Combat Skills

[Giantmoth]

I'm thinking of making a new character with plenty in combat skills. Basing around one of the larget cities(If I can find them), and mainly hunting boars and bears for settlers who'd rather focus on building skills than combat. I'd like to ask what combat skills are viable to get, as well as what food and beliefs should be focused in. I'd have to rely on other players for items, but hopefully one can earn up most basic items by hunting for people.

It would seem that Melee is the easiest sustainable combat. Armour decay would be the biggest problem, but making arrows could be quite hard, since it needs a lot of skills. Is unarmed good at all, or should be skipped if possible? Any advice appreciated!

[Kokaiin]

Dunno. But if you want to be self-suficent, you'll need mining, foraging, and metalworking to make armor and a sword. Foraging to find rustroot.

[weirdguy]

Slings aim faster than bows and rocks are easier to obtain. For the most part, unless you've got really good accuracy, don't even think about a bow.

[Giantmoth]

So slings are good for easy to sustain weaponry, but how powerful are they when you need to fight boars, bears, and even other players?

[Kokaiin]

That's pretty much enitrely up to your marksman skill.

[Giantmoth]

Stone axes can be used as starting melee weapons, don't they? How effective ARE melee weapons?

[Giantmoth]

I could use a second opinion on the Melee weapons vs Ranged weapons. My main goal is to go hunt boars and bears for people in return for payment, as well as hiring myself to other players to either attack people, or defend their own stuff against raiders. So a mix of player combat and animal combat. I was under the impression that animal combat was best done with a bow, having witnessed some hunter take down a bear in 4 arrows, and player combat being more effective with melee weaponry. Might be wrong though.

[weirdguy]

This is correct. Ranged weapons work best for hunting because animals are stupid and stay still while you're aiming at them, but you'll need good perception to deal more damage. Melee combat works better for human opponents because they probably won't stay still for you while you're aiming, and because most metal armor shrugs off ranged hits pretty easily.