Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[Spark Mandriller]

What are the 4 locations it can spawn?

The three areas directly north of the Rail Crossing train, and the one directly west of the flooded vault.
The hard part is that random encounters have their own seed that nobody really understands, so just saving and loading won't work. You need to load and then wander around or wait a set amount of time or something and then try again. And again, that's one chance per area. It checks once, when you enter the zone, and if it doesn't decide to spawn a hole then it never will. If you enter all four possible areas and none of them spawn it then you're screwed and have to load a save from before you checked them. Though the good news is that also means the holes stay forever, so you can't lose them once they do spawn.
My usual strategy when I want a specific hole is to keep checking back every once in a while. When the trains first come online then I immediately save and go check. If I get a hole in the first area I check then that's fine, if I don't then I load my game and go do the battery plant or shopping in Core City or something. And then when that's done I save and check again. If one spawns good, if not then I go do the battery plant or whatever and check again, and so on and so on. By checking every once in a while I give a lot of time for the seed to change, and since I'm only doing it incidentally it doesn't get boring as hell either. Simple way to get all three/four holes to spawn on the same save without going mad.

One thing to note is that we're nearly at the time when Luperchaun can start spawning, so that's a positive and a negative if you're looking for holes. On the plus side it's interesting to find him. On the negative side that's another possible hole which means it's less likely to spawn the metathermics beetles. Still probably worth it for the novelty though.

 

[Sykar]

Funny behaviour, while using the PSI inhalant will put you out of stealth, you can re-stealth during the the inhalation.

 

[Zeem]

Funny behaviour, while using the PSI inhalant will put you out of stealth, you can re-stealth during the the inhalation.

Bandages probably work the same way now that I think of it.

 

[Sykar]

That is worth a try!

 

[Sykar]

Just out of curiosity, does Utility Station 6 appear randomly or is there a trigger for it? Last time I went to Upper Underrail with my Blood PSI Can I could get to it imediatly, now on my stealth PSI it is not there.

 

[Trashos]

Sykar, I think that Utility Station 6 is triggered after the Tchortists steal the cube.

Spark Mandriller, cheers. It had always looked to me like there was some content missing near the Hanging Rat

I didn't know about Luper either. The days are approaching!

 

[Trashos]

Can anyone think of any reason why a Falchion pistol would be used as the main weapon of a pistol build?

I am looking at its entry in the wiki. Assuming it is correct, the Falchion is a prestigious crafting-only pile of trash. Hammerers give average damage and critical damage, Neo Lugers give precision and low damage spread, all the while the crafting-only Falchions give... 5% additional critical chance?!

Not sure why it is so trash. It is crafting-only, it should have been the best (at least for certain builds). I am theorycrafting some pistol builds right now, and for the life of me I cannot think of any reason why I would use it in any build.

(Maybe the quality of the Falchion frames gets higher than the others? I doubt it, but that's the only thing that might make it make sense.)

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

You might want to reread the wiki.
The Falchion gives the highest crit chance of all frames, not crit damage. It has a decent damage spread and does more max damage than the Luger, but less than the hammerer. It comes chambered in 7.62mm and 9mm.

Hammerer has the highest max damage but the lowest min damage, meaning that it has unreliable damage output. It also has the highest crit damage modifier. It comes chambered in 7.62mm, 9mm, and is the only weapon (outside of Old World weapons) that comes chambered in .44.

Neo Luger comes with a +5% precision bonus, but a penalty to crit damage. It also has a tight damage spread, making it pretty reliable. However, its max damage isn't that much higher than the Hawker, lower than that of the Falchion and much lower than the hammerer. It only comes chambered in 5mm and 9mm.

The Hawker is just weak overall, but it's better for silenced weapons because unlike the luger it doesn't have crit damage penalty, meaning that aimed shot will do more damage.
It comes in 5mm and 7.62mm.

But yes, it would seem the meta for most "gunslinger" builds is centered around the hammerer with a lot of dex to have enough AP reduction so you can use the .44 version more than once per turn.

 

[Trashos]

CthuluIsSpy, I had corrected my post before you replied. 5% additional crit chance (one THIRD of what the focus stim offers) means what to who? People who want power will choose the Hammerer, people who want certainty will choose the Neo Luger, who is going to choose the Falchion? Do you choose the Falchion yourself?

(Iirc Hawker frame quality does not go as high as the others. So I am not using it in the comparisons.)

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Well, if you want a more reliable damage spread but not the crit damage penalty of the luger, the Falchion might be a safe pick.
Overall though, yes, I agree. Crit damage is overall more useful than Crit chance because of its synergy with aimed shot, and with a proper gunslinger build you'll be firing so many shots that the hammerer's damage spread doesn't really matter.

Maybe burst fire works better for the falchion? Each shot has a chance to crit, right?
The Falchion seems like a middle ground between Luger and Hammerer.
More damage than the Luger, but much less maximum damage and more reliable output than the Hammerer.

It's probably best to think of it as an upgraded Hawker that loses the ability to take 5mm rounds.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

Falchion is bad compared to other pistol types and the only use case for it is if you somehow find a frame for one in high quality and can't find any good hammerer frames so you're forced to stick with it.
I don't know why Styg goes to such effort to balance everything else but leaves different weapon types so broken. Hawker/falchion suck. Jackrabbit/impala suck. Rebel sucks. Corsair and harbinger both suck but they're the only .50 sniper rifles, so you have this weird situation where if you want to use a big boy rifle you have to pick one of the shit types.
It's especially sad to compare the sniper rifles. Falchion and impala aren't very good but at least they give you +5% crit chance. Harbinger gives you... +1%. And corsair is one of those slightly higher average damage but also wide damage range so it's unreliable type weapons, except that's it. Steel cat/hammerer/vindicator do the same thing except they also get a crit damage bonus because wide damage range is annoying and nobody actually wants it. Corsair doesn't. It just sucks. Great.

(Iirc Hawker frame quality does not go as high as the others. So I am not using it in the comparisons.)

It does. Just rng if you haven't seen any high quality ones. Not that you're missing much.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Eh, Hawker is meant to be a starter weapon, and it has its niche as a silenced pistol.
Ditto for the jackrabbit. I used it as an covert ops weapon up until I found the uzi.
Impala is pretty disappointing though.

Agreed on the sniper rifles. I ended up using a 8.6mm Reaper with a bunch of upgrades and it really slaps. If you use the crit damage scope and the smart module you can have a pretty scary alpha strike. Throw in a rapid reloader and you can probably shoot twice a turn, or shoot once and use an item / your side arm.
It felt so much better to use than the 12.7mm variants.

 

[Tygrende]

Falchion is bad compared to other pistol types and the only use case for it is if you somehow find a frame for one in high quality and can't find any good hammerer frames so you're forced to stick with it.
I don't know why Styg goes to such effort to balance everything else but leaves different weapon types so broken. Hawker/falchion suck. Jackrabbit/impala suck. Rebel sucks. Corsair and harbinger both suck but they're the only .50 sniper rifles, so you have this weird situation where if you want to use a big boy rifle you have to pick one of the shit types.
It's especially sad to compare the sniper rifles. Falchion and impala aren't very good but at least they give you +5% crit chance. Harbinger gives you... +1%. And corsair is one of those slightly higher average damage but also wide damage range so it's unreliable type weapons, except that's it. Steel cat/hammerer/vindicator do the same thing except they also get a crit damage bonus because wide damage range is annoying and nobody actually wants it. Corsair doesn't. It just sucks. Great.

(Iirc Hawker frame quality does not go as high as the others. So I am not using it in the comparisons.)

It does. Just rng if you haven't seen any high quality ones. Not that you're missing much.

I don't actually mind it with sniper rifles as much because it feels more like it's supposed to be a linear progression rather than competition.

Corsair is almost always the first sniper rifle you can find/craft/buy and it's the worst by far with its only saving graces being it can be chambered for all calibers and has highest max damage.

You then are most likely to craft/buy harbringer which offers more consistent damage, but can't be 7.62 which can shoot twice with adrenaline, so there's still reason to use corsair at this point.

If you're lucky you may buy a reaper frame from Gort before Depot A but it's usually found post-Depot A. This one makes corsair irrelevant with more consistent damage, higher crit damage and ability to be 7.62. Harbringer is still what you would use if you want it to be .50.

And then spearhead is the rarest frame that also needs the rapid reloader to blow all the others out of the water on actual sniper builds just because it has zero move penalty with strafe, even though reaper has higher crit damage and can shoot only slightly less often over a a lot of turns. Reaper and .50 harbringer are still something to be considered if sniper rifle is only supposed to be an addition to a build with an other primary weapon.


As for Falchion, it does kinda suck. Hammerer is just better if you're going for crits. Only reason to use it would be if you wanted max crit chance, but it can't compare to the 23% base crit chance revolver that also gets another 11% from steadfast aim. I think it's just a case of something that was added very early in the game development and was never tweaked as time went on.

 

[Trashos]

I have been thinking what features the Falchion should have instead. "Moar daamage!" is too obvious and direct, so I dismissed it.

Upgrading the Falchion:
a) Bigger magazine.
It is handcrafted after all. Luger has precision (making laser sights less of a requirement), so maybe the Falchion could have less of a requirement for an extended magazine. This produces nice synergy with the Commando Belt for versatility builds.
(because wearing the Commando Belt means you are NOT wearing the Bullet Strap Belt, so you could do with fewer reloads. Also the bigger magazine ties in with the many shots/turn that versatility builds have).

b) Greater frame quality.
Additionally, maybe the Falchion frames could go a bit higher in quality than the other frames. I think this makes sense, since it is crafting only. Assuming all pistol frames go up to ~160 right now (I am not sure), maybe the Falchion could go up to 180. Crafting-only, and asking for serious skillpoint investment!

The +5% crit chance the Falchion already has can stay or it can go. I don't really care.

 

[jackofshadows]

I don't know why Styg goes to such effort to balance everything else but leaves different weapon types so broken.

I don't mind it and prefer this to absolute sawyerism. When you have so much different gear it's alright to have 100% worse types of gear to compare stuff. That said, I don't think Styg's left things like that deliberately, looks more as kind of an oversight.

Then again, you cannot just balance weapons on the basis of players who go for ~100% crit chance builds.

 

[lukaszek]

crit chance could use feat like critical power, potentially exclusive, so that its not always crit dmg >> crit chance

 

[ciox]

Still think it would be cool if we could learn this somehow https://www.stygiansoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=Electromagnetic_Burst

 

[Zeem]

Still think it would be cool if we could learn this somehow https://www.stygiansoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=Electromagnetic_Burst

Yeah, it's called an EMP grenade

 

[lukaszek]

Still think it would be cool if we could learn this somehow https://www.stygiansoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=Electromagnetic_Burst

Yeah, it's called an EMP grenade

I could see it being fun, centered on you and work sort of like demolitionist belt - bring as many batteries as you can, discharge, somehow survive.


Speaking of, anyone was able to have ungodly amount of sneak to place jet ski batteries in enemy inventory and discharge that? I never found ninja feat to be useful outside of lowering the tedium of stealing something from everyone

 

[Tygrende]

Speaking of, anyone was able to have ungodly amount of sneak to place jet ski batteries in enemy inventory and discharge that? I never found ninja feat to be useful outside of lowering the tedium of stealing something from everyone

You can't reverse pickpocket in Underrail.

You can do some fun stuff with ninja looter, like stealing oddities and other stuff from incapacitated enemies, including a lot of bosses with unique oddities and strong drugs they would use on their first turn otherwise. Spec it and together with very high stealth it's even possible to pick pocket non-hostile NPCs without them seeing you. I used it extensively in my pacifist run, but it's not really optimal to take otherwise.

https://s1.webmshare.com/Qb89d.webm

 

[ciox]

I very vaguely remember something about it being possible in old versions of Underrail, can't really test easily but I think you had to ctrl+click in your inventory while the pickpocket window was open, or something.

 

[Arthandas]

Here's my comprehensive review of Underrail:

Spoiler

 

[CHEMS]

Can anyone think of any reason why a Falchion pistol would be used as the main weapon of a pistol build?

No, it sucks ass. Hammerer and hawker are the only ones worth using.

 

[Trashos]

Hammerer and hawker are the only ones worth using.

The Neo Luger is pretty good with its precision bonus. Even more so when using JHP against lightly armored opponents, when you want to make sure that you are doing enough damage for the JHP bullet to deliver its miracles.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

The lower crit damage hurts it though. With most fights you'd want to open up with aimed shot, and dealing only 90% of your damage hampers it a little.