I have looked for 1 whole hour trying to find an answer but to no avail... there is too much too this game and the information is scattered around, I have a good gist of what I have to do but inevitably I need to ask some questions:
First, just asking for a recommendation. Right now I am trying a balanced build on my characters but is there a cap to how much to get of 1 stat? (Like should I stop raising health until I get 100 hp? is it too low? too high?). Also, bows... I can tell they suck on your main character but Natives deal double damage with them and use no arrows, does the strength stat affect bow damage for MC and Natives or is it better to stack speed so they shoot more often? Cause if speed and strength do nothing for Archers, then I guess its best to make them tanks?
Optional build?
>For me it was
"Speed" first, as the game really builds around you not having enough speed to dodge their hits
Which this is probably what most people struggle in combat as they can't evade the attack fast enough
But once you reach to a point where you can easily not be hit, by then I would suggest
not to raise it even further as having super high speed might cause you some issue in your gameplay if you enjoy building stuff, a slight elevation would send you flying.
>
"Strength" part really depends on how you view on it, as you might accidentally kill whoever you want to capture but forgot to switch weapons
>but
"Health" I would say 250~500 HP? or even 1000 HP.
If you got Insane High Health, and you want to view some defeat sex scenes, it might take a while...just a caution.
But as flannan and ciphertul mentioned, High level Raids (90~100+) would spawn Elites, and their attack speed is insane, taking 1 or 2 hits with less than 200HP is an instant down/death, so you might just want enough so that you don't die and got enough time to "heal up"
If you want me to give you an optional build number
Sorry I can't, I will tell you after 250~300 in Speed,
DO NOT Raise it more.
As for skill level, you can see only
Self-Healing,
Smash and
Grapple is unlimited raise, so invest in whatever you felt it's important to your current gameplay, I would say Harvest -> Self-Healing -> Leader -> Carry, mainly for having Companions and allow you to carry corpses or unconscious NPCs as a Temporary Storage/Backpack to carry more stuff
Note: The Health/Strength/Speed is only for one character, so it's either raising Yona or Male MC on it, they don't share points.
As for Bows and Arrows
I'll honestly
Avoid crafting Wood Arrow at all, waste of feathers
Basic branch Arrow is whatever as they're everywhere, but
save the feather for the Iron Arrow and see what Arrow you want to craft afterward as they all require Iron Arrow to make
If the Workbench has a Bow, then that workbench's Arrow special ability is tied to that bow and will be activated when you use the Heavy Attack Key (F)
Spider Arrow & Spider Bow for example :
Normal shot(Arrow form) & Special shot(Web form)
Friendly NPCs who uses a Bow which is
Nami,
Female Native and
Female DLC
By default their Arrows are all
Wood Arrows
You can give them any Arrow you want, those Arrow's description's ability will apply to them
like you can see with Chaos arrow shooting 2 Arrows out. (Mid-flight, you can see two arrows flying side by side.)
You can farm/dup these Arrows off of Dead Animals/Some NPCs
Here's my old post on it
https://f95zone.to/threads/mad-island-v0-41-beta-e-made.209671/post-17018631
As for how their arrow damage is calculated...IDK on that honestly.
You can see both x1 Wood arrow and x1 Chaos arrow deals the same damage of 347 (147)
(with
Meal Effectiveness Buffing her, 100 veggie pizza, that's +200 attack, so without the buff, she deals 147 damage instead.)