatever Merch I had after hiring Floretta. I usually send him off to cut logs.
Orville Goff
The strange lactose intolerant pizzaolo I talked about in the first post. His questline is to commit arson and murder on the people who've allegedly wronged him.
A really irritating but hilariously contrived situation came up when I was doing the initial read-alongs with Floretta, Stacey, and Orville. Floretta and Stacey have Slow Reader, and Orville has Fast Reader. (I guess as static NPCs, the mercs have the exact same range of stats and traits.) From level 0 of the exact same skill, Orville leveled more quickly. This was a nightmare when Orville could no longer learn from the book I was still reading to other two, but I couldn't switch to another book because it'd be too advanced for them understand. Random acts of unintentional RNG cruelty.
Rescued prototype cyborgs
I've already talked about where the prototype cyborgs came from in the first post.
Their skill and stat spreads are much better than the beggars', but most of them aren't too relevant for base building. Not much else to say about them specifically, besides that I removed all their bad bionics and now they're quite self-sufficient.
The only standout cyborg is MVP of the entire camp. Hermina Farias started with marksmanship of 6. This is actually extremely lucky and impressive, because the best textbook can only bring marksmanship up to 3. It's one of the few skills that can't be grinded from textbooks. The only way to train this skill further is just using ranged weapons like bows or firearms a lot. For reference, my marksmanship is still 5, 31% to 6. It takes a very very long time to train.
Hermina's marksmanship turned from "doubt I'll use you in combat but cool" into the most important skill in camp thanks to the "Hunting Large Game" base mission. I didn't even know hunting was dependent on marksmanship until I saw the description.
The first time I sent her out, she was hunting for a week. It looks like every 6 hours there's a roll for what kind of corpse is added to the final loot pool. She came back with some disgusting, disgusting game.
First of all, it is absolutely broken that NPCs can produce game from thin air. Cows are too rare in the wild and valuable for infinite milk so you should never butcher any you find. But magically generated ones like these, huge haul.
(Some corpses are highlighted in yellow because if they're not pulped, they will revive as zombie versions after a day or so. Pulping or damaging corpses will reduce yield, so those meant for the butcher rack should be kept in pristine condition.)
If you're wondering what sweetbread is, no, it is not sweet bread. When I initially saw it I was confused. So was my sister. But it is, in fact, a legitimate meat term.
How much food did that week of hunting yield?
Good job, Hermina. A week brought back over 2 seasons and a half worth of calories. Disgusting. To be fair, you absolutely can't count on every haul to yield jackpots like cows, moose, and bears, but when they show up, they singlehandedly make up for a dozen other mediocre hauls and set the camp food supply ahead by months.
Ben "Hunger" Bynum
There's a radio tower you can build, which adds a base function to recruit NPCs generated from thin air.
Recruiting takes 4 days and your NPC might find no one, find someone who wasn't interested in joining, or find someone who's willing to hear a recruitment offer.
Ben is the first recruit. This dude lives up to his nickname, hungry, and not much good for anything else. Literally only skill level is in social which is useless. Everything else is 0, unbelievable. Still, I wanted to recruit him – a warm body is a warm body – so I increased the amount of food I was willing to take out of camp supply to give to him. I upped the food offer so recruit chance was 100%, and boom, new follower. Not much else to say about him, he's still grinding skill levels.
Vincent Lu
After getting Ben, Floretta had 2-3 more failed recruitment attempts before the next prospect showed up. After Ben's unimpressive abilities, I was not holding my breath when Floretta came back with a Vincent Lu who wants to hear my offer.
And then I saw his overview window.
Never increased the food offer to 100% recruit chance so fast in my life. Those stats, while not great for base building, are actually crazy. He also started with a computer book or two in his inventory. Too bad he's not wearing a Linux tshirt or it would've been near perfect. Yes, Linux tshirts are specific clothing that exist in the game.
Dell Vasquez
My latest recruitment. After a meh Ben and a nerd, I wasn't sure what to expect.
After the nerd, we have a literal dumbass on our hands. But that 8 social though, wtf. Clearly a dumbass who learned that she wasn't getting through life with her brains, so she learned to rely on other people and train her outdoor survival skills. Stat spread is awful but oh boy are her skills top notch. Too bad the 8 is in social. (Marksmanship?? Please??)
So she joins.
It's a little odd she's overburdened, but ok, let's see what she has, unload the unnecessary junk, give her a better backpack, the usual procedure for new followers.
Let's see what she's carr-
I don't have screenshots of the next page of her inventory, but it was another half page of fuses in plastic bags. All the ingredients needed to make more explosives.
That 2 intelligence really does not tell the whole story.
just wat
Special mention to that AAA Guide. No points for guessing which version she had in her bag.
That's it for now. Next post, I'll try to show the base building progression and some day to day activities around the camp.