Classic or Oddity

[Parabalus]

Anyway, I prefer Classic. I've completed several Oddity playthroughs (all pre-Expedition), and it encourages:

• planning your entire route through the game with maximization of Oddity XP in mind
• investing in certain skills (usually to an exact min-maxed value) for the purpose of gaining additional Oddities
• turning over every rock and checking every pocket
• literally farming certain enemies until they drop their Oddity

Compared to Classic which encourages:
[*]planning your entire route through the game with maximization of XP in mind
[*]investing in certain skills (usually to an exact min-maxed value) for the purpose of gaining XP from skills usage
[*]kill everything that moves
[*]literally farming enemies

You are correct. Classic is so much better. /sarcasm

With Classic you don't think about XP at all, like it should be.

 

[Parabalus]

Players don't like to leave XP on the table but doing trash encounters is not fun.

That happens in Oddity, where you have to farm enemies for low drop % XP.

With classic you just skip what you want and move on, as its XP is fungible.

Not true. Ignoring trash mobs is a blessing.

That's what Classic allows you to do, in Oddity you have to farm them until you get all pig anuses.

 

[Wunderbar]

"Classic xp encourages you to farm respawning critters!" mantra always felt like a projection to me. Almost as if oddity mode is the only thing that prevents oddity adepts from starting farming critters themselves.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"Classic xp encourages you to farm respawning critters!" mantra always felt like a projection to me. Almost as if oddity mode is the only thing that prevents oddity adepts from starting farming critters themselves.

yes most underrail players are degenerates who heavily abuse meta mechanics and play by reading a guide

 

[Parabalus]

It's also wrong because the balance tuning is such that Classic gives you more XP than Oddity.

 

[Sykar]

Anyway, I prefer Classic. I've completed several Oddity playthroughs (all pre-Expedition), and it encourages:

• planning your entire route through the game with maximization of Oddity XP in mind
• investing in certain skills (usually to an exact min-maxed value) for the purpose of gaining additional Oddities
• turning over every rock and checking every pocket
• literally farming certain enemies until they drop their Oddity

Compared to Classic which encourages:
[*]planning your entire route through the game with maximization of XP in mind
[*]investing in certain skills (usually to an exact min-maxed value) for the purpose of gaining XP from skills usage
[*]kill everything that moves
[*]literally farming enemies

You are correct. Classic is so much better. /sarcasm

This reminds me of a thread I stumbled upon almost two decades ago about "experience harvesting" in IWD on the iirc Sorcerer's Place forum page. One of the tips was... Slaughter the entire city of Targos and all NPCs because after you fly away with Oswald you do not come back anyway so no loss, apart from no RP whatsoever anymore. I am pretty sure people have thought about stuff like that for other RPGs when it comes to "Classic" experience as well, including UR. In Oddity this is basically pointless. At most you might get some niche Oddity that gets you.... 2 Oddity exp. Which is basically nothing in the long run. Money and loot can be gotten a whole lot easier otherwise.

"Classic xp encourages you to farm respawning critters!" mantra always felt like a projection to me. Almost as if oddity mode is the only thing that prevents oddity adepts from starting farming critters themselves.

It is an option, but not a very smart one. Most critters even if maxed Oddity wise give only a small percentage of the total. You will also tend to kill enough to get most of them regardless, unless you manage to avoid everything, but if you have such a build anyways why waste time fighting critters in the first place when they are no real threat? The only time I would try this is super early game where you are at your most vulnerable due to the lack of life, gear and feats/skills. Smart players can get oddities without doing much, for example there are at least three areas where you can lure stalker types into other enemy groups and let them take care of each other. Would you do this under Classic? Maybe not, since you do not get experience for other enemies killing the opposition for you. So smart play is in fact discouraged under Classic, which just underscores my point that Classic is brainless.
Furthermore as already pointed out earlier in this thread you will always want to kill everything that moves unless you are already at max level which you achieve too fast anyway under Classic and much earlier than Oddity even if you would try to farm under Oddity rules.

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

oddity mode is just pillars of etenity xp mode

 

[toro]

oddity mode is just pillars of etenity xp mode

another brainfart?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

oddity mode is just pillars of etenity xp mode

another brainfart?

you can get up to n amount of oddities per enemy putting an xp cap on each enemy, no different than pillow's direct XP cap other than a slight misdirection

 

[Parabalus]

max level which you achieve too fast anyway under Classic and much earlier than Oddity even if you would try to farm under Oddity rules.

Exactly, any argument praising Oddity is moot because of the lack of balance.

Far more grindy than Classic.

 

[Sykar]

max level which you achieve too fast anyway under Classic and much earlier than Oddity even if you would try to farm under Oddity rules.

Exactly, any argument praising Oddity is moot because of the lack of balance.

Far more grindy than Classic.

This game has been beaten on Dominating by a level 6 character though via heavy save scumming. This though illustrates that it is assanine to make the argument that max level is needed to beat Tchort and that therefore grind is needed. You can do it but it is usually a waste if time, any decent build should be able to beat Tchort around 20-24 latest. Higher level of course makes it easier but the difference is not even remotely crucial or particularly large. Furthermore there not a whole lot of oddities whose drop rates are so low that they need farming anyway. The only ones that come to my mind right now are normal Siphoners and Dragontail Oddity from Hoppers.

 

[Modron]

You guys sure like that dressed up ubisoft collectathon experience system.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I got too overpowered too quick for my 1st classic playtrough.

After that, oddity playtrough feels more balanced in term of power curve.

 

[Beans00]

So I've only played underrail once, and I played it with the classic XP system. My reasoning was simple; I didn't want to not be rewarded for a huge part of the game(combat). So I can't comment on oddity, I can say I don't think it would have made a huge difference for me, since I was pretty thorough when exploring and looting shit.

As for grinding? In ~75 hours, I beat the game at level 29(1 below max level)

I'm not posting these screenshots to brag about my character or anything, I'm only posting them to show that someone who didn't meta game at all, and didn't craft(aside from recycling to repair gear and maybe a few flashbangs like I said) can beat the game.

I'm sure a lot of the underrail experts will look at my character and think it's complete shit, but like I said that's ok. I didn't stare at spread sheets before making, or do any research. I read the feats as I leveled up and took what I thought looked effective. I started the game without stealth, and without traps, and without throwing and realized my character would be much more effective with them so I put points into them as I leveled.

I got tired of getting stunned and killed, so I raised my CON to 10 and got thick skull.

Again no meta gaming, just did what I thought made sense at the time.

screenshots

Looking through my maps, the only areas I have that are fairly unexplored is the black sea, and the lower passages. I still have probably well more then half both areas mapped out. There was also def points where I forgot to pick up some oddities since obviously they didn't do much for me.

As for the grind. There were parts of underrail where I was annoyed by grinding mobs, but it wasn't nearly as bad as some people make it out to be, or the grind in other games.


My definition of grind is; when you need to artificially interrupt the flow of your game to gain levels and/or money because the story/side quests don't give you enough opportunity to advance. One of the games that I've played(not including shit jrpgs I played on playstation when I was a kid) that had the worst examples of this were baldurs gate 1. I also like BG but it definitely has this problem.
In BG1, any time I've played the game(I've only played it through like 3 times in the last 20+ years) I've always tried to clear as many easy maps as possible before going to naskel, and then the bandit sections. I'm sure it's possible to nail those sections on level 1, but dealing with the fire/ice arrows is pure rng cancer unless you want to save/reload over and over or drop the game to baby difficulty.

I replayed the baldurs gate games maybe 7-8 months before I played underrail for the first time and I felt like those games wasted my time WAY more then underrail did.

I never felt I couldn't progress in underrail due to my level. I've heard a lot of people whine and bitch about depot A but I didn't have a problem with it, and I cleared it at maybe level 8 or 9? The hardest parts of underrail were always areas of the game off the beaten path or stuff that was optional.

The bandits south of the foundry, the icelandic retards in the north west part of the expansion, random early game fights against psi enemies(I got acolytes in the mushroom cove scavanger quest, which was beyond cancer), the burrowers when saving jenny near the junk yard, The death stalker nest near the rail yard(until I went back with an actual decent burst weapon lol). Those were the places where I died by far the most(some more then others) while playing the game, especially the icelandic dickhead which literally took me like 20 attempts until I got annoyed and covered the entire hallway with like 75 mines and bear traps(lol). None of those areas were mandatory, in the main story I can't even think of a specific fight that really gave me an absurd amount of trouble, there were some annoying parts. I'm sure parts of the expansion would have been worse if I was underleveled, but I did it after tchort so the hives were basically a joke, just annoying not really hard.

The deep caverns sucked but they weren't really hard. I guess it can through you through a loop if you aren't prepared/aware it's a point of no return?

 

[Parabalus]

max level which you achieve too fast anyway under Classic and much earlier than Oddity even if you would try to farm under Oddity rules.

Exactly, any argument praising Oddity is moot because of the lack of balance.

Far more grindy than Classic.

This game has been beaten on Dominating by a level 6 character though via heavy save scumming. This though illustrates that it is assanine to make the argument that max level is needed to beat Tchort and that therefore grind is needed. You can do it but it is usually a waste if time, any decent build should be able to beat Tchort around 20-24 latest. Higher level of course makes it easier but the difference is not even remotely crucial or particularly large. Furthermore there not a whole lot of oddities whose drop rates are so low that they need farming anyway. The only ones that come to my mind right now are normal Siphoners and Dragontail Oddity from Hoppers.

If you make the argument that XP is completely unnecessary than why are you even arguing about Classic vs Oddity?

 

[Spark Mandriller]

Exactly, any argument praising Oddity is moot because of the lack of balance.

Far more grindy than Classic.

Neither mode is grindy.
You don't need to grind on classic even if you can, because it gives you more experience than it should anyway. You play normally and you get more than enough levels, especially if you play hard or dominating.
You don't need to grind on oddity, because random drop oddities are all either very low value (no I don't care about your 1 xp pig snout) or are incredibly common drops so you'll get ten times more than you need without trying.
There's no fucking grind.

 

[just]

oddity = trash collector

 

[Parabalus]

Exactly, any argument praising Oddity is moot because of the lack of balance.

Far more grindy than Classic.

Neither mode is grindy.
You don't need to grind on classic even if you can, because it gives you more experience than it should anyway. You play normally and you get more than enough levels, especially if you play hard or dominating.
You don't need to grind on oddity, because random drop oddities are all either very low value (no I don't care about your 1 xp pig snout) or are incredibly common drops so you'll get ten times more than you need without trying.
There's no fucking grind.

Oddity is still relatively more grindy.

 

[Blaine]

oddity would benefit from randomization but it would make meta-fags(who make up a majority of the people that still play the boomer game) seethe with rage because they can't spend hours thinking about how they'll optimally play the game just to never play it

Essentially, yes.

The entire reason to strive for "alternative experience point systems" when designing cRPGs is to shore up perceived weaknesses in more traditional systems, namely:

1.) emphasis on combat or (less commonly/to a lesser extent) quest completion to dispense lion's share of XP rewards

2.) ability to exploit XP faucets and "farm" levels to an unintended extent

Oddity only partially sidesteps these weaknesses, largely (though not exclusively) because players still strive to maximize their XP gain as much as possible when playing Oddity by min-maxing and metagaming, in some cases quite extensively. Not one thousand "Disagree" ratings will ever change my mind one iota, because I've seen countless Oddity lovers discussing how to game the Oddity system across hundreds of pages of the megathread.

It's what you do. I find you all guilty, and sentence you all to being objectively incorrect.

The crux of all this is that the weaknesses of Classic XP pretty much just vanish if you ignore XP entirely, don't farm XP, and simply play the game. You do still gain XP a little too quickly with Classic, but this too is fixable.

 

[Blaine]

Ah yes, forgot to add this important bit: You can still collect Oddities for the sake of curiosity and/or completionism if desired and enjoy their artwork/descriptions regardless of the XP mode chosen.

 

[luj1]

Oddity, which was supposedly the system he'd always intended.

Underrail was also intended to be played in realtime, just saying

 

[Sykar]

That was thrown out during alpha already iirc. At that time its name was something like "Timelapse Vertigo".

 

[Delphik]

I like the existence of both because increased replayability.
But I played classic first playthrough because it seemed more familiar.

 

[Blaine]

It's great to see the poll becoming a little more correct.

You can do it, Correct XP preferrers. Incorrect XP preferrers can't metagame their way out of this one.