Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[Mortmal]

What the fuck kind of bullshit is the end of the gauntlet?

My guy has all keys and flies through it without any delays and can't get to the middle of the final hallway before someone else gets there?

Is it pretty much that you have to reload over and over in the previous room hoping some random shit changes the NPCs and somehow delays them?

What kind of retard developed this? Is this the same kind of crap that DC is like?

I can see developing shit based on skill and developing shit based on random chance, but who in their right mind makes something with the apparent need for skill when it's nothing but random chance???

Gauntlet is worse than DC. It is much worse if you didn't have a save before Gauntlet because your playthrough stops here and you have to start over from lvl 1. With DC you can kind of continue with spoilers and very careful play.

Styg should do something about that last level of gauntlet or at least make sure the game creates a save before you enter that room with starting equipment.

Same thing in DC , if you dont have saves before you go to the elevator you are screwed. Just tried again,even with last patch its still impossible with my build to do it . I am really disapointed , should have been told heavy armor is the way to go and most builds are useless in end game .

 

[oneself]

What the fuck kind of bullshit is the end of the gauntlet?

My guy has all keys and flies through it without any delays and can't get to the middle of the final hallway before someone else gets there?

Is it pretty much that you have to reload over and over in the previous room hoping some random shit changes the NPCs and somehow delays them?

What kind of retard developed this? Is this the same kind of crap that DC is like?

I can see developing shit based on skill and developing shit based on random chance, but who in their right mind makes something with the apparent need for skill when it's nothing but random chance???

You took too long exploring. You should make a gauntlet save before doing it because some rooms can take a long time to clear.

I wish Styg did autosave before Gauntlet like it did for Arena.

 

[oneself]

What the fuck kind of bullshit is the end of the gauntlet?

My guy has all keys and flies through it without any delays and can't get to the middle of the final hallway before someone else gets there?

Is it pretty much that you have to reload over and over in the previous room hoping some random shit changes the NPCs and somehow delays them?

What kind of retard developed this? Is this the same kind of crap that DC is like?

I can see developing shit based on skill and developing shit based on random chance, but who in their right mind makes something with the apparent need for skill when it's nothing but random chance???

Gauntlet is worse than DC. It is much worse if you didn't have a save before Gauntlet because your playthrough stops here and you have to start over from lvl 1. With DC you can kind of continue with spoilers and very careful play.

Styg should do something about that last level of gauntlet or at least make sure the game creates a save before you enter that room with starting equipment.

Same thing in DC , if you dont have saves before you go to the elevator you are screwed. Just tried again,even with last patch its still impossible with my build to do it . I am really disapointed , should have been told heavy armor is the way to go and most builds are useless in end game .

Not really. I did two gauntlet runs and I finished both first time. One was a nimble SMG build and the second is a nimble psionic build that rolled for both maze for first area and burrower for second. Still got all keys and finished. Light armor is fine, but your goal should be rushing it.

 

[Inf0mercial]

Eh, with dodging you need stealth and make/grab yourself a nice shield and grab some batteries, the best thing about late game dodgers is that with your shield on you should still be dodging and stunning everyone so half the shots will miss/ your taking less fire, so fights should be over before you take any HP damage, and you have a longer time till you start taking actual hits.

This combined with you getting to dictate how you start the fight and if you use a sniper forcing them to fight a max range should really let you fuck people up, even close range works because you should have stuns in any close range build the only one i can think off that does not have built in stuns or range is a pistol or SMG build and you probably should have picked up throwing for flashbangs in that case.

Also side note night vision goggles are amazing combined with burst fire that near constant darkness debuff getting lifted lets you burst fire and kill people at max range of 14 tiles away, i can't help but think it will help a ton early game as well.

 

[oneself]

So for an SMG

I've been using an 8.6mm Steel Cat that I crafted. Does the job - but I can't find any special bullet blueprints for it - only one was a 5mm.

Is a 5mm SMG better than 8.6mm? Or would 8.6mm be good to keep around for enemies with higher armor? Are there any SMGs that can take a 9mm/.44 barrel?

The best caliber is arguably 7.62mm. Steelcat has a very high damage range while impala/jaguar doesn't have that problem. Jaguar can also shoot for less.

5mm can be pretty good, because at 16DEX on a Jaguar frame you can reach 4AP shot and 8AP burst with spec-ops. Since expertise perk adds flat damage to reach bullet, you are better off shooting more faster instead less but better. And 5mm craft bullets is one of the better craft bullet, decent damage improvement and easy to craft, since you can buy the component instead finding/making it.

The downside is that 5mm is a rare caliber found on enemies later on, and you need to carry loads of ammo around if you intend on taking that to DC.


No craft SMG can take .44 barrel and 9mm barrel. Only the hammerer takes .44 barrel and only two SMG uses 9mm caliber, which is the MP6 and the Tommy Gun, both are uniques. I don't remember what caliber MPX took.

 

[toro]

Did not read most of this thread, DC question:

Spoiler

Creeping Doom goes away after combat, so I can just enter and exit combat to reset it. Is this an oversight?

Anyone else find this game boring halfway through? It got boring to me after Core City, too much loot and most combat is too easy. I'm using a full psi/heavy armor build.

I do. Not on the first run however it's boring on the following play-throughs.

Which is funny considering the fact that the first part of the game is linear but it provides a much tighter experience than what follows after the game world opens up.

The obvious cause of this is Styg's design philosophy which pretty much fills the game world with useless backtracking. I personally think that he failed in this regard.

The thing is that the quest lines should be flowing naturally and in a open-world game I pretty much prefer a hub-connected world.

It's quite simple: you get to a hub, you solve all the quests available there and perhaps you get 2-3 hints from a larger arch-quest which will motivate you to explore/search another hub. Occasionally you return to a previous hub for a short time.

Well, this shit is not so simple in Underrail: you get a quest and you have to backtrack like a retard between locations and NPCs which should increase the immersion factor but they proved to be quite detrimental to the overall experience.

Think about the Beast or Lenox Pierce or DC quests. Absolute fun extinguishers. Absolute garbage implemented just because the designer decided to go full retard and force the player to backtrack for whatever reasons.

I don't think Styg did this with bad faith but I really do think that he implemented all this backtracking because he thought that the player will experience the world in a specific way (probably the *best* way he envisioned). Which is not true for a open-world game.

This is pretty much my only solid complain of the game. I know I've bitched before about DC but nothing from there bothers me more than useless backtracking. It's not fun. It fucking kills the game around Core City.

 

[oneself]

You'll generally want to max crafting skills thusly if you hope to make the best (with a nod to efficiency) of available components:

• Mechanics: 120 (for guns, crossbows, most armor, etc.; can reach nearly 150 with all pre-Deep Caverns buffs)
• Electronics: 120 (for energy shield emitters, goggles, some weapon and armor components, etc.; same as Mechanics)
• Chemistry: 120 (for chemical pistols et al.; same as Mechanics), otherwise 66 for mines, 98 for grenades (too fiddly to mess with Junkyard Surprise each time, crafting station buffs only)
• Biology: 130 if you want to manufacture DC medicines, otherwise 70 for psi, 60 for non-psi
• Tailoring 120 (same as Mechanics, for non-metal armor; can get away with significantly less for metal armor, say 90-ish)

If you want to craft the DC-exclusive meds while it matters, you need Biology to be the highest of all. You also need a bare minimum of 5 DEX, because otherwise you aren't allowed to succeed at fishing more than a fraction of the time, and all high-end meds need salmon juice in them for some reason (actual reason: mass-producing them is deterred because you'd have to stand around clicking your mouse on one spot for twenty hours to do so).

Shields have higher electronics requirement if you add both optional mods, assuming all components you use are of 120+ Q. I remember trying to craft a shield that has 162 requirement. Needless to say I didn't have that.

 

[Zetor]

Tommy Gun is worth it just for bursting enemies with Explosive Bullets. I always wanted a Marsec Auto Cannon from Laser Squad!

 

[Jack Dandy]

This is pretty much my only solid complain of the game. I know I've bitched before about DC but nothing from there bothers me more than useless backtracking. It's not fun. It fucking kills the game around Core City.

I wish I could slap a big disclaimer in the game before the menu pops up, saying "Using cheatengine speedhack and disabling autosaves will make this game 10 times better".
I started getting tired of the backtracking around the time I started fooling around in Foundry.
"Bring this thingy back to SGS... then bring that one.. then start mining shit..", I couldn't take it.
Once I started using the above methods, everything just became... great! Fantastic! Exploration (and, yes, backtracking) have become a breeze.

I wish Styg would implement an in-game fast forward button. If everybody would use it, they'd stick with the game longer!

 

[oneself]

Tommy Gun is worth it just for bursting enemies with Explosive Bullets. I always wanted a Marsec Auto Cannon from Laser Squad!

Tommy Gun is .44? I thought it was 9mm.

This changes everything.

 

[MediantSamuel]

I just killed Carnifex at lvl 14 without save scumming for Initiative.

<snip>

Anyway, I'm pretty much done with my pure psi play-through:

Spoiler

I've finished the Oculus quest line which was also somewhat underwhelming. I really hoped that they have more quests to give but I was disappointed to find out that Wit Nosek quest was the only one. After which they basically disappear from the story which is sad.
Also I'm pretty much done with Core City quests and the only thing remaining are ... Tchort Institute and Deep Caverns. Which means that my excitement is gone (cause I did explore both extensively in my previous play-through)
Basically the first part of the game is the best part of Underrail: Junkyard, Camp Hathor, even Rail Crossing, exploring caves/lost labs are awesome but once the player reaches Core City ... backtracking seems to set in. Just my impression.

After spending perhaps too much time over the weekend on my pure psi character I have to agree with you, toro.

I just finished Core City also and despite having a myriad of spells to choose from, I think stealth was the most interesting mechanic I sunk my teeth into. I believe the most challenging encounter for me was the warehouse as Coretech.

Still need to actually finish DC but I'm thinking I may roll a sniper/ar character next and just abandon the psi character. The addiction is real. :D

 

[FeelTheRads]

On the official forums there's talk of changing the save system and supposedly things will load faster. Not sure if without autosaves there will be any difference in area loading from what it is now, but at least the saving and loading games will be faster.

 

[Jack Dandy]

FeelTheRads dude I checked it myself, disabling autosave improves things a shit-ton.

Area transitions are now 1.5 second tops instead of a constant 5 second wait. See for yourself, the option is right there in the menu.

 

[Beastro]

What the fuck kind of bullshit is the end of the gauntlet?

My guy has all keys and flies through it without any delays and can't get to the middle of the final hallway before someone else gets there?

Is it pretty much that you have to reload over and over in the previous room hoping some random shit changes the NPCs and somehow delays them?

What kind of retard developed this? Is this the same kind of crap that DC is like?

I can see developing shit based on skill and developing shit based on random chance, but who in their right mind makes something with the apparent need for skill when it's nothing but random chance???

Gauntlet is worse than DC. It is much worse if you didn't have a save before Gauntlet because your playthrough stops here and you have to start over from lvl 1. With DC you can kind of continue with spoilers and very careful play.

Styg should do something about that last level of gauntlet or at least make sure the game creates a save before you enter that room with starting equipment.

Same thing in DC , if you dont have saves before you go to the elevator you are screwed. Just tried again,even with last patch its still impossible with my build to do it . I am really disapointed , should have been told heavy armor is the way to go and most builds are useless in end game .

Not really. I did two gauntlet runs and I finished both first time. One was a nimble SMG build and the second is a nimble psionic build that rolled for both maze for first area and burrower for second. Still got all keys and finished. Light armor is fine, but your goal should be rushing it.

I'm a sneaky sniper, i like to scout and then set up a nice kill zone with traps so I'm not used to rushing into things.

 

[oneself]

I'm a sneaky sniper, i like to scout and then set up a nice kill zone with traps so I'm not used to rushing into things.

I guess then not everyone is supposed to finish Gauntlet.

 

[epeli]

On the official forums there's talk of changing the save system and supposedly things will load faster. Not sure if without autosaves there will be any difference in area loading from what it is now, but at least the saving and loading games will be faster.

It should be a noticeable improvement in cases where slow disk I/O is the bottleneck. The new saves are archived so file system fragmentation won't slow them down as much and the current game will also be kept in memory instead of disk.

But it won't make a huge difference if saving/loading is already fast. For me transitions with autosave went from maybe 3-5 seconds to maybe 2-4 seconds.

 

[FeelTheRads]

FeelTheRads dude I checked it myself, disabling autosave improves things a shit-ton.

Area transitions are now 1.5 second tops instead of a constant 5 second wait. See for yourself, the option is right there in the menu.

I believe you. I'm just saying they're working on a new save system or something that should improve save and load game times, but not sure if it will make any difference in just loading times when moving from area to area.

 

[veevoir]

Guise, serious question. Where the fuck can I find special ammo blueprints? Found only one during previous playthrough, in protectorate embassy locker. No luck with merchants.

 

[Eyestabber]

Guise, serious question. Where the fuck can I find special ammo blueprints? Found only one during previous playthrough, in protectorate embassy locker. No luck with merchants.

There is no secret guaranteed place AFAIK. Best you can do is check merchant inventory regularly for blueprints and open every box. And yes, the chances should be increased, IMO.

 

[Gord]

I found all of mine with merchants (mostly Core City, I think), but their probability to show up is very low.
And of course I found them beginning with the least useful for my char.

 

[Goral]

I only found them in DC and shopkeepers had only shit. At some point bartering becomes totally useless from my experience.

 

[Shadenuat]

I'm a sneaky sniper, i like to scout and then set up a nice kill zone with traps so I'm not used to rushing into things.

I guess then not everyone is supposed to finish Gauntlet.

Gauntlet sucks, but not because it doesn't make a special save for you (it's fairly trolly and I even liked it, people should take what game says seriously), but because in a turn based game it seems to punish people who are actually taking their time, engaged in puzzles and are trying to carefully and strategically plan their route.
I got to the end in my shitty build with no stealth or psi, through rooms that are pretty much my anti-builds (burrowers, psi bugs, so on), with 1% health, with 2 keys, wenth through some rooms, yet got killed by a plot switch.
I'd understand if live or die would have been based on performance, say at the end level there was a live countdown and you had to go through rooms in time, and kill monsters in specific amount of turns, but for me it felt like I was just cockblocked because I had wrong build and spent I don't know how many hours figuring out route in a burrower room.
So it's build and RNG (some rooms are just breeze compared to others), while player skill seems to be left out from this quest.
I wasn't too angry about it, kinda took it as a late game cant-do-now-return-later challenge, but everything would be a lot more clear if there was a live timer on a screen after you enter first room of Gauntlet. (Say you need to finish each room in specific time or door to colored keys closes, and with each key lost you have to fight more monsters in final room in less turns, something like that).

 

[Zetor]

I'm a sneaky sniper, i like to scout and then set up a nice kill zone with traps so I'm not used to rushing into things.

I guess then not everyone is supposed to finish Gauntlet.

Gauntlet sucks, but not because it doesn't make a special save for you (it's fairly trolly and I even liked it, people should take what game says seriously), but because in a turn based game it seems to punish people who are actually taking their time, engaged in puzzles and are trying to carefully and strategically plan their route.
I got to the end in my shitty build with no stealth or psi, through rooms that are pretty much my anti-builds (burrowers, psi bugs, so on), with 1% health, with 2 keys, wenth through some rooms, yet got killed by a plot switch.
I'd understand if live or die would have been based on performance, say at the end level there was a live countdown and you had to go through rooms in time, and kill monsters in specific amount of turns, but for me it felt like I was just cockblocked because I had wrong build and spent I don't know how many hours figuring out route in a burrower room.
So it's build and RNG (some rooms are just breeze compared to others), while player skill seems to be left out from this quest.
I wasn't too angry about it, kinda took it as a late game cant-do-now-return-later challenge, but everything would be a lot more clear if there was a live timer on a screen after you enter first room of Gauntlet.

imo the announcer's voice could help, making occasional comments when someone's ahead of the player (or if it looks like the player is screwed)... and of course the other way around too. "Looks like Blue is dominating!" / "Now that Red's got the key, he/she is in the lead!" / "Yellow is lagging behind... don't think he/she can catch up now." / "Whoa, Yellow is dominating the Gauntlet hardcore. No way he/she can lose this now!" etc.

That said, an autosave BEFORE the player is locked into the gauntlet would probably be welcome. I made a manual save because duh, but I can see a lot of people getting complacent due to the frequency of checkpoint saves and whatnot.

 

[Shadenuat]

imo the announcer's voice could help, making occasional comments when someone's ahead of the player (or if it looks like the player is screwed)... and of course the other way around too. "Looks like Blue is dominating!" / "Now that Red's got the key, he/she is in the lead!" / "Yellow is lagging behind... don't think he/she can catch up now." / "Whoa, Yellow is dominating the Gauntlet hardcore. No way he/she can lose this now!" etc.

Yup, that would have worked nicely.
Although I still believe player's brain time when he is doing designer's dumb puzzles is a holy time, and shouldn't be interrupted or punished by anything.

 

[ArchAngel]

All bad ideas. Gauntlet has a nice premise, you lose all your cool custom build items and all your stocks of buff and healing items and get shit and 2 healing items. Then you fight battles and get more random shit and some healing items. All the time I played I was on the edge of items to use.
It was new and fun. The room with endless doors and no enemies is crap, and time waster (at the time I though it is only that, oh how I was wrong). I didn't even want to explore everything to find all the Lockers, I was happy to just go to next level. This one needs to be changes first.
And then the fun new experience turned utterly stupid and terrible with last room where I cannot get to half area before being killed by electricity. This can be done so much better. Like the player that finishes first gets access to goodies and can use those in last room where surviving contestants fight each other. Or he gets a Plasma Sentry to help him.
That would be a good Gauntlet. What we got is just one of the worst designed thing I ever seen. And the lack of save before you start is beyond saving. If I lost my game here and didn't have a save I would have deinstalled this game and bashed it everywhere.