In this guide, I will breakdown the pros and cons of every starting class in the game. I will start by stating the class and what comes with it, then I will break down what that means. Let's begin shall we?
Production Classes
Farmer: The farmer starts off with a ruger mini that has no rifle requirement. This means they can instantly fire off powerful rifle ammo from the beginning. They also produce food at a limit of 2-4 pieces of food per 24 hours. The foods they produce depend on their level. The breakdown goes as follows:
Levels 1-10: Millet
Levels 11-20: Millet & seeds
Levels 21-30: Seeds, potatoes, & rice.
Levels 31-40: Potatoes, rice, & eggs
Levels 41-50: Fresh vegetables, fresh meat, and eggs.
Level 51+: Fresh vegetables, fresh meat
The benefits of this are that food is vital to survive and you get free food every day. You can choose to eat this food yourself, or sell it off to make some extra profit. Or of course do both.
A major downside to the farmer is the ruger they start out with. Yes, it is powerful, but at the same time it is very expensive. Rifle ammo usually runs for multiple dollars per round, which is extremely hard on a beginning players wallet. More often than not, a newbie goes through all their money feeding the rifle and eventually feels forced to beg for more. Also, the 5.5mm rifle ammo that it shoots is not looted until at least purple area and more prominently in red zone.
Scientists: Scientists produce medical items in contrast to the food that farmers create with the same 2-4 items per 24 hours. They do not start out with a weapon, but do start out with a little extra cash ($50). Obviously you are going to get hit in the game, so meds are every bit as important as food. The meds a scientist creates is also bracketed by level.
Levels 1-10: Steri strips and Plasters
Levels 11-20: Steri strips, antibiotics, and antiseptic spray
Levels 21-30: Bandages, antibiotics, and antiseptic spray
Levels 31-40: Morphine and bandages
Levels 41-50: Nerotonin and morphine
Levels 51+: Nerotonin.
The benefits from the scientist is the exact same as the farmer. You create stuff that you can use yourself or sell for a profit.
The downsides are that not everyone gets hit, especially at higher levels, so your medical supplies are not always huge demand. You also do not start off with anything other than a pen knife weapon wise, but the 50 dollars you get to start is equal to the scrap price of any of the special weapons other classes start off with.
Analysis of Production Classes: You really can't go wrong with either of these. Choosing between the two is like choosing between a sexy blond or a sexy brunette, you can't go wrong either way. It is practically impossible to say which is "better" largely because the amount of money they make is dependent on the always changing market. Theoretically, farmers are more important as people will always get hungry (especially service classes), but will not always get hit, however medical products usually yield more cash, especially in the earlier levels.
But you can't go wrong with either of these, so just pick one (or make an alt and have both, which I recommend the most).
Service Classes
Chefs: Chefs as you would obviously guess cook food for a fee. The higher level chef you are, the better foods you are able to prepare and thus the more you can charge for your services. You also start off with a chef knife, which is slightly stronger than the usual pen knife. Prices traditionally fluctuate, so saying what you should charge for your food bracket is constantly in flux:
Levels 5-15: (cook level 10 foods)
Levels 15-25: (cook level 20 foods)
Levels 25-35: (cook level 30 foods)
Levels 35-45: (cook level 40 foods)
Levels 45+: (cook level 50 foods)
In general, when you get stronger you can charge a lot of money, which makes you a lot of money. The downside though is that you lose 8% hunger for each time you get hired and you cannot offer your services once you reach starving hunger status. This means that you need to eat food a lot in order to keep in business, thus you have to spend money to make money. This remains true for all service classes.
Doctors: Just like chefs, but they apply medicine to other players in the game. The same overall rules are still the same, but the usual price layout is different. They also do not start out with any special weapon.
Levels 5-15: (apply level 10 meds)
Levels 15-25: (apply level 20 meds)
Levels 25-35: (apply level 30 meds)
Levels 35-45: (apply level 40 meds)
Levels 45+: (apply level 50 meds)
Engineers: Again, same as the others, but they start out with an extra 50 dollars and have a little different level breakdown. These guys repair your armor when it gets damaged.
Levels 3-15: (repair flak jacket)
Levels 15-20: (repair SA1 mesh)
Levels 20-25: (repair XR22 mesh)
Levels 25-30: (repair XZ8-GX mesh and Dusk mesh)
Levels 30-40: (repairs LR8 reactive armor)
Levels 40-45: (repairs ZX11 reactive armor)
Levels 45+: (repairs ZRX-H reactive armor)
Analysis of Service Classes: The service classes definitely have the potential to yield a lot of cash. The problem is, they require cash to make that cash. This branch of classes is most efficient when you have farmer(s) to keep them fed. In the long run they will make you more cash than a production class, but constantly having to make sure they are fed can grow irritating.
Each of the three service classes have their own benefits and again it is hard to pick one that is the "best". All three of them charge roughly the same at level 45+ Doctors traditionally seem to cost the least as you level up, but as of now are the most expensive in the later levels. Chefs have a nice balanced amount of cost and since everyone needs to eat, they are often used. Engineers can offer their services the earliest and are also guaranteed to be used. Doctors and chefs can be neglected as it is possible to eat and heal yourself without their help, but only engineers can repair armor when it is damaged.
Another note: As expected, you can use your chefs, doctors, and engineers for free to use for your own meds, food, and armor. Doctors have the greatest advantage at this though, because they can use their service inside the city while the other two cannot.
Stat Boost Classes
Boxer: Boxers as you would guess excel in hand to hand combat. Because of this, they get a stat boost in melee (+10) and strength (+20) Giving you a combined total of 20 stat points and 10 proficiency points.
soldier: Here is the "king" of the stat boosts. Soldiers obviously excel in combat and it shows with their stat boosts in strength (+5), endurance (+10), accuracy (+10), reloading (+10), and machine guns (+10). This gives you a grand total of 35 stat points and 10 profeciency points. This is obviously a lot so to balance this out, they also have a 20% experience deduction, which can grow irritating at higher levels. They also start off with a skorpion, the beginning level machine gun. It gives you instant rapid fire, but the weapon itself is nothing more than an ammo waster, as it does not offer any kind of critical chance. Plus, even though the .32 handgun ammo it uses is cheap and easy to find, you still use so much of it that it can grow hard to maintain.
police officer: Easily one of the most controversial classes in the game. Many say they suck, others say they pwn. They get a healthy amount of stat boosts in accuracy (+10), reloading (+5), pistol (+10), and shotguns (+10). This gives you a total of 15 additional stat points and 20 additional weapon points. The problem is, these weapon boosts conflict with each other, but more on that later. They also start off with the Beretta Tomcat, which unfortunately is the worst weapon in the game.
Fireman: Very similar to the boxer. They also have a total of 20 additional stat points and 10 additional weapon points, but in slightly different categories with +20 to endurance and +10 to melee. They also start out with the damaged fire axe, which has the same power as the regular fire axe, which is one of the better newbie melee weapons in the game. The reason for this is it combines the longer reach of blunt weapons and the very high critical chance that you usually see with bladed weapons.
Athlete: Athletes may not have combat ability, but they more than make for it with their speed. All of their 25 additional stat points are pumped straight into agility,which makes them a zombie dodging, melee efficient speed demon.
Analysis of Stat boost classes: This will be by far the most in depth analysis of all the class catagories. The reason for this is that there actually is a best and worst of all these.
Now, the first question is which boosts are better: Statistics or Weapons? In the beginning, it would appear weapons are the better boost, as you can use stronger stuff instantly. But this is actually incorrect once you do a little planning. By level 41 all classes can have two level 100 weapons, which is your ultimate goal at the end. Sure, the weapon boosts may make this so you can have them by level 39 or 37, but you simply won't have the additional stats to make them truly effective, plus in all likelihood, you wouldn't have the cash to have one level 100 weapon by then, much less two. Now statistics on the other hand are always helpful and the more of those you can get the better. These are the ones that truly determine your level and without a lot of stats, any weapons you have will not be nearly as effective. Add Mastercrafted stats on top of a stat boost class and you have a hell of a lot of extra points that you wouldn't be able to have otherwise.
Another major factor that makes stat points more important than weapon points is when you are leveling up past level 50. Starting with level 51, you only gain 1 stat point per level and 2 weapon points per level. This makes stat points twice as hard to come by and thus twice as important as weapon points.
The best overall class to start with in the game is still the soldier, even with the experience penalty. First, the weapons points in machine gun. The two traditional newbie friendly builds in this game both have machine guns as an excellent weapon option. This means that no matter what you shouldn't be wasting these 10 points and having them sit there doing nothing. Stat wise, you start out with 35 more stats, all of which into very important catagories for guns and any build. This means you are always 7 levels ahead of your actual level. A level 1 is like a level 8, a level 12 is like a level 19, and so on.
The next best class is actually the athlete. Now, I know that overall the athlete has the least total stat boosts (and remember that stat points are more important than weapon points), but agility is quite possibly the most important stat in the game . With 100 agility and some good dodging skill, a person can easily loot Death Row, the area with the best loot in the game (usually), without a weapon. An athlete can make it to that point by level 11. Agility is used in basically any build (except PVP builds) and you always want as much as possible. Plus, since athletes do not get any weapon boosts, you don't feel obliged to go with a certain weapon, which allows you to have more control over how you want to play. Another huge aspect of the athlete is when using them for the pure melee build (which isn't recommended, but many people love the rush of using melee) you can have your completely perfect build at level 50. For melee, you only need endurance, agility, and critical, with strength for armor/chainsaws. At level 50, an athlete can have 70 strength (which gives them the best armor), 100 endurance, 100 agility, and 100 critical. This effectively gives you maxed out stats in everything that you need.
Next on the list is the fireman, with the boxer closely behind that. Both start with melee, so they traditionally are for melee users. With melee, you want as much endurance as possible as you are so close the zombies, you are going to get hit from time to time. Strength isn't nearly as important, as only chainsaws have strength requirements. Traditionally for the critical (melee user) build, you only go up to 40 strength for the LR8 armor. This means that if you use a boxer for this, you have 5 wasted stat points. The only time the boxer proves more beneficial is if you plan on using the grinder.
Finally, the worst stat boost class, and overall worst class in the game aside from role playing classes is the police officer. But...they get 35 overall stat points, the second highest of all of them and by far the most weapon points so how can this be? Well, in terms of statistics, they only gain 15 points, which is in effect 3 additional levels. Also, these points give more accuracy than reloading, when overall accuracy is less important than reloading. As for the weapon points, this is why the police officer is the worst stat boost class. Yes, pistols and shotguns sound great, but they do not go well with each other. Pistols require critical and no strength while shotguns require strength and no critical. When trying to use both in the same build, you will have a lot of wasted stat points regardless of which weapon you choose to use. Now this is not saying that the pistol/shotgun build is impossible, it is just extremely hard to pull off and needs as many stat points as possible. Now remember that police officer only gives you 15 stat points, which is the lowest of all the stat boost classes AND that you can still have 100 in both pistols and shotguns well before the level 50 endgame plateau.
Role Playing Classes (and Student)
This section of the guide will be structured a bit differently than the others, as there isn't a whole lot to say about this grouping of classes. All of the Role Playing classes receive a 30% experience boost. The only thing that separates them is the amount of money they start out with in the beginning. Teachers and Priests start out with no additional cash (which makes them the "worst" of the group), Entertainers and Actors start out with an additional $20, Accountants, Architects, and Journalists start out with an additional $50, and Stockbrokers and Lawyers start out with an additional $100 dollars (which makes them the "best" of the group.)
Now the experience boost is nice and all, but even with that, a role playing class will always lag behind a stat boost class of equivalent power simply because they don't have extra stats. Yes, they level up faster, which does help in the lower levels quite a bit, but once you get to level 50 and beyond, the usefulness of your experience boost is far less important than the stats gathered by a stat boost class. Take an athlete for example. A level 50 athlete with its stat boosts makes it more like a level 75. The level 50 Role playing class remains at level 50 overall, which mathematically puts the athlete 25 levels ahead of the role playing class.
The biggest beauty however comes from combining Gold Membership with the Role playing class. Gold members get an additional 25% experience boost. Percentages are multiplicative, so lets do some math. And by "lets" I mean me. When you take the 30% boost from a role playing class and multiply it by the 25% GM experience boost, you end up with a total experience boost of 62.5% This means that if a zombie gives you for example 100 experience when you kill it, you instead gain 162.5 experience. Taking this one step further, lets factor in the OA, which gives you a 50% experience boost for each kill you make. So for a regular role playing class, they get a total boost of 195%. For a Gold Member Role playing class in the OA, that equates to a 243.75% experience boost. Needless to say, that is a hell of a lot of a boost.
(A note about Gold Membership. When using it with a soldier, it completely negates the -20% experience reduction, giving you regular experience gains)
Student: This is an interesting little class. It combines aspects of both the stat boost classes and role playing classes. It receives +1 strength, +2 agility, and +2 endurance. It also gives you a +22% experience boost. The stat boosts clearly make this a better class than all of the role playing classes. That being said, the stat boosts only equate to one level of stats before level 50 and 5 levels of stats after level 50. Experience wise, a gold member student would gain 52.5% experience boost. For OAs, a regular student gains 183% and a gold member student gains 228.75% per zombie killed.
Overall, In my opinion with the student, the experience boost makes it better than a police officer (when you take into account the negative aspects of the class), but not up to the level of the other stat boost classes.
And there you have it. That's pretty much the Dead Frontier Classes in a nutshell. I hope you enjoyed this read and it helped you out.
