Wrestling Spirit 3 - Rookie to Legend Start Guide

[The Masked Orange]

Wrestling Spirit 3 - Rookie to Legend Start Guide

For me, Rookie to Legend is the default play mode I want to start up whenever I get that craving for some text-based wrasslin. I've started a fair few over the years with varying amounts of success. I hope what is to follow is a fairly useful guide for players old and new to make the most of their WS3 experience in Rookie to Legend mode. This isn't a definitive or exhaustive guide, so if anyone has anything they want to chuck in. I'm going to treat this guide as though you want to start in the default Cornellverse database, but most of the info should easily translate to any RL mods or any mods in general.

Creation Page

Let's start off by going through the Creation Page. This is where you have to decide on the wrestler you will create, where they start and how they wrestle. Pretty much all of this guide will be about how you make the decisions on this page. There's not a lot of hand-holding or explanation from the game, so let's get started.

-Gender-

After the name, the image and the bio (these are just cosmetic, go nuts. If new to the CVerse the 'generic' photos are all labelled CVFP if you want a unique image that isn't already in use in the database), the first big decisions you have to make are Age, Race, Nationality and Gender. Age you pretty much want to set as low as possible unless you have a role-playing reason to do otherwise, so you can just leave. Race and Nationality are just cosmetic in game terms, so I've got nothing to add here. The first big choice you have to make is what gender your wrestler is going to be - Male or Female. If you are a new player, or if you want a playing experience with a lot of options, I highly recommend you go Male. There's a few reasons for this. Firstly, there are less companies you can wrestle in if Female and some in-game areas have no women's wrestling at all. It would be very different if we were using the most recent database where women's wrestling has been expanded upon, but alas. The second reason is that the way the game generates new wrestlers tends to make women's wrestling a bit lopsided. Large and Huge companies with women's divisions find it difficult to hire suitable wrestlers from further down the pyramid, so they generate/'discover' new wrestlers fairly often, and they have amazing starting stats. They will often have Star popularity and incredible starting skills right out of the gate. So often the Female experience in WS3 is grinding your way up through a fairly thin independent scene, and then hitting a wall of insane generational talent at the very top that your years of indy grinding won't have prepared you for. The third reason is that in order to become a 'Legend' in RTL, the ultimate completion of this game mode, you need to be able to work for Large and Huge companies and to win Main Event Titles in them. Even if you end up working for, say, NOTBPW in their women's division, their Women's title is a midcard title. You'll never complete the list of objectives, and that 'Legend' page will be an itch you can never fully scratch.  RTL takes a lot of patience, but the experience outside of Men's wrestling is particularly trying if you don't know what you're getting in for.

-Based In-

This is a pretty big decision, and it isn't. At the beginning of any month you can decide to start working in any game area you have enabled. So Day Zero of your game you can decide your Rookie is a true Globe Trotter who will work every independent scene available. This does give us an opportunity to talk about the different game areas, and where are some good places to start. If you're new, start in America/Canada or Japan. These are the most fleshed out areas, and they have companies at every size. Mexico is also very fun with enough options to further your career, and to switch things up when you want a new challenge. If you want to fully complete your 'Legend', you will at some point need to work for one of Burning Hammer of the Wrestling Gods in Japan, North of the Border Pro Wrestling in Canada, South of the Border Pro Wrestling in Mexico, or the Supreme Wrestling Federation or Total Championship Wrestling in the USA. You can have lots of fun in RTL without having to complete your 'Legend' or work for the biggest companies as a top star, but if you do, these places are where you have to work.

Australia is pretty decent, and like the areas mentioned before has a 'Large' company so that you can tick off a lot of the 'Legend' objectives, but it's not as developed a game area as the others mentioned. The British Isles has the major problem of the state of British Wrestling at the start of the game. There is one company, 21CW, they are Large so you can tick off 'Legend' requirements, but they will not hire you until you have reached at least 'Indy Star' popularity. So, if you start in the British Isles and work nowhere else, you'll be grinding on the Independent scene for a long time. Anywhere else in the world, you can break up that grind by working for several different companies. Europe has no Large or Huge companies, so unless you want a unique start with an eye to moving abroad later in your career, I would choose another area to focus on.

There is spillover popularity between the different areas of the game world, so if you do grind your way to the top of the independent scene in Europe you can use that to get a gig in an opening spot in a small company overseas, but really the other way around is much more effective - build popularity in one of the many companies in the USA and Japan and use that to have a fun 9-month adventure abroad whenever you want to switch things up. Because there are bigger companies, you can start with a new company at a good level, rather than having to punch your way through the undercard.

-Mask-

This is cosmetic as well, but I will say that having a mask and a character to go with it is what gives the Mexico region a lot of its flavour, and can be lots of fun. The 'Hair' section is basically just used to help generate a suitable image for you, as I'm pretty sure unmasking and hair wagers are not a mechanic in WS3.

-Wrestling Styles (Skills)-

THIS IS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DECISION YOU'LL MAKE IN SETTING UP YOUR GAME.

Wrestling Style does much more than decide what moves you will have access to and what tactics you'll want to use in matches themselves. RTL doesn't have different difficulties to choose from, but this section where you choose your Weight, Style and Sub Style is essentially that. There is a huge amount of variation in your starting skills and starting abilities between the various styles and sub-styles, and your size is important in deciding your future maximum skill levels and in how the game resolves certain mechanics. I actually really nerded out over this bit when I decided I would make a guide and put together a couple of spreadsheets illustrating what I mean. 

Max Skills

Starting Skills

(On a side note, it's been a long time since I've posted any pictures on this site and Amazon Photos is for me the easiest way to do it these days. If anyone has any knowledge as to why this may be a bad way to do things from a privacy, security or nuisance perspective, please let me know)

Let's start with the least important of the two, Max Skills. If you are a new user looking for a more casual experience and unlikely to play this game for more than a handful of sessions, you can skip this. All of the skill categories are capped by either Popularity, Style or Size. You increase your popularity by playing the game so essentially the cap on 'Overall Rating' and 'Spirit' are capped at the maximum of 1000. The spreadsheet shows the variation in total skill caps based on skills impacted by Style and Size. The theoretical best wrestler you could become would be an MMA Crossover that was either Small, Lightweight or Middleweight with a combined skill total of 6550.  Conversely, if you are a Giant Spot Monkey you will find your total skill caps reached at 4450. That's over 2000 total skill points that you will not have access to, and in a game where it can take months in game to grind up skills just 50 points, that's a huge potential difference. The asterisk on all this is that athleticism does not have an effect in matches, only on the move pool available to you. I've included the Athleticism on the chart so that you can see how that is spread out, but even without Athleticism Giant is still the most limiting size you can choose in the game.

 

There's two ways to see this. If you want to min-max your rookie, then you know which Size/Style combos give you the best potential future. The other way to see it is as a set of long-term difficulty modifiers. It's one thing to conquer the world as a Middleweight fighting in the Puroresu Style, but how many can do it as a scarcely feasible Giant Spot Monkey?

 

tldr: If you want the best start for potential, pick an MMA Crossover that's either Small, Lightweight or Middleweight.

 

The other spreadsheet I've posted was to the much more important factor in starting a game - starting skills. Let's face it, most games end before we've ever maxed out a skill let alone all of them. How well we start determines how much success we may have grinding on the independent scene, getting those early wins, snowballing the XP gain and finding jobs with actual companies that will let us push that XP gain even more. Starting Skills are not altered by size as far as my testing could see (yes, a Giant Strongman and a Midget Strongman have identical starting skills, just the Midget strongman is already at the strength cap, and will likely not have access to many of the moves a strongman would need to play properly). Sub-styles are the be-all and end-all as they decide not only your total starting skill total, but the unique attributes you have as well, which together will dictate the moves you'll want to have in your move set and your tactics in every match. If you have a good brawler with an increased chance to land upper body strikes, you'll want to throw punches and limit things you're not good at like pesky chain wrestling. So there's a lot of subtlety missing in that spreadsheet, but I was really surprised by the difference between the 'best' and 'worst' starting skills. There's a good chance if you're a Balanced Puroresu Style wrestler that you're better than half the Japanese indy scene on day one, with a starting skill total of 3750. If you're a Brawling Powerhouse or an Entertainer with Incredible Bulk, you start with a combined skill total of 2050. That's 1700 skill points that you could potentially gain or lose on this starting page, and the game doesn't really communicate that. Of course, you should play the game based on what you think is fun and maybe even roleplay, but if you just want the numbers that will make the rolls that happen in every match work out better for you, then you're going to be fighting Strong Style my friend.

 

Those numbers of course don't cover the other factor, which is the unique attributes you get with each substyle. Starting with less skill can be worth it for a fun or powerful starting attribute. A good example of this is the Entertainer Strongman substyle. With 2350, it's well below average skill level at the start, but the attributes are pretty good, especially the 'Real Fast Starter' attribute that gives you a 10% bonus on all rolls of any kind in the first five minutes of a match. This is very powerful, can help you really establish control in the pivotal early part of the match and normally cost 9000 experience if you were to have bought it from the Skill & Attributes page. It's hard to directly compare attributes to skills using xp as the xp cost for attributes is static whereas it increases for Skills for at every 100 point interval. XP is also discounted if you buy it in increments of 10 rather than 5 (my advice, ALWAYS BUY SKILLS AT THE DISCOUNT RATE, JUST WAIT AND SAVE UP). It takes 3,600 XP to upgrade a single skill from 300 to 400, for example, but 4,500 XP to upgrade from 400 to 500. So, a 9,000 XP attribute could be anywhere from upwards of a thousand skills points to less than two hundred depending on where you are investing it.

 

What I've done on the spreadsheet is put in red the values which are below average, if you just want a quick visual indicator of what builds are optimal. For example, a Japanese Junior style wrestler with the Risk Taker substyle has both above average starting skills and attributes which are worth more XP than the average substyle. You know if you pick a JJ Risk Taker, you'll have a stronger start. A Psychopath with the Bloodthirsty substyle is a relatively horrible start that will be less skilled and more difficult to progress with. Again, you can use this knowledge to roleplay, minmax or to set your starting difficulty. (I can't remember whether I left Cruiserweight Striker black for Skills because it was pretty much average or because I just forgot to change it. Either way, it's slightly below average).

Side Note: The Psychopath Bloodthirsty substyle may actually be the weakest overall if I had to pick. One of the traits, Crimson Mask, is actually a negative trait that makes it easier for you to bleed that usually in the shop you can acquire and be given XP for the inconvenience (more about those shenanigans later). Not only is it a negative trait, but you're denied the opportunity to get the 500 XP you could have gotten if you'd picked it yourself. The Psychopath Streetfighter on the other hand has the amazing 'Raging Bull' attribute that gives you a big momentum boost and lets you take control of the match when you are bloodied. If you're hellbent on playing a Psychopath, pick Streetfighter, take Crimson Mask all the way to Lv3 for an extra 3450 XP to spend on skills/other attributes, and watch your cool new synergy do something fun in your matches. Bloodthirsty just seems less good, less fun and, weirdly, less bloodthirsty.

 

Of course, this is all based on skill totals, when sometimes it is how you've spread your skills that matters. The Ground skill is always nice for defensive counters but it's not going to help you establish your all-aerial offence. Personally, I think the Puroresu Style Powerful Substyle is the best mix of skills and attributes. If in doubt, try that out. I was surprised by how skill-deficient a lot of the more technical westerns styles were. Master of the Mat is the worst Regular Wrestler style, Slow and Steady is easily the worst Lucha substyle and all of the Technician Styles seem weak compared to MMA Crossover when you consider that the Technician substyles have only slightly above average skill totals and well below average attributes. A good technical grappler is one of my go-to play styles so realising I'd had the brakes on the whole time was a shock. Not unpleasant, mind, the game was still very playable and fun. 

 

tldr: The game thinks the Japanese styles are best, pick Puroresu or Japanese Junior if you want to start strong.

 

-Wrestling Styles (Other)-

 

No spreadsheets here. Just a couple things you should also bear in mind when deciding weight and style.

 

First, Size matters. How the game calculates Brace attempts (a type of counter where you take a blow, normally a strike, and shrug it off) is numerically dependent upon Strength. However, there is a hard limit where you cannot brace successfully any move performed by someone two sizes or more bigger than you. That means your Very Small Strongman may be a hilarious concept, but it's going to hurt when Lightweight spot monkeys slap you in the face and you can't do anything about it. It works the other way, if you are a Giant with a low strength skill, be safe in the knowledge that most wrestlers won't be able to stop you punching them by bracing. I don't believe it works in letting you brace, if someone is significantly stronger than you, you will not be able to brace one of their punches even if you have a size advantage. There's also the interaction between Strength and Size when it comes to the 'Reeling' mechanic. I won't get super far into it, but generally size helps you stay on your feet instead of falling down. Something to consider when building your Rookie, potentially even at the cost of starting skill points (I've had a few RTLs with Giants and, infuriating though it may be to be beaten by some scrub lightweight in the Indys early on, it can be a lot of fun and a real tactical advantage).

 

The other thing about style is that, from a strictly winning point of view, not all move pools are created equal. For this reason, Spot Monkey might be the hardest style to find consistent success with, as even with favourable skills and attributes a lot of your move-set falls into the high-risk 'Move' territory. A move which can be countered by 'Avoid' loses you control, but it does not damage your wrestler. If the enemy 'Moves', you take damage that scales with the damage output of the move attempted. You will lose significant health and momentum over your matches missing springboard this and shooting star that. Plus, if the move has a 'Chance to Win' and a 'Move' counter is successful, then the opponent will have a free opportunity to pin you, with the success scaling with the 'Chance of Win' move you just missed. If you plan on playing with a flippy boy/girl in RTL, there will likely be multiple occasions where you lose a match because you missed a Top Rope finisher and they lay on top of you for an easy pinfall.

 

Having a high enough Overall Rating will prevent being pinned by anything with a low Chance of Success which can help counteract this, but honestly it takes a significant level of time and popularity to reach that point and by that time you should have already found your winning strategies. If you're getting familiar with the game or want a more consistent experience, pick a grappler or a brawler. They do simple things well, and the reversals don't hurt.

 

-Tips & Tricks-

 

There's a couple things that you can do Day Zero to really improve your starting position. These have varying levels of cheese so it's up to you to decide what you think is appropriate for your game.

 

The first one all experienced players will be familiar with is buying BAD Attributes. I mentioned this a bit earlier. Essentially, trade a permanent bad buff in exchange for a hit of that sweet sweet drug known as XP. However, there's a cute little exploit that let's you do this for essentially no downside. There are certain negative traits you can buy and then set to only be active for when your Rookie is in a certain disposition. These traits are: Afraid to Fly, Dozing Partner, Fish out of Water, Martyr Complex, Prima Donna Partner and Suicidal, Homicidal. Your first matches as a Rookie will always be neutral as there is no face/heel divide on the Indy scene. If you buy all of these traits and then untick the 'neutral' disposition on the Skills and Attributes page, and then click 'Update Attribute', your Rookie will not have these negatives when you wrestle. If you get signed to a company with a face/heel divide? Update it again! You can do it whenever you want, as long as at least one box remains ticked. This is obviously hardcore cheese, and you have to be careful not to pick any of the permanent negative attributes that will be active on every disposition (if you do that on accident, maybe just restart). Doing this nets you 31,650 XP, so it's a game-changer, and can let you pick some very fun and powerful attributes early on, or raise your starting skills to prodigy levels.

 

Not all moves are created equal. Honestly, when trying out the game for the first time just auto-generate your move set as the game recommends, it's pretty good. The one thing I would recommend is to add the Chair Shot to Head and the Chair Choke Out to any move set you have. This will make sure you have moves that you can use to help you win First Blood and Submission matches respectively, both of which are no-DQ and which you will likely have a fair few of in your career. The auto-generate doesn't always add moves that cause blood and that can win by submission, and having these in your back pocket is better than the in-match options of 'Attempt to Submit' and 'Attempt to Draw Blood', which are pretty low percentage and guarantee you lose control of the match. The other reason not all moves are created equal is because they aren't. Moves have their own chance of hit, and their own damage ratings, and while in general high probability moves are weak and risky moves are strong, some propositions are worse than others. For example, if you are a Brawler, why would you ever throw a punch when you could Mongolian Chop? It is still a low level move, it does more damage in the crucial early portion of the game (which is essentially a race to do enough damage with low-level moves to get your opponent to medium health) and still has a significant chance to hit, particularly if you have attributes that increase your attack rolls on Upper Body Strikes. You'll figure this out as you play. I would let the auto-generate flood your move set with moves, figure out which ones you like and are effective, and then cut the weird stragglers you don't use or that frustrate you whenever you do use them. There's no real need to have a streamlined move set day one.

 

The other little bit of advice about moves is that you may want moves that help you manipulate your opponent into different parts of the environment, like a Blindside High Knee to help get them from in the ring to ringside, or a move that gets them or you onto the apron to help set up another move. These moves tend to be better options that the generic 'Move X Wrestler to Y' because they do damage, impact momentum and aren't just free opportunities for the opponent to take control by 'fighting back'.

 

The last little thing you may want to consider is setting up a tag team. You can see what wrestlers are active in your game area by going to the 'Workers' tab, filtering to popularity 'Unknown', 'Unemployed' and based in your game area. If there is a wrestler there that looks like they may be a lot better than you (particularly with Overall Rating), you may want to consider teaming up. You can set up the Tag Team in the 'Tag Team' tab, if you are both unemployed there will be no rejection, and from your first 'Continue' you should be given the option to engage in a tag team storyline with them. This can be a good way to hide your Rookie behind a better wrestler that you can control in your tag matches. It can also just be fun to wrestle as a tag team sometimes in WS3. Beware, it is unlikely that you will ever be able to take your partner with you to companies together even as both of your popularities improve. So there's a good chance you'll need a new partner in each new company if this is your plan. There's also the chance they may randomly receive a popularity increase from the monthly news events, in which case you may find that you can no longer partner with them.

 

The other little thing to consider is managers, you can't get them in the Indys, but you can get them in many of the small companies, but most will reject you until you've improved your Overall Rating to match theirs. My advice is that they usually tend to be worth it, as they can distract or even intervene at tactical moments to really help you control a match, but they do siphon off your XP gain, so losing with a manager is the worst of both worlds.

 

 

 

That's all that I can remember wanting to say right now. If anyone else has some tips on how to start a RTL save, I'd love to hear them. Hopefully this can give some people some fun ideas for playstyles they might not have considered before as well. If there's anything I haven't explained very well, just let me know and I'll try and unjumble my words.

[TigerClawTV]

That's awesome! Thanks so much for this info!

[The Masked Orange]

On 10/19/2022 at 1:42 AM, TigerClawTV said:

That's awesome! Thanks so much for this info!

There's a whole bunch of stuff I didn't really go into like the size and athleticism requirements for moves, which could be a big deal for deciding how much variety and choice you get in your actual gameplay. If in doubt, I'd always suggest using the editor to increase your athleticism if you're worried about missing out on cool moves, since it doesn't really affect your ability to win matches (a lot of the cheesy moves aren't gated behind athleticism, it tends to be things like cool springboards and dives, but some good cheese is stuck behind size/power if you're into that, and you could make the argument about good grapple/ground skill having some cheese too).

[Eternal Phoenix]

This is an excellent guide. I like it a lot. it covers basically everything I would If I made one, and actually alerted me to the attribute cheesing you mentioned. The only thing I'd add to it is that Stamina is God. Stamina penalties will kill your ability to effectively counter the opponent's moves, leading to you getting beaten up fast and them gaining momentum and being able to execute more moves with greater ease. If you want to win, and win a lot more than you would otherwise (as opposed to purely roleplaying, which is just as valid) the first positive attribute you should take is the first level of Cardio Freak. Yes, even if you're a puro or MMA god with 600 Stamina. It effectively doubles how much Stamina you have and so provides a big extension to the time before you starting taking defensive penalties. It also makes it so that the "Breathing Hard" status (-10% off your attack roll) will take longer to pop up while performing stamina intensive moves like most High and Finisher level moves are. Seriously. Of two otherwise evenly matched wrestlers, if one has significantly poorer Stamina they'll lose against the other almost every time. It can even sway matches against a better wrestler, if they start running out first. Stamina is the most important stat in the game. Every wrestler needs it. Cardio Freak makes it better. And that's the end of my tale.