Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[R.B.]

I think I just found the cave the Dude is talking about (the one where Cave Hoppers go to die)

 

[MediantSamuel]

Am I missing something with Tithonus Lab?

Spoiler

Pulled the plug and spawned a bunch of vengeful ghosts, except I'm a metal wearing, lead loving, non stealth kind of guy and they tend to mob and fuck me to death (fair enough, I suppose) but I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to get past them.

 

[oneself]

Am I missing something with Tithonus Lab?

Spoiler

Pulled the plug and spawned a bunch of vengeful ghosts, except I'm a metal wearing, lead loving, non stealth kind of guy and they tend to mob and fuck me to death (fair enough, I suppose) but I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to get past them.

Stealth doesn't work with ghosts. But they do have a more limited detection radius.

 

[Old One]

I can confirm that...

Spoiler

...it is possible to get the quest to help Silas destroy the Scrappers as soon as you've finished the Wormhole quests. I was too impatient to finish off the Scrappers before going after the Armadillo parts in Depot-A, but I have to wonder what would (or should) happen. The force from SGS attacks from the Depot-A barricade area, which means they have to traverse Depot-A from the Wormhole to the main gate. There are a lot of mutants, turrets, and traps along the way. A large armed group would have to fight its way through, presumably.

Question: where are the ruins of Omega Station supposed to be? It must have been fairly close to SGS, since it controlled the research base and the outposts just north of SGS.

 

[ST'Ranger]

Tanner tells you explicitly where Omega is located - directly north of the outposts.

 

[Excidium II]

is it just that area with the lonely mindshroom?

 

[Nines]

Is there any way to get

Spoiler

Praetorian Insignia (Oddity) without killing Praetorians, without joining them, and without pickpocketing? They automatically became hostile even if I stealth kill one of them.

 

[hilfazer]

Is there any way to get

Spoiler

Praetorian Insignia (Oddity) without killing Praetorians, without joining them, and without pickpocketing? They automatically became hostile even if I stealth kill one of them.

Spoiler

Use contaminated gas nade on one of them near Faceless barricade.

 

[Excidium II]

Oblivion and Skyrim references in the same map. Tone it down man

Spoiler

 

[oneself]

Electric funeral for gauntlet is not doable.

I don't have to time disarm bear traps and reach safe place at the same time with the doors opening and closing.

 

[oneself]

Is there any way to get

Spoiler

Praetorian Insignia (Oddity) without killing Praetorians, without joining them, and without pickpocketing? They automatically became hostile even if I stealth kill one of them.

Nope. Same with the JKK pen.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Electric funeral for gauntlet is not doable.

I don't have to time disarm bear traps and reach safe place at the same time with the doors opening and closing.

Is that the one with the electric floors? You don't need to disable the traps, there are paths around them.

 

[oneself]

Electric funeral for gauntlet is not doable.

I don't have to time disarm bear traps and reach safe place at the same time with the doors opening and closing.

Is that the one with the electric floors? You don't need to disable the traps, there are paths around them.

Which means you are not guaranteed to get the key.

I suppose you are supposed to just rush it then.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Christ, I'm 70 hours in my first playthrough. Doing as much as possible and still haven't gotten thru everything yet.
Pistol fighter, I've done 800+ damage with my 44 hammerer on criticals. Badass.

 

[Modron]

You're moving kind of slow aren't you? I am 92 (12 of which was me forgetting game was running and probably a few odd more hours here and there) hours in and am about to open the gate to tchort, think I will save the final push through the deep roads until tomorrow, I am a little burned out at the moment.

2-3 pretty good rpg releases last year but felt like a crappy year as AoD and Underrail only arrived on the scene at the very end of it.

 

[Nines]

Is there any way to get

Spoiler

Praetorian Insignia (Oddity) without killing Praetorians, without joining them, and without pickpocketing? They automatically became hostile even if I stealth kill one of them.

Spoiler

Use contaminated gas nade on one of them near Faceless barricade.

Thanks. Can I do the same with Black Eels / Free Drones somehow?

 

[hilfazer]

Is there any way to get

Spoiler

Praetorian Insignia (Oddity) without killing Praetorians, without joining them, and without pickpocketing? They automatically became hostile even if I stealth kill one of them.

Spoiler

Use contaminated gas nade on one of them near Faceless barricade.

Thanks. Can I do the same with Black Eels / Free Drones somehow?

Don't know, i pickpocketed their stuff. You can use gas cheese in every uncontrolled zone, not sure about partially controlled ones. Try Junkyard slums/casino/wormhole.

 

[Old One]

Omega Station would be a good place to start to expand the game, should any expansion ever take place.

Spoiler

I'm trying to advance the Missing SGS Traders quest line, but it seems that I've reached an impasse. I questioned the conductor in the Hardcore City Bare before I did the Rail Crossing missions, and I can't seem to get any dialogue to connect the Acid Hunters with the Bakers and the cube. I will see what happens after I find the murder cave.

I had this happen once before, and I had no option to talk to Cornell about the Bakers, even though it was very obvious the Acid Hunters were the murderers. It was annoying.

 

[damager]

I can't bring my self to finish the game. At first it was all fun, but around level 13 it did start to become somewhat boring. Quests in core city were usually solved in 5 minutes, additionally many quest lines I was interested in are stuck. Now at level 15 in foundry it's lots of backtracking and searching for locations through endless tunnels full of trash mobs. Making progress in the story was what kept me interested in the end, but the game can't deliver anymore.

 

[Old One]

Making progress in the story was what kept me interested in the end, but the game can't deliver anymore.

I would concentrate on the main quest and not give up until you get to the next major part of the game*. If it still feels stagnant after that, take a break. You can come back and do the Foundry stuff later.

Core City tends to stall the progress of the game if you let it.


*

Spoiler

The Institute of Tchort

 

[Gord]

Aaaaand that concludes Underrail for me (at least for now).

I wouldn't call it the second coming, but it was a very nice game overall, albeit with some (mostly minor) nuisances.
Still a very respectable accomplishment, especially from such a small team.

I have some questions regarding the Mutagen puzzle:

Spoiler

In the end I never tried the puzzle - I went down the ladder to Tchort, not really knowing that I would find him there already and had not much trouble disposing of him right away.
So from what I gathered after I finally investigated the final cave after I had destroyed Tchort, you have to create two sequences Exitus 1 and 2 and inject them via the console?
I had found the container with Exitus 1 somewhere in DC, but I haven't found anything about Exitus 2, so I suppose there should be the "recipe" somewhere and I have to create it at the console?
What does it do, anyway? Tchort died pretty fast already from some shots with my high-crit sniper...
I didn't give it that much thought, admittedly, since it looked like a lot of additional backtracking (why does the scanner have to be several screens away?) and it proofed unnecessary, anyway...

A few random thoughts, mostly the things that irked me a bit:

• Crafting was great. A few recipes might need some adjustment, maybe (energy shields can get pretty OP), but otherwise it's cool.
  
• Some balancing issues - I originally had envisioned using chemical and energy pistols, but ended up with SMG+Sniper most of the time.
  The damage output is just much better and parts/ammo are easier to come by. Imo, AP cost of the pistols need to be reduced, and secondary effects need a boost. Particularly energy weapons have laughable ammo capacity given their energy consumption (even with the +35% energy capacity feat).
• It looks as if the Institute originally was supposed to play a bigger role. At least there's a lot of (optional) content...
  
• DC are not as bad as some people say (but then I played after they got patched), but some parts are a bit annoying. Mushroom forest and the Labyrinth have too many pointless fights, respawns in some areas should be reduced, esp. around the lake.
  Overall I liked the exploration in DC (except the parts mentioned before), but would have liked some hints at which areas used to be what. Also the usefulness (or lack thereof) of some items only gets revealed later, so have fun with backtracking unless you picked stuff up because it had that quest item look.
• I enjoyed the absence of a quest compass, although a few parts of the MQ could have been handled a bit better (arena, Buzzer's death).
• Wouldn't have minded a few more peaceful options here and there.
• The game had some very good exploration, but also quite some filler maps - then again it's not easy to keep it plausible without some, I guess.
• What's up with the fishing quest? I couldn't find a Ghostface pre-DC, so can it be completed at all?
  Speaking of fishing, that could use some overhaul, anyway...
• remembered another one: please, please make AI not turn on the player because they decided to run into the fire of my Molotov that has been burning there for several rounds, already.

 

[ST'Ranger]

Endgame Spoilers

Sniper is the easiest character to beat Tchort with atm so you don't really need to solve the mutagen puzzle. It makes the fight a bit easier for the vast majority of characters which will require a more sustained fight.

The mutagen puzzle consists of you synthesizing Exitus-1 from the base reagents. Information on Exitus-2 is lost.

Chemical and Energy pistols are fine, but you have to build your character specifically toward their strengths - and you have to have some metagame knowledge to best determine how to do that so it's not a great character to make right off the bat. And they suffer a bit from having only two available weapons when they commonly use at least 4. Pistols (apart from energy pistols) need to be brought up a bit, particularly everything that is not a Hammerer. Energy pistols really can't be buffed anymore because they are already pretty ludicrous with a character built to maximize their output.

 

[Nines]

Crafting was great. A few recipes might need some adjustment, maybe (energy shields can get pretty OP), but otherwise it's cool.

The blueprint for Chemical Blob Traps is weird.

Cryoliquid/Acid Trap MK II/III require Chemical Dispenser of specific quality, and yet, they don't scale with it. So, if you have 4 Dispensers with Q76, Q80, Q100 and Q110, result will be the same: MK III with the same damage. And sometimes you may not have the sufficient Chemistry skill to craft them from Q100 and Q110. That's really unfair compared to grenades, mines and bolts.

Then we have Incendiary Blob Trap, which has the same blueprint as Cryoliquid/Acid Trap, but now Chemical Dispensers don't affect the final result at all. Instead, it's all about quality of a chemical (Fuel / Magnesium Powder / Napalm-C).

 

[Jack Dandy]

Aaaaand that concludes Underrail for me (at least for now).

• What's up with the fishing quest? I couldn't find a Ghostface pre-DC, so can it be completed at all?

You can freely explore the world after getting outta DC

 

[Gord]

Endgame Spoilers

Sniper is the easiest character to beat Tchort with atm so you don't really need to solve the mutagen puzzle. It makes the fight a bit easier for the vast majority of characters which will require a more sustained fight.

The mutagen puzzle consists of you synthesizing Exitus-1 from the base reagents. Information on Exitus-2 is lost.

Spoiler

Ah, ok. So I misunderstood that part. I had analyzed Exitus-1 along with the other sequences I had found when I came across the scanner but had no idea it served as a blueprint for the sequence.
Doesn't make much sense that it should need to be replicated by that console by using other sequences instead of using it directly when you think about it, other than REASONS!
Or it's the difference between Mutagen Compounds and Mutagen Sequences alluded to in that one chatlog you find in Cearus Residential.
Well, doesn't matter. If I play with a different char and find Tchort more difficult, I can still try to solve the puzzle.

Chemical and Energy pistols are fine, but you have to build your character specifically toward their strengths - and you have to have some metagame knowledge to best determine how to do that so it's not a great character to make right off the bat. And they suffer a bit from having only two available weapons when they commonly use at least 4. Pistols (apart from energy pistols) need to be brought up a bit, particularly everything that is not a Hammerer. Energy pistols really can't be buffed anymore because they are already pretty ludicrous with a character built to maximize their output.

Not sure here, tbh. I had taken several feats that should boost chemical and energy weapons and still found them to be much worse than just burst-firing everything with a SMG after some aimed sniper shot for opening.
It can easily (and guaranteed) finish 1-3 enemies per round with the right feats and weapons.
In comparison, chemical pistols do damage over time and/or only shine when the secondary effect kicks in (for which the probability is rather low for most of the game).
Electrical pistols are a bit better, especially since they can hit multiple targets when the bolt jumps to other, nearby, targets - they can probably stay as they are.
Laser pistols I can't say much about, they looked too bad so I never used them. Plasmas are better, but both energy and AP usage is too high. At least reduce energy usage a bit - 3-4 shots from a fully charged high-quality crafted pistol (including the +35% energy perk) is simply to few. Also despite me having high dex I could often fire them only once or twice per round - again a sniper or SMG build has MUCH higher DAM/AP.

But yeah, it was my first char, so it's absolutely possible that I did overlook quite a few things and a truly (and in the right way) specialized char will have an easier time with them.

Agreed about normal pistols, they are in a strange spot. Apparently they have been nerfed since high-crit/special attack builds could exploit them pretty badly, but currently they, too, suffer from too low DAM/AP, or require some specialized approaches (maybe with execution and high crit builds it might work).