Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

[Lhynn]

I think you just have the wrong idea about this difficulty. It's not supposed to be a carefully balanced step-up from Hard, at least not yet. Right now it's experimental madness that was given to the seasoned masochists who played the game so much Hard just doesn't do it for them. Hell, even the in-game description says that Stygian doesn't gurantee it's possible to finish it. I love it.

Yeah, the new difficulty is great. The constant nerfs so that you have no idea if your character or concept will work from one patch to the next is what irks me.

 

[Tygrende]

Every fight in the game that matters lasts over 3 rounds.

First of all this is simply not true and entirely dependent on your build. Final boss fight can be as short as 1 turn, Carnifex fight can be as short as 1 turn, killing a small group of enemies can definitely be done in 2 turns, etc.

Second, you need to spend 3 turns below 70% HP in order for regenerative vest to provide a bigger bonus than the infused pig leather. That's a pretty important detail you missed.

Dominating only makes your comparison even more ridiculous as every fights duration got increaded by over 50%.

Combat duration is not a linear function of enemy's HP. Again, entirely dependent on your build.

Remember that quality of infused going down means less dodge/evasion/othergoodies, making the character easier to hit. But its true, you could just as well not invest in it.

I rarely bother with dodge/evasion as I consider it to be vastly inferior to other defenses the game has to offer, even for low armor penalty builds.

What is worse is that any build which does not have an overabundance of AoE is forced to spam bear trap over the entire field. I had to reload even when I laid down well over 30 traps and the 50 I mentioned was a mere guestimate. Sorry but this is not fun. It is also not "hard" since there are no choices to be made it all boils down to "Are there enough bear traps or not?".

I will be sure to record beating that fight with no AoE or traps whatsoever, you have my word.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[Parabalus]

This is just bullshit. Light unarmed was (likely still is) by far the best melee. Since your weapons were Q190ish you were miles above everyone else thanks to nothing but raw numbers - it made knives which share feats/stats appear garbage by comparison. Psionics aren't even needed.

Not according to my experience, but then again, i never made room for skinner feat. I found that without expose weakness my character could simply not hurt anything with high armor.

Your attacks cost 4 AP (used to be 2 AP), that's 12 attacks minimum, do you expect each one to 1-hit KO something[/QUOTE]
Attacks are 5 AP if you reach dex 14, 4 Ap was before taste for blood was nerfed. Read my previous point.[/QUOTE]



But you have the expose armor feat? Only thing I can recall which was unhurtable w/o ea. (and needed more than 1 use, e.g. eye dies in 1 round so not an issue) was the dreadnaught.

Not sure what you're talking about, crafted gloves are 12 base, tabi+LP+eel gives 4 AP. TfB was for 2 AP (and even then superfluous since DEX was 4%)

Skinner likely added comparable damage per punch as psi punches would, since it added to base which gets multiplied. Not sure how all modifiers stack though, might be wrong.

I dislike nerfs myself but in light unarmed I think it was 100% needed, when you have a build much stronger than others it throws everything out of whack.

Twice? Try quadruple at bare minimum.

That's even better!


I think you just have the wrong idea about this difficulty. It's not supposed to be a carefully balanced step-up from Hard, at least not yet. Right now it's experimental madness that was given to the seasoned masochists who played the game so much Hard just doesn't do it for them. Hell, even the in-game description says that Stygian doesn't gurantee it's possible to finish it. I love it.

Is XP lowered in Classic to account for mob spam?

 

[Lhynn]

I dislike nerfs myself but in light unarmed I think it was 100% needed

Nope

when you have a build much stronger than others it throws everything out of whack.

Even if that was the case, its not the case in a single player game. Stop treating this like a god damned mmo.

 

[Parabalus]

I dislike nerfs myself but in light unarmed I think it was 100% needed

Nope

when you have a build much stronger than others it throws everything out of whack.

Even if that was the case, its not the case in a single player game. Stop treating this like a god damned mmo.

It's important when light unarmed shares feats/stats with knives. When I made my char I wanted to use knives, but halfway through realised that except for Cutthroat every feat is usable with fists AND they get more feats with much stronger weapons.

It's funny you mention MMOs since Underrail draws heavily from WoW.

 

[Lhynn]

It's important when light unarmed shares feats/stats with knives. When I made my char I wanted to use knives, but halfway through realised that except for Cutthroat every feat is usable with fists AND they get more feats with much stronger weapons.

Already elaborated on this, fist has too many synergies, just provide more content to explore for other options.

It's funny you mention MMOs since Underrail draws heavily from WoW.

Yeah, the shittier parts of the game. This was talked back at release.

 

[Stavrophore]

Twice? Try quadruple at bare minimum.

That's even better!

I think you just have the wrong idea about this difficulty. It's not supposed to be a carefully balanced step-up from Hard, at least not yet. Right now it's experimental madness that was given to the seasoned masochists who played the game so much Hard just doesn't do it for them. Hell, even the in-game description says that Stygian doesn't gurantee it's possible to finish it. I love it.

No it is not "better", it is retarded. Increased damage, HP and amount per wave was enough, but it seems like he also doubled the amount of waves which come which makes no sense considering you cannot even slaughter half as much inside the mines.

What is worse is that any build which does not have an overabundance of AoE is forced to spam bear trap over the entire field. I had to reload even when I laid down well over 30 traps and the 50 I mentioned was a mere guestimate. Sorry but this is not fun. It is also not "hard" since there are no choices to be made it all boils down to "Are there enough bear traps or not?".

Yeah the DOMINATING difficulty is suited only to a few builds, stealth oddity build, preferably AoE grenadier with flashbangs breaking LoS, trap quick tinkering.

 

[Parabalus]

It's important when light unarmed shares feats/stats with knives. When I made my char I wanted to use knives, but halfway through realised that except for Cutthroat every feat is usable with fists AND they get more feats with much stronger weapons.

Already elaborated on this, fist has too many synergies, just provide more content to explore for other options.

It's funny you mention MMOs since Underrail draws heavily from WoW.

Yeah, the shittier parts of the game. This was talked back at release.

But he didn't touch fist synergies this patch, only the Q190 outstating.

 

[Lhynn]

But he didn't touch fist synergies this patch, only the Q190 outstating.

Not this patch, but the last 2 he did. He is now messing with a different part of the package, dealing directly with damage and defense.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So has anyone tried a truly unoptimized build and made it successful?

 

[Stavrophore]

Someone found the use for coal and lighter? I presume styg want to add campfires to the game, probably for the ironmanesque save system where you can only saves using campfires.

 

[Sykar]

Twice? Try quadruple at bare minimum.

That's even better!

I think you just have the wrong idea about this difficulty. It's not supposed to be a carefully balanced step-up from Hard, at least not yet. Right now it's experimental madness that was given to the seasoned masochists who played the game so much Hard just doesn't do it for them. Hell, even the in-game description says that Stygian doesn't gurantee it's possible to finish it. I love it.

No it is not "better", it is retarded. Increased damage, HP and amount per wave was enough, but it seems like he also doubled the amount of waves which come which makes no sense considering you cannot even slaughter half as much inside the mines.

What is worse is that any build which does not have an overabundance of AoE is forced to spam bear trap over the entire field. I had to reload even when I laid down well over 30 traps and the 50 I mentioned was a mere guestimate. Sorry but this is not fun. It is also not "hard" since there are no choices to be made it all boils down to "Are there enough bear traps or not?".

Yeah the DOMINATING difficulty is suited only to a few builds, stealth oddity build, preferably AoE grenadier with flashbangs breaking LoS, trap quick tinkering.

My build is centered around Stealth, Snipe and PSI. It has done very well in hard difficulty with very few reloads necessary.
Also as mentioned this is not even difficult. It is just obnoxious and retarded.

So has anyone tried a truly unoptimized build and made it successful?

My stealthy PSI Sniper has gone through at least 4 iterations before I started to be satisfied and before it started to do well on Hard difficulty.

 

[Fenix]

Agility, MP/AP, Armor Penalty, etc have no effect on speed.

That's a shame, I think +1% movement speed for every Agility higher then 4 will be fine. Agility users should (?) have something else from this not so useful stat.


Also, that mean, that you can eat Jumping Bean, shot Adrenalin, enter stealth and run pretty fast - I'll take it into account.

Stealth appears to stack multiplicatively unlike all others.

Interesting, what does that mean?

 

[epeli]

Stealth appears to stack multiplicatively unlike all others.

Interesting, what does that mean?

It's a different modifier from others - something like baseSpeed * speedMod * stealthMod.

So for example if you have +35% from tabis, +10% from rathound regalia and -45% from stealth, they don't cancel each other out. Instead you get baseSpeed * 1.45 * 0.55 = 0.7975.

 

[Fenix]

Ah, you are about speed debuff...

 

[Sykar]

Has anyone else tried to tackle the last step on "The Beast" questline? I tried with now over 70 traps and even though I kill over 20 I still see something like 15 left with all traps sprung. This is utterly ridiculous and retarded.

What is worse is that Saban and Dave are barely any help thanks to the retarded idea of not giving them armor piercing ammunition and Saban has like what? 3 grenades tops? Even worse though they are ranged they have no concept of kiting whatsoever, just stand there like idiots and getting surrounded...

 

[Stavrophore]

So i stealthed the Silent Isle on dominating, but the captain broderick died, because he somehow aggroed azuridae while i was at the other side of the island[not that knife build would do anything to the azuridae goliaths]. Jesus christ this is so retarded.

 

[Sykar]

So i stealthed the Silent Isle on dominating, but the captain broderick died, because he somehow aggroed azuridae while i was at the other side of the island[not that knife build would do anything to the azuridae goliaths]. Jesus christ this is so retarded.

Yeah you need to make a save before you go. In its current iteration the only viable way is through the rathounds since the new azuridae rip low level characters apart but such a large pack of rathounds is not easy without a good chunk of preparation either. Then you still have to get to the chest which if you are unlucky is guarded by up to 2 of these big ugly bugs. Doable as a stealth character, not so sure how pure combat specialists will fare.

 

[Stavrophore]

So i stealthed the Silent Isle on dominating, but the captain broderick died, because he somehow aggroed azuridae while i was at the other side of the island[not that knife build would do anything to the azuridae goliaths]. Jesus christ this is so retarded.

Yeah you need to make a save before you go. In its current iteration the only viable way is through the rathounds since the new azuridae rip low level characters apart but such a large pack of rathounds is not easy without a good chunk of preparation either. Then you still have to get to the chest which if you are unlucky is guarded by up to 2 of these big ugly bugs. Doable as a stealth character, not so sure how pure combat specialists will fare.

I would say its absolutely impossible to beat the two goliathus unless you somehow amassed dozens of acid blob traps.The problem with rathounds is that whenever i try to fight them, the sounds of the fight somehow atracts azuridae. I had to reload dozen of times until the fucking bugs didnt come after me and captain.

 

[Ent]

Was the monster oddity drop chance lowered? I am having a really hard time getting those things for some reason.

 

[razvedchiki]

you can beat the goliathus with magnesium grenades,you just have to be lucky enough that they will get the burn debuff,2-3 magnesium grenades with grenadier feat did the trick for me.

 

[Sykar]

So i stealthed the Silent Isle on dominating, but the captain broderick died, because he somehow aggroed azuridae while i was at the other side of the island[not that knife build would do anything to the azuridae goliaths]. Jesus christ this is so retarded.

Yeah you need to make a save before you go. In its current iteration the only viable way is through the rathounds since the new azuridae rip low level characters apart but such a large pack of rathounds is not easy without a good chunk of preparation either. Then you still have to get to the chest which if you are unlucky is guarded by up to 2 of these big ugly bugs. Doable as a stealth character, not so sure how pure combat specialists will fare.

I would say its absolutely impossible to beat the two goliathus unless you somehow amassed dozens of acid blob traps.The problem with rathounds is that whenever i try to fight them, the sounds of the fight somehow atracts azuridae. I had to reload dozen of times until the fucking bugs didnt come after me and captain.

And the fun thing is they are not the worst. The new Death Stalker has utterly insane stealth and stealth detection value. Even at level 14 with maxed out stealth, paranoia, 65% stealth detection googles and 10 Perception I cannot even begin to see them before they attack me. What is worse they bring me down to like 25% through a medium frequency shield and their stun dot is now paired with a dot which deals around 80 bio damage if you attempt to use an antidote.

In its current iteration you can already encounter them in Core City during Gorsky's quest line.

 

[ciox]

Can you still reveal them with flares and stuff? I remember trying the one time I encountered them and having a hard time with it.

But yeah their Hyperallergy status effect is very strong, 77 bio damage and dazed for 3 turns if you use any chem (lose 15 ap) is quite hefty. Maybe the bio damage should (or already is) be reduced by CON.

 

[Sykar]

Can you still reveal them with flares and stuff? I remember trying the one time I encountered them and having a hard time with it.

But yeah their Hyperallergy status effect is very strong, 77 bio damage and dazed for 3 turns if you use any chem (lose 15 ap) is quite hefty. Maybe the bio damage should (or already is) be reduced by CON.

Theoretically? Sure. Practically? Good luck. You won't see them coming so you need a lot of luck.