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[NullForceOmega]

I really like this game, but I am so very bad at it.  Any recommendations for someone who hasn't gotten past the Rust Wells, ever?

[puke]

Spend more time level grinding in safe areas?  Make a character build that better suits your play style?

Praetor with 2H sword is a straightforward and solid build that should take you pretty far as long as you don't get too reckless.

[NullForceOmega]

I need some basic help here, I don't know what stat distributions are good for anything (I get that you want high stats in your primary areas, but I'm not seeing how to balance them so I'm not ruining my survivability.)  I don't have any kind of clear idea what skills are useful early on vs. late game.  There is just a vast amount of information that I am not in possession of, and I'm not very good at roguelikes in the first place.

I've had a few characters make it through the Wells themselves, gathering the 200' of wire.  But by the time I get out, I've so badly depleted my supplies that whatever engages me next kills me.

As for builds, I've got a physical mutant who either succeeds wildly, or gets wiped in moments.  A true man tinkerer, who reliably gets to the bottom of the Wells and dies.  And a mental mutant who has thus far completely failed at basic survival.

I'm not even sure what is supposed to be safe to fight, snapjaw scavengers are obviously easy pickings, but hunters are not, and brutes can pretty easily crush me, bears tear me to pieces, chameleons are really dangerous, giant amoeba are either very easy or very deadly.  I worry about picking fights with the neutral creatures because I have no idea what they are capable of.  Plants are the most confusing, as they either deal next to no damage and die easily, or suddenly take me from fifty hitpoints to nothing from a couple stupid seeds.

[puke]

physical mutant who either succeeds wildly, or gets wiped in moments. 

Ha!  Sounds like you're doing it right, that's pretty much what those do.

A true man tinkerer, who reliably gets to the bottom of the Wells and dies. 

This was my favorite build when I started, and ill be honest:  they suck.

now that turrets are reusable, they are a bit more viable.  But it is a very slow and cautious play style.

can't speak for the mental mutant,  way too many possibilities there.

What supplies are you running out of?  Are you not able to eat enough bodies of monsters to keep from starving? Are you running out of bandages?

You can just rest instead of using bandages, but that stresses your food supply further.

Extinguish torches when not in use, and they should last basically forever.  I usually find them faster than I use them, unless I accidentally rest with one lit or have it lit for overworld travel or daytime.

There are some survival and butchery skills that seem like a good idea early on, but I usually wait until I have a bit of combat specialization first.

You can make a short blade monster by doubling down on agility and not worrying about strength.  Otherwise, strength is king for melee fighters.

[NullForceOmega]

The biggest problem is that I get pulled into fights I can't escape from, so I end up using meds (salve, bandages), then I get pulled into more fights, rinse repeat, and eventually I'm no longer able to survive the encounter due to attrition.  I know that I can just wait outside of combat and heal, and if I'm lucky backpedal long enough to regain some HP while fighting, but it doesn't always work, and I end up dead.

I haven't had any problems with food or light, those are fairly easy to deal with.  Hell, I've never lasted long enough to run out of water.

I have a penchant for balanced 'no weakness' builds which is probably causing part of my problem, I don't like negative modifiers, but I probably need to give something up in order to be more robust.

[puke]

yeah, take the weaknesses.  Your tinker is full of them, so instead of trying to compensate for it just dump the places he is already weak and double down on the places he is strong.

make up for it by having an opposite character build (your phys mutant, for example), and enjoy both play styles at different times.

The strongest armors have dodge penalties.  make a heavy hitter that sacrifices range and dodge.  make another character that goes the other way -- cant hit hard and no heavy armor, so needs to dodge and needs to find alternate methods of penetrating armor.

If you're not having a problem with food, then dont hesitate to bail out back to town and sell loot / buy bandages.  play slower.

You say you're not a big roguelike player, but I'll make a nethack analogy anyway:  nethack is widely considered to be a hard game.  I have never won it myself.  The truth is different -- it is NOT a hard game.  it is a game that requires very methodical and careful play.  The only time you lose, is when you get in a hurry and start taking shortcuts.  Often it happens after you start to get stronger, because you get cocky and start getting lazy.

Qud isnt exactly the same, but it is similar.  You need to play carefully and methodically, especially if you are not using a brutal melee build.  There is a story a few posts up from somebody with a super strong character that got wiped by chute crabs.  because he got cocky and cut corners.

play methodically.  take the trip back to town when your supplies are running low.  dont engage that thing that looks risky.  Getting too deep and dangerous in the rustwell?  there are THREE of them, just start over on level 1 of a different well.

Have you done the "whats eating the watervine" quest?  I'm not sure if that one is easier or harder than the rustwell, but I usually do it first.  it is fairly similar

[puke]

Someone else can probably do a little better, but take a look at character build code AGSMOKOG

it is a basic strength focused praetorian, you can start putting skill points into Long Blades, or Axe, depending on which skill tree looks cooler to you.

One of the builds I personally enjoy (though it has been nerfed a bit) is the multi-limbed physical mutant with short blades (edit:  BBDWMMMEAAU1BNB2):

Put everything into agility, dump strength.  Get "Shank", "Juke", "Pointed Circle", "Tumble", in that order.  Work "Jab" in there somewhere, whenever you feel like it, as well as advancing the Dual Wield tree.

As you can see, this is pretty demanding and takes a while to get good because of all the skills involved.  Also, requires a little maneuvering in combat as you need to manage your juke cooldown and cant really fight high armor things until you find some other way to crack them.   (edit:  i think the extra arms may not give skill based extra attacks any more -- only extra attacks from the mutation its self -- so this build might not be as functional as it used to be)

The Praetor on the other hand, you can just bump into shit until it dies.  rinse, repeat.

EDIT:  see paranthetical edits above

[Edmus]

Puke's got good advice. I prefer the high agility builds, myself. A Eunuch True Kin is pretty easy if you race for rejoinder in the skills.
Always try to have 18 toughness, as it's not a stat you should dump.
Also, sometimes fighting is a bad idea, in those situations you will want to run away using your sprint ability. It's very powerful, and if you can work in some clever movement and some disposables it can get you out of most binds. Either to lick your wounds to reengage, or just to live to fight another day.

edit:
This was my last successful build, which got me to the end of the game's main story content for the first time.
AHKUMMKK
It doesn't have any dump stats either, so it's pretty manageable early game before you get to the levels that give +1 to all your stats.
Your pistol is your main penetration weapon at the start of the game, but pistols are a weak weapon type, so don't sink more skill points into it unless you love the gunslinger aesthetic (I always sink my points  )
Daggers and knives quickly out perform it in damage output. You'll want to switch to a carbine or rifle of some kind if you can eventually.

[puke]

I haven't thought about Qud character builds in a while, but now I want to make a "drummer" that dual wields blunt and focuses on stun-locking.  Needs both Str and Agi though, so could be even harder to get started.

figure a starting +4 strength, you'd have 10% to bludgeon on each attack (attack, not hit?) and additional 6% to clobber with stacking penalties. 

Once you stun something large, switch over to a 2H blunt (which have the best penetration in the game) and crack it open.

edit: Haha!  BCSLKKOEBEBJBNBPBUB1CC  this build is not great starting out. 

editedit:  BCQLMMOEBEBJBNBQCC still not great but traded fur and chimera for phasing.  I thought fur was doubling down on ape relations, but realized greybeard gave bonus to bears, not apes.  has enough powers to increase that adding random new ones is not that useful (unless save scumming) so figured chimera was a waste.

[beorn080]

Chimera is a very poor choice in the mutation list. All it does is lock you into physical mutations when getting a random one, which odds are you're never going to do due to how mutation point hungry physical muts are. I think it might her interesting to give it a random mutation effect. Random thought, every level 1/3 chance of nothing, 1/3 chance of an extra mp, 1/3 chance of unstable genome style mutation for a physical one.

[puke]

Chimera is a very poor choice in the mutation list. All it does is lock you into physical mutations when getting a random one

well, consider that you might want additional mutations and you've dumped ego.  chimera isnt a bad choice in this case, especially if you've taken "unstable".

if you have gone heavy on ego, you probably want to pick esper so that you best take advantage of it.  dont want to waste mutation slots on things that dont get your best stat bonus.

I think the only reason not to take one or the other, is if you're absolutely certain you have enough mutations and you'll never want another one.

I'm not an expert though and, like you say, it is pretty easy to make a starting build that will never need additional mutations.

So far, I have gotten absolutely nowhere with my greybeard "drummer".  I've hit about level 3, usually die to something stupid.  Even tried robbing Joppa once to get a little better starting gear.  Didn't help.

I think if I can play cautious until about level 10, he will be a contender.  But man it is a serious challenge getting anywhere near that.

[beorn080]

Chimera is a very poor choice in the mutation list. All it does is lock you into physical mutations when getting a random one

well, consider that you might want additional mutations and you've dumped ego.  chimera isnt a bad choice in this case, especially if you've taken "unstable".

if you have gone heavy on ego, you probably want to pick esper so that you best take advantage of it.  dont want to waste mutation slots on things that dont get your best stat bonus.

I think the only reason not to take one or the other, is if you're absolutely certain you have enough mutations and you'll never want another one.

I'm not an expert though and, like you say, it is pretty easy to make a starting build that will never need additional mutations.

So far, I have gotten absolutely nowhere with my greybeard "drummer".  I've hit about level 3, usually die to something stupid.  Even tried robbing Joppa once to get a little better starting gear.  Didn't help.

I think if I can play cautious until about level 10, he will be a contender.  But man it is a serious challenge getting anywhere near that.

The issue is not deciding to never want a new mutation. Its that physical mutations take a lot of MP to build up. If you get three that can be powered up, that's 27MP to max them. Which is a bit over 23ish levels. Its true that you don't need to max them, but its very worthwhile, especially any mutation that takes up a slot. On the Esper side, the bonus levels you get from ego means you can effectively get an extra mutation even with just a +! to ego, if you have three mutations.

As to help the drummer, I recommend seeking out the Strange Glowpad in the watervine swamps around Joppa, while killing any glowfish or crocodile you find and ignoring glowpads. The Strange Glowpad is usually in a box 5 wide and 3 tall of world zones centered on Joppa, in the Salt Marsh. You can also stumble across some Bloody Remains that contain at least one exceedingly useful artifact. Bring trade goods for the Strange Glowpad, and get the Joppa and Gritgate recoilers, which will let you go rob Grit Gate's EXCEEDINGLY useful treasure stocks.

[Frank2368]

physical mutant who either succeeds wildly, or gets wiped in moments. 

Ha!  Sounds like you're doing it right, that's pretty much what those do.

A true man tinkerer, who reliably gets to the bottom of the Wells and dies. 

This was my favorite build when I started, and ill be honest:  they suck.

now that turrets are reusable, they are a bit more viable.  But it is a very slow and cautious play style.

can't speak for the mental mutant,  way too many possibilities there.

What supplies are you running out of?  Are you not able to eat enough bodies of monsters to keep from starving? Are you running out of bandages?

You can just rest instead of using bandages, but that stresses your food supply further.

Extinguish torches when not in use, and they should last basically forever.  I usually find them faster than I use them, unless I accidentally rest with one lit or have it lit for overworld travel or daytime.

There are some survival and butchery skills that seem like a good idea early on, but I usually wait until I have a bit of combat specialization first.

You can make a short blade monster by doubling down on agility and not worrying about strength.  Otherwise, strength is king for melee fighters.

Wait how do I reuse a turret?

[puke]

Wait how do I reuse a turret?

Okay, I could have sworn that this was something I read could be done in the change log, but I can't find it now and can't find any way to do it in the game.

Guess I was wrong 

[Aoi]

I like using Burning Hands, Wings, and Carapace. The former two means you can kill most things on the surface easily, including wandering traders (eventually), and Carapace will help keep you alive when wings fail, or you're indoors, until you have good non-burning hands offensive capabilities. And the heat resistance will keep you from setting yourself aflame constantly.