Uriel's Guide to Hellmoo
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This is a page of little tips and tricks that'll help you kick the fuck out of hellmoo, because why the fuck not.
Okay, let's talk builds. What build should I do? is probably one of the most common questions I hear because you dumbshits don't bother even trying to figure this crap out on your own. OKAY, FIRST STEP. What do you want to do with your hellmoo life? Most people just minmax to kill shit, but I find that INCREDIBLY FUCKING BORING, but w/e it's up to you. Let's talk weapons.
Clubs : Pretty reliable, and some of its top weapons can be gotten for free off chumans or the punisher. Clubs only uses two stats for everything; damage is brawn, speed is reflex, and skill is brawn+reflex. This makes clubs one of the most versatile weapons for doing other shit since it leaves you more wiggle room with your stats. You can choose endurance as a third main stat and be a crazy fistfighter, you can pick cool and be great with guns or blades, or you can even go brains and be a brainy clubmaster. Also is amazing for people who want to headbutt crap.
Blades : As much as I love blades, they really aren't the best weapon. I managed to pull off a brainy/blades sort of build, but I'm crazy and you're not me. In any case, to be fuckamazing at blades, you need reflex and cool. Brawn adds a bit of damage, but unless you're using a springsteel or a kukri it wont show a whole ton. Most people go shiversword at the end, and if you have high skill it's got a crazy high random damage range, but the base damage is still low enough that on an unlucky roll your powered shiversword might fail to one-shot an orphan. High risk, high reward I guess. The springsteels scale amazingly well with brawn, and with good brawn you can put out over 17dps with one. However, the bruce is slow as FUCK, and the boss is a bit less accurate than most, so not ideal for taking on dodgy fuckers unless you can feint them. Or knock them out, might work well with headbutt.
Guns : Okay, guns are fuckin' mean. They pretty much ignore dodging, they have their own speedcaps, they usually do kickass damage, and fucking rifles have a custom stun called 'duck and weave'. This means with a sufficiently fast rifle, you can keep people from moving just by shooting at them. Also they can't be parried. Did I mention many armors are weak to bullets? Plus with different ammo types, you can do pretty much any kind of damage you want, including the all powerful wasting damage which ignores armor. For speed, you want some brawn, and for skill you want some cool and reflex. Due to them ignoring dodge, you don't need as much skill with guns to hit things, so you can actually safely dump cool as long as you boost it with bling and don't take too many muts that lower it. What's the downside to pistols and rifles? Well it takes some work to get started with them for one. They're probably the hardest weapon type to begin with, but endgame they're frightening. Also you need to actually buy ammo for them unless you can craft your own. If you run out of ammo, your weapon is useless since the game doesn't have gunbashing. Also you can't block, meaning you have to rely on your soaks and dodge to save your ass.
Fists : Fists use brawn for damage, reflex for speed, and brawn and endurance for skill. Fist weapons are fast, do beat damage which can knock folks out, and have fairly easy to get weapons, namely knuckle busters and jawbreakers. Most people who go fists do so to murder and murder and murder some more, which generally means that they're not a very brainy group of people. Due to said murderific bit, fist players tend to go abom later on, which gives them the kickass claws and fangs weapon which is natural so they spawn with it and does radiation damage. For those not planning on joining the hordes of hideous mutant monsters, the main fist weapons are knuckle busters, jawbreakers, tesla gauntlets, and patas. Busters and jawbies are fairly similar, but jawbies scale less with brawn and are faster. However, if you have mad brawn and reflex, say like if you're a vampire/abom on drugs, knuckle busters will actually outdamage the harder to get and more expensive jawbreakers just by brawn scaling. If you're not the brawniest, teslas would be the way to go. They scale on skill most of all, and are actually kinda badass. Then we have the patas, which are basically shiver swords for fists. Yes, I just said that. Scary thought, I know. Downsides to fists are that they're mostly pc0, meaning they can't parry for shit. The pata completely ignores this, as it can parry any parryable weapon. The other downside is that there's not a wide variety of weapons as you go up in ranks until the end, so those knuckle busters of yours are gonna be around for a while.
Whips : Whips mostly scale just with skill, with the exception of the chain weapons, and skill is determined by senses and reflex. Yes, the same skills as dodge. What this means is that any high class whipper worth their salt is going to be insanely dodgy. If you can't feint them and don't have a gun, good luck with that. Now since whips are mostly determined by just two stats, this makes them a versatile weapon just like clubs. As one of the prime stats is senses, and craft runs on brains and senses, this is usually a favorite weapon of crafters. Alternately, making your third prime stat be endurance means you can be a magical elf wizard with focus abilities and use tons of drugs to be even crazier at whatever it is you do. Not sure what the drugs would be great for though besides being even more accurate and dodgy. The downside of whips is that there's not a wide variety of options endgame. You basically either go flashwhip or urumi, and before that you were probably using a flame chain. Another downside is the lack of pc2 weapons, meaning engame you're gonna be relying on your dodge more than your parrying to keep you from being dead.
Spears : Spears scale with brawn for bonus damage, reflex for speed, and endurance and reflex for skill. Also, they're almost all pc2, meaning they can parry everything but guns. If you go spears, you'll probably wind up using dual assegais, a garden weasel, a chainsaw lance, or a zap brannigan if you can manage one. Assegais are easy as hell to get endgame, free, and easily replaceable. If you want, you can basically wind up swimming in these in no time. Garden weasels are also free and can be gotten right outside freedom city. This means your weapons can be super easy to replace, unlike some other weapon classes. Chainsaw lances can be crafted or gotten for free, but to get them for free you need to drop Hawthorn, and he's kinda badass. However, so are chainsaw lances. If you're on drugs, you can probably get close to speedcapping a chainsaw lance, meaning you now have a fast as fuck pc2 weapon that deals bleed damage. Ouch. Some people roll with the zap brannigan, but that's a crazy ass weapon for crazy ass people. Let me be straight with you, unless you plan on playing hellmoo for a long time you're probably never going to own one of these. They are an ass to craft, and to use one effectively you need a true power adapter and a sack full of atomicells to keep the weapon charged. On the other hand, it scales very well with skill. The main advantages of spears are that all spears are at least pc1, and a bunch are pc2 meaning if you've got skill you're gonna parry like a prick. Also, you can use drugs almost like an abom due to your mad endurance, letting you get super fast and buff on top of any mutations you have. Downside is that you are basically reliant on those drugs to be super good, as spears are a bit slower than most.
Flails : If you're considering taking flails, you better be a gimmick character because these suck. Flails uses brawn and senses for skill, brawn for damage, and reflexes for speed. Flails are a pc- melee weapon, meaning that they can't be parried or dodged, but you can't parry with them in return. This would be kickass if any good flails existed. They don't. Most flails that aren't custom also can get stuck in their target. What this means is that you have to stop swinging to yank your flail out of your opponent's flesh, which leaves you pretty vulnerable until you do. I've been told that custom flails don't get stuck, but I've not researched that much. The 'saving grace' of flails is that you can make a custom flail out of basically anything. The raw of a custom flail is equal to the flail's weight, which means that while you can make a flail out of a refrigerator, that flail's going to ask you for 60 raw to use it with any semblance of accuracy. People go on about electronics workbench flails, which weigh 15kg so they're raw 15 meaning they're usable if you somehow get 15 raw, but I doubt you will. You can also make flails out of weapons, but the damage they do is half the damage of the weapon in question if it had no skill applied and had no mods on it. Chainsaw lance flails aren't terrible, and a giant wrench flail might be okay. Upside of flails is they're pc-, meaning they hit like guns without the need for ammo. Downside is that even if you hit you're probably not going to do much damage through your opponent's soaks since flails don't have much damage output
Science : If you actually need this guide, you're not ready for science. If guns are hard to start with, science is a fucking diamond. The only readily available science weapon is the proton pack, and that normally just does EMP damage which only hurts ghosts and robots. Other science weapons have to be crafted, which is a bitch, their ammo has to be custom crafted, which is that bitch's bigger and bitchier sister, and all science weapons have a chance of exploding violently and killing you if you fail your science roll hard enough, which is some other horrible metaphor. On the other hand, if you somehow manage to get good at science, you can kill things really nicely. Science weapons are pc- too, meaning that dodgy fuckers and blockers also have to fear you. Plus to be good at science you need to be good at brains meaning you can feint. On the other hand, anyone who's really fast and folks with hooligan can probably murder you.
Throwing : Uses brawn and senses. You can throw axes at people. Axes can be gotten for free from the fire station. That's really all you need to know. You're not gonna be able to block though.
Now we've talked weapons. And throwing. Throwing isn't really a weapon skill. So now you've picked your weapon. "Okay, but what else should I tag? What else is good? Tell me tell me tell me!" Fuck you. Tagging a skill makes you start with one raw in it and makes buying further raws cheaper. This means you should only tag skills you plan on taking to raw 10+. If you're gonna be a crafter, go ahead and tag craft and scavenge. Otherwise, figure it out your own damn self. Other okay tags might be hack or lockpick if you want to be a thief, or medic if you're not gonna be brainy but still want to be able to heal yourself well. Poor tag choices include appraise, fuck, sneak, torture, and fish. As for your stats, figure that shit out yourself, it's not hard.
Whatever, now let's talk grinding. Don't forget to use the grind <skill> command to grind better. You can only grind to 6 raw. After that you need to go find someone to teach you shit.
Weapons : Grinding a weapon is fuckin' easy. Go kill shit with your weapon. Check your weapon's raw, as long as your raw is within the range listed you'll get ip from using it just fine. This is fucking elementary, if you needed me to say this do us a favor and come back when you're actually 18.
Scavenge : Skin all those fuckers you kill while grinding weapons. Alternately, find a tile with a secret door, find the door, leave the tile, go back, repeat.
Throwing : Throwing isn't a weapon, remember? You can grind it by throwing shit at npcs to kill them, sure, but you can also find a buddy who will let you spend hours in a public area chucking cigarettes at their face. Just make sure they set up a trigger or something to not murder you.
Dodge : Get someone to chuck cigarettes at you and try not to kill each other. It takes forfuckingever, so set up triggers and go watch a movie or something.
Chemistry : Go make some hootch. Then take that hootch and make some molotovs.
Bombs : Use said molotovs.
Hack : Go find a computer and hack it. A lot. There's one in gangland.
Locksmith : Go find a keyed lock and pick it. A lot. There's one in slagtown.
Pilot : Go drive a boat around for several hours. Bring extra fuel. Boats are bought in Botany Bay, which you get to via plane, boat, or climbing. If you have no friends, have fun in the mountains.
Climb : Brucie's gym and Rolf's gym both have climbing walls. Go climb those for a few hours.
Ride : Buy a skateboard, go wild.
Repair : Find a public area with no cameras and a piece of furniture. Break furniture. Fix furniture. Repeat.
Quickdraw : Stand in the street drawing your weapon and stowing it repeatedly. Pretend you're Clint Eastwood.
Appraise : Go appraise shit in a store a lot. Be sure to have some stress reduction with you.
Medic : Buy a massage table in Weezer, find a volunteer, massage them until they have no bones.
Track : Find someone who doesn't move much, stand one tile away, track them repeatedly.
Swim : Walk a lot in the surf up on north beach. You can't sink, so there's no drowning involved.
Sneak : Get some stars, walk around the city a lot and try not to die.
Fuck : Have a lot of sex. How is this news.
Torture : Tie someone to the bench in hellfire, menace them with a cigarette a lot.
Focus : Drop a hottub in public, sit in hottub, spew constantly for six days.
Fish : Go fishing. No shit.
Craft : Remember all those skins you got while grinding scavenge? Probably? Okay, go turn all those into leather berets. Take your time, you can only get 1ip ever 15 seconds. Done with that? Then just improv makeshift with beret. Alternately, go to jail, mine up a bunch of ore, put ore in license plate press, make plates, then, improv pick with plate. This way is arguably easier and faster, but also might get you raped and killed in prison.
Now then, let's get to something actually interesting. MONEY. I like money. You probably like money too. But how to get money? For a newb, the easiest way is just to join a corp. In a corp you can do contracts for cash. Pretty simple. If you're a crazy murder machine, this is basically your main source of money.
Most newbs will start out with the eugenic cleansing contract once they've got themselves some weapon skill and some clothing. This usually involves murdering crackheads in the crack mansion, but if you feel lucky and have okay beat resists gear you can fight old people. Just watch out for the war vet, he's senile and has a rifle.
But how about if you don't want to join a corp/do contracts? One way is to do jobs. Some NPCs around town will pay you to do various things for money and xp, such as that nice old man Satan paying you to grind up corpses into food to eat. Look around or ask other players for tips on finding new jobs. Another way is to sell shit. If you're a crafter, you can sell items that you make from the flesh of your enemies for some extra cash, and speaking of flesh of your enemies, here's a tip for easy money.
If in a corp, get a beachcomber contract from the shop out in shoreline. At night, head to north beach. At night in north beach, the lobstros come out to play. You can kill them for some nice money from the contract, then butcher them for their meats. Take those meats and store them. Now head out to the chemical plant and kill the tuskers, butchering tusker bellies. Take those bellies and make bacon, then cook the bacon with the lobstro meat to make bacon wrapped lobstro. If you sell those to the right vendor you can get something like 1200 cash per lobstro you kill. Easy peasy.
Let's say you're a thief, you like lockpicking and B&Es. There's NPC hotels around the city that you can bust into and steal their TVs and other things, then sell them for cashy money. If you've got a bit more skill there's a place in corpclave you can break into for more expensive loot, too.
Through liberal application of contracts, jobs, and selling shit, you should very soon have enough cash to start that meth lab you've always dreamed of.
But where to put that meth lab you've always dreamed of? In your house, naturally. Let's get you one. There are various housing zones around the city, though the most popular are the Bradbury in slagtown, and Sweaty Palms and the Helliday in freedom city proper. In gangland there's also the astral complex and broham gardens, but we don't talk about those. In any case, to rent a place you'll need some startup cash and a monthly rent which will be automatically deducted from your account come payment day. Out of the places I just mentioned, the Helliday Inn is the most pricey, with a monthly rent of 1000 bux. Might sound like a lot to you if you're new, but it's really not. However, the housing complexes are frequently full up since there's limited room space. So how do you get one?
Time for another of Uri's tricks. This one is how I got my first place at the helliday when it was full up. If you've got tradenet on (tradenet on, duh) every now and then you'll see an announcement from an NPC named Sargo. This sometimes means that someone just got evicted, meaning you have a chance to get yourself a house if you act fast. Using Sargo as a signal is how I got my first place at the helliday and a corp HQ in corpclave.
So now you've got some skills ground up, you've gotten some cash, and you've got a house. Aww, look, you're all grown up. And I didn't even hold your hand the whole way, maybe you learned a bit about actually relying on yourself instead of asking others to spoon feed you everything, you fuckin' babies.
So a couple of you pissheads were all, "Uriel! Help me make a build like the awesome goddess of cool that you are!" Flattery will get you everywhere, so here's a few builds for you.
Brainy!Clubs
So clubs uses only two stats for speed, skill, and damage. That means you've got a spare stat for expanding your shenanigans potential. Now you could make that third stat senses to be more dodgy and be a straight combat focused boring fuck, but that's dull and boring and piss on anyone who says this game's only about combat. So, brains it is! Note that this build also lets you use guns as a second weapon if you like since guns don't need as much tohit as melee weapons.
Tagged Skills : Clubs, Craft, Scavenge, Science Clubs should be obvious, it's your main weapon. Craft is the standard brain skill and lets you make badass shit for you and your little friends and crappy coworkers. Scavenge lets you find crap to make more crap with. Science is just goddamn awesome, letting you make shit like portalguns and sim up new recipes. Since you're brawny, you can even effectively use SCIENCE weapons, which are pretty awesome.
Starting stats : Reflex 14, Brawn 14, Brain 10 But Uriel, I want my 14 in in brains! Well, be my guest. Just note that right out of the gate you'll have to do more combat than brainy stuff, so you'll have a tougher beginning. Higher brawn also lets you wear more armor and carry more shit.
Gymming The first thing you should gym is your reflexes. Probably shouldn't do this 'til you're done with your grinding since higher skill equals a tougher grind. "But brains!" Reflexes is more useful early on. After that you have a choice, you can gym Brawn up to be more combat effective, not a bad choice in this game, or you can gym brains to work on your craft and shit earlier. The choice is yours. Note that if you go brawn first, you'll get to start working on brains around 60k xp or so.
Mutations Like gymming, I'd say hold off on stat changing muts til you're done with your grinding. There's no set mutation list I'm going to give you, so be clever. Here's a few tips and shit though.
Brute Strength vs Swollen Brain : This is a choice between being more combat effective and easier brain shit. Personally I think that brute may be more helpful in the endgame, but earlier on swollen will help you with your crafting and shit. If you want to get swollen, then demute later or something, up to you.
Leapfrog/Flight vs Clair : This build likely won't let you have good focus. Leapfrog and Flight don't run off focus, though, they run off brawn and reflex, reflex for the rolls and brawn so you can fly while carrying more shit. Helpful for getting around, but you could also get Clair to be able to see in the dark or whatever, though projecting won't work all that well. You might also consider clair if you go with Lithodermis for synergy with the next mutation option. Of course you could just fly a plane somewhere and take clair, but if you want to fight chupacabras then flight helps. Otherwise you'll need a jetpack.
Hooligan : Didn't think of this with a brains build, did you? Guess what, with your high brawn (and possibly lithodermis if you forewent flight) your headbutts will hurt like hell. Go have fun with it, you rugby bastard.
That's about all there is to say about this in a basic outline form. Have fun changing how the world sees smart people.
Brainy!Blades
Blades is normally seen as the domain of combat specific characters. Piss on that, let's make a blade user who's smart and shit. This build focuses on blades skill, meaning your endgame weapon is the motherfucking shiver sword, which runs on skill to do massive hurts. Considering you'll be smart, you can make your own swords and atomicells for a power adapter to run the damn thing.
Tagged Skills : Blades, Craft, Scavenge, Science Blades is your weapon, craft is how you make shit, scavenge finds you bits to make shit with, and SCIENCE is goddamn SCIENCE for crafting and simming. Note that since you're not going to be brawny, SCIENCE weapons and guns will be slow.
Starting Stats : Reflex 14, Cool 14, Brains 10 "But I want more brains in the beginning!" Bully for you. By all means, do so, but your blades skill wont be as high. Less weapon skill may make the early game tougher, but it's doable.
Gymming Gym your shit after you grind or the grind will be harder. First gym your reflexes, then your cool. This'll make you more dangerous, which is useful. "But I want brains first!" Then do brains first, I'm not your damn mother. Just note that if you gym whichever you put the other 14 into first, you'll be able to start working on the last stat by about 60k or so. However, one of those two skills will end at 17 instead of 18, and the better one for that is brains imo.
Mutations I'm not going to make a list for you, but I'll mention a few things about some muts you probably will want to consider. Swollen Brain : This mutation is pretty useful, you'll be trading 1 point of cool for 3 points of brains. However, this may throw your blades skill permanently off a point if it makes your cool and reflexes not both be odd or even numbers. Remember, for the best skill point the two stats involved should either be odd or even, but not one odd and one even.
Enigma : Boosts your cool. That's great! However you can't be diagnosed (not that big a deal) or analyzed (a much bigger deal), and you can no longer brag (the BIGGEST GODDAMN DEAL OF ALL). If you feel those extra two points of cool or hiding your muts is worth getting stuck with mentals (unless you're buddy buddy with an empath) and being unable to strut your braggy stuff, then go for it.
Fuck Machine : May be harder to use if not focus-y, and let's face it, your focus won't be amazing. Could help you control your horniness to maintain your blade skill or to increase your carrying capacity, and the +1 cool fixes the -1 from swollen brains.
That should help you figure things out well enough. Have fun swordfighting.