Hmm , i sided with protectorate so never had to fight them , but is there a quest / mission to clear it from free drones side ?
Also does anyone knows how viable are melee builds that forgo hammers? I'm trying an unarmed build and heavy punch is barely making a dent in anything that has any semblance of DT.
Do machines get stunned by anything other than electrical attacks? If not this path seems lackluster to say the least. I did Omega without a hammer and I ended up running away like an asshole. Watching your recent knife build video you seem to have had the same problem in that the build just becomes a shitty throwing build. Relying on cheap shots and combo is questionable anyway. You can attack 10-12 times a turn by level 4 but 15% is 15%. As far as combo goes, it only counts damage dealing attacks, so a single 0 damage hit fucks up the proc.When it comes to the fists, I think that heavy punch (as well as the metal gloves) kinda sucks and you need to go for the critical hit builds. Their problem is that they lessen your number of attacks per round and said round means how many target can you hold down with your combo & pneumatic disables. And, as long as you hold them down indefinitely, it doesn't really matter whether you're killing them slow or fast (most of the time). So Recklessness, Cheap Shots, Bone Breaker, Opportunist, mb build into Survival Instincts (but those are probably mutually exclusive with Bone Breaker). Expose Weakness too, ofc. Theoretically, this should give enough multipliers to pierce through the armor.
You wot mate? Unarmed is plenty powerfull, you use metal gloves on robots, and leather/no gloves for anything with minimal armour. Couple that with light armour on your character and decent feats and you will be a God-Damn kung-fu master. I run such a build well into Core city and the only problems I had were with the first robots in that Gorsky mission to get the keycard in that outpost. Had to use crafted metal gauntlets and probably that attack that lowers armour. But after that it was a smooth sailing. I may be planning an unarmed build on release, with the psi skill that gives even more damage.Do machines get stunned by anything other than electrical attacks? If not this path seems lackluster to say the least. I did Omega without a hammer and I ended up running away like an asshole. Watching your recent knife build video you seem to have had the same problem in that the build just becomes a shitty throwing build. Relying on cheap shots and combo is questionable anyway. You can attack 10-12 times a turn by level 4 but 15% is 15%. As far as combo goes, it only counts damage dealing attacks, so a single 0 damage hit fucks up the proc.When it comes to the fists, I think that heavy punch (as well as the metal gloves) kinda sucks and you need to go for the critical hit builds. Their problem is that they lessen your number of attacks per round and said round means how many target can you hold down with your combo & pneumatic disables. And, as long as you hold them down indefinitely, it doesn't really matter whether you're killing them slow or fast (most of the time). So Recklessness, Cheap Shots, Bone Breaker, Opportunist, mb build into Survival Instincts (but those are probably mutually exclusive with Bone Breaker). Expose Weakness too, ofc. Theoretically, this should give enough multipliers to pierce through the armor.
I think knives and unarmed aren't designed to be your only offensive skill. They just get too fucked up by DT.
There's an awful lot of discussion in this thread about topics like viability or the opportunity cost of certain character builds. I'm an obsessive combatfag myself, but I want to warn any newer players that this is a wrongheaded approach to Underrail. Any character build with an offensive and defensive component can progress through the game right up to the edge of the currently available content. You won't run into problems where you're bashing your head up against the game design because of your choice of character. There isn't anything analogous to Fallout's Throwing skill. There aren't any useless offensive or defensive methods. Some characters are harder to play than others (e.g. a knife wielder will require more game mechanics knowledge than an AR character), some characters are harder to build than others, but any character that consistently levels up an offensive and defensive component can make it through everything. That's not to say the game is easy, but if you encounter a difficult situation on a character that another character dealt easily with just be assured that it's not the game at fault if you're unable to puzzle your way out.
There's ultimately very little point (except for the satiation of academic curiosity) to figuring out the most optimal character or characters because they will never be pitted against one another, and the encounter design and combat system in Underrail provide the player with ways to play and plan around weaknesses and strengths. Sure, I'd be willing to say that a focused AR character is far "stronger" than a crossbow character, but I actually find the crossbow playthrough much more enjoyable because the playstyle is more to my liking. Try to keep this in mind even when you see some of us sperging out over the glorious character creation system provided by this excellent game. The real point in optimizing is to have the most enjoyable experience with whatever character concept you chose to explore.
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Alfons In the previous patch, the two character builds that got all the attention were the knife god and the SMG user. SMGs have been brought down very slightly this patch (mostly the food nerf) and ARs have been brought up significantly. But SMGs are certainly incredibly lethal devices due to their extraordinary synergy with Dexterity and feats. The only difficulty is in choosing how precisely to build the character as there are several different avenues with different approaches and strengths. Compared to other characters, I'd say that SMGs are underappreciated right now because of the excitement over the ARs.
I think knives and unarmed aren't designed to be your only offensive skill. They just get too fucked up by DT.
Every build can resort to throwing 40% hit chance grenades and be effective that's just not a build I want to play and with the current system I don't think anyone should. For example, my pure unarmed build couldn't dent the armor of the sentries in omega and resorted to running away while throwing inaccurate emp nades. Could heavy punch, heavy tactical vest, or the sledge help me out? Sure, but at that moment I didn't have access to those tools and resorted to using the things that are outside of my build but are available to everyone.
I can think of one - any psi character with premeditation.I can't think offhand of a character that has an easier time at low levels fighting the sentries rather than sneaking around them.
Underrail's combat is not fought in abstracted space. The screen does not flash and whisk the player away to a separate battle map on a separate screen. Combat takes place in the world space where one can manipulate terrain, line of sight, place traps, and even retreat or reset combat through stealth.
The real point in optimizing is to have the most enjoyable experience with whatever character concept you chose to explore.
This question is asked and answered roughly every 2 pages of this thread.how much longer til this game is finished? also, is it looking to be a solid piece of incline? I already bought it just waiting for a final release.
There's ultimately very little point (except for the satiation of academic curiosity) to figuring out the most optimal character or characters because they will never be pitted against one another, and the encounter design and combat system in Underrail provide the player with ways to play and plan around weaknesses and strengths..
What constitutes a reasonable solution depends on the purpose of the build and player perspective. If your objective is to get past an encounter or to solve the quest than every build is able to achieve that goal. My purpose with combat builds is to win encounters using strengths which are specific to the build. If I have to resort to tactics that aren't developed in the build like running or throwing grenades frequently then for me that's a failed build. If that guy is throwing nades and running often might as well invesnt in skills and feats that allow him to that well.Combat takes place in the world space where one can manipulate terrain, line of sight, place traps, and even retreat or reset combat through stealth. I haven't yet found a situation in the game with any build that doesn't have a reasonable solution.
I have specific progression for the starting areas. Outposts+sample quest, SGS, psi beetles+hoppers, Junkyard, knife quest "exploit", trader savescumming, SGS, GMS, bandit camp, SGS, Junkyard, Dockmaster+Grover, Isle, depot A.Against the bots, you could've dropped EMP nades at your feet when near them - 100% hit chance without any throwing skill! And you usually ding 6 before encountering the first bots in GMS, so you should also have Expose Weakness. If not, it's always possible to explore a bit more and come back more experienced and better equipped. Underrail doesn't scale to your level.
Oh, and one more thing: those bots can't open doors. That brings a lot of possibilities, be creative.
I can do you one better. Any character with a heavy tactical vest.I can think of one - any psi character with premeditation.I can't think offhand of a character that has an easier time at low levels fighting the sentries rather than sneaking around them.
There you go epeli , there you fucking go. Either misunderstanding something, or intentionally taking it out of context. What did I say?Alfons you don't need reloads or running around, and the primary purpose of EMP is to disable your target for 2 turns. Damage is just icing on the cake. Since you always find couple of EMP grenades nearby and they're easy to deploy even without any throwing skill when you aren't yet reliant on any electronic gadgets vulnerable to EMP, any build should definitely make use of those free EMP nades. Using all available tools is not a sign of failed build, but refusing to use them is a sign of something else failing. For the third time: Expose Weakness is what lets you overcome the armor penetration problem and makes killing the bots or any other armored foe relatively easy rather than impossible, so stop ignoring it and/or saying it isn't build specific kthxbye.
Expose Weakness would help a lot: if the enemy has 20 mechanical threshold and you hit for 21 damage, expose weakness will up your damage from 1 to 11, which is a pretty significant increase. Everything helps when you're dealing zero damage, so expertise would be very significant as well.
The problem is Expose has a 4 turn cooldown, so you really should have alternative means of dealing damage. The real problem you're running into is that you're relying upon a single damage type: mechanical. It stands to reason you'd have trouble with mechanically resistant enemies.
There you go epeli , there you fucking go. Either misunderstanding something, or intentionally taking it out of context. What did I say?Alfons you don't need reloads or running around, and the primary purpose of EMP is to disable your target for 2 turns. Damage is just icing on the cake. Since you always find couple of EMP grenades nearby and they're easy to deploy even without any throwing skill when you aren't yet reliant on any electronic gadgets vulnerable to EMP, any build should definitely make use of those free EMP nades. Using all available tools is not a sign of failed build, but refusing to use them is a sign of something else failing. For the third time: Expose Weakness is what lets you overcome the armor penetration problem and makes killing the bots or any other armored foe relatively easy rather than impossible, so stop ignoring it and/or saying it isn't build specific kthxbye.
"If I have to resort to tactics that aren't developed in the build like running or throwing grenades frequently then for me that's a failed build."
I'm not going to scream "It doesn't work!" because a level 5 character with 3 feats is using every tool it has available
Wasn't expose weakness covered on a thread in the Underrail forumes
Expose Weakness would help a lot: if the enemy has 20 mechanical threshold and you hit for 21 damage, expose weakness will up your damage from 1 to 11, which is a pretty significant increase. Everything helps when you're dealing zero damage, so expertise would be very significant as well.
The problem is Expose has a 4 turn cooldown, so you really should have alternative means of dealing damage. The real problem you're running into is that you're relying upon a single damage type: mechanical. It stands to reason you'd have trouble with mechanically resistant enemies.
I agree.But unarmed is a perfectly viable main offense in combination with various other things.
I think knives and unarmed aren't designed to be your only offensive skill. They just get too fucked up by DT.
My first choice would be primarily focused on the speech-skills with stealth as a backup. That said, non-combatant playthroughs can really suck if its not supported properly. I'm pretty much wondering if Underrail has the stealth gameplay and (especially) the dialogue to make such a build fun.
After that I'm considering an stealth/traps/explosives build. My main concern with this one is limited resources. Is this feasible or would I need to invest in other combat skills as well?
gestalt11 I appreciate the detailed response. With every build I played so far grenades lose effectiveness as levels progress if you don't take throwing. I can't tell you how many times I died because of missed clutch grenades because I either hit 1 out of 4 tightly packed guys who proceeded to kill me or hitting myself with my grenade. If you frequently use them why just not make it part of your build and invest enough point to make them not fall at your own feet? But don't take my word for it, you can go watch some Pope Amole II 's build videos and see how reload inducing grenades can be. I believe some of the builds have throwing but it's not high enough to be reliable. Builds that don't take throwing but rely on it heavily will have it even worse.