I'm currently playing a vanilla generalist game....3 Per, 3 Str, 5 End, 1 Agi, 6 Int solo game at the moment. The only weapon skill I'm using is rifles 2/5. I have 3 points in heavy armor and healing factor, and I have no issues staying alive...currently at level 50-ish. Modded, high end melee weapons that I've looted from POIs seem more than sufficient, and avoiding speccing into any particular melee weapon style means that I've been able to freely discard old weapons and grab newer, better ones without regard to weapon type....discarding my level 2 iron spear for a level 3 reinforced club, then that into a level 4 steel spear, and dropping that for a level 5 steel sledge.
This is actually how most of my games go, but I am usally highly into str/fort. I ignore int, I can wait or use workstations in poi's. I also do not touch perception. My next game i'll prob end up with 2-3 str (2+ a cigar to make 3 for lv 3 miner 69'er/motherload/sex t-rex), high fort (heavy armor, maybe machine gunner, and healing factor, and lv 1 in living off the land), and high agi, as I love pistols, they do fairly good damage at t3+ and have cheap plenatiful ammo in general. Unsure how stealth is later on, SMG is still garbage, as its damage is fairly low compared to pistol so I usually just vendor any I get. AP Pistol ammo and AP Magnum rounds will rekt things. normal magnum rounds are 65 dmg, the AP ones do 80.
Knives are pretty bleh as a weapon as are spears and the stun baton. Fists would be good if you perk into it, and clubs/sledges are good all around. If you get lucky and find a steel sledge early game, any tier steel sledge your set for a while melee wise.
Note that I play on warrior difficulty, on adventurer the new default you can breathe on zombies and they die. zombies hit 50% harder than on nomad, enrage more often (and move faster when they do, or they can anyway) and if its like a17 the player takes a 17% damage done to zombies hit.
I'll be honest though I really hate the weapons being locked to certan stats, as most of the good perks imo are in str and fort, with int following those (int used to be near my top, but since schematics are a thing, and the int weapons are complete garbage a lot less reason to bother with intel anymore.) Other than pistols agi doesn't really offer much else of value to me. I'd like to try a steath build but, its probally not viable later, same issue with melee, once your dealing with nothing but ferals and radiated which on warrior is day 25 or so when thats mostly what you'll see, melee just isin't good enough. It can handle singles, maybe 2 at max, but more than that you'll die before you can kill them. Might give a sledgehammer build a try though. High knockdown chance on first swing with perks, and a chance of aoe knockdowns might make it viable later on.
