Beginner Character Build Tips

Guide created using  of Cataclysm DDA.
Some of the information present here might not apply to future versions.

Here's some advice on decent beginner character builds.

Choosing stats

You have four primary character statistics: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence & Perception. Bear in mind that these are impractical to raise once you're in-game, so for long-term characters, most of your development points should go here.

1. Strength: If you plan on fighting in melee, you should set a reasonable Strength (10 will do, but 11 helps avoid being unable to recover stuck weapons). It affects your melee combat damage-output, your maximum health, and your maximum safe carry-weight.
2. Dexterity: An universal stat which affects both melee and ranged to-hit chance, increases your dodging chance and improves your trap detecting and avoiding skill. 8-10 pts should work.
3. Intelligence: Affects your social abilities (currently negligible, given that NPCs are disabled by default). However, it also affects your ability to learn and is the base stat for nifty things like hacking computers and implanting bionics. If you don't want to do those things now, consider that you might change your mind once you're in the game. Setting intelligence to 10-12 will probably suffice; 14 is only needed for one or two rare, high-end skill books.
4. Perception: Improves your ranged combat to-hit chance and helps your character to detect and disarm traps. 10 points will enable you to see any trap in the game, provided that your eyes aren't encumbered. If you're OK with not being able to reliably spot land mines, 8-9 will suffice.

Choosing traits

There are positive and negative traits: positive traits cost development points, whilst negative traits provide more points.

Positive

• Quick: Smaller bonus than Fleet-Footed, but applies to everything. Sometimes retreat is better than combat.
• Light Step: Noise attracts critters, so less of it is a Good Thing.
• Parkour Expert: Quickly navigate difficult terrain, then turn around and take a few swings at the clumsy zeds who need 2-3 times as long.
• You might consider a protective or regenerative trait like Poison Resistant or Fast Healing
• Night Vision can greatly help after dark.
• Pack Mule: Being able to carry more (volume) is never a bad thing.

Negative

• Ugly: No one minds your appearance after the Apocalypse.
• Truth Teller: Chances are nobody's around to notice!

More advanced traits

• Robust Genetics: Don't mutate without it!
• Trigger Happy: It makes military rifles less-controllable, but if you're not planning on using them that's not a problem.
• Martial Arts Training: Hand-to-hand starts weak but can be one of the strongest weapons in the game. These basic styles are likely to stay available even after NPCs get fixed.
• Self-Defense Classes / Shaolin Adept / Venom Mob Protege: These are stopgaps for the buggy NPC martial-art trainers. Don't over-rely on them, but if you want a nifty advanced style, they're the way to go right now. They can greatly simplify your early-game inventory needs, and is always a useful backup. Feel free to check Choosing Martial Arts Styles if you're curious.
• Addictive personality: You'll be OK as long as you don't go crazy (as in more than five in a row) with addictive substances, such as hard and soft drugs and sleeping pill variants (that includes Nyquil).
• Glass Jaw: Once you get a helmet of some sorts this negative trait becomes mostly irrelevant.
• Insomniac: It makes your character have difficulty getting to sleep, but the effect is fairly minor. A bed or makeshift bed and being at least Tired will generally suffice.

Professions

These provide a little different starting inventory, and sometimes character traits (such as the nicotine addiction from Chain Smoker). You can probably get along well enough without them, but feel free to experiment. Professions which cost points are mostly notable for skill point sets which might be useful for specific builds. Negative professions can be useful, as the addiction they give can easily be rid of with some reading, while they give some use able points (The four points given by Hobo is very nice, the 21 units of whiskey translates to a Molotov cocktail for the craft savvy)

Skills

Spending a development point here translates into two levels of skill. Since much of the game involves building skills, spending irreplaceable development points on them may seem wasteful--and in many cases it is--but a small investment at the start may make the difference between survival and early-game death.

Useful skills to start with may include:

• Archery
• Survival
• Dodge
• Tailoring