Steam Community :: Guide :: 'Easy' Character Build Sheet

Store Page

System Shock® 2 (1999)

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

System Shock® 2 (1999) > Guides > Charlie4727's Guides

260 ratings

'Easy' Character Build Sheet

By Charlie4727

A very short and concise guide on how to upgrade a character in System Shock 2. This type of build is a great choice for beginners.

The full rationale behind the choices has been explained very well in other excellent guides. This is just for quick reference use while in game.

Award

Created by

Charlie4727
Offline

Category: Characters, Classes, Gameplay Basics

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

5 Dec, 2015 @ 2:11pm

6 Dec, 2015 @ 1:50pm

14,453	Unique Visitors
606	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Intro

CHOOSE YOUR PATH

TECH

WEAPONS

STATS

PSIONICS

OS UPGRADES

Comments

Intro

Early game! Use your wrench! Use the brawnboost implant and keep it charged! Use the autodoc! You will club many things to death, relax. Your health is cheap, ammo is expensive. Yes youll have to plod back and forth between levels 1 - 4 to do this. Save your ammo and hypos!

Get very used to saving constantly and reloading your game to retry stuff. I mean literally every two minutes. This is not Dark Souls, why torture yourself? Its also not a AAA title from the last 5 years, so handhold it does not.

By mid-game youll be ammo-ed up, disciplined with saves and a bargain grabbing, item rich, killing machine, if you follow the upgrade guide below.

So when you come up on something thats actually a threat you'll have the pleasure of many, many grenades to launch at its face. ;)

CHOOSE YOUR PATH

Take the Navy path, with these options:
Year 1: +1 STR, +1 Hack
Year 2: +2 Standard (there is a case to be made for +2 CYB here too)
Year 3: +2 AGL

TECH

HACK: CRITICAL 4 levels by midgame, 6 levels by endgame!

MAINTAIN: GOOD, get it as needed to keep weapons alive!

MODIFY: GOOD, 1 level needed only!

REPAIR: POOR, 0, dont bother, just keep things saved and maintained and you wont need it.

RESEARCH: POOR-GOOD, 1 level to start, 3 levels later because of shinyyy thingsss

WEAPONS

STANDARD WEAPONS: CRITICAL, 6 levels, just doooo ittttt! Never has an M16 kicked so much ass.

ENERGY WEAPONS: POOR, 1 level so you can use the laser pistol. A very useful tool, why hack, explore, stealth or blah blah when you can just zap anything small for infinitely rechargeable free?!

HEAVY WEAPONS: GOOD, 1 level for grenade launcher, 3 levels if you just love it and love big guns later on.

EXOTIC WEAPONS: POOR, 1 level mayybe for the most basic exotic weapon which is quite nice.

STATS

STRENGTH: CRITICAL, 5 levels, brawn implant will take it to 6.

AGILITY: GOOD, 3 levels, useful early game for rushing and braining things cheaply and effectively.

CYBER AFFINITY: GOOD, 4 levels, makes hacking just special.

ENDURANCE: POOR, 2 levels later maybe, you can get away without this.

PSI: POOR, 2 levels, some of the powers are cool, will explain below.

PSIONICS

WE SAID WE WOULDNT DO THESE BUT HERE WE ARE ANYWAY! Pick and choose from these, they are not the core of this build! No skill over level 3 are listed for this build. Dont go there! ;)

CYBERAFFINITY: hackzorsss, yep this is good.

CRYOKINESIS: free cheap zaps, meh why, just use laser pistol hmmm

ADRENALIN: hulk smash, just get LETHAL WEAPON OS UPGRADE if you cant be bothered with psi stuff.

REGENERATION: use psi hypos as med kits, yayyyyy, especially good if you suck and like to heal all the time, like me!

ELECTRON CASCADE: lekky sponge! charge up everything all the time! Less looking for wall sockets!

OS UPGRADES

Only listed the ones useful for this build! You get 3 or 4 in the whole game!, choose carefully!

SHARPSHOOTER: BANG!

CYBERNETICALLY ENHANCED: IMPLANTS!

REPLICATOR EXPERT: CHEAP STUFF!

PHARMO FRIENDLY: INJECT YOSELF!

LETHAL WEAPON: HULK SMASSSSHHH (Especially good if you dont go for psi powers at all and just want to be a gorilla.)

12 Comments

< >

Midnight Ranger 9 Jul @ 4:34pm

For the Psi Powers, I would personally replace Cryokinesis with Psycho-Reflective Screen.

Boyar 2 Aug, 2023 @ 4:20pm

I go around and hit everything with a wrench

Life is good

Huh? Guns? What guns?

Lt.Dan 1 Jul, 2023 @ 6:06pm

CAN YOU HELP ME I KEEP DYING

awdf 30 Jul, 2022 @ 6:42pm

Thank you, very helpful!

Zidane Lionheart 22 Jul, 2021 @ 9:02pm

Excellent!

megalomania 26 Oct, 2020 @ 12:34pm

☠Sodie Popping☠ There is a very good modding guide by 'Saleck'. It's very in-depth and informative. Highly recomended.

tynian87116 2 Sep, 2020 @ 9:11am

Awesome guide!

Sodie Popping 17 Aug, 2020 @ 12:50pm

Ik this is a character guide but do you have any recommendations for mods, either graphical or anything else?

fishhooks 12 Jul, 2016 @ 9:05am

My recommendation...play on Easy, stock-pile a ton of cyber-modules, do a hard save about a third of the way thru, and experiment! Try out numerous combinations, see how you like them, and re-load the save as many times as necessary to find your own 'best' choices. Do another third, (stock-pile modules again), hard-save, rinse and repeat. By game's end, you should have a pretty good idea of what kind of build you have the most fun with, and can proceed on higher difficulties with a clear idea of exactly what you want to invest in.

fishhooks 12 Jul, 2016 @ 9:04am

@ shibbeh...I see a lot of strict guides for specific builds too, and having invested hundreds (if not thousands) of hours in this game over the past decade, I can safely say...THERE IS NO STRICT BULD THAT IS "BEST"...PERIOD.

There is so much variety available (particularly regarding the Psi options), and because difficulty level has a HUGE impact (more so in this game than any other I've played), players should always look for their own personal optimum. While there are certainly some cyber-module investments that can universally be considered as pointless (i.e. taking Research to lvl 6), most are truly a matter of personal choice.

Take this guide for instance...while it's a good starting place for a first-timer on Easy difficulty, there are several recommendations that I totally disagree with. Like two of the OS recs...Replicator Expert and Pharmo Friendly...complete waste of half your OS implants, imho. Doesn't nake the guide wrong or right...just different choices.

< >