In this Wasteland 3 Best Party Builds guide, we’ll be giving you a rough idea of what we think can be the ideal party to travel with when traversing Colorado.
We will give you an example of a good party composition and explain how members of your squad can play off each other’s strengths.
Wasteland 3 Best Party Builds
The world of Wasteland 3 is a dangerous one and best not explored alone.
As you continue your adventure, you’ll be able to acquire pre-made NPCs that will join your party to assist you throughout the game.
You can also create custom characters that suit your agenda. When creating a character, you’ll get to choose their Starting Weapon, Background, Attributes, Perks, Skills and Quirks.
Out of these, Quirks are optional. You don’t have to choose any Quirks for a character if your build doesn’t need one.
Keep in mind that you can create a Wasteland 3 Character build any time by heading to the HQ.
If you think a build isn’t performing as you expected, you can replace the build or rework it as we will explain in this Wasteland 3 best party builds guide.
Managing your Party
After adding a new companion to your squad you can manage them from the Escape menu and heading to Manage Party.
You can also talk to the NPC directly at your base. Companions can’t be kicked from the squad, but they can be stowed away for later user.
New companions will be able to join your squad automatically through a game progression based on the choices you make in the game.
Sometimes, if you make a decision that bothers them; they will leave you, unable to be used again.
Your squad can have a total of 6 active party members at once. In that, you’re allowed to have a maximum of 4, and a minimum of 2 Rangers.
Other than that, 2 slots are reserved for the companions.
Ranger or a Companion?
The difference between the two is that Rangers may only be recruited and created from the Ranger HQ or by speaking to Sergei Greatski in Colorado Springs.
Companions are pre-made and they have their very own voice lines, personality, stats, and agenda.
Making your Party
As you play through Wasteland 3, you’ll understand that you can’t exclusively stick to one composition for too long.
Swapping out different companions for other individuals becomes important when facing unique situations.
There is no universally best companion and you must learn to adapt to different situations for a truly effective party.
Skill Mules
This is where Skill Mules come into play. Instead of creating full-fledged characters with balanced stats all round, it’s wiser to create characters that focus primarily only on either one or two skills to help you get through very specific situations.
For example, they could have proficiency in skills that aren’t necessary for progression in Wasteland 3.
Skills like Barter, Toaster Repair, and Weapon/Armor Modding can be maxed out on the character creation screen.
Make a character for the Barter skill, and get yourself good cash on your sales, or buy items for cheap.
This way you won’t have to sacrifice on your combat or any other important aspects of your squad build.
Recommended Party Build
With all the above tips in mind, let’s create the perfect Wasteland 3 squad build that will suit our adventure the best.
Each character has a total of 7 attributes.
Leader (6/1/1/2/1/4/6) – The Boss, and Medical Marvel. Give ‘em 2 Automatic Weapons, First Aid 1, Leadership 1, and Mechanics 1.
The Leader can’t be revived during a battle but will be automatically revived once the fight’s over. Invest in the Mechanics Skill to make exploration easy.
Sniper (10/1/1/1/1/6/1) – Goat Killer, and Death Wish. You won’t be able to wear any armor, but considering you’re a sniper you won’t exactly need it either.
Scout (6/1/4/2/1/6/1) – Raider Hater, and Serial Killer. Bring down your enemies’ health down as low as you can use your other companions and bring your Scout’s AP up with the Serial Killer perk by finishing them off. He can become a formidable foe as he thrives on killstreaks.
Use the above three presets as templates and design your roster around them. The attributes, perks, and quirks will help you face combat and explore more effectively.
Leader Build
Attributes
- Coordination: 6
- Luck: 1
- Awareness: 1
- Strength: 2
- Speed: 1
- Intelligence: 4
- Charisma: 6
As the name suggests, the Leader build is designed to be well-balanced, so they can lead your party.
Choose ‘The Boss’ as your background as it’ll give you Hard Ass 1. You’ll then be able to get Hard Ass 2 by getting the Ranger Veteran Star accessory found in the Ambush Site. You can select whatever starting weapon you want.
The Mechanics skill is really important for this build as it allows the character to explore more freely. It also lets you put down turrets which will make your character even more powerful.
The ‘Medical Marvel’ quirk works very well for this build as it increases the leader’s survivability.
They may not be able to get revived by a teammate, but they’ll get back up by themselves at the end of combat.
Assassin
- Coordination: 6
- Luck: 1
- Awareness: 1
- Strength: 6
- Speed: 5
- Intelligence: 1
- Charisma: 1
Equipped with Melee Combat, and Explosives skills, you’ll be able to engage enemies at both close and medium-range.
Utilize throwing weapons, bladed weapons and blunt weapons to take your enemies out whenever necessary.
Your high coordination will allow you to position yourselves as far as possible, it works hand-in-hand with the Assassin’s playstyle.
Healer
- Coordination: 4
- Luck: 2
- Awareness: 1
- Strength: 2
- Speed: 5
- Intelligence: 6
- Charisma: 1
With the background of a Bookworm, and utilizing skills such as Leadership, Small Arms, and First Aid; you can be the perfect support for your team. Pick the Pointdexter perk for this one.
Although, you can engage in the occasional fisticuff every now and then. The better thing to do with a Healer is to stay in the back and let the opportunity present itself.
Don’t engage unless you absolutely have to, and make sure your team stays on its toes at ALL TIMES
Sniper Build
Attributes
- Coordination: 10
- Luck: 1
- Awareness: 1
- Strength: 1
- Speed: 1
- Intelligence: 6
- Charisma: 1
The reason why the Coordination attribute of the Sniper is so high is because this will give them a ton of AP.
You can then get the ‘Death Wish’ quirk to stack up even more AP. This will allow the sniper to shoot two bullets from their sniper rifle each turn.
For your Background, select ‘Goat Killer’ as it’ll bump up your crit chance, which is very important for a sniper. The high intelligence will work hand-in-hand with your background to give you a really high crit chance.
Since the Sniper will be attacking safely from a distance, you don’t really need to have any armor. Utility items can still come in handy, however. Use your skill points to get Lockpicking 2, Explosives 1 and Sniper Rifles 2.
Another cool thing about this build is that once you get your hands on a rocket launcher, you can equip your sniper with it in the alternate weapon slot. You’ll then be able to fire a rocket twice per turn.
Assault Build
- Coordination: 4
- Luck: 1
- Awareness: 1
- Strength: 2
- Speed: 1
- Intelligence: 6
- Charisma: 1
Equip the Demoman with the Big Guns, Explosives and the Lockpicking skills. Since you’ll be dealing in mostly explosives, it’s best to acquire the Pyromanic perk along the way.
You can easily take care of herds of enemies on your own from medium range. Make sure the Demoman isn’t left uncovered or he’s just a standing duck that can only take so much.
With high intelligence, you’ll have a greater chance to land critical hits. It’s chaotic, really. Deal AoE damage along with a high chance to land criticals.
Pyromaniac
Attributes
- Coordination: 3
- Luck: 2
- Awareness: 2
- Strength: 6
- Speed: 4
- Intelligence: 3
- Charisma: 1
The idea of this extremely tanky build is to bring your flamethrower up to its highest potential. However, this build isn’t a one-trick pony, it’ll also be able to work well with grenades and RPGs.
Since flamethrowers don’t work well against robotic targets, you’ll be using your RPGs and grenades just as much.
With the attributes, your main focus is Strength as it’ll help your character become the absolute tank you want it to be. Not only will it increase your health and damage, it’ll also allow you to wield heavy weapons and armors.
The second most important attribute is Speed, as all that heavy armor and weaponry will make you quite slow.
High Speed will allow you to stay at the front lines so you can lead your team, as opposed to lagging behind everyone.
It’ll also allow you to make the move first, so you can obliterate enemies before they even get the chance to fight back. Furthermore, it’ll grant you evasion; which makes you harder to get a hit on.
Coordination will help you out a lot as well as it’ll grant you some much needed AP, a lot of which is required to use your flamethrower and RPG.
When it comes to the quirk, ‘Pyromaniac’ is a total no-brainer for obvious reasons.
The skills you need are Weird Science, Explosives, Big Guns and Toaster Repair. These will all help you use your weapons more efficiently.
Toaster Repair may seem like an odd choice but it’s a very good skill for this build as it gives you access to the ‘Heating Element’ Perk. This perk will boost your fire damage by +25%.
Other useful perks are Terrorizer, Pressure Cooker, Widespread and Duck and Cover.
Melee Build
Attributes
- Coordination: 4
- Luck: 2
- Awareness: 1
- Strength: 2
- Speed: 5
- Intelligence: 6
- Charisma: 1
The Brawler relies on critical hit chance and damage to deliver its DPS. This build is very agile and evasive, and also serves as a good medic for the team.
The problem with creating a brawler build is that survivability is needed as your purpose is to be on the front-lines, fighting the enemies head on.
This means that a ton of Action Points are needed to build up your combo meter by hitting the enemy multiple times per turn.
However, this type of build also requires you to be very agile and evasive. It’s impossible to create a build with all of these features together, which is why you’ll have to choose one or the other.
This build favors mobility over strength. If you prefer the opposite, then feel free to adjust the build to your own needs.
The Background for this build is ‘Mopey Poet’. It grants you an increase in evasion, so it’s the best choice for this type of build.
Speed is the main attribute of this build. It’ll enable you to move more hexes per AP.
Since you don’t have much health with this build, the Evasion you get from the Speed attribute is extremely important as it’ll be your primary method of survivability.
Coordination is also very important for this build because if you don’t have a solid number of Action Points in the first place, your high Speed won’t help you out that much. You should max out both Coordination and Speed when you can.
The third most important attribute is Intelligence because of the high crit chance and crit damage it gives you.
It also gives you crit heal chance and bonus, which is why medic works so well with this build.
After you max out Speed and Coordination, use the rest of your points in Luck and Intelligence.
The two points in Strength and Luck are there for the +3 Constitution/level and +1 Penetration buffs respectively.
For your skills, Brawling is the most important one (who would’ve guessed?). When you reach the max level of Brawling, it’ll give you access to a perk which decreases the AP cost of your brawling weapons by –1.
Another good skill is First Aid, which grants you the Overhealing perk when you get it to level 5.
Leadership is also a good one as it grants you the Demoralize perk at level 5, which increases your damage output with Shaolin Strike.
When choosing perks, pick those which increase your survivability. You already have a high enough damage output, so try to pick those perks first which give you more Constitution and/or crit resistance.
You can then pick brawling perks like Shaolin Surprise and Deadly Combo to make the character even stronger.
The best quirk to use with this build is ‘Death Wish’. It grants you more AP, but it’ll also not let your character wear armor.
This debuff doesn’t really matter as your low Strength doesn’t allow you to wear heavy armor anyway.
