Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[lukaszek]

How does that work? Like is there a blank where the island is supposed to be? Are there Jet Skiers that stop you from approaching the island?

they are there, i think they turn hostile if you try to land in docks

 

[ItsChon]

just had random encounter... i think? In camp hathor there was a guy with nearly destroyed jet. With mechanic and mercantile skills I bought it for 300 harons. As lvl12 guy I already own a jet and can do husar jet ski riding with my spear... at very small speed considering state of my ride.

I must say I love spear throwing, poking with it much less. It only reinforces me in adding spear throw to stabby build. I guess I know what I would do for infusion.

At max range im seeing 1.2k crits with my q100 spear.

Had my fastest rathound king kill

HOLY SHIT! He actually added in a way to access the Waterways before embarking on the Expedition? Fucking legendary. Now I just hope there are ways for you to upgrade your ride. I wonder if Ray's shop is open? What happens when you Jet Ski towards the Black Sea?

You already could access Black Sea without joining the expedition before. It was just harder.

Well yeah I know. I moreso meant he added a way to facilitate Waterways exploration in a way that was organic to a first time player. There are multiple ways you can get access to a Jetski outside of this new event, but all of them were super roundabout and out of the way. I want to integrate early Waterways exploration with my adventures in Rail Crossing, Camp Hathor, and the Foundry, before I even get to Core City. My whole problem with all the Waterways Content is that by the time you get around to it, you're already so strong and you've spent so much time in Underrail proper, you don't really get to enjoy them as much as you should.

The Waterways should feel alive, and just as connected to Underrail as everything else is. Devs have done a great job of doing this by adding in the random events, people moving around, but I always felt like more could be done. Allowing an actual way to access the Waterways makes it feel like the whole game is connected versus Underrail and Expedition being seperate pieces of content. Showing SGS presence in Chancers Bay is something else I thought would have been cool to once again show how every aspect of the setting is well thought out.

How does that work? Like is there a blank where the island is supposed to be? Are there Jet Skiers that stop you from approaching the island?

they are there, i think they turn hostile if you try to land in docks

Appreciate the info! Super excited to try this update now.

 

[notpl]

just had random encounter... i think? In camp hathor there was a guy with nearly destroyed jet. With mechanic and mercantile skills I bought it for 300 harons. As lvl12 guy I already own a jet and can do husar jet ski riding with my spear... at very small speed considering state of my ride.

I must say I love spear throwing, poking with it much less. It only reinforces me in adding spear throw to stabby build. I guess I know what I would do for infusion.

At max range im seeing 1.2k crits with my q100 spear.

Had my fastest rathound king kill

Spearthrowing sounds like a fun gimmick, but wouldn't sword just give you flatly better damage in melee compared to knife?

 

[ciox]

I ended up restarting. The stealth crossbowman was... disappointing, really. Not that it is unviable or anything, but I found it really tedious. The "stealth part" is kind of garbage since enemies are almost never in a situation where you could stealth kill them – they tend to be grouped up, and even if you manage to lure one out of sight through traps and the like, you usually don't have the means to kill him within a single turn (especially on dominating) after which he alarms his friends anyway, so the stealth part becomes kinda moot. Generally, every fight ended up being about kiting enemies well enough while utilizing aimed shot and kneecap, which was doable but not very fun. I guess there's other crossbowman builds that are more fun, but this one wasn't it.

I'm trying a heavy shotgunner this time around and so far it's really good :D The difference compared to crossbowman is night and day. While as crossbowman, I couldn't really tank anything and my damage output was negligible (offset by high mobility and range, I suppose), here I go up close and personal, tank enemy hits like they're nothing, and blast them in the face for massive damage. The only negative is that I'm giving up stealth – it was kinda shitty in combat, but I enjoyed the non-combat part of it (ie. getting into interesting places without triggering hostilities with friendly NPCs). Maybe once I get some of the skills to their max potential, I'll have some points left over to dump into stealth, just for fun? I'll probably end up putting it in crafting instead, but it's a possibility.

On another note, I think I'm in love with pickpocketing. It's such a silly skill, doesn't really help you much in combat aside from some highly situational cases (where the enemy is non-hostile at first so you can steal his meds and ammo), but stealing faction-related oddities you otherwise wouldn't have, along with luxury items is pretty fun, and you have basically infinite health hypos and adrenaline shots, since the friendly commoners and guards always carry some of those.

I couldn't really get crossbows to work without mixing in a few extra things. You're just too weak against armor, and you have little crowd control ability unless you spend your whole life shooting those damn Shock Bolts.
Add a little melee (for Expose Weakness and Dirty Kick) and psi (for the basic 2-turn forcefields and a stun that cannot miss with electrokinesis) and you're good to go. Don't need any OP shit to completely transform the build into something else.
Dirty Kick lets you keep utility slots free for bolts, since you don't need a taser in there, and Expose Weakness can be applied with a jackknife or shiv for like 7 AP or less.

You could get by without using any melee or psi, just by abusing a lot of traps and waiting for a lot of EMP grenade cooldowns, but it was just too tedious for me.

There's also magicians that claim to be able to do 500,000,000 damage vs. industrial bots with one bolt, of course, but such feats are not for mortal men like you or I.

 

[ItsChon]

just had random encounter... i think? In camp hathor there was a guy with nearly destroyed jet. With mechanic and mercantile skills I bought it for 300 harons. As lvl12 guy I already own a jet and can do husar jet ski riding with my spear... at very small speed considering state of my ride.

I must say I love spear throwing, poking with it much less. It only reinforces me in adding spear throw to stabby build. I guess I know what I would do for infusion.

At max range im seeing 1.2k crits with my q100 spear.

Had my fastest rathound king kill

Spearthrowing sounds like a fun gimmick, but wouldn't sword just give you flatly better damage in melee compared to knife?

It's not a gimmick. Spear Throwing is very strong and is vital to increasing the damage output of a Spear build. It deals massive damage, and allows you to instantly delete an enemy.

 

[ItsChon]

I ended up restarting. The stealth crossbowman was... disappointing, really. Not that it is unviable or anything, but I found it really tedious. The "stealth part" is kind of garbage since enemies are almost never in a situation where you could stealth kill them – they tend to be grouped up, and even if you manage to lure one out of sight through traps and the like, you usually don't have the means to kill him within a single turn (especially on dominating) after which he alarms his friends anyway, so the stealth part becomes kinda moot. Generally, every fight ended up being about kiting enemies well enough while utilizing aimed shot and kneecap, which was doable but not very fun. I guess there's other crossbowman builds that are more fun, but this one wasn't it.

I'm trying a heavy shotgunner this time around and so far it's really good :D The difference compared to crossbowman is night and day. While as crossbowman, I couldn't really tank anything and my damage output was negligible (offset by high mobility and range, I suppose), here I go up close and personal, tank enemy hits like they're nothing, and blast them in the face for massive damage. The only negative is that I'm giving up stealth – it was kinda shitty in combat, but I enjoyed the non-combat part of it (ie. getting into interesting places without triggering hostilities with friendly NPCs). Maybe once I get some of the skills to their max potential, I'll have some points left over to dump into stealth, just for fun? I'll probably end up putting it in crafting instead, but it's a possibility.

On another note, I think I'm in love with pickpocketing. It's such a silly skill, doesn't really help you much in combat aside from some highly situational cases (where the enemy is non-hostile at first so you can steal his meds and ammo), but stealing faction-related oddities you otherwise wouldn't have, along with luxury items is pretty fun, and you have basically infinite health hypos and adrenaline shots, since the friendly commoners and guards always carry some of those.

I couldn't really get crossbows to work without mixing in a few extra things. You're just too weak against armor, and you have little crowd control ability unless you spend your whole life shooting those damn Shock Bolts.
Add a little melee (for Expose Weakness and Dirty Kick) and psi (for the basic 2-turn forcefields and a stun that cannot miss with electrokinesis) and you're good to go. Don't need any OP shit to completely transform the build into something else.
Dirty Kick lets you keep utility slots free for bolts, since you don't need a taser in there, and Expose Weakness can be applied with a jackknife or shiv for like 7 AP or less.

You could get by without using any melee or psi, just by abusing a lot of traps and waiting for a lot of EMP grenade cooldowns, but it was just too tedious for me.

There's also magicians that claim to be able to do 500,000,000 damage vs. industrial bots with one bolt, of course, but such feats are not for mortal men like you or I.

The only Crossbow build I'd recommend would be Elemental Bolts Crossbow. You're not supposed to fire anything other then a special bolt at all times.

 

[ciox]

Also I think an integral part of playing a stealth crossbowman is being able to drop at least 2 enemies in one turn, before they can alert their friends, by performing a Snipe and then an Aimed Shot, if that doesn't work because of difficulty settings or your build, then you will most certainly have a bad time.

 

[notpl]

just had random encounter... i think? In camp hathor there was a guy with nearly destroyed jet. With mechanic and mercantile skills I bought it for 300 harons. As lvl12 guy I already own a jet and can do husar jet ski riding with my spear... at very small speed considering state of my ride.

I must say I love spear throwing, poking with it much less. It only reinforces me in adding spear throw to stabby build. I guess I know what I would do for infusion.

At max range im seeing 1.2k crits with my q100 spear.

Had my fastest rathound king kill

Spearthrowing sounds like a fun gimmick, but wouldn't sword just give you flatly better damage in melee compared to knife?

It's not a gimmick. Spear Throwing is very strong and is vital to increasing the damage output of a Spear build. It deals massive damage, and allows you to instantly delete an enemy.

He isn't playing a spear build, hence why it's a gimmick.

 

[thesecret1]

You could get by without using any melee or psi, just by abusing a lot of traps and waiting for a lot of EMP grenade cooldowns, but it was just too tedious for me.

Yeah, that was pretty much what I was doing as a pure crossbowman (abused opening/closing doors a whole lot). It was possible to play the game that way and probably even finish it, but by the time I reached core city, I was kinda fed up with that shit. The lack of decent crowd control combined with low damage output and extreme fragility lead to strategies that turned every combat into either Benny Hill kinda chase, or 300 molotovs: battle of single tile doorway and the like.

Shotgunner is way more fun so far. Really high damage output even very early in the game, and beefy too.

On a side note, is there some kind of build in which psykers aren't an absolute pain in the ass to deal with? I've been thinking, and I don't actually have any kind of strategy against them with any build other than "Kill them first, before they manage to actually slug a spell at you, else you're fucked". Aside from when playing psyker, I guess, but then it was more of a wild west kinda deal, where whoever went first won.

 

[lukaszek]

He isn't playing a spear build, hence why it's a gimmick.

actually I am playing spear build right now. I am always on lookout to improve stabby builds - in them yeah, spear throwing does sound like gimmick and abusing game systems.

wouldn't sword just give you flatly better damage in melee compared to knife?

knife got AP reduction and ripper. This is more or less what I would go for, dont mind feat order too much
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMQB...xJh0WEwZcUUvClQASwoVCwrN2PuKfhAHiqLsD4rOiA9-_

On a side note, is there some kind of build in which psykers aren't an absolute pain in the ass to deal with? I've been thinking, and I don't actually have any kind of strategy against them with any build other than "Kill them first, before they manage to actually slug a spell at you, else you're fucked". Aside from when playing psyker, I guess, but then it was more of a wild west kinda deal, where whoever went first won.

any build with sneakery and preparing battlefield in advance? Also silently killing enemies before real fight even starts

 

[Parabalus]

He isn't playing a spear build, hence why it's a gimmick.

actually I am playing spear build right now. I am always on lookout to improve stabby builds - in them yeah, spear throwing does sound like gimmick and abusing game systems.

wouldn't sword just give you flatly better damage in melee compared to knife?

knife got AP reduction and ripper. This is more or less what I would go for, dont mind feat order too much
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMQB...xJh0WEwZcUUvClQASwoVCwrN2PuKfhAHiqLsD4rOiA9-_

On a side note, is there some kind of build in which psykers aren't an absolute pain in the ass to deal with? I've been thinking, and I don't actually have any kind of strategy against them with any build other than "Kill them first, before they manage to actually slug a spell at you, else you're fucked". Aside from when playing psyker, I guess, but then it was more of a wild west kinda deal, where whoever went first won.

any build with sneakery and preparing battlefield in advance? Also silently killing enemies before real fight even starts

Do you need 9 INT, instead of 10 AGI for Blitz?

Also this build could still easily take versatility.

Do you need Expert Throwing, having max skill?

 

[lukaszek]

Do you need Expert Throwing, having max skill?

dont know. From what I saw so far its hard to hit enemies at max range. At lvl 13 spear build guy I have 15-20% to hit at max range of 11. And its not theoretical max distance, you can get better wings quality(for like 3 extra?) and spec points(3 more). Probably there arent many places where one can execute such long throw.

Also this build could still easily take versatility.

honestly versatility can be swapped with expose weakness. That would allow you to pew pew with lemurian spear too! Hmmm....

Do you need 9 INT, instead of 10 AGI for Blitz?

blitz is always nice, but... quite feat starved already and would pick it very late. Actually through its not possible but I have hard requirement 6Int, not 7 as I thought. Still with that low INT one would need to drop bio and chemistry for sure. And im not positive it would be enough, possibly get rid of mercantile as well. Or drop tailoring in favor of mercantile, although losing 10% crit chance always sounds painful. There are clear tradeoffs to be had. High int also allows you to grab practical physicist and high technicalties(need 25guns) if you went for versatility. This would be more in line with my dominating space cowboy build.

 

[Parabalus]

blitz is always nice, but... quite feat starved already and would pick it very late. Actually through its not possible but I have hard requirement 6Int, not 7 as I thought. Still with that low INT one would need to drop bio and chemistry for sure. And im not positive it would be enough, possibly get rid of mercantile as well. Or drop tailoring in favor of mercantile, although losing 10% crit chance always sounds painful. There are clear tradeoffs to be had. High int also allows you to grab practical physicist and high technicalties(need 25guns) if you went for versatility. This would be more in line with my dominating space cowboy build.

Well you could drop Evasion instead of the crafting feats.

Though the nerf to All-In does make INT much more needed. Don't think you can get Philosophy III with 6 INT anymore?

 

[lukaszek]

Well you could drop Evasion instead of the crafting feats.

I consider evasion mandatory due to nagas

 

[fredsteel]

Too bad we couldn't see his face when he realized that he was thought-controlled by Tanner all along.

He wasn't thought controlled. Just blocked. Very effectively. Which says to you he stuck around out of curiosity (he's a scientist after all) as well as to confirm his suspicions. I have no doubt he knows of the Godmen.

It's explicitly described as a xenoartifact by the Coretech facility logs. It has no markings in human languages, but plenty of Godman symbols - similar to the ones on Glowing Canine. It is incredibly valuable to Godmen themselves, and I highly doubt that would be the case if the tech within was simple enough to be reproduced by humans.

Coretech is a clusterfuck of an organization. The Oligarchs themselves and their organizations are that. Just attempting to ape the past, and Coretech is the biggest example. They wouldn't know their assholes from a hole in the ground, and I have no doubt they lack the knowledge of the archives of Old Biocorp (i.e. their secret projects, their hidden histories, knowledge of the Apex Technocrats, etc.). If they had, they would have made expeditions to DC AND taken on the Tchortists to take over the old University and learn its secrets.

Fuck Coretech. They're not even a shadow of Biocorp's technological prowess, which would be fit to wipe my ass.

Major_Blackhart , you.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

The Cube is pretty explicitly a power source of massive proportions - likely the output socket of the Godman interstellar energy harvesting network.

I wouldn't go that far. I would say the Cube is similar to ACORN in its origins. If you take Acorn to Ezra, he explains as much. It was built by humanity, the design for it is clearly human, BUT the ability to build or craft such a thing was outside our capabilities at our zenith on the surface. Specifically, Ezra mentions the mind within hidden behind the quantum locking mechanism, the slumbering AI. That intelligence was outside our ability to create, and while we thought it up, we could only do so with the help of outsiders. If you've discovered enough, gone through the monoliths, seen all that jazz, you can guess it's the Godmen.

One of the things that I love especially about this game is Ezra himself, and a few other remnants of Old Biocorp, the ruins, all of it. It's like a nightmarish Indiana Jones adventure in some ways, raiding lost temples and such. Also, I love how Ezra will drop hints about things via exposition dump, but only in relation to certain things and at specific times, such as during the Foundry Beast questline or post Expedition. But it's not really an info dump, more like an explanation to obvious questions. And then it's never enough to really reveal anything further that might put him in danger.

Underrail's writing is really criminally underrated.

 

[ciox]

The worldbuilding is all very good, if there's any weakness it's in some of the dialogue trees and stuff like that, maybe the deployment of infodumps in Expedition. The backgrounds of the characters and the world are all interesting to explore.

 

[toro]

just had random encounter... i think? In camp hathor there was a guy with nearly destroyed jet. With mechanic and mercantile skills I bought it for 300 harons. As lvl12 guy I already own a jet and can do husar jet ski riding with my spear... at very small speed considering state of my ride.

I must say I love spear throwing, poking with it much less. It only reinforces me in adding spear throw to stabby build. I guess I know what I would do for infusion.

At max range im seeing 1.2k crits with my q100 spear.

Had my fastest rathound king kill

Wtf! Rathound king is a bro! You never kill bros!

 

[ciox]

That reminds me that I still haven't seen the mythical, legendary Rathound King encounter in

Spoiler

Deep Caverns

Whatever character run I finish next, should have that.

 

[lukaszek]

Wtf! Rathound king is a bro! You never kill bros!

i smell weak build that cant utilize hunter feat

 

[toro]

Wtf! Rathound king is a bro! You never kill bros!

i smell weak build that cant utilize hunter feat

i smell a Sarine's simp

 

[Twiglard]

i smell a Sarine's simp

Kidnap Sarine for the RK, kill the RK and take over as the sole user of Sarine. Good enough?

 

[toro]

i smell a Sarine's simp

Kidnap Sarine for the RK, kill the RK and take over as the sole user of Sarine. Good enough?

Spoiler

Don't kill him. You can encounter him in Deep Caverns.

 

[Tigranes]

There is a (random?) encounter now in the upper caves where you jump down, you find a bunch of Azuridae Goliath, and.... a PLASMA BEAM MENTOR

brb starting up a crit metathermics build

 

[toro]

There is a (random?) encounter now in the upper caves where you jump down, you find a bunch of Azuridae Goliath, and.... a PLASMA BEAM MENTOR

brb starting up a crit metathermics build

it was added in the patch before the last one.