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first time playing Underrail, please recommend easy to follow builds!

Parabalus

Arcane
Joined
Mar 23, 2015
Messages
17,432
Parabalus, I don't know how you manage to always disagree with me, even in cases when I am clearly correct, like this one. You are basically saying that an absolute newbie to DnD should dive into BG2 playing a mage, because it is the most powerful.

That's the best way to lose potential players. The average Underrail newcomer won't even know how to sneak properly, and you are talking about death stalkers. I hope you are not a teacher, man. The goal is not to make them powerful, the goal is to ease them into the game. If they are eased into the game and don't like their build, they can always restart. If, on the other hand, they get hopelessly overwhelmed, they will not return.

Therefore, my advice is to guide all asking newbies to SMGs (or Assault Rifles if they prefer tanks) which is both powerful and simple. Definitely away from unarmed, pistols, crossbows, and psi.

Now, if a newbie actually has an opinion and prefers the idea of psi or unarmed, then sure, help him with that.

Comparing Underrail's PSI to Bg2's mages is insane.
Wizards have more lvl 1 spells than the entirety of the Underrail PSI repertoire.

There are no mage battles in UR, PSI just does everything by itself, better than every other build.

For SMGs you need grenades, switching ammo (and lugging around a ton of it), crafting gears to never be as effective as a brain-dead PSI user.
Most of what you posted is correct, but I wouldn't call psi builds brain-dead. I remember having tons of fun when I played my first full psi build years ago. Figuring out how spells interact with each other, coming up with new combos, determining which spells work better against what enemies, locating new spells etc. Unless a newbie combs through the forums to find all that shit out, pure psi will be a lot of fun for them. They'll have lot's of flashy things to do each turn and overpoweredness of psi will carry even a retard through the whole game.

I agree with you, PSI has a lot of cool interactions and combos.

The sad thing / point is that even without stuff like FF-chains, TD pops, LTI abuse etc. it's extremely straightforward to play and still one of the strongest builds.
 

Sheepherder

Augur
Joined
Feb 4, 2014
Messages
657
Parabalus, I don't know how you manage to always disagree with me, even in cases when I am clearly correct, like this one. You are basically saying that an absolute newbie to DnD should dive into BG2 playing a mage, because it is the most powerful.

That's the best way to lose potential players. The average Underrail newcomer won't even know how to sneak properly, and you are talking about death stalkers. I hope you are not a teacher, man. The goal is not to make them powerful, the goal is to ease them into the game. If they are eased into the game and don't like their build, they can always restart. If, on the other hand, they get hopelessly overwhelmed, they will not return.

Therefore, my advice is to guide all asking newbies to SMGs (or Assault Rifles if they prefer tanks) which is both powerful and simple. Definitely away from unarmed, pistols, crossbows, and psi.

Now, if a newbie actually has an opinion and prefers the idea of psi or unarmed, then sure, help him with that.

Comparing Underrail's PSI to Bg2's mages is insane.
Wizards have more lvl 1 spells than the entirety of the Underrail PSI repertoire.

There are no mage battles in UR, PSI just does everything by itself, better than every other build.

For SMGs you need grenades, switching ammo (and lugging around a ton of it), crafting gears to never be as effective as a brain-dead PSI user.
Most of what you posted is correct, but I wouldn't call psi builds brain-dead. I remember having tons of fun when I played my first full psi build years ago. Figuring out how spells interact with each other, coming up with new combos, determining which spells work better against what enemies, locating new spells etc. Unless a newbie combs through the forums to find all that shit out, pure psi will be a lot of fun for them. They'll have lot's of flashy things to do each turn and overpoweredness of psi will carry even a retard through the whole game.

I agree with you, PSI has a lot of cool interactions and combos.

The sad thing / point is that even without stuff like FF-chains, TD pops, LTI abuse etc. it's extremely straightforward to play and still one of the strongest builds.
Straightforward yes, but not as straightforward as tincan AR - another build which is commonly recommended to newbies. Combat starts, go last, tank damage and then brrrt everything. Rinse, repeat for the entirety of the game. That's safe, brain-dead and boring.
Figuring out all those psi interactions is half the fun. And because of how op pure psi is, new players have a lot of room for error when building a char.
That's why imo we should recommend new players a pure psi of some sort. On normal, a non temp distortion centered tranq build will do very well. Maybe add some throwing too, to help them deal with robots/shielded enemies.
 

Replicante

Educated
Joined
Aug 3, 2017
Messages
61
Thanks, this is very helpful information. I feel comfortable playing on hard thanks to this very thread. Hopefully :D
 

eXalted

Arcane
Joined
Dec 16, 2014
Messages
1,213
First time playing here too. Will try an assault rifles, grenades and heavy armor build. Should I invest in Psi?
 

overly excitable young man

Guest
Played it last month also first time.
I don't think you can really make non viable builds if you specialize.
 

hell bovine

Arcane
Joined
Sep 9, 2013
Messages
2,711
Location
Secret Level
Yes if you go for a chemical pistols build, otherwise not really.

Btw, stealth is going to be faster than heavy armor in the long run, because you can skip a lot of combat with sneaking. Just go with 7 agility, then you can pick up interloper on level 2.

(on a side note, mole crickets?!... someone on the dev team likes insects a tad too much)
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
Parabalus, I don't know how you manage to always disagree with me, even in cases when I am clearly correct, like this one. You are basically saying that an absolute newbie to DnD should dive into BG2 playing a mage, because it is the most powerful.

That's the best way to lose potential players. The average Underrail newcomer won't even know how to sneak properly, and you are talking about death stalkers. I hope you are not a teacher, man. The goal is not to make them powerful, the goal is to ease them into the game. If they are eased into the game and don't like their build, they can always restart. If, on the other hand, they get hopelessly overwhelmed, they will not return.

Therefore, my advice is to guide all asking newbies to SMGs (or Assault Rifles if they prefer tanks) which is both powerful and simple. Definitely away from unarmed, pistols, crossbows, and psi.

Now, if a newbie actually has an opinion and prefers the idea of psi or unarmed, then sure, help him with that.

Comparing Underrail's PSI to Bg2's mages is insane.
Wizards have more lvl 1 spells than the entirety of the Underrail PSI repertoire.

There are no mage battles in UR, PSI just does everything by itself, better than every other build.

For SMGs you need grenades, switching ammo (and lugging around a ton of it), crafting gears to never be as effective as a brain-dead PSI user.

Sorry, I do not see it how PSI is brain dead compared to SMGs. Swapping ammo? What for? All you need is AP for high armored target, can stick to standard against soft targets. I guess electro ammo is nice against shields but far from mandatory to burn through them. What is so difficult about grenades? Spec Ops and Grenadier lower the CD to laughable degrees. Can even back in some TM to reduce the CD and since you won't use PSI for anything else you can just happily reduce CD with it. Cryorb is more difficult to place than any grenade. Thanks to new feats you can get now 100% accuracy making it completely safe at high levels. SMG is actually fairly straightforward and simple. PSI needs to know which ability to use against which enemy, especially now in Expedition which sports a lot of enemies which are highly resistant or outright immune to at least one if not more damage types. PSI is always squishier than non-PSI and tend to have low PER, leading PSI to be vulnerable to stealth enemies early on. Even with Paranoia and good detection goggles you will struggle with certain enemies in stealth unless you know exactly where they all are. Psychosis works best with SI which requires high con and a good gameplan.
 
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