5. Quirk Review

: your party can have up to 3 animals max, either spread out or tied to the same character. Of course, with this quirk you want to focus them so you gain 3 extra ability points. Generally, those will be either Goats or Cows as they give the best stats. Still, it's a rather mediocre option – it's not even about the scarily mysterious disadvantage, it's about Animal Whisperer being too weak in the late game. Once your enemies start using burst weapons and explosives, it becomes too hard to keep your furry friends alive. You can try this out on a long-range sniper, but even that is unlikely to have happy ending (even after the quirk buff).: great for int 1 characters. For everyone else it's harmful – they will have 2 utility skills and, without the access to the trinket boosts, will loose more skill points that they'll gain here. Dumb chars, however, tend to skip non-combat stuff altogether so they don't care as much. They also rather appreciate the initial skill-influx.: great if you weren't going to spend on the Kiss Ass/Smart Ass anyways. That way you're basically gaining 30 skillpoints for free – that's a nice bonus.: one of the top-3 ones. The mobility loss hurts, of course, but since you tend to go 8-10 speed in DC and since you mostly wear light armor, it's not the end of the world. You don't use this with melee/shotguns/submachines/handguns, obviously, but for the other stuff it's ok. The gains are very big, however – it's like +4 Coordination, only this can stack with the high coordination, opening up previously unavailable AP sweet spots.: meh. So at level 10 you lose those 9 skillpoints, at level 19 you regain them back then, at the end of the game, you have about 20 bonus skill points. It's not horrible but it's also nothing that cool – you're really hungry for the skills in the early game (where this skill cripples you), later on they stop being as crucial and that's when the bonus actually kicks in. Not the best timing ever.: it was nerfed, but it didn't make it bad - it was broken, now it's good. It's still +1,25 AP and +1,5 Initiative & lots of smaller bonuses without real penalties. There's a simple solution to its flaw. The disadvantage works only when you're actually odd-leveled – not when you have enough xp to level up. So you delay reporting to the citadel until it makes you even leveled. So instead of progressing 2-3-4 and so on, you go 2-4-6. First couple of levels are a bit difficult because of this delay (I suggest grinding some easy raiders in the desert so you start AG/Highpool as level 4), but after that it becomes ok. Still really competitive. Mind you that you want either all or none of these in the squad.: the enemies don't crit you that often, the chance to faint is crappy and skipping your turn sucks. Avoid this.: the worst one in the bunch. All melee weapons gain a big part of their damage from their criticals. Yes, even the blunts who don't seem like they crit often will eventually have about 33% crit chance. Ruining those crits for the sake of measly 15% damage is absolutely not worth it. It just ruins your character.: it's too lolrandom and can't be controlled. You can try theknife build with it as it gains the most and suffers the least (knives, thanks to their low AP attacks, are not vulnerable to sudden AP losses & gains), but it's still really random.: nice for a healer, though the healing packs are only scarce in the beginning of the game. After that, they're not as important. And, well, don't forget to have a secondary healer in your party.: decent on a relatively low Initiative, high AP character with low-AP cost weapon. I guess bladed is the only school that really fits the bill. So the rest of your crew softens enemies up and this guy executes them. After the buff, this got really good.: burst weapons galore! Yeah, every shot in the burst counts, so one heavy gun burst can give you up to 14% criticals. Submachines will also work nicely, but heavies are ideal here. You really want to invest in your weapon skill rapidly (to compensate for the basic penalty). Having high Coordination and some good Leadership bonus is also a must.: it's for the cover-abusing build. Sit in cover, have Turtle perk, 10 Speed and this – 75% evasion in total. Obviously, you want some long-ranged weapon for this. Also, many people hate this quirk because your character becomes a clown. Literally.: use it with weapon schools that naturally provide few criticals. Energo, Shotguns, Heavy Guns – that's the choice here. Also, you want your character to be slightly tanky and armored so he's not devastated by said critical. And high sweet spot is preferable here so your power turn lasts as long as possible.: the last of the power-3. If you don't know, armor works simply – if armor is bigger than armor penetration (if and only – high penetration doesn't give extra damage), then penetration number gets divided by it and that's the damage multiplier. So penetration 5 vs armor 7 is 5/7=0.71. That's 71% of damage being dealt. Now armor bonus here doesn't scale equally – it gets diminished a bit because, say, 3/5=0.6, but 7/9=0.77. The later it goes, the less you get. But even 23% of extra survivability is a very solid amount. And 30% combat speed loss is not as noticeable when you have 8-10 Speed in your entire party.: makes your close combat specialists really, really fast. I don't like it that much, however – with 10 speed, you already have insanely high speed so this is an overkill. Not to mention that the main advantage of the melee fighters are precise strikes and they hate this accuracy penalty.: horrible. Most combats last much longer than 2 rounds (at least on challenging difficulties) so you will be losing much, much more than you're gaining. Not to mention that this thing totally screws with your AP sweet spots. Avoid at all cost.: generally this is bad. With 7 rangers in your squad, you often outnumber your foes. At best, you're even with them, so this thing hurts you as much as them and can't be really controlled. The only use for it is the singleton run (the ture singleton – without a squad). There you can try it with 10 speed character – just run around the map until lighting kills them all (it hits for the 75% of their health). Mind you, I've tested it and it's really, really tedious. So be prepared for some endurance runs.: similar to the Repressed Rage, but easier to activate. You go with the same 3 weapon schools. The loss of the speed is fixed with Speed 10 as usual. And, well, your damage output under the squeezing becomes insane. I guess you craft your sweet spot around the drunken state so if its 12, for example, your base one needs to be 9. You also go Highpool and avoid Scotchmo – that maximizes your booze amount. Squeezins are not infinite, mind you, but there's enough of them for the major combats. And you should never have more than 1 combat alcoholic in your party.