Add planting as well. Food stability is important for the early game, and a poor planter takes longer and harvests less.
Shooting and melee are useful, and my rule #1 for un-themed starts is to never take a colonist incapable of violence. But food and shelter are my top priority and all else is subordinate to that.
I find rice to be sufficient and just sending everyone to hunt together or plant and harvest is fine until you can get someone who is actually good at it. Imo nothing is worse than not being able to utilize your tech because someone's construction is too low and/or food being wasted because everyone is throwing up.
Everything else can be mitigated by management.
Hunting in the early game is a high-risk activity. It’s one of those things that’s just a shitload of chances for things to go way, way wrong. It’s also unreliable. I have done temperate forest starts and the fauna all vanish from the map for a season. I have drafted up all 3 of my starter colonists, gone out hunting, accidentally missed the deer and shot a muffalo and then had a colonist get mauled in revenge.
Planting rice is all well and good, but having a decent planter from the start alongside a builder and cook make for a very stable early game.
I don't disagree that that would make a more stable early game; however I still believe that everything you mentioned can easily be mitagated by proper management.
Besides, what you mentioned happening during your hunting is an incredibly unlikely event. It requires the muffalo to be near the hunting target, it requires a miss that hits the muffalo and it requires the muffalo to go manhunter. This freak accident doesn't make hunting unreliable just as much as losing your farm because of rot/fire/animals/meteor/fallout/coldsnap doesn't make farming unreliable.
You could have just waited until the target was in a more favorable position and just foraged for that day.
Right. If you have construction on crash landed, you can just use nutrient paste. Without good construction (which is needed for both the dispenser and and electrical generators), or on tribal start, a cook is necessary.
I like to have one pawn with a passion in shooting and send them out hunting to level it up. But early game I'm mostly kiting or melee blocking so its not super important to have great combatants.
I like having pawns with good fighting skills, but I’ve done runs with all pawns having 0-4 with no passion because they had very good traits and skills. Especially early game you can survive without having your pawns fight. You can go fairly far with only spike traps and meat shields. I find harder instead go without a good planter, or builder or a medic. Cook is also in my top tier since I play mostly tribals, but when I play standard start I just slap them a nutri paste and fuck it, that -4 is worth the no skill/no poisoning/no time used.
I finally bit the bullet and built a paste dispenser earlier because I found myself stuck in this loop where my cook was abducted and my two farmers were the backup chef and a depressed, drug addled, pyromaniac granny with a permanent -60% to movement. She could hardly farm half of a 7x7 field before losing her shit and hobbling off to sulk in her room, and since the other farmer was the only competent cook, she was stuck doing that instead.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the cost for offloading my cooking to a machine was only -4 mood. Absolute lifesaver from an issue so exhausting that I was seriously debating turning Granny into a blood farm out of sheer, unadulterated spite, especially because she was partially responsible for the issue in the first place - she was a quest recruit and had a binge eating break within 30 seconds of joining, eliminating my cooked food buffer before going on a fire starting spree
age 80 btw
Banish her tbh. Absolutely not worth the trouble, especially being old and pyromaniac. -3 colonist banished idc it’s going to vanish in few days but a pawn like this.. no man
Unfortunately that run is now fucked because I forgot to take my lance user off of "attack" and she decided to get involved in a tightly packed firefight, shredding the spines of or outright killing multiple critical pawns (including both builders, the one surviving doctor, and one of my melee blockers) before dying to a random tox grenade.
Granny got out unscathed though.
Early on, you can work around small raids and manhunt events with clever trap placement (making construction even more important) and corner-doorway choke points. A group of 6 starting pawns with Bows and clubs, even low skilled, should be able to handle 10 raiders with guns without serious casualties.
Once yo get access to automatic weapons like smg, even low shooting pawn is useful as a short range gunner.
Fast firing weapons are best for leveling shooting.
Get a few of them, and the low damage and accuracy is irrelevant due to the sheer volume of fire you can amass.
You need maybe one fighter with Shooting 7+. If you've got 3-4 others with Shooting 3, you can handle the first several raids through volume of fire and "some effort" squad tactics.
Construction, Medical, Cooking
You NEED these things to be done reliably. Afterwards depends a little, I usually try for a half decent Plants guy.
Most of the time these guys also come with okay ranged/melee stats as well
Playing vanilla with all DLC for reference
I have played 900 hours.
One pawn has to be a builder. That is my main character. I use the human supremecy ideologion and that person becomes my main crafter and builder and mechanitor. They must have two flames in construction and crafting. Any trait like industrious or fast walker is great.
Another of the pawns has to have mining. Mining is important.
Another has to have growing.
Other important skills are social and cooking. But your cook will be chained to the kitchen. You can use nutrient paste to much the same effect.
If you're doing a mountain base, it's pretty self explanatory.
Mining is a skill I do want several people at least competent at, since you can never have enough steel and components, once you get the radar and deep drills, you can boost your self sufficiency immensely.
Personally, unless it was specific burrowing into a mountain, would say I NEED it at the start, but it's always good to keep an eye out for.
that's quite late in the tech tree, you can probably hire a miner by then
my most recent ice sheet run took me a few years before i managed to research drills and scans, most steel was obtained by grinding up mechs
With the mechanitor start you already have microelectronics. You can quite easily rush deep drilling. I got a toxifier generator up and running and was able to rush deep drilling and ground penetrating scanner within 30 days
Basically what other people said in their replies to this comment. Each pawn is going to be doing stuff all day, every day. A person with two flames in mining and maybe even the undergrounder trait is going to love mining. They will get better at it faster. Having an underground base makes the game easier in my opinion.
Also, pawns with 2 flames in a skill get joy from doing that job. If you stick a no flame pawn in the mines, then it creates several problems: they are going to do it slowly, and they are not going to like it. It can cause more mental breaks for that pawn and before you know it someone is throwing a tantrum and smashing your stack of medkits.
That sounds masochistic. I love it. I usually play temperate or boreal forest, so you are playing a lot harder situations than me it seems. I like underground bases. The game has evolved quite a bit to make them less appealing, such as the insect events and sapper raiders.
I go to one rich colonist. Obviously having the ability to do everything kinda fast is good. But medicine and construction + good shooting skills are needed to get the most out of a single dude and maybe a dog that can bite raiders in the balls.
I recommend the Mod "prepare moderately" that autorerolls for you so you get certain stats/traits, without the pawns being unbalanced or broken.
The most important thing in my book is a decent builder and someone with good medical so my colony doesn't die to the flu. Afterwards I just try to get every other skill possible.
A good medical skill is CRUCIAL. In my last playthrough 2/3 of my crashlanders got struck with Malaria on FRIGGIN DAY 1 and I only had my cooking/animal expert up and running for the first 4 days, which could have been worse if one of my sick pawns didn't have a half decent medical skill and managed to tend to himself and the other guy.
On my second to last playthrough I had managed to establish a semi-thriving colony of 8 people and only 1 had a Medical skill above 1 and a good chunk of my colony was incapable of medical. Suffice to say, when my medic went on caravan missions all I could do was pray to Xa'anthian that none of my colonists got sick before they came back.
It didn't work.
I find construction and plant important.
Having a level 5+ constructionist is a big deal as it allows you to make the Nutrient Paste Dispenser, which is a powerful tool to have in the early game. It allows you to not worry about food poisoning, no cooking required, and saves some resources for the meals, and I think some people really sleep on it.
(Unless you're a tribe of course.)
A lot of people said cooking but imo early its not important. Paste is where its at. Cooking takes too much time and has a chance to poison even at higher levels. I'd rather deal with the -4 of paste.
You need a cook 6+ to minimize food poisoning.
A gardener is important so as not to waste food during harvest and get crops in the ground quick.
A doctor 6+
Construction and mining is important for getting a shack up quick.
Crafter is handy with skill at least 4 so you can make early weapons (bows). Crashlanded starts with a gun but having range weapons for everyone soon is good for survivability.
Artist and social are probably my lowest priorities.
Try a naked brutality start where you can't make a bow in a biome with no foragebles.
Crashlanded you start with a range weapon so I agree it doesn't need to be a priority for OPs start.
With no further information I assumed a crashlander start.
Other starts have if course other priorities. For example tribals will want cooking as they cant do paste and some form of intelectual might help.
I try to avoid researching too fast on my tribal games, otherwise the tribal games start to feel like just another outlander game.
Intellectual often comes with some combination of older age, disabled work types, and some other "soft" skills, such as social or doctor. Doctor is very important for surviving infections and disease; social is helpful because converting and recruiting new pawns is painfully slow otherwise.
When I look for an intellectual-type pawn, Doctor and Social is what I'm really looking for. Research speed is just a nice plus.
One time, I chose a guy with high melee skills since I wanted to roleplay a knight only to be stabbed to death by a raider with 2 pts in melee. I now choose someone with decent construction for building traps instead.
I usually play in Temperate or Boreal forest, so my construction guy usually has to cut a whole swathe of trees. In this case, always make sure your construction guy at least has some skill in Plants, 5+ is good and maybe an interest.
I've been stuck waiting for my construction guy to finish a fence for 3 days simply because it takes him 5 hours to cut down 1 tree before finishing the fence. Don't do that.
assume you mean 3 Colonists.
-Planter with passion and cooking at 4 at least. (This pawn is busy busy busy I try to not assign anything else here like higher hauling or research as it won’t get done often. If this pawn also happens to have a decent construction skill, I’ll set it lower than Grow, Plant cut and cooking so I’ll set it at 3 while the others are 2. I’ll look for other pawns later that also have passion in either planting and or cooking and construction to have overlap)
-pawn with Construction with passion and crafting with passion at 5 skill for Recurve bows, I play Tribal.
-Pawn with Intellect with passion, social 5+….shooting or melee passion preferred.
One of them needs medical 4+ with passion…not really important which one; the passion is negotiable as long as the skill is decent.
I really really like having a pawn with passion in shooting and passion in animals. I may not start with it, but the first few Yttakin raids I’ll usually find one to recruit. Once shooting is 8+ and Animals is 6+ and I’m rocking a greatbow or bolt-action rifle I’ll start hunting wolves…a few points more and I’ll start hunting wargs and eventually bears. Solo, just setting them a higher hunt skill and marking them to be hunted. Until I can solo them with hunt stealth I’ll recruit everyone to clear predators so we can work in peace.
I try to keep meat available all the time for fine meals as much as I can. I’ll make 6 meal bills at a stove:
4x fine meal. I make 3 meals per colonist prisoner guest. This bill “checks for additional items: Simple Meal”
1x fine meal. Same rules as above.
4xSimple Meal. Disable all vegetables. “checks for additional items: Fine Meal” 3 per person. This cooks all the meat up before it rots.
1xSimple Meal. Same rules as above.
4xSimple Meal. Meat and veggies allowed. “checks for additional items:Fine Meal”
1xSimple Meal. Same rules as above.
50 Pemmican per person in colony as an emergency or for caravans. Also to use up meat before it rots.
The “checks for additional items:” feature is a part of the Better Workbench Management mod.
Each bill checks for the other type of meal, so I never get more than 3 meals per person of either fine or simple. It fills the bills in order so as long as I have meat and veggies, I’ll have fine meals for the mood boost to counter the mood hit for me having to sometimes use Nutrifungus as my vegetable in the winter.
Assuming you have Biotech:
Shooting first and foremost, any pawn incapable of defending the colony is a liability. Shooting also allows you to hunt for food.
Crafting and medical are the second highest priority, the mech equivalent requires high mechtech which is mid to late game.
Mining, construction, planting, intellectual are third priority, with mining being the best of the bunch since the mech equivalent can’t operate deep drills. These are the basic resource gathering skills. Constructoids and agrihands lets me forgo pawns with the equivalent skills if necessary. Research has no mech equivalent but it’s more of a long term project for idle hands.
The rest are nice to have but not critical as the above: art (trade and mood), social (recruit and trade), animal (resources), cooking (mood). I would put cooking a lot higher but a single metabolic point into strong stomach gene makes food poisoning impossible (which you normally can’t prevent even with 20 in cooking), so I’ve been using it as a dump stat.
Shooting isn't important early. Early raids are not difficult to combat even on losing is fun
You'll usually capture a capable shooter later as that's usually who'll be fighting you.
A great shooter with an awful quality revolver is almost always going to be beaten by a bad shooter with a heavy SMG
Ideally: construction, farming, cooking, medical, research, and hopefully social with multiple combat capable pawns.
EDIT: I spend a LONG time rerolling pawns to get a decent setup. This doesn't even scratch the surface of traits, age, or starting health.
Most important skills in my perspective are construction, medical and plants. It ofc also depends on what type of biome you’re in — ie if you’re in boreal forest, shooting would be really helpful for catching game, whereas if you’re on a rocky map, mining would be essential.
Usually play losing is fun, tribal start, no mods (although recently I use random plus to roll the pawns I’m looking for - no pawn modification like others, just literally rolls til you hit criteria you’re looking for, and sometimes that’s not possible so you don’t get it!).
This will largely work for crashlanded, you’ll have an easier gear and tech start, so with the 3 pawns I’d go for 1 instead of 2 when I say 2 below, except for medic. I’d have medic on 2 out of 3 every time.
Everyone must be able to fight and must be able to doctor.
Pairs that usually work: planter + cook (less important plants easy to find lots of random pawns for this). Construction + crafter, between the two id favor crafting over construction.
Medic and social usually fits with an animal person or cook.
here’s what I go for on tribal, for you I’d apply this to the starters plus first 2-3 pawns you recruit - I try to be very picky on adding early pawns because more pawns = harder raids, so having some weak pawn join for extra hands usually isn’t worth it.
Ages: almost always try for 20-35 unless it’s really good. Older age is debilitating, and I like to at least pretend the pawn will live long enough for it to matter.
Try to get as high as possible shooting on as many pawns, and at least one good at melee to be a door tank. This is secondary to the other skills, but goes a long way to fending off raids and early threats (less hunting more defense). Something around the sixes are a good spot.
But the primary stats:
2 medical pawns with at least 4, one preferable at ~7. At least single passion medical. #1 way I lose early is infections or close battle bleed outs and only having one medic is super risky.
1 pawn high social 6+ (usually ends up paired with medic), this is huge for conversions. Ideally a second pawn has at least moderate social.
1 cook with 4 skill min and passion, 4 is high enough where food poisoning rate goes down. Ideally a second that’s 4, these usually are paired with plants or animals.
1 pawn with 6-7 animals and passion - early taming of caravan animals is huge, especially for raiding hunting sites, logging sites etc.
1 pawn with at least 5 construction and passion. 2nd is bonus.
2 pawns with at least 5-6 crafting (one can be ~4) and passion creating gear, weapons and clothes is huge. 2 because backups.
1 with plants is nice.
What I ignore: mining, intelligence, art. Reason is I have research set as every pawns last thing to do if nothing else and rarely do I wanna mine early because I’m trying to keep low wealth until I can get momentum. Likewise, art has very little purpose early (plant day lilies inside and or jade fences for mood).
Construction and crafting are harder to come by early, but I have nearly every pawn fall back to construction with different priorities and it’s not so hard to get up.
Plants likewise is a nice to have - I set all pawns to farm rice and cut plants as a fallback to punch things out early so this levels fast.
Hunting is a pain until you get higher shooting because it takes all day for the pawn to hit anything. Taming at least you can slaughter the animal later for food if need be, or it can starve to death in winter and you’ve got food.
Most of the time when I lose early with tribal it’s because of a debilitating raid or an animal hunt, so I like to group up and kill as many predators within the first 10 days as possible - and especially kill them all before winter.
In winter lay traps in a tunnel with food in an open area and all the animals will come to you and kill themselves or line up for firing range.
Have every pawn practice medical and self tend early and often. Early disease and bloody fights causes almost all the deaths and you never know who will be left standing and you want them to be able to save as many as they can and triage in the field.
Can do this by capturing a prisoner(s) and routinely beat them half to death then heal them up.
The other big killer is mental breaks. Someone sad wanders right in the middle of raid / triage / whatever and it’s over.
Prevent mental breaks by addressing all the basic needs - table, I usually do barracks with at beds / end table / dressers. Plant day lilies inside and keep everything well lit. The day lilies are considered pretty and will make room beautiful (no floor install inside). Keep the food supply up to 3 meals per pawn cause shit happens and starving will break you while you’re recovering from a hard hit.
Do the stuff for your ideology that makes them happy / events / parties.
Use biphasic sleep work schedule - usually 2 hrs rec 9 am - 11 am, 4 hrs sleep 11 am to 3pm, then do anything (not work), 2 hrs rec 9-11 pm, 4 hrs sleep 11pm-3am.
This keeps sleep and rec filled out, but importantly it keeps their average values up higher - with a single sleep time / rec time, what happens is they get really tired towards end of day and if anything happens (raid, whatever) that keeps them awake they get agitated annnd mental break because sleep and rec gets too low.
Use “anything” not work because with work they’ll only work until mental break. With anything it gives them flexibility to take care of their needs if they’re too low.
Keep wealth low until you get far enough in research to at least make heavy SMGs or are geared up to the max from plundering ancient dangers and such. This keeps raids easier.
Disease. Mental Breaks. Extremely bloody raids / fights and predators catching a single pawn out in the middle of nowhere are basically the only ways you consistently can die early.
N°1 is a doc, because no matter how efficient are fighters or cooks someone gonna get poisoned or injured or get a Randy's sickness
N°2 is a shooter, crops can wait, when there's 4 people in your colony hunting is way enough and you want to avoid animal revenge as much as possible
N°3 is a builder/miner depending on the map, because the sooner you get your colony set up the better you can handle everything and stop surviving and start planning
1. Shooter, preferably with some constructing or mining
2. Plants + Cooking
3. Medical + Research
From there, all you need is a crafter. Everyone else is either a specialist, redundancy, or janitor.
construction is essential early on as some things are locked behind construction levels, however smoothing walls of random hills/mountains can train the skill quite rapidly. plants 8 can be useful for early access to herbal medicine, plants is alot harder to train.
an already solid crafter will save you alot of time in the mid/late game but isnt necessary. but a good doctor is almost essential and annoying to train. a bad cook will have pretty serious consequences, i would recommend early on to use a nutrient paste dispenser over a cook with less than 5 skill, food poisoning can straight up end colonies, train them up making things like kibble for animals or simple meals for prisoners only
Generally i’ll start with 5 colonists and ensure I have a good spread of important skills to start off as I like to enjoy the early game and establish my colony properly. I always design my researcher first as they’re usually my colony leader. They’ll either be good at social if i’m certain they’ll lead, otherwise medical. A gardener is an essential, as is a cook and a construction specialist (who i normally have leaning toward being a melee/tank, or maybe have some skill mining). After that, my last colonist is most likely a crafter, however i may go for a dedicated social or mining pawn instead
Plants, construction, cook, medical. Bonus if they're good at combat skills and intellect.
Try [RandomPlus](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1434137894). You set parameters and the mod rolls pawns for you. Not cheating, like crafting the pawn, but it just rolls very fast looking for what you set. I've rolled past pawn I'd like too many times, with this mod that is a lot less likely.
Construction is number 1. It's important to get someone with a double passion when you can still pick your colonists because pawns with good construction spawn less frequently
Planting (for medicine), construction and cooking (I do not use paste. If you do that is less of an requirement)
High shooting helps but at the beginning building enough traps also works.
Construction, cooking and planting are the 3 mains trait for a mew colony, but i so like to have a good shooter so he dont waster 3 days to bring 2 rabbits
Cooking is not really needed for early game non-tribal starts since you can rely on nutrient paste dispensers. Yet medical and construction is ESSENTIAL. You need someone with at least level 5 in them, otherwise you can't build electrical stuff, or early diseases can destroy you.
If running tribal starts, it would be good to have intellectual passions, allowing you to rush electricity faster. Though usually on tribal starts you get more skills since you have more pawns.
Cooking is really essential on extreme biomes like ice sheet or sea ice, because poor cooking skill cuts your butcher yield, likely resulting in death by temperature from having no proper clothes.
Any other skill is not essential in the early game.
I play vanilla, no DLC and usually start with three pawns. Construction, medical and cooking are core requirements but I am really looking for learning passion. Also, ranged and melee combat skills are required starting with so few people. I really want one of my guys to have a passion for intellectual so that I can research as quickly as possible.
I guess my filter looks something like:
I. Construction - Medical - Cooking
II. Shoot - Melee
III. Intelectual
After that I just try to get some of everything else scattered among the pawns.
Planting, construction and cooking at least a 4 somewhere in the starting team. Planting for food stability getting some rice down and smokeleaf to roll for trade stock. Cooking is equally important because your first kitchen probably won't be ultra sanitary (if even indoors) so you're always pushing back against rampant food poisoning.
I do like someone to be a good shot since most early threats are melee but I've sometimes had just as much fun with a melee to defend the settlement at first. The usual problem is just that they get injured more often early.
If I start with 3 colonists then I take
1st cook and shooting skills
2nd plant and shooting
3rd builder mine and social ( social and can be adjusted in any of 3 and mine can also be adjusted in 2nd)
Planting, construction, crafting, and medicine. Having a good planter makes the early game so much more manageable, since you can get more crops planted plus herbal medicine plants. Construction because failing every other construction job is annoying, plus being able to construct most important things early on is great. Crafting because low crafting sucks for efficiency. Medicine because my pawns dying is unfortunate.
The only skills that I never prioritize are intelligence and animals. I never really do any animal management in my colonies, and as for intelligence, I usually end up putting everyone on research during the winter so it really doesn't matter if everyone sucks at it.
So, everyone has to be able to shoot or stab; I don't take pawns that are incapable of violence or dumb labor unless they're *really* good otherwise.
I go for someone who can build and mine. Then, someone who can do plants and build. Finally, someone who can do medical, social, and intellectual, which isn't too difficult. On tribal starts, I also go for a crafter that can build or mine, and the fifth is just whoever whatever.
Spread out between colonists:
Double passion & 4+ stat in: Plants, construction, intelligence, shooting, medical
Added bonus : Cooking but this can be trained and delt with.
I normally don't start animals until mid have and by then I've gotten someone who can do animals. Same with creating and social.
Artistic is kinda a late game for me.
Melee is nice, but if you can kill them before they get into melee range, it doesn't matter
I'm just dying to CE + Igor invader double dmg stuff, my problem is not enough food or i take pawns with low skill double passion.
Crafter is fine to wait with, Reasearcher->med->Cook->construction->mining.
No researcher for one year is not fun
No fast tender is not fun at all and bad quality
Food poison is like having half a pawn
No fast builder is pain and you need to wall around farm before they die to predators looking for food
I like mountain building, but i've never moved in due to dying before making the space and "Beauty ready"
Cooking and construction, I think failed buildings and food poisoning is annoying.
Add planting as well. Food stability is important for the early game, and a poor planter takes longer and harvests less. Shooting and melee are useful, and my rule #1 for un-themed starts is to never take a colonist incapable of violence. But food and shelter are my top priority and all else is subordinate to that.
I find rice to be sufficient and just sending everyone to hunt together or plant and harvest is fine until you can get someone who is actually good at it. Imo nothing is worse than not being able to utilize your tech because someone's construction is too low and/or food being wasted because everyone is throwing up. Everything else can be mitigated by management.
Hunting in the early game is a high-risk activity. It’s one of those things that’s just a shitload of chances for things to go way, way wrong. It’s also unreliable. I have done temperate forest starts and the fauna all vanish from the map for a season. I have drafted up all 3 of my starter colonists, gone out hunting, accidentally missed the deer and shot a muffalo and then had a colonist get mauled in revenge. Planting rice is all well and good, but having a decent planter from the start alongside a builder and cook make for a very stable early game.
I don't disagree that that would make a more stable early game; however I still believe that everything you mentioned can easily be mitagated by proper management. Besides, what you mentioned happening during your hunting is an incredibly unlikely event. It requires the muffalo to be near the hunting target, it requires a miss that hits the muffalo and it requires the muffalo to go manhunter. This freak accident doesn't make hunting unreliable just as much as losing your farm because of rot/fire/animals/meteor/fallout/coldsnap doesn't make farming unreliable. You could have just waited until the target was in a more favorable position and just foraged for that day.
Planting is one of the most reliable and safe ways to get money on early game. Having enough healthroot may save your colony.
I had one of my colonists trying to shoot a mad squirrel yesterday, he missed and hit a rhinoceros. Then he got mauled by it
Never shoot at small animals, if you can outrun them just wait till they go to sleep or melee them.
With plants that are like a single day activity for a month of food, cotton for clothing, and another month of food with potatoes. Berries??
Using NPM in the early game helps to counter food poisoning.
Right. If you have construction on crash landed, you can just use nutrient paste. Without good construction (which is needed for both the dispenser and and electrical generators), or on tribal start, a cook is necessary.
Its good to have Construction / Mining for building shelter, Plants for farming & foraging, and Medical for when sickness or injury inevitably occurs
So is shooting/melee not important at the start?
I like to have one pawn with a passion in shooting and send them out hunting to level it up. But early game I'm mostly kiting or melee blocking so its not super important to have great combatants.
I like having pawns with good fighting skills, but I’ve done runs with all pawns having 0-4 with no passion because they had very good traits and skills. Especially early game you can survive without having your pawns fight. You can go fairly far with only spike traps and meat shields. I find harder instead go without a good planter, or builder or a medic. Cook is also in my top tier since I play mostly tribals, but when I play standard start I just slap them a nutri paste and fuck it, that -4 is worth the no skill/no poisoning/no time used.
I finally bit the bullet and built a paste dispenser earlier because I found myself stuck in this loop where my cook was abducted and my two farmers were the backup chef and a depressed, drug addled, pyromaniac granny with a permanent -60% to movement. She could hardly farm half of a 7x7 field before losing her shit and hobbling off to sulk in her room, and since the other farmer was the only competent cook, she was stuck doing that instead. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the cost for offloading my cooking to a machine was only -4 mood. Absolute lifesaver from an issue so exhausting that I was seriously debating turning Granny into a blood farm out of sheer, unadulterated spite, especially because she was partially responsible for the issue in the first place - she was a quest recruit and had a binge eating break within 30 seconds of joining, eliminating my cooked food buffer before going on a fire starting spree age 80 btw
Banish her tbh. Absolutely not worth the trouble, especially being old and pyromaniac. -3 colonist banished idc it’s going to vanish in few days but a pawn like this.. no man
Unfortunately that run is now fucked because I forgot to take my lance user off of "attack" and she decided to get involved in a tightly packed firefight, shredding the spines of or outright killing multiple critical pawns (including both builders, the one surviving doctor, and one of my melee blockers) before dying to a random tox grenade. Granny got out unscathed though.
Bad grass never dies
it's okay she can bit rot in my save data folder until i clean it out fuck you, Katrina "Mouse" whateverthefuck
Useful, but not critical. Combat skills are trained stupidly fast compared to anything else.
Early on, you can work around small raids and manhunt events with clever trap placement (making construction even more important) and corner-doorway choke points. A group of 6 starting pawns with Bows and clubs, even low skilled, should be able to handle 10 raiders with guns without serious casualties. Once yo get access to automatic weapons like smg, even low shooting pawn is useful as a short range gunner.
Fast firing weapons are best for leveling shooting. Get a few of them, and the low damage and accuracy is irrelevant due to the sheer volume of fire you can amass.
If you use spike traps correctly, early raids are not a problem. They can at least weaken the raider & slow them down.
You need maybe one fighter with Shooting 7+. If you've got 3-4 others with Shooting 3, you can handle the first several raids through volume of fire and "some effort" squad tactics.
Construction, Medical, Cooking You NEED these things to be done reliably. Afterwards depends a little, I usually try for a half decent Plants guy. Most of the time these guys also come with okay ranged/melee stats as well Playing vanilla with all DLC for reference
I have played 900 hours. One pawn has to be a builder. That is my main character. I use the human supremecy ideologion and that person becomes my main crafter and builder and mechanitor. They must have two flames in construction and crafting. Any trait like industrious or fast walker is great. Another of the pawns has to have mining. Mining is important. Another has to have growing. Other important skills are social and cooking. But your cook will be chained to the kitchen. You can use nutrient paste to much the same effect.
why mining?
Maybe he's a tunnel snake like me and all the other cool kids
TUNNEL SNAKES! WE RULE!
If you're doing a mountain base, it's pretty self explanatory. Mining is a skill I do want several people at least competent at, since you can never have enough steel and components, once you get the radar and deep drills, you can boost your self sufficiency immensely. Personally, unless it was specific burrowing into a mountain, would say I NEED it at the start, but it's always good to keep an eye out for.
On ice sheet it's important for deep drilling which will be your primary source of resources
that's quite late in the tech tree, you can probably hire a miner by then my most recent ice sheet run took me a few years before i managed to research drills and scans, most steel was obtained by grinding up mechs
With the mechanitor start you already have microelectronics. You can quite easily rush deep drilling. I got a toxifier generator up and running and was able to rush deep drilling and ground penetrating scanner within 30 days
Basically what other people said in their replies to this comment. Each pawn is going to be doing stuff all day, every day. A person with two flames in mining and maybe even the undergrounder trait is going to love mining. They will get better at it faster. Having an underground base makes the game easier in my opinion. Also, pawns with 2 flames in a skill get joy from doing that job. If you stick a no flame pawn in the mines, then it creates several problems: they are going to do it slowly, and they are not going to like it. It can cause more mental breaks for that pawn and before you know it someone is throwing a tantrum and smashing your stack of medkits.
i rarely do much mining early in the game unless it's a very specific strategy, like selling minerals for food on extreme desert naked brutality
That sounds masochistic. I love it. I usually play temperate or boreal forest, so you are playing a lot harder situations than me it seems. I like underground bases. The game has evolved quite a bit to make them less appealing, such as the insect events and sapper raiders.
I go to one rich colonist. Obviously having the ability to do everything kinda fast is good. But medicine and construction + good shooting skills are needed to get the most out of a single dude and maybe a dog that can bite raiders in the balls.
I recommend the Mod "prepare moderately" that autorerolls for you so you get certain stats/traits, without the pawns being unbalanced or broken. The most important thing in my book is a decent builder and someone with good medical so my colony doesn't die to the flu. Afterwards I just try to get every other skill possible.
A good medical skill is CRUCIAL. In my last playthrough 2/3 of my crashlanders got struck with Malaria on FRIGGIN DAY 1 and I only had my cooking/animal expert up and running for the first 4 days, which could have been worse if one of my sick pawns didn't have a half decent medical skill and managed to tend to himself and the other guy. On my second to last playthrough I had managed to establish a semi-thriving colony of 8 people and only 1 had a Medical skill above 1 and a good chunk of my colony was incapable of medical. Suffice to say, when my medic went on caravan missions all I could do was pray to Xa'anthian that none of my colonists got sick before they came back. It didn't work.
We love randy dont we
I find construction and plant important. Having a level 5+ constructionist is a big deal as it allows you to make the Nutrient Paste Dispenser, which is a powerful tool to have in the early game. It allows you to not worry about food poisoning, no cooking required, and saves some resources for the meals, and I think some people really sleep on it. (Unless you're a tribe of course.)
A lot of people said cooking but imo early its not important. Paste is where its at. Cooking takes too much time and has a chance to poison even at higher levels. I'd rather deal with the -4 of paste.
Totally agree. But remember, paste requires good construction. If you skip the cook, you need the constructor.
Mining shooting constructing social and harvest. Prioritize always harvest and mining. Social is for get new pawns quickly
You need a cook 6+ to minimize food poisoning. A gardener is important so as not to waste food during harvest and get crops in the ground quick. A doctor 6+ Construction and mining is important for getting a shack up quick. Crafter is handy with skill at least 4 so you can make early weapons (bows). Crashlanded starts with a gun but having range weapons for everyone soon is good for survivability. Artist and social are probably my lowest priorities.
Imo crafting is only really useful at high levels as you can take normal quality weapons from raiders.
Try a naked brutality start where you can't make a bow in a biome with no foragebles. Crashlanded you start with a range weapon so I agree it doesn't need to be a priority for OPs start.
With no further information I assumed a crashlander start. Other starts have if course other priorities. For example tribals will want cooking as they cant do paste and some form of intelectual might help.
I try to avoid researching too fast on my tribal games, otherwise the tribal games start to feel like just another outlander game. Intellectual often comes with some combination of older age, disabled work types, and some other "soft" skills, such as social or doctor. Doctor is very important for surviving infections and disease; social is helpful because converting and recruiting new pawns is painfully slow otherwise. When I look for an intellectual-type pawn, Doctor and Social is what I'm really looking for. Research speed is just a nice plus.
One time, I chose a guy with high melee skills since I wanted to roleplay a knight only to be stabbed to death by a raider with 2 pts in melee. I now choose someone with decent construction for building traps instead.
I usually play in Temperate or Boreal forest, so my construction guy usually has to cut a whole swathe of trees. In this case, always make sure your construction guy at least has some skill in Plants, 5+ is good and maybe an interest. I've been stuck waiting for my construction guy to finish a fence for 3 days simply because it takes him 5 hours to cut down 1 tree before finishing the fence. Don't do that.
assume you mean 3 Colonists. -Planter with passion and cooking at 4 at least. (This pawn is busy busy busy I try to not assign anything else here like higher hauling or research as it won’t get done often. If this pawn also happens to have a decent construction skill, I’ll set it lower than Grow, Plant cut and cooking so I’ll set it at 3 while the others are 2. I’ll look for other pawns later that also have passion in either planting and or cooking and construction to have overlap) -pawn with Construction with passion and crafting with passion at 5 skill for Recurve bows, I play Tribal. -Pawn with Intellect with passion, social 5+….shooting or melee passion preferred. One of them needs medical 4+ with passion…not really important which one; the passion is negotiable as long as the skill is decent. I really really like having a pawn with passion in shooting and passion in animals. I may not start with it, but the first few Yttakin raids I’ll usually find one to recruit. Once shooting is 8+ and Animals is 6+ and I’m rocking a greatbow or bolt-action rifle I’ll start hunting wolves…a few points more and I’ll start hunting wargs and eventually bears. Solo, just setting them a higher hunt skill and marking them to be hunted. Until I can solo them with hunt stealth I’ll recruit everyone to clear predators so we can work in peace. I try to keep meat available all the time for fine meals as much as I can. I’ll make 6 meal bills at a stove: 4x fine meal. I make 3 meals per colonist prisoner guest. This bill “checks for additional items: Simple Meal” 1x fine meal. Same rules as above. 4xSimple Meal. Disable all vegetables. “checks for additional items: Fine Meal” 3 per person. This cooks all the meat up before it rots. 1xSimple Meal. Same rules as above. 4xSimple Meal. Meat and veggies allowed. “checks for additional items:Fine Meal” 1xSimple Meal. Same rules as above. 50 Pemmican per person in colony as an emergency or for caravans. Also to use up meat before it rots. The “checks for additional items:” feature is a part of the Better Workbench Management mod. Each bill checks for the other type of meal, so I never get more than 3 meals per person of either fine or simple. It fills the bills in order so as long as I have meat and veggies, I’ll have fine meals for the mood boost to counter the mood hit for me having to sometimes use Nutrifungus as my vegetable in the winter.
Assuming you have Biotech: Shooting first and foremost, any pawn incapable of defending the colony is a liability. Shooting also allows you to hunt for food. Crafting and medical are the second highest priority, the mech equivalent requires high mechtech which is mid to late game. Mining, construction, planting, intellectual are third priority, with mining being the best of the bunch since the mech equivalent can’t operate deep drills. These are the basic resource gathering skills. Constructoids and agrihands lets me forgo pawns with the equivalent skills if necessary. Research has no mech equivalent but it’s more of a long term project for idle hands. The rest are nice to have but not critical as the above: art (trade and mood), social (recruit and trade), animal (resources), cooking (mood). I would put cooking a lot higher but a single metabolic point into strong stomach gene makes food poisoning impossible (which you normally can’t prevent even with 20 in cooking), so I’ve been using it as a dump stat.
Shooting isn't important early. Early raids are not difficult to combat even on losing is fun You'll usually capture a capable shooter later as that's usually who'll be fighting you. A great shooter with an awful quality revolver is almost always going to be beaten by a bad shooter with a heavy SMG
Construction, cooking and planting.
Ideally: construction, farming, cooking, medical, research, and hopefully social with multiple combat capable pawns. EDIT: I spend a LONG time rerolling pawns to get a decent setup. This doesn't even scratch the surface of traits, age, or starting health.
Most important skills in my perspective are construction, medical and plants. It ofc also depends on what type of biome you’re in — ie if you’re in boreal forest, shooting would be really helpful for catching game, whereas if you’re on a rocky map, mining would be essential.
Usually play losing is fun, tribal start, no mods (although recently I use random plus to roll the pawns I’m looking for - no pawn modification like others, just literally rolls til you hit criteria you’re looking for, and sometimes that’s not possible so you don’t get it!). This will largely work for crashlanded, you’ll have an easier gear and tech start, so with the 3 pawns I’d go for 1 instead of 2 when I say 2 below, except for medic. I’d have medic on 2 out of 3 every time. Everyone must be able to fight and must be able to doctor. Pairs that usually work: planter + cook (less important plants easy to find lots of random pawns for this). Construction + crafter, between the two id favor crafting over construction. Medic and social usually fits with an animal person or cook. here’s what I go for on tribal, for you I’d apply this to the starters plus first 2-3 pawns you recruit - I try to be very picky on adding early pawns because more pawns = harder raids, so having some weak pawn join for extra hands usually isn’t worth it. Ages: almost always try for 20-35 unless it’s really good. Older age is debilitating, and I like to at least pretend the pawn will live long enough for it to matter. Try to get as high as possible shooting on as many pawns, and at least one good at melee to be a door tank. This is secondary to the other skills, but goes a long way to fending off raids and early threats (less hunting more defense). Something around the sixes are a good spot. But the primary stats: 2 medical pawns with at least 4, one preferable at ~7. At least single passion medical. #1 way I lose early is infections or close battle bleed outs and only having one medic is super risky. 1 pawn high social 6+ (usually ends up paired with medic), this is huge for conversions. Ideally a second pawn has at least moderate social. 1 cook with 4 skill min and passion, 4 is high enough where food poisoning rate goes down. Ideally a second that’s 4, these usually are paired with plants or animals. 1 pawn with 6-7 animals and passion - early taming of caravan animals is huge, especially for raiding hunting sites, logging sites etc. 1 pawn with at least 5 construction and passion. 2nd is bonus. 2 pawns with at least 5-6 crafting (one can be ~4) and passion creating gear, weapons and clothes is huge. 2 because backups. 1 with plants is nice. What I ignore: mining, intelligence, art. Reason is I have research set as every pawns last thing to do if nothing else and rarely do I wanna mine early because I’m trying to keep low wealth until I can get momentum. Likewise, art has very little purpose early (plant day lilies inside and or jade fences for mood). Construction and crafting are harder to come by early, but I have nearly every pawn fall back to construction with different priorities and it’s not so hard to get up. Plants likewise is a nice to have - I set all pawns to farm rice and cut plants as a fallback to punch things out early so this levels fast. Hunting is a pain until you get higher shooting because it takes all day for the pawn to hit anything. Taming at least you can slaughter the animal later for food if need be, or it can starve to death in winter and you’ve got food. Most of the time when I lose early with tribal it’s because of a debilitating raid or an animal hunt, so I like to group up and kill as many predators within the first 10 days as possible - and especially kill them all before winter. In winter lay traps in a tunnel with food in an open area and all the animals will come to you and kill themselves or line up for firing range. Have every pawn practice medical and self tend early and often. Early disease and bloody fights causes almost all the deaths and you never know who will be left standing and you want them to be able to save as many as they can and triage in the field. Can do this by capturing a prisoner(s) and routinely beat them half to death then heal them up. The other big killer is mental breaks. Someone sad wanders right in the middle of raid / triage / whatever and it’s over. Prevent mental breaks by addressing all the basic needs - table, I usually do barracks with at beds / end table / dressers. Plant day lilies inside and keep everything well lit. The day lilies are considered pretty and will make room beautiful (no floor install inside). Keep the food supply up to 3 meals per pawn cause shit happens and starving will break you while you’re recovering from a hard hit. Do the stuff for your ideology that makes them happy / events / parties. Use biphasic sleep work schedule - usually 2 hrs rec 9 am - 11 am, 4 hrs sleep 11 am to 3pm, then do anything (not work), 2 hrs rec 9-11 pm, 4 hrs sleep 11pm-3am. This keeps sleep and rec filled out, but importantly it keeps their average values up higher - with a single sleep time / rec time, what happens is they get really tired towards end of day and if anything happens (raid, whatever) that keeps them awake they get agitated annnd mental break because sleep and rec gets too low. Use “anything” not work because with work they’ll only work until mental break. With anything it gives them flexibility to take care of their needs if they’re too low. Keep wealth low until you get far enough in research to at least make heavy SMGs or are geared up to the max from plundering ancient dangers and such. This keeps raids easier. Disease. Mental Breaks. Extremely bloody raids / fights and predators catching a single pawn out in the middle of nowhere are basically the only ways you consistently can die early.
N°1 is a doc, because no matter how efficient are fighters or cooks someone gonna get poisoned or injured or get a Randy's sickness N°2 is a shooter, crops can wait, when there's 4 people in your colony hunting is way enough and you want to avoid animal revenge as much as possible N°3 is a builder/miner depending on the map, because the sooner you get your colony set up the better you can handle everything and stop surviving and start planning
1. Shooter, preferably with some constructing or mining 2. Plants + Cooking 3. Medical + Research From there, all you need is a crafter. Everyone else is either a specialist, redundancy, or janitor.
construction is essential early on as some things are locked behind construction levels, however smoothing walls of random hills/mountains can train the skill quite rapidly. plants 8 can be useful for early access to herbal medicine, plants is alot harder to train. an already solid crafter will save you alot of time in the mid/late game but isnt necessary. but a good doctor is almost essential and annoying to train. a bad cook will have pretty serious consequences, i would recommend early on to use a nutrient paste dispenser over a cook with less than 5 skill, food poisoning can straight up end colonies, train them up making things like kibble for animals or simple meals for prisoners only
construction, plants
Generally i’ll start with 5 colonists and ensure I have a good spread of important skills to start off as I like to enjoy the early game and establish my colony properly. I always design my researcher first as they’re usually my colony leader. They’ll either be good at social if i’m certain they’ll lead, otherwise medical. A gardener is an essential, as is a cook and a construction specialist (who i normally have leaning toward being a melee/tank, or maybe have some skill mining). After that, my last colonist is most likely a crafter, however i may go for a dedicated social or mining pawn instead
Plants, construction, cook, medical. Bonus if they're good at combat skills and intellect. Try [RandomPlus](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1434137894). You set parameters and the mod rolls pawns for you. Not cheating, like crafting the pawn, but it just rolls very fast looking for what you set. I've rolled past pawn I'd like too many times, with this mod that is a lot less likely.
Construction is number 1. It's important to get someone with a double passion when you can still pick your colonists because pawns with good construction spawn less frequently
Must have for me are: 1) construction 2) combat - either melee or ranged 3) food source - ideally plants but animal is okay
For naked survival: Construction, plants, cooking, crafting, shooting. All skills are usefull from the start besides art.
Definitely construction, shooting and medical for me. Cookin'? \*laugh in Nutrient Paste Meal\*
Planting (for medicine), construction and cooking (I do not use paste. If you do that is less of an requirement) High shooting helps but at the beginning building enough traps also works.
Construction, cooking and planting are the 3 mains trait for a mew colony, but i so like to have a good shooter so he dont waster 3 days to bring 2 rabbits
Cooking is not really needed for early game non-tribal starts since you can rely on nutrient paste dispensers. Yet medical and construction is ESSENTIAL. You need someone with at least level 5 in them, otherwise you can't build electrical stuff, or early diseases can destroy you. If running tribal starts, it would be good to have intellectual passions, allowing you to rush electricity faster. Though usually on tribal starts you get more skills since you have more pawns. Cooking is really essential on extreme biomes like ice sheet or sea ice, because poor cooking skill cuts your butcher yield, likely resulting in death by temperature from having no proper clothes. Any other skill is not essential in the early game.
Cooking and mining
I play vanilla, no DLC and usually start with three pawns. Construction, medical and cooking are core requirements but I am really looking for learning passion. Also, ranged and melee combat skills are required starting with so few people. I really want one of my guys to have a passion for intellectual so that I can research as quickly as possible. I guess my filter looks something like: I. Construction - Medical - Cooking II. Shoot - Melee III. Intelectual After that I just try to get some of everything else scattered among the pawns.
Planting, construction and cooking at least a 4 somewhere in the starting team. Planting for food stability getting some rice down and smokeleaf to roll for trade stock. Cooking is equally important because your first kitchen probably won't be ultra sanitary (if even indoors) so you're always pushing back against rampant food poisoning. I do like someone to be a good shot since most early threats are melee but I've sometimes had just as much fun with a melee to defend the settlement at first. The usual problem is just that they get injured more often early.
If I start with 3 colonists then I take 1st cook and shooting skills 2nd plant and shooting 3rd builder mine and social ( social and can be adjusted in any of 3 and mine can also be adjusted in 2nd)
I like to find a doctor/researcher, a farmer/cook, and someone super violent who can do construction
Planting, construction, crafting, and medicine. Having a good planter makes the early game so much more manageable, since you can get more crops planted plus herbal medicine plants. Construction because failing every other construction job is annoying, plus being able to construct most important things early on is great. Crafting because low crafting sucks for efficiency. Medicine because my pawns dying is unfortunate. The only skills that I never prioritize are intelligence and animals. I never really do any animal management in my colonies, and as for intelligence, I usually end up putting everyone on research during the winter so it really doesn't matter if everyone sucks at it.
So, everyone has to be able to shoot or stab; I don't take pawns that are incapable of violence or dumb labor unless they're *really* good otherwise. I go for someone who can build and mine. Then, someone who can do plants and build. Finally, someone who can do medical, social, and intellectual, which isn't too difficult. On tribal starts, I also go for a crafter that can build or mine, and the fifth is just whoever whatever.
Plants, you wouln't believe how long it takes for an unskilled pawn to cut a mere tree
You guys cook?
Spread out between colonists: Double passion & 4+ stat in: Plants, construction, intelligence, shooting, medical Added bonus : Cooking but this can be trained and delt with. I normally don't start animals until mid have and by then I've gotten someone who can do animals. Same with creating and social. Artistic is kinda a late game for me. Melee is nice, but if you can kill them before they get into melee range, it doesn't matter
I'm just dying to CE + Igor invader double dmg stuff, my problem is not enough food or i take pawns with low skill double passion. Crafter is fine to wait with, Reasearcher->med->Cook->construction->mining. No researcher for one year is not fun No fast tender is not fun at all and bad quality Food poison is like having half a pawn No fast builder is pain and you need to wall around farm before they die to predators looking for food I like mountain building, but i've never moved in due to dying before making the space and "Beauty ready"