I’m on normal and two at once in some building are kicking my ass. I’m level… 3 I think? I have points in guns, metamagic or whatever it is and telekinesis. Even one at a time they do so much damage I have to retreat to lick my wounds and heal after.
Also I didn’t even consider whether the difficulty could be changed during the game. That’s too bad.
If you got Metathermics then try using Cryostasis on them, 4 casts (2 turns) and one should be dead. Use hypos if you have to, there’s no point in hoarding supplies in this game, you’ll be swimming in them later on.
Oh man. Playing a ranged weapon character in this game is a whole new experience. Suddenly you have to take darkness and noise system into account. So much tactical depth, absolutely crazy. I’m currently running two characters at the same time, one is a pure psion and the other is a stealthy crossbow/trap hybrid. Both have their pros and cons but I’m leaning towards the crossbow guy because I’m a sucker for stealth. I also really got into crafting, my first character didn’t have any and I realise now how much I’ve been missing out.
Currently trying to decide which title UnderRail is gonna replace on my top 5 games of all time list.
Once again, for people just starting this game, check out Nerd Commando’s channel to get a few build ideas. He’s very thorough in his explanation and nicely lays out the pros and cons of different perks feats.
I’m really digging my stealth/melee/traps build. At this point I think I would take stealth on any character I make in this game. With the “oddity” experience system, you can bypass some combat encounters and really explore all of the different ways a quest can be completed. Sneaking around the ventilation systems was a lot of fun in the Junkyard’s quest area. Reminded me of the original Deux Ex a bit.
I’m in Depot A now too, and those auto turrets are pretty annoying. Like cameras they instantly detect you through stealth. Unlike cameras they don’t seem to be limited to a cone of vision. I’ll probably just avoid them, because I’ve got an EMP grenade and some armor piercing rounds but I’m not sure they’d be worth the effort.
On the bright side I’ve got so much sneak skill now due to getting some molerat overcoat (+8), balaclava (+3 or something) and some ninja shoes (+30 or something) and keeping it maxed to my level that other than the cameras and turrets I practically have to run in to the mutants for them to detect me. The ninja shoes also give pretty big bonuses to dodge and evasion which is nice. They were a bit pricy but I jumped on them as soon as I saw them.
Also did the silent island, which was kinda cool. Died once before I figured out what was up. Dunno, really wish they’d put more quality of life work in the game, maybe a time compression toggle that flips off when you enter combat, but otherwise plays the game at 1.5 or 2 times speed just so you can shuffle around town a bit quicker or shuffle through cleared areas to get BACK to town. Dead skills are also a bummer, pickpocket has been completely useless to the point where I’ve abandoned it and I’m slowly leveling throwing, and lockpicking seems fairly questionable. There are still a bunch of electronically locked goody chests, and the hacking skill lets you pick those open AND hack computers to do nonsense with turrets and stuff. Lockpicking lets me pick open a locker which has nothing in it, and silently open air vents which sounds nice but I’m not sure how much of an issue cracking them open with a crowbar would be.
Game is growing on me a bit though. The combat is still irritating (I mean technically I can manage 3 raiders at once with SMGs and assault rifles through careful planning and traps, but it involves a lot of repeated shooting due to huge HP pool and can come crashing down if the AI decides it wants to suicide itself with a grenade) and there’s more combat/enemies than I’d like, but the map design is well done and is the main thing driving me forward. Maybe I’d like it better if I just made a heavy combat brute character that could breeze through combat. Due to the way armor works I would think that might be possible.
If your main problem are bullets then just get yourself a ballistic vets, they have upwards of 200% more damage treshold for bullets. So a vest with 8 mechanical defense and 200% bullet threshold would effectively stop 16 damage from firearms. And this is HUGE early on in the game. But yeah, otherwise I agree, combat can take a while because the enemies can sometimes fire 5+ times per round. It really adds up.
If you want to power through combat and don’t care about stealth then I highly recommend a psion. Insane damage, insane utility (enrages, disables, stuns) and you can (and should) craft a decent psi tactical vest. Afaik only metal vest actually cuts into your AP pool, otherwise armor penalty only affects movement, dodge, evasion and stealth. Neither of which you really care about as psion.
I can’t agree on lockpicking though - one of the must have skills for me, on any character :). I guess it comes down to preference and various lvls of gaming OCD, heh. Pickpocketing can be very useful - it can singlehandedly solve your money issues and if you’re playing with the Oddity system you can get a few oddities from faction members in various towns that you otherwise could not get except if you killed them but that would turn you hostile versus a large number of people. It’s still a secondary skill though, like throwing if you’re only using it as support. Once you get it to effective ~120 you can stop leveling it.
Let’s not let this thread die. I like the feel of this complex game even if it is a bit hard.
Let’s not! My crossbow character is now level 20 and is a pure joy to play. I love sneaking around and killing patrols silently with my crossbow before I engage smaller groups of enemies by luring them into well placed traps. Sneaking through vents, hacking computers, picking locks…it feels like I’m playing an isometric Deus Ex.
Re the difficulty - it’s pretty standard for rpgs I’d say. It’s slightly harder in the start and then gets progressively easier as you get access to more tactical options and increase your stats. I haven’t been to the endgame area yet but from what I’ve read it ramps up the difficulty but also introduces several elements that help you manage that (quests/puzzles to weaken the enemies etc). Overall I find the difficulty/power curve very satisfying (playing on Normal difficulty), with spikes here and there - these will vary greatly depending on your build (as a crossbow user - fuck burrowers, at least early in the game).
I haven’t enjoyed a game this much in years.
I had already beaten Depot A by the time Bateau had posted back then, and haven’t really played it since. Wasn’t too much that I can directly point at and say “This is why I stopped”, but I think it was just a collective pile that did me in. Final straw might’ve been crafting. Even though I took mechanical to work on traps I just stopped giving a damn about tearing equipment apart and making repair kits to save on weight. Pretty much always been against crafting in RPGs, skipped it completely in Neverwinter Nights 2 too. Quest specific crafting where some NPC will make you a widget if you go collect the foozle I can roll with, but when a game tells me the greatest treasure of all was inside myself all along and here’s a stack of wood boards and nails my eyes glaze over.
Loaded it up again after about a week of not playing. Went through the busywork of inventory management and shopping after Depot A, since I left it after I turned the quest in and had a cutscene last time. Then I headed off into the caves in search of batteries. No idea if ideally I was supposed to start heading to Core City at this point or going to the caves (I was level 7 I think) but caves sounded more promising. Found the battery location but have yet to find a way in, got some trickery with a remote controlled robot but it doesn’t seem to be able to interact with anything. Found rats, traps, more rats, more traps, and then Conan the Rattarian. Conan was a fun fight but sadly wasn’t very heavy on the loot, but taking him out got me an oddity to hit level 8 which fortunately got me juuuuuuust enough trap skill to be able to recover some of the beartraps I passed on the way in. Found a town, sadly had to do a song and dance and quest chain before I could give them Conan’s head, but now all is right in their world and I called it a night.
Part of what got me trying it again was watching a buddy of mine play a brand new character, almost all STR and CON and psi, and seemingly get through the opening bit a lot easier. No idea if pistols are just that weak but I swear it looked like he was doing pistol-like damage with as many attacks per round using a knife, and things got even more heavily in his favor once he started flinging fireballs and force-fists. Will be interesting to see how well it continues for him when he plays more. Right now it seems like my dude’s a lot worse at combat unless I can prepare, since Conan and his rat buddies did 0 damage to me due to one molotov, a few bear traps, and some caltrops.
I am kinda wishing I hadn’t taken gunslinger, though. Pistols haven’t been wowing me, and the only silenced pistol I’ve found (My original plan when I made that guy with 0 knowledge about the game. Figured sneaking+traps+probably a silenced pistol was the way forward) has been a reedy 5mm that I can’t even stand using because it does so little damage. Used a SMG on Conan and his ancient rat buddy since I could fire one burst off (All getting the opportunist damage bonus) and one or two regular pops per turn. Even with the gunslinger feat the SMG seemed to be doing a hell of a lot better than my pistols.
From what I read pistols get pretty insane later on because you can stack chd like there’s no tomorrow. 44 in particular is supposed to be beast mode. Also, if you’ve got enough STR then using an armor with a shield might be a fun option.
I got my crossbow guy to lvl 22 and temporarily switched to an assault rifle build (currently lvl 6, the pistol struggle was real until I got my hands on an AR) just to see how it plays. The grass is always greener on the other side in this game, it’s very hard to make a build that does everything well.
Sounds like you’d be stacking damage modifiers for a big strike then, with the .44. IIRC I can fire the .44 once a turn due to AP costs, even with gunslinger. Does good damage though, an aimed shot on someone in a trap with opportunist (Next level or two should also get me execution/executioner which is something like +250% pistol damage to immobilized and stunned people, which is how most of my threats end up) might stack up enough modifiers to really make pistols come into their own. Also looted a plasma pistol which I haven’t used yet, but it’s another slow one like the .44.
I am thinking of getting and playing this but have a couple of questions.
(1) Which is better, this or Lords of Xulima? I would think that the weird world of Underrail may appeal to me more than the seemingly more generic world of Xulima but I could be wrong. Xulima has good reviews.
(2) If I get this I need details on the easiest build possible including stats, feats and anything else that may come into play. By all accounts it seems that only specific builds will work in this game and I am not one who will replay a game if the build I pick is somehow broken. I have read the Steam forums and the people there seem to attack anyone who dares to ask questions and speak using acronyms that I do not understand so I am not going to pose this question there.
Sounds like your dex is a bit low, you should be able to fire .44 twice per round which is a game changer obviously. What’s the pistol’s AP per shot, what mods does it use and what’s your current dex?
UnderRail…recently a term “2d Deus Ex” has been popping up to describe the game and I think that’s pretty much the best way it describes how the game’s mechanics and gameplay are structured. Add a bit of open world and relative freedom in regards to quest order, spice it up with a touch of Dark Souls (exploration & interconnected world, not the infamous difficulty) and you get UnderRail.
On the other hand, if you want to try out stealth then I would recommend Nerd Commando’s arbalist build. I’d make a couple changes though:
Drop one point from perception and put it into Will and level persuasion (if you care about solving quests in an alternative, often more peaceful way, if not ignore my comment). To compensate I’d probably drop chemistry, I haven’t really found much use for it. Of the perks he recommends I’d drop Ambush and get Pack Rathound instead. This build uses only 3 str which means that your carrying capacity is relatively low and the traps are heavy which makes Pack Rathound a huge bonus.
Early on when your accuracy is a bit low I’d recommend you use a regular scope on your crossbow. It adds a flat 10% to precision which helps out a lot. Also know that darkness is very important to your accuracy, it’s recommended that you get NV goggles asap or at least use flares when the situation allows for it (they break stealth when you throw them so it can be tricky to utilize). Setting enemies on fire with incendiary bolts or molotovs also works. If you like stealth then this build is fantastic to play, traps offer so much control over the fights it’s crazy. It takes a while before you get used to them, especially since they’re consumables and most rpg players prefer to hoard resources but when you realise how potent they are you will be using them at every opportunity. Definitely the most fun (and versatile) build I’ve played so far.
7 DEX, and .44 hammerer uses 27 adjusted (In combat stats) AP to fire. So 54 AP to fire twice and I’ve got 50 AP. Next stat advancement may go in to DEX because of that, though I’d like to hit 10 perception too.
Are you using rapid reloader? It lowers the AP cost of each shot by 20%. In the mean time you could also use adrenaline shots, with that damage output you should be able to finish the combat before the effects of the buff wear out and you get hit by a debuff.
Had to look it up, but no. Don’t think I saw such a thing plus I largely abandoned the mechanical skill in favor of taking more throwing since grenades are great.
No wonder it doesn’t work for me. :)
-Tom
His builds are a great starting point in general. However the requirements for crafting seem to be much lower after launch then they were in early access. Enough so that I think you can put 3 in Intelligence and still craft everything without maxing the crafting skills.
I don’t know, I’m now on my 4th character (haven’t taken either one to Deep Caverns yet though :P) and I’ve found components that required ~120-125 in particular skill, especially once you add optional enhancements that raise the requirements a bit. Now, it’s true that you probably could craft adequate gear even with 3 INT and workbench bonus (15% per bench, each costs ~1200 coins to have it delivered to your house). Maybe not exactly top of the line but one or two tiers below that for sure. The ‘problem’ however is - how many skill points do you invest to get to that point. In my opinion, if you got 3 or more crafting skills then having anything less than 6 INT is kind of a waste, especially if you add hacking into the mix. Because then you already got 4 skills that depend on the same stat and having it so low that it gets penalties is a waste of skill points. And then there’s the matter of feats, crossbow builds just happen to have one (not crafting related) that requires 6 INT.
On a side note, my latest character is an SMG user and I LOVE IT. Feat rich, lots of skill points (pretty great synergy with main stats too so I can spread them out), stealth, great damage output, grenades…so far it’s absolutely amazing. If I could somehow fit in Persuasion it would be the ultimate character.