Wasteland Remastered walkthrough part 1: Ranger Centre

Welcome to my walkthrough for Wasteland Remastered! As a fan of 1980s CRPGs, I have been looking forward to reliving my younger years through this game.

For those who might be used to this style of game, or may have forgotten some of those cryptic clues and special keys I hope this walkthrough serves you well. Let’s enter the Wasteland together…

Skip ahead

The first three parts of this walkthrough talk about character creation, navigating the game map, and managing your party. If you are happier getting started straight away then skip these parts and take the starting party straight to Highpool to get your adventure started.

Alternatively, use this shorter getting started in Wasteland guide to get your first $1,000 and some useful gear before you get started on the quests.

Danger Rangers

You start the game with a functional party of four Rangers. These provide a serviceable way to get started in the wasteland. If you’re happy you can simply leave Ranger Centre immediately and start exploring the Wasteland. If so, go straight to part 2. Otherwise read on for some party creation tips.

Destruction – creation

To create your own Ranger character you will first need to delete one of the starter party. While there’s no limit to the number of NPCs or Clones (we’ll get to that later) you can have in your party, 4 rangers is your maximum.

Therefore your first step in creating a ranger of your own is to delete one of the starting party. But this gives you good practise at disbanding characters.

Step 1, is to open a character you won’t be deleting and Pool all the party’s money to them. This ensures that you won’t accidentally remove you party’s money along with an unwanted party member.

Step 2 is to strip your unwanted character of equipment. Simply trade all their items off to the other members of your party. This can be sold off later for cash.

Step 3 is to double check that your unwanted character has no cash or items you want to keep on them. If not, then you can safely delete them.

Well done, you’re now ready to create your first Ranger!

Quartz sidebar

If you want to delete all four starting characters immediately, you will find that carrying capacity among the new party members is reached fairly quickly. The store in Quartz will buy all starting ranger items, and it’s safe enough to take a trip there even as a starting party.

First, make sure you enter Quartz to the lower left square with the brighter blue roof.

Next, go North and you’ll find the store almost immediately as it’s the first building on you party’s left.

Once you have sold everything off (remember to Pool all the money to a character you will keep!) you are ready to complete your party o new rangers!

Got stats?

In proper 1980s RPG fashion the first thing to do is roll up your character’s stats. Some are more important than others. While some people are happy to roll several hundred times to get what they want, I prefer a slightly faster approach.

An acceptable character for me is one with INT 15 or higher, and all other stats in double figures. It can take a while even to roll someone to this level, but if your other stats aren’t high enough your new character may be unable to hit with a gun or deal damage in hand to hand combat. This would not be ideal.

Skill planning

A good party is one with a mix of skills and some redundancy for the more important skills. Medic can be a literal life-saver, but not if your only Medic is the one who is seriously injured. So you need to consider not just the best skill mix for an individual character, but also the best skill mix for your party.

A higher INT stat gives a character access to different and better skills. You can’t roll higher than 18, but ultimately all characters will need to go higher than that.

I recommend the following approach:

For each character: Brawling (level 2), Clip Pistol, Swim, Climb, Perception, Assault Rifle

For 2-3 characters: SMG, Perception (level 2), Picklock (level 2)

For 2 characters: Medic (level 2)

For 1-2 characters: AT Weapon, Bomb Disarm, Demolitions

For 0-1 characters: Metallurgy

Explanation:

Clip Pistol gives you the ability to use your starting ranged weapon, which is always a pistol. Brawling lets you fight in melee, at first using your crowbar, but other weapons will be available later. Going straight for level 2 means your character will do 2 attacks in combat when in melee.

Swim and Climb are important at multiple points in the game, as is Perception. Having a couple of characters start a Perception level 2 will also help.

Assault rifles are going to be important for all party members to have, especially once you’re righting killer robots on the streets of Las Vegas (we’ll get to that later).

SMG lets your character use the Uzi, which is the bridge between pistols and assault rifles. You can ignore the carbines and rifles in the game. AT Weapon gives a character or two the opportunity to use Anti-tank weapons, which pack a punch.

Demolitions and Bomb disarm come in useful too.

Medic costs a total of 6 skill points to take to level 2, but it’s worth it. The Wasteland is a harsh place and serious injury can quickly lead to death.

Metallurgy can be useful, especially if you like digging cash out of solid rock (we’ll get to that later).

Once your party is done, join me for part 2 and heading out into… the Wasteland!