Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[Blaine]

If Dominating is a challenge mode—and it is—then it's okay to either want to play Dominating, or to not want to play Dominating. Either is fine.

I don't want to play it, and I have nothing against anyone who does. No one has ever really held it against me that I don't want to play Dominating. I'd even go so far as to freely admit that those who've completed multiple Dominating runs are more skilled Underrail players than I am, because they've been tempered in a crucible of pain and come through intact.

There have been times when I wished that I were temperamentally suited to Dominating, when a playthrough eventually becomes a bit too easy for me and I'm steamrolling everything. That doesn't happen until later, though. The real pain, as in all playthroughs, is mostly at the beginning.

In my mind, the most impressive thing is to finish Underrail at all for the first time, on Normal. That's the only thing I'm going to stand up and clap for.

In short, who cares? It's good that Dominating exists, it does exist, some people love it. Finis.

 

[Parabalus]

Misses his sting from stealth and then proceeds to pummel me to death with basic attacks. Sure buddy "JUST CAST MIRRORS LULZ!"

If they miss their sting they will still jump away, you have two turns to find them or go to a choke point.

If you can wear metal armor you can just ignore them too.

The only reliable strategy I found when there is more than 2 of them (which is every fucking where) is hide in a corner and burn everything around you with molotov cocktails, which not only damage those in the AoE but also makes them visible.

You can do something similar with Exothermic Aura.

 

[Sykar]

Dude, I literally described what happened, can you not read? Yeah I expected the crawler to stealth after the missed the sting, too. Surprise, he did not. For some reason he just stayed and meleed me to death. You guys can make all the excuses you want Death Stalkers are overtuned and unless you hard counter them you have to meta and exploit the shit out of them. If you find that fun go for it. I find it merely obnoxious and retarded. Styggie could not have used a lazier way to increase difficulty, no improved AI, no surprising abilities or items, nothing just flat MOAR DÄMÄGE MOAR HP MOAR NUMBERZ! /yawn
Nevermind the need for optimization in Dominate is so high that you cannot make flavor builds. Anyone here take a feat like Burglar for example in recent time? I bet no one here has.

 

[Parabalus]

Dude, I literally described what happened, can you not read? Yeah I expected the crawler to stealth after the missed the sting, too. Surprise, he did not. For some reason he just stayed and meleed me to death. You guys can make all the excuses you want Death Stalkers are overtuned and unless you hard counter them you have to meta and exploit the shit out of them. If you find that fun go for it. I find it merely obnoxious and retarded. Styggie could not have used a lazier way to increase difficulty, no improved AI, no surprising abilities or items, nothing just flat MOAR DÄMÄGE MOAR HP MOAR NUMBERZ! /yawn
Nevermind the need for optimization in Dominate is so high that you cannot make flavor builds. Anyone here take a feat like Burglar for example in recent time? I bet no one here has.

How is Burglar a flavour feat?

It's just trash, I wouldn't take it on Hard either.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

Dominating is designed around metagaming so I'm not sure what the problem is. It's the difficulty for people who have memorised the entire game, including all crawler locations. Death stalkers need to be threatening to make up for how easy to counter they are when you know they're there.
They're also pretty easy to skip, especially on dominating. Most of them are in optional areas that you don't need to go to, and a lot of the ones that aren't can be killed by luring them into fights with other enemies. I can't think of any that you actually have to fight before the Institute (if there are any then feel free to point them out), and by then you should be able to take them. And if you can't then again, dominating is designed around metagaming, use the beartraps.

 

[Sykar]

The problem is that a difficulty designed around metagaming and exploiting the shit out of the game is lazy, obnoxious and boring. I find it funny that I get unasked adviced when I have beaten Dominating. I do not need advice. I know how to beat it. I have no further interest in the difficulty because for the umpteenth time, it bores me to tears.

 

[Parabalus]

There is a weird definition of metagaming being used here, might as well complain that having to strip mage protections in BG2 is metagaming.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There is a weird definition of metagaming being used here, might as well complain that having to strip mage protections in BG2 is metagaming.

most of the retarded shit people remember as "mage duels" in BG2 was added by mods

 

[Parabalus]

There is a weird definition of metagaming being used here, might as well complain that having to strip mage protections in BG2 is metagaming.

most of the retarded shit people remember as "mage duels" in BG2 was added by mods

Pretty sure you need to cast Breach in the unmodded game.

Or cheese by waiting it out.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

btw adding areas/lore that are only available in dominating but making it so dominating requires you to be an autistic spaz to play is pretty shit design

 

[Sykar]

There is a weird definition of metagaming being used here, might as well complain that having to strip mage protections in BG2 is metagaming.

most of the retarded shit people remember as "mage duels" in BG2 was added by mods

Pretty sure you need to cast Breach in the unmodded game.

Or cheese by waiting it out.

AoE was usually doing the job just fine against most mages and thanks to low HP pretty effective especially with damage types that were rarely resisted like cold or magical. Breach was more needed for melee heavy parties that only onea arcane caster.

 

[Parabalus]

There is a weird definition of metagaming being used here, might as well complain that having to strip mage protections in BG2 is metagaming.

most of the retarded shit people remember as "mage duels" in BG2 was added by mods

Pretty sure you need to cast Breach in the unmodded game.

Or cheese by waiting it out.

AoE was usually doing the job just fine against most mages and thanks to low HP pretty effective especially with damage types that were rarely resisted like cold or magical. Breach was more needed for melee heavy parties that only onea arcane caster.

So you deal with mages by memorizing particular spells?

Sounds like metagaming.

 

[Sykar]

Oh yeah AoE is ONLY useful against mages and would never be memorized for other situations.

 

[Blaine]

Why not Expertise + crit path? I am one of the most tedium-averse players on here, given I leave most of the loot, but SI+Chips+Focus is 50% crit chance at almost zero makework.

Don't get me wrong here, crits will always produce more damage than Expertise.

Let's say you're level 20 and you've got a silenced 5mm Jaguar, q110ish, that deals an average of 18 damage per round. Let's say your effective Guns skill is 200, so your total damage is 18 * (1 + [0.7 * {200/100}]), which converts that 18 damage into 43 damage. Expertise modifies that into 63 damage, or 68 if you've spec'd it.

Expertise does tend to help you most around mid-game. You end up with something like a 30-50% damage increase per round, depending on caliber and exact Guns skill. This is less than crits, but applies to every single round with just one feat, no other feats, food, medication, or any specialized equipment required. You don't need to be Focused, you don't need Sharpshooter, Reckless, Critical Power, Ambush, or Scrutinous; you now have four more feats to use elsewise, you can use different food, you don't need crit goggles, etc.

To be honest, I'm not 100% clear on how damage and critical hits are truly calculated. Just inferring from my experience (and the huge numbers achievable), crit multipliers multiply the base damage of your weapon modified by your skill (rather than only multiplying the base weapon damage, with your skill bonus damage added to that), and the entire critical damage amount is applied to DR/DT (rather than only what gets through armor being multiplied); and Expertise, I think, is always flat. That is, Expertise bonus damage isn't modified by your skill. I could be wrong about that, though; I'd have to load up a save and test it.

Expertise helps you less and less after you hit 20 and move on towards 30, even if you spec it, but later on you'll obliterate everything anyway. That's why I don't see a need for crits. Do I need to kill it harder? All those crit feats can be spent on Blindsiding (which I believe does modify Expertise damage, since it modifies your final damage, similar to Opportunist), Sure Step for using caltrops and blob traps with impunity, more mobility feats, motion-tracking goggles at all times so you can watch Death Stalkers wander around for a while before they eventually notice you (at level 24+ with minimal 12-13ish PER, high Stealth, and +100% goggles, on no more than Hard difficulty), etc.

Final note, I settled on using two Jaguars: Rapid Compensated for 7.62mm, and Rapid Silenced (I think) for 5mm. I made some Rapid Compensated Steel Cats for incendiary 8.6mm. With 14 DEX, it costs 10 AP to burst-fire a Rapid Silenced 5mm Jaguar. That's seven whole-ass W2C rounds with Expertise pasted on top for 10 AP. You can shoot that bitch four times (w/Commando proc), reload with bandoleer belt, shoot it again, then use an adrenaline shot and throw a flashbang onto the riddled corpses for old times' sake back when you didn't kill everything immediately.

 

[Tacgnol]

Started playing a spear build last night, definitely one of the better melee builds I've tried.

Spear + riot gear and shield makes most melee attackers pretty trivial to deal with.

 

[Black Angel]

Bros, quick question: I took a glance at the wiki and saw some items being marked with, "This [item] is not meant to and cannot be worn in a normal playthrough." Does this mean the item in question

(1). Can't be retrieved and equipped through normal means (and has to be through cheat engine/console command or similar ways) or
(2). Can't be retrieved when playing on a Normal-difficulty playthrough?

Because if it's the (2), I think I finally have really good reason graduate from Normal difficulty, and start a proper Hard playthrough.

 

[Parabalus]

Bros, quick question: I took a glance at the wiki and saw some items being marked with, "This [item] is not meant to and cannot be worn in a normal playthrough." Does this mean the item in question

(1). Can't be retrieved and equipped through normal means (and has to be through cheat engine/console command or similar ways) or
(2). Can't be retrieved when playing on a Normal-difficulty playthrough?

Because if it's the (2), I think I finally have really good reason graduate from Normal difficulty, and start a proper Hard playthrough.

First.

Don't think there are any major additions on Hard, DOMINATING adds some new areas.

 

[Tygrende]

Bros, quick question: I took a glance at the wiki and saw some items being marked with, "This [item] is not meant to and cannot be worn in a normal playthrough." Does this mean the item in question

(1). Can't be retrieved and equipped through normal means (and has to be through cheat engine/console command or similar ways) or
(2). Can't be retrieved when playing on a Normal-difficulty playthrough?

Because if it's the (2), I think I finally have really good reason graduate from Normal difficulty, and start a proper Hard playthrough.

Those are either cut content or items found in the mutant-only questline. That or false/outdated info, there's a bit of that on the wiki too.

 

[Blaine]

Tygrende

Some of them are equipment that's worn by unique/named enemies, like the modified robe that allows Stygian what's-his-name to spam Bilocation in the Arena.

Do not try to understand the rules—that's impossible. The enemies don't follow the rules. Instead, only try to realize that you must obliterate every enemy in one turn before it can attempt to cheat.

Spoiler

Also take Versatility, pump Dexterity to 18, set Perception and Constitution to 3, as well as take Psi Empathy and invest in Temporal Manipulation.

 

[ItsChon]

Dominating really isn't super hard, I don't know what people are complaining about. I had to restart five times before I could get a build right that was viable on normal, and it probably would've taken me even more attempts if I didn't finally read peoples builds and get an idea of what I needed. I only play Dominating now, and I often play sub-par builds that use cobbled together elements from multiple different builts. I.E, my Metathermic Tin Can Sledge Hammer Build. I wanted to be tanky as fuck. I wanted to try a Metathermics build with the new Plasma Beam Psi power, and I wanted to slam people with a sledge hammer. I made a build that works. It's far from optimal, but I was able to do everything I wanted to do, and I had a great time doing it. If you don't want to play Dominating, that's fine, but I don't think it's gimmicky at all. I honestly can't play the game any other way now, since anything below Dominating is just way too easy.

EDIT: Metathermic Tin Can was really fun though, and I'm sure it could be optimized even further if someone that was actually good at making builds took a crack at it. If anyone's interested I can drop.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

ofc it's not hard, you just find some autistic person who wasted hours making an optimized build and copy it

speaking of which, got any builds to share chon?

 

[ItsChon]

ofc it's not hard, you just find some autistic person who wasted hours making an optimized build and copy it

speaking of which, got any builds to share chon?

That's my point though, you don't have to hyper optimize anything. Here's my Sledgehammer Tin Can Metathermic Psion for example (rough feat order).

https://underrail.info/build/?HA4DA...zxoXgAAwpYASABbKwhfLVAqPxI9wrxgLlUfZMK2wrjfvw

I want my build to do three things. Soak up damage, deal enough damage through Metathermics to be useful, and deal enough damage with my Sledgehammer to be useful. If I want to soak up damage, I'll need some Constitution, if I want to deal damage with my Sledgehammer, I'll need strength, and if I want to deal damage with Psionics, I'll need Will and likely some intelligence. I start by dumping Dexterity, Perception, and Agility to three. This gives me 19 skill points to play around with. I have some experience with Psi builds, so I know that six intelligence is a must for Premeditation, and I also know that the only Psionic feats that rely on an intelligence higher than six is psycho-neural flexibility. How do I know that? I went into the character builder, and I typed "Psi" into the feat section, and just looked at every skill. Plus, I need it for Expose Weakness too, so an easy choice. So now I'm down to 16 skill points. I want my build to be tanky, so I go ahead and type "Constitution" into the feat bar next. A quick glance over lets me see that there are a ton of useful feats that rely on Constitution, so it looks like I'm going to have to invest a lot of points here. I put the cut off at 9 Constitution, as this allows me to take all the damage resisting feats that I need. This means I forego thick skull, but since Bullhead exists, this is a sacrifice I'm willing to make, not to mention I'm used to avoiding stuns due to playing primarily glass cannon builds. This leaves me with 10 points, and two stats left. This is where some of the experience comes into play, and I admit that someone who hasn't experimented with both sledgehammer builds and psi builds couldn't implicitly know this. I've played Psi builds before, and I know that you can still deal a fairly decent amount of damage with just 10 or even 8 points into Will. I've also played Sledgehammer builds before, and I know that if you're not dealing enough damage to consistently one shot enemies, you're going to have a rough time. Knowing this, I split my remaining ten points between Will and Strength, giving me a final split of

Strength: 8
Dexterity: 3
Agility: 3
Constitution: 9
Perception: 3
Will: 8
Intelligence: 6

and I'll be pumping ever stat point I get into strength to make sure my melee damage scales throughout the game. I don't care that I only have 8 Will because the whole point of this build is to whittle down the tanky enemies as they close the distance, and the squishy enemies that deal a lot of damage will be weak enough so that my low Will score won't matter. Just from looking at these base stats I know that I won't be as effective in the early game due to less than optimal base stats in my two main combat abilities, but this is temporary, and I know I can deal with a lot of this early game weakness by utilizing traps and grenades.

All that's left to worry about is feats. As I established previously, I want to be tanky, I want to deal damage with my sledgehammer, and I want to deal damage with psionics (metathermics). So, I look up all the feats that are related to being tanky, and I make note of them. I look up all the feats that are related to sledgehammers, and I take note of them, and I look up all the feats that are related to dealing Metathermic damage, and I take note of them. I also take note of some utility/QoL feats that I might want. Finally, I review the mental list I've made, and I try to make sure that I have enough feats to accommodate everything, and if I don't, I start making cuts to see what I can live without. If I have a question about a feat and its usefulness, I'll just check the Underrail and RPGCodex forums to ask. The rest is just ordering them as I see fit, and that changes depending on how the build fares through the game. The build above is the end result. I did all the quests and side content, even went through Fetid Marsh.

I broke it down as simply as possible, and this same process goes for any build. I handicap myself by taking persuasion in every single build, and I have not made some otherwise viable builds because I couldn't make the skill point distribution work. I'm honestly not good at making builds; I never have been. If this constitutes "autism", then fair enough, but I'm pretty sure anyone here can do this, and there's people here that can probably do it far better than me. I just don't like when people sit around and circle-jerk about how dominating is super hard and only turbo-autists can make dominating viable builds. I mean, it definitely feeds into my superiority complex, but it's really not that hard.

 

[Black Angel]

First.

Don't think there are any major additions on Hard, DOMINATING adds some new areas.

Those are either cut content or items found in the mutant-only questline. That or false/outdated info, there's a bit of that on the wiki too.

Sheessh, sounds like either some kind of oversight to get those things in the wiki, or just plain no fun allowed.

But wait, DOMINATING-only content pretty much confirmed? I thought it's just because people hasn't been playing on Normal, or at least hasn't confirmed if those content can't be found on Hard...what the fuck is this?

Dominating really isn't super hard, I don't know what people are complaining about.

My problem with this case is the fact that Stygsoft themselves proclaimed, in-game, that Normal is The Way the Game Meant to Be Played™, and that DOMINATING weren't meant to be viable to be beaten normally. Actually, my problem is with difficulty modes in general.

Anyway, I could understand if these exclusive content were meant to reward those who played above Normal, meaning at least Hard playthrough would've been pretty much welcome. But the literal Insane Difficulty? Really, Styg?

 

[Blaine]

Black Angel

If you want to experience Dominating content, simply import your level 30 character into a new game carrying all fifty tons of his accumulated possessions and charons with him.

That's what I'm going to do.

 

[Blaine]

I've just hit 22 with my sniper, and I'm changing my lesson plan.

For the first time ever, I'll be dropping Power Management. I've come to terms with the unnecessary and obnoxious bullshit of feeding small batteries into NVGs like they're reverse Pez dispensers, because waiting until they're empty and then using a big battery can be hazardous if you happen to forget. Best to keep them topped off, in which case Power Management is largely superfluous. I'm going to take Trap Expert instead, because frankly I don't have enough time left in my life left to waste arming traps at the default snail's pace, fast-forward function or no. Additionally, the extra speed can allow me to place traps in places that might otherwise get me noticed before I finish setting them.

I'm strongly considering swapping Blindsiding for Opportunist, since I don't really feel I need the extra power for sniper rifle special attacks at this stage, and Opportunist works with both traps and flashbangs during intervals when I can't use Snipe or Aimed Shot.

Once I hit 30, I can decide between Strider, Gun Nut, Blindsiding, or whatever else I may want by then.

For the first time ever, I'm speccing Interloper to the max (other spec was 1/4 Shooting Spree). This way, when I pop out of stealth to use Snipe and Aimed Shot as I nearly always do, I will have real MP left to use in addition to Sprint—and can Blitz it all up if necessary, combine with an Adrenaline Shot, or whatever. There are also Smoke Bombs to consider, now that I have access to Oculus.

I've settled on an 8.6mm primary sniper rifle. It's powerful enough with a Smart Module and AA scope, and with a RR, it costs 32 AP to fire. This is perfect, because ideally I'll be able to Snipe, Aimed Shot, throw a grenade or incendiary, inject a Focus Stim or whatever (with Doctor's Pouch), then fire yet a third time, possibly benefiting from Ambush; and if I miss initially, I'm slightly less fucked than I was when relying on a 50 AP 12.7mm.

All in all, getting very close to enemies and spraying with the SMG "felt better" to me than playing a sniper, because snipers rely on cooldown bursts and a little luck, and have to fall back on Spearheads or the Dragunov if anything gets remotely close (if you went full-blown sniper with Strafe, as I did). Ambush is also virtually guaranteed not to help you if enemies are close. Snipers are generally dogshit at close range when waiting out cooldowns, which of course makes sense, but can be annoying.