Is the game interesting when following premade build advice?

[opium fiend]

I remember playing this game back in 2016. I just skimmed over some basic newbie guides, then proceeded to go with my SMG stealth commando assassin girl and it was fun. Can't remember why I stopped playing. Maybe The Foundry was too much of a chore, I don't know.
Anyway, since then I read how damn easy it was to mess up one's build and find that out late in the game. I don't have time to restart over and over and I'd like to beat the game, so I looked up some advice, settled on versatility/crossbow/chem pistol (mayby with traps or throwing). Did I ruin my fun because I read too many guides?

Bonus queston: Can you piece together most/all lore without being a psyker and talking to monoliths? If not, I might try a psy build because those I haven't looked into, I only know that they're stupidly overpowered later and I doubt I'd enjoy that.

Sorry if this reads like Prosper's word salad, brain fog creeping in.

edit: I'll play on Hard

 

[Trashos]

Do not worry about spoiling you fun by reading about others' builds. I have read all the build guides, and can still come up with builds on my own. UR offers so many build options that you will never run out of new things to try.

SMG stealth was a very good choice for a first build.

Versatility builds are some of my favorite, but they take a while to become strong (they start picking up midgame), so generally I would only recommend them to experienced players. There is a chance you will suffer until then.

As for Crossbows, again I don't recommend them to players without significant experience. i haven't played them for a long time though, and don't know exactly how they play currently.

Chemical pistols are awesome, that's one of my favorite builds. I recommend them at any level of experience (after the 1st palythrough). Be patient and use mundane pistols and grenades until midgame, because chem pistols are rare and expensive (incl. the ammo) early. It will still be an awesome playthough.

I do not see any reason to combine chem pistols and crossbows.

I wouldn't worry about being overpowered. You are going to die at least 100 times, I promise. Psi is fine, if you want to go that way.

 

[ItsChon]

To see most of the lore, you'll need a decently high will score, so that pretty much is psionics. There are some cool psionic hybrid builds I can recommend if you are interested. Outside of that, feel free to look at a guide I don't think that'll be an issue. Versatility builds are good but take time to ramp up as Trashos said. Crossbow/Chem Pistol seems counterintuitive to me though, so I'd advise against that specific combination.

 

[Twiglard]

Just don't look for side quest solutions. Otherwise you might not miss something that most people did on the first playthrough. Find it by yourself, or spoil yourself only for the second playthrough (if at all).

 

[opium fiend]

Thanks guys for the answers guys. I was thinking some and I'm really interested in one rogue-assassin type, with crossbows, and that's because I don't know much about them and from what I heard they offer great variety of dispatching enemies and have to be played attentively, so using lines of sight, covers, ambushes dark etc. Similar to what I did with SMGs and had much fun. So that's my choice for char#1, unless sniper/smg is somehow playable, which I heard it's not.

Trashos Could you hit me up with some versatility builds that aren't crossbow/chem pistol? Because from my limited knowledge it's only good for that.

ItsChon Please recommend some psi builds, hybrid or full, for my #2.

Twiglard I don't plan on spoiling myself, I want to discover as much as possible on my own. Hopefully there aren't any dead ends in the sense I have to restart the game.

Btw, should I go with persuasion or intimidate? Throwing or trapping? What crafts are most useful for a sneaky xbow/SMG/sniper hitman and what for a psycho Carrie White?

thanks!

 

[Twiglard]

sneaky xbow/SMG/sniper

This has very bad synergies, even with maxed Versatility. Go for something more normal like rifle+sniper, crossbow+traps, or punch/knife+psi.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The whole point of the game if to find a good and viable build so if you follow someone else build, no, you're not going to have any fun... At all!

Do not worry about spoiling you fun by reading about others' builds. I have read all the build guides, and can still come up with builds on my own. UR offers so many build options that you will never run out of new things to try.

He's not talking about reading but following a build.
Although, eve if the latter is worse, reading about others build on a first playthrough is really lame, if you play for the story, go play Disco Disco instead.

This is not a game someone not interesting in characters build would enjoy.

 

[Yosharian]

Thanks guys for the answers guys. I was thinking some and I'm really interested in one rogue-assassin type, with crossbows, and that's because I don't know much about them and from what I heard they offer great variety of dispatching enemies and have to be played attentively, so using lines of sight, covers, ambushes dark etc. Similar to what I did with SMGs and had much fun. So that's my choice for char#1, unless sniper/smg is somehow playable, which I heard it's not.

Trashos Could you hit me up with some versatility builds that aren't crossbow/chem pistol? Because from my limited knowledge it's only good for that.

ItsChon Please recommend some psi builds, hybrid or full, for my #2.

Twiglard I don't plan on spoiling myself, I want to discover as much as possible on my own. Hopefully there aren't any dead ends in the sense I have to restart the game.

Btw, should I go with persuasion or intimidate? Throwing or trapping? What crafts are most useful for a sneaky xbow/SMG/sniper hitman and what for a psycho Carrie White?

thanks!

I have a versatility SMG build that I developed for normal difficulty, I could paste it here if you want. It's not very optimized (Discord would have a fit at some of my feat choices) but you don't need to optimise that hard for normal and I had tons of fun with it.

I would agree with others that building your own character is fun but I would also say that learning what feats are valued by other players also is fun because it gives you insight into how the game works, and that can help you develop your own builds

 

[Trashos]

opium fiend,
With Versatility, I love my firearms pistol, chem pistol, SMG (you have already played SMG...) builds. I also designed an energy pistol Versatility build, but never got around to playing it (I love firearms pistols or chem too much, and I end up playing those instead). If any of that might interest you, let me know so that I look into my notes and present sth to you.

Darth Canoli,
I don't fully agree with that. Sure, part of the fun for a lot of us is nailing a build. But from a point on, once we are already capable of designing decent builds, most of the fun for me is applying the build's strengths optimally to UR's situations. I think this gets lost in the discussions, generally. A decent build is necessary. But a good build won't necessarily save someone who is not going to make the most of it.

To use an example: If my build, eg, has investments in Crafting and I don't use Crafting, then I am not making good use of it. This is an exaggerated example, but you can think of other cases as well (Traps, Pickpocketing, Caltrops, some psi ability etc).

 

[Cryomancer]

I NEVER see a build guide. Fells like I'm playing another person character, not my character...

 

[Lhynn]

I see many build guides, theres wisdom in looking at others people experiences before settling for something with your own spin.

Though lately I dont bother, finding optimal builds at a glance seems to be easier and easier as I get older and shittier.

 

[ItsChon]

@ItsChon Please recommend some psi builds, hybrid or full, for my #2.

Here you are.

https://underrail.info/build/?HA4DA...zxoXgAAwpYASABbKwhfLVAqPxI9wrxgVS4fZMK2wrjfvw

With 8 will, you have the ability to boost to 9 with Tchortist Noble Robes, and boost to 12 with the robes and All-In. This will allow you to access every pillar in the game. You also have up to 8 Int with Hypercerbix, which should allow you to do a lot of things, though you will miss out on 5 extra Psi Points and 15 resolve as you can only get put to Philosophy II. Add this to the fact that the build is really fun and super tanky come late game, and I really enjoyed the build. Plasma Beam is super strong btw, try to get it asap.

 

[jackofshadows]

Yes, absolutely. As with collectible card games, where some are better at deckbuilding while others at testing/optimising/piloting them here while some like Darth Canoli supposedly see fun at creating your own builds only (or he's simply full of shit) others may gain it out of other things in the game, especially when some wonky builds will require different approaches to various high points of the game (depot a, the warehouse, natives, lunatics, whatever).

 

[Darth Canoli]

Yes, absolutely. As with collectible card games, where some are better at deckbuilding while others at testing/optimising/piloting them here while some like @Darth Canoli supposedly see fun at creating your own builds only (or he's simply full of shit) others may gain it out of other things in the game, especially when some wonky builds will require different approaches to various high points of the game (depot a, the warehouse, natives, lunatics, whatever).

I'm not saying I wrote a thesis on underrail builds, i just picked a weapon and tried to get the most out of it.
Maybe I was just lucky, because the energy chain gun is overpowered with a crit build.
Well, regular gun worked quite well before that, the one with the higher max damage.

 

[jackofshadows]

I'm not saying I wrote a thesis on underrail builds, i just picked a weapon and tried to get the most out of it.
Maybe I was just lucky, because the energy chain gun is overpowered with a crit build.
Well, regular gun worked quite well before that, the one with the higher max damage.

Nah, it's not overpowered. Just the general idea of stacking crit is powerful enough and that's what DOM is for: to make the game somewhat hard even with that.

Anyway, stacking crit is simple but some builds, imo melee especially might be tricky to flesh out and some people are really enjoy the process of starting over and getting it better but some not while playing with said build, even suboptimal still might be fun.

In short: different players might see fun in UR differently, duh.

 

[anvi]

I think the idea of builds is weird design wise. If the players end up with builds then it usually would have been better to just have classes and design them with some variety. It lets you focus on designing the combat to be good and fine tuned, you know exactly what resources are in every encounter and can balance the game around that. Having lots of abilities and then letting the player choose and build their own character sounds nice, but it usually ends up being shit. Nobody enjoys building their character only to find stuff they picked is weak compared to what they could have had. Or vice versa. And you end up with cookie cutter ideal builds which ruins the whole point of adding all the abilities. You didn't get freedom, you got jank, quantity over quality. It's also bad to be designing spells/abilities in a game that people end up not picking because it's not in their build. That happens in games like Rift where there's a best build for each class so half the spells and abilities and passives in the game are worthless, why even spend all that time programming and animating it and testing it all when it gets used by nobody. Again if it just degenerates into some key builds then it would have been better as classes that were finely tuned. That way you use all the things developers made, you just tune them into one cohesive class that's good.

MTG is great at providing that freedom and you can copy builds if you want and still enjoy it. Although learning how to make your own decks adds another big dimension to the game.

 

[Ereshkigal]

I never look for builds but rather what skills/stats are best ignored to save me some pain.

 

[Trashos]

But if you get it right without classes, then players get awesome freedom to design their characters and tactics. I think UR has done a very good job on build design. It is not the easiest road for developers, but it is ultimately the best and most ambitious road, especially for RPGs without parties.

 

[Jonathan "Zee Nekomimi]

what game would that be?

 

[opium fiend]

Me again. After playing a versatile crossbow stealthy bomber/trapper commando assassin, I have discovered that things are never as sweet as the first time and this playthrough (reached core city) failed to recapture the magic of my smg assassin from years ago.

I'd like to order a PSI build please one that's not all 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 WIL 10 INT 10. I would like to use stealth, maybe a gun as a variety (or shotgun? no idea), would like to be at least somewhat persuasive and/or intimidating and to dabble in all PSI schools. Not interested in tin cans and heavy melee as I would like to dabble in stealth as well.

Is this doable at all? Oh, and tranquility or psychosis? I'm thinking psychosis but weirdly more interested in "zen" schools like temporal and mind... fuck I'm gonna get the "retard" tag for this.

 

[Tigranes]

Me again. After playing a versatile crossbow stealthy bomber/trapper commando assassin, I have discovered that things are never as sweet as the first time and this playthrough (reached core city) failed to recapture the magic of my smg assassin from years ago.

I'd like to order a PSI build please one that's not all 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 WIL 10 INT 10. I would like to use stealth, maybe a gun as a variety (or shotgun? no idea), would like to be at least somewhat persuasive and/or intimidating and to dabble in all PSI schools. Not interested in tin cans and heavy melee as I would like to dabble in stealth as well.

Is this doable at all? Oh, and tranquility or psychosis? I'm thinking psychosis but weirdly more interested in "zen" schools like temporal and mind... fuck I'm gonna get the "retard" tag for this.

That's a little bit too much - it might be possible for Normal, but you're going to feel like you're playing half-assed previews of 4 different builds, like a D&D character who wants to use bows and shields and magic and thieving.

What you could do is pick a gun type, pick a supporting psi school, and run with that (and sure, add on Pers or Inti for fun). It could be a sniper with thought control for crowd control, or an AR with metathermics for maximum chaos, a sniper with metathermics to freeze then shatter enemies (Cryostasis + relevant feat), etc.

This does mean that you'd have to prioritise your stats. Are you gun main psi second? Probably 10 PER first then WILL. And so on.

Temporal Manipulation is an exception, as it's intended to be a support school for almost any build.

Psychosis is about upping that offensive punch. Tranquility obviously works when you can maintain full HP and not get hit. Psych is probably more fun / visible but it depends on your build too. You could whip up a build you like on underrail.info/build and we could comment.

 

[thesheeep]

When a character system is sufficiently complex (and not a nothing-really-matters thing like Pillars), you'll have a very hard time to make a good build that can withstand higher difficulties in any game.
I'd say Underrail qualifies for this.

Not everyone has the time necessary to become a full expert in any given system.
Don't feel bad for looking some stuff up.

I wouldn't slavishly follow a build guide (that would IMO indeed take away some of the joy), but taking it as a blueprint to base things on?
Sure, why not.