Worst 6 traits?

[sadpickle]

My number-one is Chemical Fascination. I hate these goddamn pawns so much. You just can't have drugs around without them blowing through limited stocks and getting fucked up. I guess they are supposed to chill out once they have a habit, but my whole strategy is to avoid addiction so they're basically immediately disqualified unless they are HIGHLY desirable in some other way (unlikely).

Sickly is shitty. They burn through medicine stocks and since they're almost always ill they are not efficient pawns.

Gourmand is brutal in the early game. A break in the first year can be devastating. It's not even worth trying to Naked Brutality with a Gourmand. Once you're established it doesn't really matter as much, but they have an annoying habit of breaking work to go stuff more food down their pie-hole.

I don't like Body Purist because I will augment everyone if I have the resources. If they get a leg or arm blown off they just aren't worth it, and it is only a matter of time.

I try to avoid lazy/slothful pawns as they are just not efficient.

Everything else is fairly manageable; I don't try to micro pawns too much so I get social fights on occasion but it's nothing my doctors can't handle. Pyromaniac is a minor one, though if the pawn breaks frequently it can be annoying.

[bbqftw]

the thing with chem int and chem fasc is that you can explicitly play around them, its not like certain other traits which are unconditionally bad, which is what you really want to have a truly awful experience.

[viperwasp]

I would love to see someone use a mod or scenario options or Dev Mode and do a run with more than the max negative traits. I forget if Scenario options can allow you to place more than the regular amount of traits. But I know Dev Mode allows you to do this. So every time you sucessful get a new pawn. Pause the game and add like 5+ Negative traits onto the pawn. Probably the same 5 to keep it simple and try to make it the worst possible mix of 5+ etc. lol

May be a mod that can help with this I don't know. But it would be a fun run.

[makkenhoff]

Pyromaniac, Jealous, Greedy, Depressive, Pessimist, Slothful

Those are my top 6 in order of annoyance.

[5thHorseman]

I started a Randy Savage* game with:

Pyromaniac with Psychically Hypersensitive
Gourmand with Chemical Interest
Wimp with Chemical Fascination

I'm about to win (Or lose. 13 days left on the ship warmup timer) and this is in many ways my best colony so far. It will be my first win on Randy OR Savage.

I did not specifically limit my wealth in any of the cheesy ways, though I did make sure I was only holding what I needed and didn't produce anything extra. I did not burn, melee, or dump anything off map though I did think about it. I DID make sure to gift all the stuff I couldn't use every time a friendly came by.

I also specifically did not limit my pawns, except how I genrally would by considering their skills. Midway through the game I stopped caring if they had "bad" traits and near the end I took a couple pawns with bad traits (chemical stuff and pyro, and a gourmand). I don't know exactly but I think 5 of my 15 pawns are chemical interest/fascination, 2 are pyros and 1 is a gourmand. I don't know about the rest specifically but will write something up when I win (or lose)

I played it pretty standard. I do have 2 kill boxes (One I just kinda made up and it works so well it's going to be my new kill box for a while) as the only ways into the base, and am using traps and turrets in chokepoints and sapper entry points.

I've lost 3 colonists so far, and none of them due to these bad traits. One died while opening the ancient danger. To - of all things - a Thrumbo that wandered into the middle of the firefight. Another died to a grizzly bear that attacked her all alone in the wilderness. The 3rd died in a mechanoid raid. Seems getting your head cut off is fatal in this game. I only lost 2 of them, the thrumbo fatality received a quick hit of ressurector serum that was in the ancient danger.

I'm going to take all the suggestions in this thread and try to come up with an absolute worst makeup for my next playthrough, and if they have a similar low number of hardships I'm going to start allowing any and all recruits that otherwise have reasonable skills into all of my colonies.

[saulysw]

Nudist on a cold map?
A least two jealous pawns (they both can't have the "best" bedrooms)
Luciferium needs on map with none (this recently got me.... I banished them after unsuccessfully searching high and low for some)
Scars, bad backs, old colonists who are depressive and of course...pacifists.

I once tried "the commune" where I more or less tried to keep everyone as high as possible without killing them. Took in everyone who wanted to join, rescued everyone who crashed, no questions asked. No armour. Avoided conflict as much as possible. Got to about day 30 and then things started to go seriously wrong.

[bbqftw]

Nudist only like -3/4 (can't remember), so its not even as bad as a depressive lol

[saulysw]

Yeah ... OR... you can make them nude, on a cold map.

[5thHorseman]

So I "won" my campaign. It was my first Savage run so I wasn't really prepared for what the game was going to send at me. As soon as 1 pawn died there was a terrible spiral and in the end, all that was left was a pyromaniac with about 100 mood hits for all the other colonists dying and all the trash lying around.

The last 5 days I just let raiders come in and steal stuff, while a group of siegers just pummeled the place with mortars. 1 day before going a trade caravan intersected with them and that was fun to watch.

That one pyro hopped in the ship as 3 groups of sappers - who didn't need to sap anything because there were holes all over my perimeter - descended on the base. I hope they had a good time ransacking the little that was left.

I still consider this a win for the big idea, as the problems I had had nothing to do with the traits. Even having only a pyro (with the lack of firefighting skill) and several days of mortars raining fire on the colony, I survived okay. As well as could be expected with ANY colonist.

I'm going to try again but on Rough in a harder biome (I had 40 days of growing and lots of trees, and a river) though I don't yet know what traits I'll use.

A least two jealous pawns (they both can't have the "best" bedrooms)

Actually for that one you just need their rooms to be tied to make them happy.

[EvadableMoxie]

Assuming we're talking a standard Crash Landed in a non-extreme biome:

Gourmand definitely isn't in a top 6 of the worst traits.  Eating extra food shouldn't really make a difference for most colonies, and it does have the upside of +4 cooking.  Food binges are really only bad due to losing control of the colonist, which means you really can't use them for direct combat safely. Beyond that, it's fine.  There are a lot of worse traits. 

Chemical interest and Chemical fascination definitely take the top 2 worst spots, though. I don't think I'd put Pyro as the 3rd worst, though, since it's generally not much worse than Gourmand.  Maybe depressive.

[ruckenhof]

The worst pawn I've ever seen had two threshold-lowering traits at once (I think she was Too smart and Volatile but I'm not really sure). She was pretty skilled, but holy crap was she fragile. I had to build the best room specifically for her to keep her in "minor break" range. Still, it was pretty common for her to get two consequent breaks in a day (Catharsis +70 yay!). I think the time she wasted during sad wanders and catatonics was much more than any delays potentially caused by Gourmands or Slothfuls. When she finally died after a raid I had zero regrets.

[zizard]

Assuming we're talking a standard Crash Landed in a non-extreme biome:

Gourmand definitely isn't in a top 6 of the worst traits.  Eating extra food shouldn't really make a difference for most colonies, and it does have the upside of +4 cooking.  Food binges are really only bad due to losing control of the colonist, which means you really can't use them for direct combat safely. Beyond that, it's fine.  There are a lot of worse traits. 

Chemical interest and Chemical fascination definitely take the top 2 worst spots, though. I don't think I'd put Pyro as the 3rd worst, though, since it's generally not much worse than Gourmand.  Maybe depressive.

Chem int / fasc has extremely easy workaround in the early game, where you just burn the paltry amount of drugs raiders drop that you don't need. Late game you can psychite or beer addict them. Then there's no real effects.

[5thHorseman]

Chem int / fasc has extremely easy workaround in the early game, where you just burn the paltry amount of drugs raiders drop that you don't need. Late game you can psychite or beer addict them. Then there's no real effects.

If they (or anybody) is addicted to beer or psychite is that the only drug they'll take on a binge? And if not, does it at least keep them from becoming addicted to that other, harder drug?

[5thHorseman]

The worst pawn I've ever seen had two threshold-lowering traits at once (I think she was Too smart and Volatile but I'm not really sure). She was pretty skilled, but holy crap was she fragile. I had to build the best room specifically for her to keep her in "minor break" range. Still, it was pretty common for her to get two consequent breaks in a day (Catharsis +70 yay!). I think the time she wasted during sad wanders and catatonics was much more than any delays potentially caused by Gourmands or Slothfuls. When she finally died after a raid I had zero regrets.

I would like to note that in the run I did with 6 "worst" (in quotes because I've changed my mind on them and only picked them on a whim) traits, the colonist in the colony who by far had the worst time of things was a new recruit whose only "bad" trait was that she was depressive.

[zizard]

If they (or anybody) is addicted to beer or psychite is that the only drug they'll take on a binge? And if not, does it at least keep them from becoming addicted to that other, harder drug?

As long as they have a satisfied addiction they won't do their special binge at all.

Wow break increasing traits sound amazingly strong. They can be controlled to produce catharsis for inspirations.