Bay 12 Games Forum

Until you at least get fully covering clothes (which you don't get if you start with the most skill in some form of unarmed combat), you're at risk of getting serious injuries even from attacks by weak enemies. I actually had a wrestler get killed less than an hour in by having her throat torn open by a chimpanzee even as she was strangling it to death.

Stealth, thrown items (weapons, bolts, and rocks sharpened with knapping being probably the most effect readily available ones), and how to attack prone enemies are very important tactics.
Unfortunately, .12 has a bug where enemies with pathfind toward or away from you even if you're in hiding and .13 has a different bug where items thrown while in hiding keep going past everything until they hit the ground.

Against foes with melee weapons, attack with thrown items until they are killed or pass out from the pain and you can go in for the head crush "pinch" (remember you need to grab with a part with a hand to pinch, and thus have one free).
Foes with ranged weapons you'll want to sneak up to and disarm with wrestling (grab their weapon, gain control of it, then either put it into you inventory or throw it far away) then proceed as if facing a melee foe. Depending on your speed and ambushing skill, you may want to just avoid them entirely by running for cover and hiding.
Foes that are immune to pain or otherwise hard to disable you may wish to avoid until you're properly armored and very skilled.

Let's say I have a warhammer equipped and a spear in the inventory. How do I equip the spear in such a case?

Press "r" to open your menu and choose the spear. If you have enough room in your inventory press "p" to store the warhammer, but if not drop the warhammer, pick up some object you don't want, pick up the warhammer (which will automatically go back into your inventory), then drop the thing in your inventory.

There's this weird glitch where it will say you "don't have a proper container" for an item even if you can still force it to store items in the bag by just picking them up with something already in both hands.

Alternatively, you can just have the spear and warhammer in one hand each most of the time, throw the warhammer whenever you start fighting, then pick it back up when you're done.

Try giving 'em [CAN_LEARN], after a thousand years the fuckers are completely unbeatable.

Learning without needing a brain or the ability to feel pain isn't really fair.
What skills would they even learn anyway? Probably just Fighter, Striker, Kicker, and Wrestler but it would be pretty funny if you got one with the alchemist skill.

suggested a way to dump them in one spot?

Not specifically in one spot, but you could well do that.

Please note that when I started that thread I figured separated followers just went back to there town of origin (or at least tried to), but now it seems more likely that they wander the wilds.

either way at least now one needs to find a way to keep those ditched companions in one spot and companion collecting meta-game can be made! I might get a blood wench for a starter.

This is sort of something I mentioned on the suggestion board. You could have a reserve of potential companions you can switch between depending on what you need. Hopefully a non-bug version will be part of the planned update to the follower system mentioned in the devblog.

Does the wayfinder still point toward the city? Assuming it's not overloaded telling you how to get to a dozen task locations on the other side of the country...

No, it just takes you to the same relatively small, empty square of land as quick travel does.

To elaborate on my previous post: it seems the world is the same, but quick travel can longer take you to the actual town but just some small part of the boondocks in the same region tile so you have no way to knowing how to get to the actual town.