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Underrail [PRE-RELEASE THREAD, GO TO NEW THREAD]

ST'Ranger

Augur
Joined
Oct 23, 2014
Messages
306
Apogee.
 

Atchodas

Augur
Joined
Apr 23, 2015
Messages
1,047
Hmm , i sided with protectorate so never had to fight them , but is there a quest / mission to clear it from free drones side ?
 

thesoup

Arcane
Joined
Oct 13, 2011
Messages
7,599
Too lazy to go through the thread - is the full content out yet?

edit
nvm I went a page back and got my info.
 

ST'Ranger

Augur
Joined
Oct 23, 2014
Messages
306
Hmm , i sided with protectorate so never had to fight them , but is there a quest / mission to clear it from free drones side ?

Quests? :smug:

Merely enter with hostile intent. And while you're at it, kill everyone in SGS. And everyone at FD as well. Remind yourself you're playing Underrail.
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
ST'Ranger where do you rate SMG's on the power curve. So far it's the most powerful build I tried, at least damage wise. Invoking a Locust of Control enrage or bilocation and setting up a force field to insulate yourself from the clusterfuck is hard to beat.

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.
 

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
Developer
Joined
Mar 1, 2012
Messages
2,052
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.

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.


BTW, do I understand it right that Vile Weaponry/Taste for Blood doesn't work with bladed fists?
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
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.
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.

I think knives and unarmed aren't designed to be your only offensive skill. They just get too fucked up by DT.
 

Zdzisiu

Arcane
Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Messages
3,489
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.
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.

I think knives and unarmed aren't designed to be your only offensive skill. They just get too fucked up by DT.
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.
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
I'm talking about the Gorsky mission. I just don't see what unarmed is going to get that will make its damage high enough, only thing that comes to mind is if the electronic gloves can be recharged during combat.

What do you mean by well into core city? You progressed through core city or just got there and stopped?

I tried the psi buff. Unless the damage gets significantly higher with points it's not worth it IMO. At 35 psychokinesis it adds 8-17 separate damage It works like the spikes enhancement. At 35 Psychokinesis it adds 8-17 separate damage, meaning it has to punch through DT on it's own. Edit: I mean to say that it doesn't solve the problem of tanky targets, if the damage get's through than it's great.

It looks like it's great against squishy mobs but so are SMG's, assault rifles, pistols, electrokinesis, and grenades. I just don't see what knife or unarmed exclusive builds bring to the table other than variety. Exclusive being the key word.
 

ST'Ranger

Augur
Joined
Oct 23, 2014
Messages
306
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.

------------------

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.
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
ST'Ranger I don't think anyone who went deep into the mechanics of the game has any doubt that almost any character with an offensive skill can go through the game. I would actually go one step further and say that it might be possible to go through the game without an offensive skill and without stealth if you're partial to reloading a lot due to a very simple fact. All characters have the option of using incredibly powerful items that have no prerequisites, namely grenades and heavy tactical vests.

If you encounter a difficult situation it might not be the game's fault, but the question is, are the problems you are encountering occur because of actual misplays or because your build doesn't have the necessary tools to deal with the situation? 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.

Styg said either here or on the Underrrail forums that he doesn't think it's unreasonable for knives not to be able to handle every situation. I'm paraphrasing and I do not know how old that statement is and whether or not his stance on the matter changed. To me that statements simply indicates that some problems can only be solved on a build level, unless you count heavy tactical vests and 40% grenades a solution.

That's why I ask about SMG's. I went to them from AR's myself and was pleasantly surprised, who doesn't like firing 28 rounds every turn? I think as it stands dexterity is probably one of the most useful attributes, seeing as there are only a handful of skills that allow you to do more each turn.
 

ST'Ranger

Augur
Joined
Oct 23, 2014
Messages
306
I can't think offhand of a character that has an easier time at low levels fighting the sentries rather than sneaking around them. I vaguely recall Styg actually stating that they were intentionally too powerful for lower level characters.

But taking aside the principle of your argument instead, I think it'd be more accurate to say that "not every weapon can do everything" or, to put it negatively, one must fight to their strengths and limit exposure to their weaknesses. 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. I haven't yet found a situation in the game with any build that doesn't have a reasonable solution. I spent a good several minutes while writing this post looking in my screenshots folder trying to recall such an instance. Admittedly, my viewpoint here may be ironically less informative because I've forgotten what it feels like for the game to be new, for stealth mechanics to be unfamiliar, for combat to be uncertain. But my stance aligns very closely with Styg's here.

I would agree with you that Dexterity is the most intriguing stat. My favorite characters to play are knife wielders, and I love the Dex skills. SMGs are absolutely better at room clearing than ARs, the one big disadvantage they have is range - so mobility and terrain abuse are key.
 

epeli

Arcane
Joined
Aug 17, 2014
Messages
719
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.

------------------

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.

This post is pure gold. Would fist.

I was just posting on the Underrail forums about how some builds are perceived to be better/worse than others, and that's mostly due to different learning curves. Thanks to that, Underrail even got its first FOTM build - the tin can rifleman! As straightforward as it gets.

The SMG thing is also completely true. I was about to ask if anyone here had played with SMGs in the latest version. Always nice to see that people are discovering new builds they like.

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.

Armor certainly is a problem for all weapons that incur increased mechanical resistance, but Expose Weakness solves that problem for dex melee. In my experience, the worst DT fuck-up you get is against psi beetles at very low levels when your weapon tends to be total junk and low weapon skill isn't helping much either. If I recall correctly, sentry bots have the same DT as psi beetles when their brains are not exposed.

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't think offhand of a character that has an easier time at low levels fighting the sentries rather than sneaking around them.
I can think of one - any psi character with premeditation.
 

GJIG

Novice
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
21
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.

This, I think, is the most useful insight for having a good time with Underrail. The people who claim that Rathounds are too hard are almost certainly failing in this exact regard: on some level they see combat as nothing but their weapon of choice, skills, feats and stats. They feel like they made a reasonable enough build, so why can't they beat rats? Obviously their [weapon type] is underpowered and the game is too hard.

The key insight here is that Underrail doesn't offer abstract builds like some other RPGs where stats are the only thing that matters. You don't select for builds so much as you select for combat approaches: what you actually do in combat matters just as much as the things you do out of combat. Your skills, attributes and feats are a part of your combat approach, and you need to supplement them by actually doing the appropriate things in the game world, like activating stealth, initiating combat at the right time, retreating, making use of the various items and equipment the game offers, and so on. Having the right utilities equipped is just as much a part of your build as the feats you select. Hell, even dialogue options are a part of your general combat approach, especially if your approach is to not do combat if you can help it.

The real point in optimizing is to have the most enjoyable experience with whatever character concept you chose to explore.

And I would argue that the very best aspect of Underrail is how closely this optimization follows fun. In order to make an effective build you first consider what your general combat approach is going to be, and then you select attributes, skills and feats in a way such that they all complement this general approach. And you end up with something that is not only effective, but also very unique, by virtue of the way in which various feats, skills, abilities and equipment come together. Unarmed psi builds (will/dex/agi) with a focus on crowd-control through low-AP disables work quite differently from unarmed builds with a focus on raw damage and crits and occasional sledgehammering (str/dex/int) [gets really good metal armor but needs to take throwing for extra damage types and range when the enemy is far away], and while there will obviously be differences in how easily the two builds beat the game, both of them can be optimized for their specific approach to the point where you have something that's effective and fun.
 

DosBuster

Arcane
Patron
The Real Fanboy
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Messages
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God's Dumpster
Codex USB, 2014
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.
 

Loriac

Arcane
Joined
Jan 20, 2007
Messages
2,375
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..

The greatest pleasure in old school rpgs is to crush the game mechanics, see the greatest challenges the game offers driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their systems designers*



*on balance, that last one probably applies more if its Josh Sawyer
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
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.
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.
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 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.
What level I am before GMS depends on how much luck I have with psi beetle and rathound oddities. Sometimes I get all 6 and sometimes I get none.

That is exactly what I said. Seeing as grenades are so powerful and are available to every character you can alway solve the problem even if it takes a few reloads, running is also an option, but again, those solutions aren't build specific and in my opinion shouldn't count as a retort to critique that is leveled against a combat build's effectiveness.

I can't think offhand of a character that has an easier time at low levels fighting the sentries rather than sneaking around them.
I can think of one - any psi character with premeditation.
I can do you one better. Any character with a heavy tactical vest.
 

epeli

Arcane
Joined
Aug 17, 2014
Messages
719
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.
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
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.
There you go epeli , there you fucking go. Either misunderstanding something, or intentionally taking it out of context. What did I say?
"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.
 

gestalt11

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 4, 2015
Messages
629
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.
There you go epeli , there you fucking go. Either misunderstanding something, or intentionally taking it out of context. What did I say?
"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 am not sure how one can say throwing grenades at a decent amount is foreign to any build. Everyone can throw at least a few grenades per fight. Eveyone has at least a couple slots for grenades or other similar things. and Even with zero throwing you can can still use them usefully. Some builds can have much more slots and/or much more accuracy and/or better CDs and/or ability to craft them. Such that at the extreme grenades could be a major component of ones offense. You can't just arbitrarily throw things out just because you didn't plan them into a build. The same goes for Stealth, anyone can get decent stealth even with no points put in. You just change your armor around. Some builds take advantage of stealth much better but saying a particular build can't or shouldn't use stealth is simply wrong. Any build can convievably have about 70 stealth with no points put in, especially easily if they have tailoring. 70 stealth works decently for up to and past core city. You won't be a ninja who cuts people's throats but you can get past a lot of guys or start most combats first with it. There are a lot of options you can use in any build.

The point about Expose Weakness is possibly correct. The problem with the analysis is that it depends on content. Exploit weakness works well on heavily armored metal armor guys. In a lot of content you will do fine as you only really need to use it on one guy. But if you are against 3 metal armor guys at once, yes, the unarmed build becomes really really poor damage even with Exploit weakness to such an extent you need to do something like use Thought control attacks. However you can definitely fit an unarmed/psycho/TC setup into a build.

So for probably 90% of encounters, if you took, exploit weakness, you are fine with unarmed. For that 10% you, IMO, basically need an alternate to unarmed which may even be considerably worse in general but which can go through or deal with armor. In my case I took thought control but you could concievably use guns with special ammo or something.

The point being that I don't think having extra difficulty with 10-20% of content is all that bad since it is definitely possible to have a secondary focus in a build to adjust for that facet. If your build falls down due to that 10-20% then it should be adjusted to your taste to deal with it either through one main secondary or a layered approach of multiple things (say greandes, traps and guns together or some other psi or whatever).

So yes there are cases where unarmed alone WILL have issues. They are rarish except in certain locations. When you take Exploit Weakness the frequency is reduced quite a lot as you should be able to whack one heavily armored guy pretty well once they are weakened (and in general you should be taking things like pnematic attachment and any feats that add non-separate damage to help). You can hit a weakened guy with a very hard pneumatic hit even with heavy armor, well over 100 (which considering the easily obtainable 600 damage pistol crits is not that amazing but you get tons of unarmed attack and you have hard combo hits as well).

With Exploit and unarmed you WILL run into encounters where due to two or more heavily armored guys unarmed even with Exploit may fall down. Two heavily armored is borderline and depends on strategy. Personally I use an unarmed build that uses a lot of movement so I would weaken one and stun the other kill the weakened, then run away and back to do another weaken. Such a tactic is doable without feats but I take specific feats for it. The real problem is when there are 3+ heavily armor guys. And while these do occur they are pretty rare over the entire content.

I do not see any problem with pure unarmed + EW having serious problems with spawns of 3+ heavily armored guys. In fact I think its good and builds can and probably should account for these through various means. A psi+unarmed build can certainly kill a plasma turret walker + 2 faceless just fine. Its no problem at all to CC them and then kill the plasma mech in a turn with exploit weakness. The facelss will have good resistances/DT but you can kill one and essentially keep two thing incapacitated perpetually since they are organic. By the time you kill one Exploit is back up. Unarmed with combo and a pneumatic fist will incapacitate things very realiably. With the build i use even without incapacitate you could do a 2-3 other controls to keep one of them occupied.

Now if these were 3 Plasma turret walkers this would be far more problematic as the TC stuff wouldn't work nor would incapacitate. This is an extremely rare case. In fact I have never yet fought three mechs simultaneously except in a case where I was playing a very slow and clunky build and made a mistake and had a camera summon many sentry bots, this is not something you should do with any build any way. Although with really high DT and good AOE it might be a fast way to clear a level. But even with all that being said against three mechs if you are not using an EMP grenade when faced with three mechs then you are simply playing poorly. Would you use 20? No you can't. You use 1 and stun all 3 (either with the greande or the grenade + electrikinesis) then you kill one of them fast with exploit weakness. Then you make a strategic retreat if you think the CC is wearing off. Then you come back stun one or two and reuse exploit wekness and finish the ecnounter up.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with needing to resort to a tactical retreat for situations that are fairly rare occurences. It is true that certain unarmed builds will basically suck, trying to be an unarmed guy with no psi who just sits in a mob and tries to pound everything down will suck. But unarmed is a perfectly viable main offense in combination with various other things.
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
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.
But unarmed is a perfectly viable main offense in combination with various other things.
I agree.
I think knives and unarmed aren't designed to be your only offensive skill. They just get too fucked up by DT.
 

Blackmill

Scholar
Joined
Dec 25, 2014
Messages
326
I haven't yet played Underrail even though I bought it several months ago. Every time I start a playthrough I find myself lost deciding what build to try. I have limited time, and I understand that Underrail is a time consuming game, so I really want a good first playthrough.

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?
 

GJIG

Novice
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
21
I think Guns are probably the only skill where you can pick it as your only combat skill, and still do really, really well. Unarmed builds will have either high dex, or high dex and high will. In order to have an effective unarmed build, you should max either Psychokinesis or Throwing, in addition to Melee. Maxing Psychokinesis at low will works decently well, too. Use Expose Weakness for solitary metal armor enemies, and Electrokinesis when there's multiple. You'll obviously get less damage out of Electrokinesis with a 3 will build than a 10 will build... but it's still enough for those few times where you can't make it by with Expose Weakness and punching. And since you'll probably invest those will points into strength instead, you'll have some other advantages in turn.

I can understand why the idea of using nothing but your bare fists might sound alluring, it's a cool concept that's bound to be satisfying if it works, but Underrail isn't quite that sort of a game. It's highly challenging by design, you should be using what you can in order to survive. If you have utility slots, if you have 8+ skills, and the game is hard... then restricting yourself to one combat skill and one weapon-type that deals exclusively mechanical damage is gonna be really tough.

In general, in almost any RPG with multiple damage types, you should expect to run into enemies that are practically (or literally) invulnerable to a specific damage type. Making sure that you have a means of dealing with that should be perhaps your primary consideration as you try to figure out your general approach to the game.

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.

A lot of stuff can be completed using exclusively stealth and dialogue skills, and the Oddity XP-system makes this fairly satisfying since you're rewarded for completing goals, getting into places, and so on, with no particular need to kill stuff if you don't want to.
With that said, I do not think you can complete the entire game without killing anything at all. I might be mistaken, but if you can do it, it's certainly not something you'd manage to do on your first playthrough when you're unfamiliar with the game.
That's not all that much of a problem, though. Speech build means high will which means you can just put points into Thought Control and Psychokinesis and win fights when you need to. I've played a build like the one you describe, and I liked it.

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?

I think it might work if you get Grenadier and Quick Tinkering. Running out of grenades or traps shouldn't be a worry. Stores sell a lot of those things, and money is plentiful past a certain point.
 

Loriac

Arcane
Joined
Jan 20, 2007
Messages
2,375
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.

I'm not sure if you're trolling here.

Using EMP grenades is a zero cost option for any character, because you can drop them on your feet and not be hurt by them. No one is asking you to dump points into grenades for your builds that don't focus on grenades; simply that even with 0 skill and 3 dex, you won't actually miss your own feet if thats where you aim them. EMP grenades are essentially a special case, and can be useful against early robot type mobs when your build may not have achieved its full potential yet in whatever you're spec'ing it for.

It would be similar in some ways to using pistols with zero skill (which is possible, particularly for the very early encounters). Or contrariwise, your stance on EMP grenades could be seen as similar to a player who starts screaming that its not right that you have to spec up in crossbows to start learning metathermics because you're given a quest where you have to use a crossbow successfully (once) to unlock the trainer.
 

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