Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[Tigranes]

Oh my fuck, it's been so long since I played that I forgot repair kits even existed.

For those just getting started with the game, crafting skills aren't only OP because they produce ludicrously strong equipment. They're also OP because they produce extremely large mountains of money, and the pathway up that mountain is paved with repair kits. Not only that, but reducing minimally valuable loot into scraps and then turning those scraps into repair kits (and ideally, repairing valuable loot on the spot) vastly reduces your overall encumbrance, allowing you to carry much more loot back to town.

It's as if crafting skills beat the shit out of Dodge and Evasion and stole their wallets.

In fact, Underrail should be Reinhardt 's new merchant OCD game, the rest of his skills based around fast movement

Agame I wouldn't go as far to say they're a trap skill, especially if you don't want to hyperminmax superpower glass cannons. I've had fun playing the latter, but I'd also say on Normal or even Hard it's a decent investment. Kind of like how dumping CON can be a minmax route for many builds but it's not so terrible to have some on a non-tincan build.

 

[Ent]

It's as if crafting skills beat the shit out of Dodge and Evasion and stole their wallets.

So is the autist/min-maxer consensus dodge/evasion are awful trap skills? I thought they were still ok to invest in for certain builds. Maybe not on highest difficulty.

The stat bloat in dominating make it them impractical as you would need to invest heavily in AGI to keep up with the opposing weapon ranks. The new temporal manipulation skill that increases your dodge and evade value by a flat additive amount makes them more viable in the other difficulties.

 

[Blaine]

So is the autist/min-maxer consensus dodge/evasion are awful trap skills? I thought they were still ok to invest in for certain builds. Maybe not on highest difficulty.

The problem with Dodge and Evasion is manifold, and as I've stated before, this has little to do with min-maxing:

• Their individual ROI is lower than that of any other individual combat skill.
• Like other, but more valuable combat skills, you have to keep pumping points into them to get the most out of them (i.e., not die).
• Also like other, but more valuable combat skills, you ideally need feats to get the most out of them, restricting your choice of stats and reducing your feat picks.
• Unlike armor (which has no skill requirements at all, and few if any near-mandatory feats), they vanish and stop working entirely every time you get bopped on the head, flashbanged, ambushed by creepy alien bugs, nerve stapled, etc.
• You will get bopped on the head, flashbanged, ambushed by creepy alien bugs, nerve stapled, etc. a lot in this game.

So yeah, I'm not a fan. Now in fairness, yes, Dodge and Evasion do make sense and are appropriate for certain builds, particularly builds that rely on Stealth and are naturally DEX and AGI heavy. This, however, is why stealth psi (AKA obliterate everything that moves almost before they know you're there) ended up being my favorite stealth build: When you invest in a psi skill, you gain access to a wide variety of cool and tactical sci-fi wizard abilities with interesting synergies and environmental interactions. When you invest in Evasion or Dodge, you reduce some enemy hit %s, but never by enough to rely on them as anything but a supplemental safeguard. A tin can and a decent health pool, on the other hand, can allow you to go full-blown Terminator in some (but not all!) situations.

In summary, Dodge and Evasion ought to be combined into one skill. The appearance of complexity, granularity, completeness, and/or realism afforded by two avoidance skills isn't sufficient justification. The two of them separately are too much of a skill point sink for snipers, stealth knifers, crossbow trappers, etc. Tin can + hammer guys can afford two or three more crafting, technical, and/or social skills, because they don't have two leeches siphoning off a big chunk of their skill points.

 

[frajaq]

gotta say I'm kinda enjoying the flow of

>go into combat area
>get my teeth kicked in a few times
>re-load
>figure out what the fuck you're doing wrong
>try until succeed

fuck psibeetles btw

 

[toro]

It's as if crafting skills beat the shit out of Dodge and Evasion and stole their wallets.

So is the autist/min-maxer consensus dodge/evasion are awful trap skills? I thought they were still ok to invest in for certain builds. Maybe not on highest difficulty.

Dodge is a trap for ranged builds because you plan to kill your enemies before they reach you therefore you don't really need it. Must-have for Melee or close combat builds.

Evasion should be a must-have for all ranged builds however some PSI builds don't need it because they have other means to make sure the enemies don't have a chance to hit them.

Melee: Dodge, Evasion
Ranged: Evasion
PSI: --

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Tigranes]

In summary, Dodge and Evasion ought to be combined into one skill. The appearance of complexity, granularity, completeness, and/or realism afforded by two avoidance skills isn't sufficient justification. The two of them separately are too much of a skill point sink for snipers, stealth knifers, crossbow trappers, etc. Tin can + hammer guys can afford two or three more crafting, technical, and/or social skills, because they don't have two leeches siphoning off a big chunk of their skill points.

thing with stealthy guys is that if you play it right you dont need to rely on those skills. If you set up proper ambush, you dont let enemies retaliate.

I had those in use when I played knifer without stealth... then I realized that fancy footwork is better as its easier to outrun everyone

Yes, in theory, a good stealther never needs any kind of defences, or HP, because they should get the job done before Turn 1 begins. But that means you are playing in a way that every mistake is death and you have to set up perfect storms. Which is great fun, but people should know that going in, as opposed to 'dodge/evasion sux anyway and is a trap'. It's a reasonable safety net for many kinds of builds, it's just that, as Blaine laid out, it's not the most efficient way to spend your points.

 

[fantadomat]

Ohhhh fuck off! After the duke's new quest i am certain that Styg is a total assholes. Killing cats,really??????

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Did you buy the game with money?

 

[toro]

Did you buy the game with money?

He probably used Leva but those hardly count as money

 

[Blaine]

thing with stealthy guys is that if you play it right you dont need to rely on those skills. If you set up proper ambush, you dont let enemies retaliate.

Yes, that's exactly right—which is why stealth psi with 0 points invested in Dodge and Evasion is so overwhelmingly powerful in the hands of an experienced player.

You couldn't rely on Dodge and Evasion even if you wanted to, because they're innately unreliable. Dodge and Evasion are literal gambling: You either avoid damage or take a spike of it based on what is more-or-less a coin flip, typically while playing characters with low health pools. Stout armor combined with a higher health pool is a sensible investment by comparison that steadily pays modest dividends. It's reliable, you can plan around it, and therefore it's a workable defense.

Of course, blanket AoE damage reduction was added to try sweetening the pot, but do you know what else provides blanket AoE damage reduction? Yeah, that's right: heavy armor. You guys are smart. Good guess!

It may be realistic and intuitive that a dodgy, evasive guy can smugly sidestep numerous attacks until he gets unlucky or misjudges and then gets comically clobbered, but defenses need to be reliable in order to be worthwhile, especially over the long term. Requiring massive skill point investment to obtain unreliable defenses is... not balanced. They work great for NPCs, most of which are ultimately doomed to die at the player's hand after just one battle, but they're awful for the player himself.

The real TL;DR is that evasive defenses need to be made reliable in some way.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Blaine]

The real TL;DR is that evasive defenses need to be made reliable in some way.

like.. deterministic?

You said it yourself: You don't need to rely on them.

I'm simply going a step further and saying that you CAN'T rely on them, which is true. That's the main reason why people choose not to rely on them. Once one realizes that one can't rely on them, one inevitably asks oneself: "Why do I need them at all?".

 

[fantadomat]

Did you buy the game with money?

No,i used leafs from the tree infront of my house. Didin't you know that GoG accept such currency???


About dude's quest.

Spoiler

Did anyone find any more of the rifts??? The whole grey army part was pretty good if you are a Slav you get a bonus

 

[Sykar]

Also, yeah, I'd considered dropping some other feat and getting Paranoia for the reason you describe. I may just do that.

I'd dump both to 3, and also drop Agility by several points, but you seem to have chosen it mostly for flavour.

No, I chose Agility 8+2 because it affords some breathing room (for MP) when wearing heavier armor, and also allows me to choose Strider much later on.

Initiative is going to be fucked either way, but not entirely fucked with a good Agility score. That's the penalty for choosing not to pump DEX and AGI and waste tons of skill points on poorly implemented avoidance skills.

Funny enough, the most powerful defensive skill is Electronics.
Would you not agree, Styg ?

In summary, Dodge and Evasion ought to be combined into one skill. The appearance of complexity, granularity, completeness, and/or realism afforded by two avoidance skills isn't sufficient justification. The two of them separately are too much of a skill point sink for snipers, stealth knifers, crossbow trappers, etc. Tin can + hammer guys can afford two or three more crafting, technical, and/or social skills, because they don't have two leeches siphoning off a big chunk of their skill points.

thing with stealthy guys is that if you play it right you dont need to rely on those skills. If you set up proper ambush, you dont let enemies retaliate.

I had those in use when I played knifer without stealth... then I realized that fancy footwork is better as its easier to outrun everyone

Yes, in theory, a good stealther never needs any kind of defences, or HP, because they should get the job done before Turn 1 begins. But that means you are playing in a way that every mistake is death and you have to set up perfect storms. Which is great fun, but people should know that going in, as opposed to 'dodge/evasion sux anyway and is a trap'. It's a reasonable safety net for many kinds of builds, it's just that, as Blaine laid out, it's not the most efficient way to spend your points.

I still agree with Blaine though that two skills which are so situational should be merged into one. Just remove dodge and just have evasion, problem solved, now it is an alternative without giving up shit tons of skill points. Alternatively give is a feat like similar to Versatility for those two so we can opt to raise one very high and still get the other high enough to matter. Styg, does that sound like a good idea?

 

[Agame]

I still agree with Blaine though that two skills which are so situational should be merged into one.

Great idea for Underrail 2, btw when is that gonna be announced??

 

[Black Angel]

Dude quest chain is quite fun, now have to figure out the riddle of the console. Drives me mad, and I am drunk on top of that!

I tried solving that drunk too. I was overthinking it completely, just keep in mind

Spoiler

there's three codes in the room because I was missing one and tried finding number combinations that added up to each of the numbers of my other code.

My gut tells me

Spoiler

that it is addition based but I can't make heads or tails out of it atm.

Spoiler

Yeah it's addition based and involves the numbers in each line.

Yeah got it now I think,

Spoiler

solved the first batch, 2 left, got completely new numbers after the first one which had numbers from the meter when adding up the numbers in certain lines. Now got to add up shit again and see if it correspond with chemicals or the piece of paper

Edit:
next one is

Spoiler

the paper

You damn nerds I skipped the console part entirely and

Spoiler

resorted to cowardly approach of casting Enrage on one of them, closing the door, wait until they come out and use the explosive barrels in the room to kill them

I am a failure to my scientific background it's not chemistry-related like the mutagen puzzle, but still....

 

[Sykar]

Dude quest chain is quite fun, now have to figure out the riddle of the console. Drives me mad, and I am drunk on top of that!

I tried solving that drunk too. I was overthinking it completely, just keep in mind

Spoiler

there's three codes in the room because I was missing one and tried finding number combinations that added up to each of the numbers of my other code.

My gut tells me

Spoiler

that it is addition based but I can't make heads or tails out of it atm.

Spoiler

Yeah it's addition based and involves the numbers in each line.

Yeah got it now I think,

Spoiler

solved the first batch, 2 left, got completely new numbers after the first one which had numbers from the meter when adding up the numbers in certain lines. Now got to add up shit again and see if it correspond with chemicals or the piece of paper

Edit:
next one is

Spoiler

the paper

You damn nerds I skipped the console part entirely and

Spoiler

resorted to cowardly approach of casting Enrage on one of them, closing the door, wait until they come out and use the explosive barrels in the room to kill them

I am a failure to my scientific background it's not chemistry-related like the mutagen puzzle, but still....

Well my problem as usual was that I overthought the problem.

Spoiler

I tried to cram all 9 numbers into the first batch of numbers which was impossible. Once I tried the more simplistic approach and saw that I get a new batch of numbers after the first one it became trivially easy. So in essence, the problem was not to find out how the numbers correlate, but that you do NOT have to solve all the numbers in one go.

 

[Urthor]

Does anyone know if

Spoiler

The Oculus'

questline was expanded?

That was definitely the highlight of the core game really

 

[Black Angel]

Dude quest chain is quite fun, now have to figure out the riddle of the console. Drives me mad, and I am drunk on top of that!

I tried solving that drunk too. I was overthinking it completely, just keep in mind

Spoiler

there's three codes in the room because I was missing one and tried finding number combinations that added up to each of the numbers of my other code.

My gut tells me

Spoiler

that it is addition based but I can't make heads or tails out of it atm.

Spoiler

Yeah it's addition based and involves the numbers in each line.

Yeah got it now I think,

Spoiler

solved the first batch, 2 left, got completely new numbers after the first one which had numbers from the meter when adding up the numbers in certain lines. Now got to add up shit again and see if it correspond with chemicals or the piece of paper

Edit:
next one is

Spoiler

the paper

You damn nerds I skipped the console part entirely and

Spoiler

resorted to cowardly approach of casting Enrage on one of them, closing the door, wait until they come out and use the explosive barrels in the room to kill them

I am a failure to my scientific background it's not chemistry-related like the mutagen puzzle, but still....

Well my problem as usual was that I overthought the problem.

Spoiler

I tried to cram all 9 numbers into the first batch of numbers which was impossible. Once I tried the more simplistic approach and saw that I get a new batch of numbers after the first one it became trivially easy. So in essence, the problem was not to find out how the numbers correlate, but that you do NOT have to solve all the numbers in one go.

Spoiler

Yeah, I noticed the numbers changing. But the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw them is that I did something wrong and now I'm either locked out of the opportunity to solve it, or I need to 'correct' my mistakes. Anyway, I already solved the entire quest chain, so I might as well revisit this in a new playthrough in the future.

 

[Sykar]

Just out of curiosity, in that base you end up on your quest with The Dude

Spoiler

is that language based on something in real life or just gibberish?

Also

Spoiler

Dude has a great portrait there, wish all portraits would look that great

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Abu Antar]

Tried to kill the three bandits so I could deliver the package. Three times, I was close, but a crit did me in every time. I said F it and purchased a few molotovs. At level 2, I went in again and threw one at them.


I've spent six hours with Underrail, in one day. 4 hours on this save file. I made a new character based on some of the feedback left here. I'm still psy heavy, but now have Str/Con at 3. I added throwing into the mix. I managed to stea... I mean find enough stuff to trade for some steel gloves, which has helped with damage output. Fixed 4/5 generators and reached level 4 (odditiesexp). Good shit so far.

Edit: Psi/unarmed seems great. Stun enemy, take advantage of opportunist and hopefully a crit from recklessness. The steel gloves are also helpful. On top of that, bought some bluprints for some hopefully useful items throughout the campaign.

 

[Citizen]

20P SHOTGUN SHELL HITTING ASS AND LEG OH GOD ITS HEAVAN

 

[mold]

I thought I'd just rush through the expedition questline and go back to the non-gaming things I was supposed to be doing, but now that I'm done I think I need to make time for a full new playthrough after all. So much cool new stuff!

How are people liking the spears?