Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[Ent]

Try to figure out what is the best formula to craft energy shield.

My glass cannon build (Max will/dex + dump str/con + Melee + Psi + Tactical Vest + No dodge/evasion) seem to have the short end of the stick.

Plan B - maybe change armor to Riot Gear (raise str to 4 to meet minimum req) to get better melee soak and craft Highx2 energy shield?

I'm guessing you are using one of those psionic vests? Theres no avoiding being squishy in that kind of build now that they nerfed the HP of a psion and increased the psi costs so much. I found that having some stealth is really good for that kind of character popping out of stealth with kinetic punch and a barrage of force of emission punches should still decimate most enemies. I think on of the the new psychokinesis abilities acts as a land mine too which could be a really good. Theres also that new feat that adds critical hit chance to things hit by electric psionics which should aid your burst immensely. They only thing I can say is to pick your fights properly with your build - you should be able to kill 2 - 3 enemies in 2 turns quite easily and then hop back into stealth again.

 

[Zetor]

Crawler behavior seems to have changed.

Spoiler

Someone correct me if I missed something, but there's no longer any point to curing their poison. After they sting you, they immediately crawl up to the ceiling and vanish as usual. If you cure the poison, they'll simply sting you and immediately crawl up to the ceiling once again. You only get an opportunity to hit them if you allow yourself to become stunned, after which they smash most of the batteries out of your shield. If you aren't a stealthy character/don't have a high Detection, it seems that now the only way to avoid this is to play Battleship with grenades/psi powers and hope for the best.

Is this a new "consumables tax" strategy, or what?

psi solution

You can stand against a wall and cast forcefield around yourself just before the poison stuns you. The crawler will dutifully unstealth and stand next to the forcefield, so you have all AP available to dispose of it as you wish.

I have the +2 duration on forcefield, but I think even without that it should hold until you're free from the stun...

Speaking of which, forcefield seems to cause melee enemies to become suicidal if you cast forcefield in a way that the only accessible adjacent tile(s) are diagonal from the player. Instead of staying away and biding their time, melee enemies will rush to stand on those tiles, which incidentally gives LOS on them while they can't hurt the caster. Why, thank you for the free pointblank SMG bursts!

 

[Ent]

can the force field psi be used to wall off the detonation of a landmine?

 

[Lhynn]

I feel like fancy footwork is really nice - tho maybe reducing my agility to 5 just to keep slealth in an okay spot might be good - maybe put more into perception. Do you prefer throwing or traps btw? I feel like I need an AOE options for certain situations.

Fancy footwork is nice if you attack fast, but if you are going to be using hammer and heavy armor you probably want something like hit and run, fancy footwork only gives you 8 per hit, which you probably dont need because the dude you are hitting is still there, so why move? hit and run gives you 30 per kill, doesnt matter how you kill your enemy, ranged or melee. So you can go after another enemy.
I think fancy footwork was done because unarmed lets you incapacitate enemies, and you break the incapacitate if you hit them again, so you want to swich target after you incapacitate someone because they are not dangerous till the next turn anyway.

I really hope that is not the case or two whole skills are useless and makes the fast light fighter archetype useless. You should be able to make yourself get to 50% dodge chance with maxed skill vs similar level enemies.

Seems to me like its a linear progression, offensive skills influence damage and chance to hit, defensive skills reduce chance to hit. As long as one is maxed you shouldnt get hit, but if you have a 60%+ penalty to your defensive skill because of wearing heavy armor, you are not going to be dodging shit against enemies with comparable skill cap.
Not saying they are useless, just saying they are useless if you dont invest in it and keep it at a nice rating.

 

[Mystary!]

Wanted my hammer dude to be as tanky as possible so I went with high constitution along with evasion and dodge but they're supposedly useless once you get better armors? Isn't there a happy medium that utilize both armor and defensive skills?

They're don't become useless, but they (along with movement points) are reduced by your armor penalty. You can use the heaviest armor and also pump high Evasion and Dodge, maybe throw Nimble and crafting feats/materials that reduce armor penalty into the mix, but instead of enemies missing a lot, they'll only miss occasionally (with little or no Evasion or Dodge, they almost never miss).

Realistically, you should probably choose one or the other, and avoid anything heavier than tactical vests if relying mostly on Dodge and Evasion. That's the happy medium; maybe even riot armor with Nimble and fairly low armor penalty.

What, you want to wear a boulder and also dodge everything like a lynx? I bet you're one of those guys who like to dual-wield tower shields in fantasy RPGs.

Nope and nope, just wanted to know if there was a reasonable way to optimize defenses by mixing them instead of relying on one or the other. But seems jury's still out on that one.
I'll give the riot armor a go thou.

 

[ArchAngel]

Well nimble reduces armor penalty by 15% so any armor equal or below that will work.
I am wearing ballistic vest with my nimble guy.

 

[Fenix]

Is it normal or a bug - I already have blueprints for cpecial bullets, while didn't done Armadillo drill part quest?
Interesting...

 

[mixer]

Got to level 10 with stealth dagger and double PSI school, game seems very easy like that. I don't enjoy that very much so ill reroll on hard and drop PSI for now.

 

[Fenix]

Another surprise from souns system. )
Threw a grenade, and this guy came.

Spoiler

Also it not the only surprise.
I couldn't saw him before he detected me. Barely survived his attack, was lucky I wasn't incapacitated.

Spoiler

 

[Cromwell]

Fuck this game, I played a little more with optimized strong armor build but now I am curious about melee unarmed. Is psi mandatory? There are a few nice things if you mix psi with unarmed, but is it also possible to do just unarmed without pi and use good gloves with damage addons?

 

[Fenix]

Is psi mandatory?

Not at all! You see, you have 4 or 6 spare ponts you can put in Str (for Wrestling), in Will for PSI, or in Perception.
Pure melee is very satisfying on its own. How about 400 dmg from crit with pneumatic hammer? Or even 600 don't remember for sure.
Looks like Melee will be my next build for next playthrough.

 

[Cromwell]

Is psi mandatory?

Not at all! You see, you have 4 or 6 spare ponts you can put in Str (for Wrestling), in Will for PSI, or in Perception.
Pure melee is very satisfying on its own.

where do you put your mandatory ones? I always go with int 7 for the crafting feats but I am thinking about dropping that since I dont know if its really worth it, but I only played until gsm station so far a few times.

 

[Fenix]

I always go with int 7 for the crafting feats but I am thinking about dropping that since I dont know if its really worth it

It IS worth it believe me. Go get Skinner, it will be your bread and butter later on, won't spoil it too. Also Power Management is a convenient feat.

 

[Fenix]

Cromwell but honestly, you can go with 5 Int easily, 7 just gives you better shields, cloacking devices, and better leather armor later on.
Melee fighters of course can find use for those 2 stat points.

 

[Howdy]

Aaargggh.... Protectorate warehouse as full psi with constitution is fucking impossible. I enrage heavy gunner once his mates are around him but he 2 shots me with AR and I'm like 10 spaces away with other fucks right next door to him. Anyone done this yet with Psi-o?

 

[NotAGolfer]

Is psi mandatory?

I think yes.
Psychokinesis or better Force Emission and later Corporeal Projection might not be a must, but I see no reason to pass up on that free extra damage for combat gloves.
You don't even have to invest a lot of points to get it, psychokinesis 30 or 35 are enough. I built my char with will 5, but I guess 4 is good enough too.

I like my combat gloves btw, on every fourth punch they have a nasty surprise for whoever dares to stand in my way.
The damage output on that 4. punch often surpasses 100 and the stun effect isn't half bad too.

The way that item value is calculated is weird imo. I often come across armor or weapons that cost around 20k or more and are complete shit in comparison to stuff that's allegedly worth a quarter of that.

But upgrades in this game are really fun while sometimes giving you a headache with the countless possibilities for synergies and resulting builds.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Once you start using a bit higher quality components on your crafting you will easily have equipment worth more than 20k.

For example those gloves you posted, the power source is low quality with only 38 energy.

 

[Blaine]

Guys, for the love of Tchort, please learn how to take lossless screenshots.

Also, Dodge and Evasion are nowhere near useless. If you want to dodge and evade frequently, though, you need to avoid armor penalty (15% total penalty -15% from Nimble is ideal; also increases total Dodge and Evasion by 15%) and ensure that you have a decent Agility score.

They have one major advantage over heavier armor: Your energy shield will last significantly longer. Super-heavy armor is still ultimately better than maxed Dodge and Evasion if your shield is gone, in most cases (they also become useless if you're incapacitated, unlike armor), but in many encounters you can use a strong energy shield to great effect before it pops.

It's also possible to pump Evasion while wearing melee-resistant armor and making sure to stun/root/out-distance melee enemies whenever possible, and forego Dodge (many goggles penalize Dodge, so this is therefore an especially viable option).

 

[Excidium II]

Guys, for the love of Tchort, please learn how to take lossless screenshots.

It's not their fault, steam that does it

 

[Kem0sabe]

I just print screen, crop in paint and upload in the most shit quality I can handle while browsing in my 5.5 inch phone screen.

 

[John_Blazze]

Also, Dodge and Evasion are nowhere near useless. If you want to dodge and evade frequently, though, you need to avoid armor penalty (15% total penalty -15% from Nimble is ideal; also increases total Dodge and Evasion by 15%) and ensure that you have a decent Agility score.

How much Con would you say a character needs for this dodge/evade way to be survivable?

I went with short range knife/pistol, 7 Agi and 4 Con and I think I fucked myself by doing that.

 

[Blaine]

It's not their fault, steam that does it

Right-click tray icon -> Settings

Check "Save an uncompressed copy" and choose a location.

 

[hell bovine]

After playing a little bit with a mage, hard difficulty, classic experience: I like the idea that a psi user gets their abilities at the costs of their health, but it would be nice if there was more variation between health decrease/psi increase, instead of locking them at 25% and 100. I'd prefer an option to build the typical glass canon mage (can spam spells like there is no tomorrow, but a rathound sneezing would blow him over), and a fighter with just a sprinkle of psi to use.

Would it be possible to make the hit points loss and subsequent psi gain proportional to the will score, reflecting a characters psi potential?

 

[Blaine]

Psi points used to be based on Will and/or character level (possibly even Intelligence, not sure), but were reworked into this new, standardized system. It makes sense, because many psi spells remain strong and useful from levels 2-30 and if their costs remained the same while psi points continued to climb, at high levels psi users wouldn't need to carefully manage their Premeditation, Thermodynamicity combos, feat cooldowns, medicine cooldowns, etc.

After a certain point, a psi user will be out of psi, all medicines on cooldown, and just barely fizzling out a little bit of bullshit each turn. I'm enjoying psi because deciding which spells to cast and in what order, and when to pop consumables is like a little puzzle with multiple solutions during each challenging combat.

 

[Wolfe]

Finally got past depot A.. that was really tough yet also rewarding as hell. Somehow managed to do it without and psi or acid resistance gear.