Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[Modron]

How do non sneaky builds maintain their sanity down there with all the respawning enemies?

Zone transitions because all those little areas you can duck into, ladders down, et cetera reset the time to arrival. At least that's how I remember it from 8 years ago.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Hot damn I did not expect the Deep Caverns to be so big.

How do non sneaky builds maintain their sanity down there with all the respawning enemies?

Simple, don't spawn them. When you're in the Deep Caverns you need to haul arse. There's a way to slow down the counter, but you'll have to find it. Also the Eye of Tchort is only in some regions and I don't think the spawns happen in Cytosine.
Look out for bunkers. They have a biohazard symbol them. They'll cause the counter to reset to buy you more time.

Even with my tin can I still managed to get by DC without too many spawns.

The thing about DC is that there's not that many enemies in the Hollow Earth areas, so you don't need to use stealth that much.

 

[jackofshadows]

How do non sneaky builds maintain their sanity down there with all the respawning enemies?

You only need sneak if you've got hostile faceless (then you're in for annoyance anyway on DOM though since those ambush guys have premium detection). As for chortlings, it's better to walk non-sneaked in fact, for speed purpose between the safe spots. This is where DC misinformation grows from btw, that you have to fight chortlings, that DC are "insane" and "unbalanced" or whatever.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

The best way to not deal with faceless is not to aggro them. There's no reason to be a dick to them anyway, unless you want to be a dick that is.
Or have dummy thicc Thought Control. That allows you to get away with all sorts of shit, iirc.

The hardest part of DC is the power plant and the apartment complex.
The former because it's a little tricky to navigate and there's annoying enemies and the latter because there's fucking Greater spiders everywhere.

The Labyrinth is pretty bad too but it's completely optional unless you don't want to bother with spooky ghosts or want the rancor.

 

[lukaszek]

How do non sneaky builds

the what now?

 

[None]

There are plenty of things that DC could do better but I absolutely love the fact that "lore as a reward" is so prevalent down there. Really, that's probably my favorite thing about the game overall, it does little to spoon feed you about what is actually going on and the setting is interesting enough that you're eager to get that next bit of info.

 

[Andnjord]

Alright lads, sitting on top Tchort’s (or should I say Otis ) cave and I know what I’m supposed to do with the mutagen puzzle (I stopped just as I scanned all the remaining mutagens), just need to sit down, make a spreadsheet and figure it out. Let’s gooooo!

About the mutagen puzzle though some things don’t seem to make sense to me:

Spoiler

We’re informed that there are Exitus-1 and Exitus-2 mutagens both of which are deadly to Tchort. Given that we do find a copy of Exitus-1, what’s stopping us from pouring that one straight in, why do we have to make another copy of it? And why even mention Exitus-2 if it’s never going to be relevant and is most likely to just send the player on a mad chase to find it thinking they somehow missed it?

Before I started double checking the entire DC I quickly checked the wiki and it confirmed my sneaking suspicions, but it seems to me that there is no in game way of confirming it.

Or did I miss something?

One last thing: why can’t we scan all the mutagens at once Styg, whyyyyy!!!

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

There's an online tool for it, but yeah it is pretty bad.
If you're not on dom then you can just skip it. If you are on dom then skip it anyway but git gud.

 

[lukaszek]

just need to sit down, make a spreadsheet and figure it out.

there is a tool, so you dont need to go crazy with excel

 

[lukaszek]

There's an online tool for it, but yeah it is pretty bad.
If you're not on dom then you can just skip it. If you are on dom then skip it anyway but git gud.

its not a proper underrail experience if you cant solve puzzle and sneak destroy tanks with dynamite

 

[Andnjord]

just need to sit down, make a spreadsheet and figure it out.

there is a tool, so you dont need to go crazy with excel

Too late! It wasn’t too bad actually, I just came in with the assumption that it would be much more complex than it really was. I thought I would have to combine and recombine stuff until I tried to just add the atoms I needed one by one without asking myself many questions and then it all fitted neatly together.

But given what I’ve found ingame I still don’t understand why we can’t just pour the Exitus-1 straight in.

 

[Andnjord]

Gentlemen.

It is done.

Spoiler

Tchort went down in two shots from the trusty 12.7mm Corsair, one Snipe, one Aimed Shot. Made a hard save before taking the train the North Underrail in case I want to take this character to Expeditions/Heavy Duty. But first I'm going to make a Hard mode (not dominating, I'm scared!) Heavy Guns heavy armor character, unleash the power of the DAKKAAAAA.

Also, trying to search for any answer to my mutagen questions I had I found some Exitus-1 sequences other people had gotten. I saw some as short as 8 and as long as 12. Mine was the full fucking 14 atoms long, for fuck sake

 

[lukaszek]

Andnjord embrace dominating, you cant go back

 

[CHEMS]

Also, I need to consider wether I want to go on a genocidal rampage on the Institute or not. Considering that the tunnelling Faceless in the University’s West Wing attacked me on sight it seems like I might have issues with them. I did talk to Six before reloading and it seems like the only other people I’ll meet down there will be that Monsignore I kept hearing about, so better to keep one faction friendly.

I never could bring myself to kill anyone in the institute. Sure the higher ups are a bunch of freaks, but i could never ever kill my bro Georgis. He's apex.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Also, I need to consider wether I want to go on a genocidal rampage on the Institute or not. Considering that the tunnelling Faceless in the University’s West Wing attacked me on sight it seems like I might have issues with them. I did talk to Six before reloading and it seems like the only other people I’ll meet down there will be that Monsignore I kept hearing about, so better to keep one faction friendly.

I never could bring myself to kill anyone in the institute. Sure the higher ups are a bunch of freaks, but i could never ever kill my bro Georgis. He's apex.

Honestly, it's not really that the higher ups are really genetic freaks either. Only Eidein himself is hinted at being some sort of monstrous presence beneath his mask. The rest of them are humans. Mengele-like in some ways? Absolutely.

In fact, they very much make me think what BioCorp was like at the end in some levels, but without the religious fundamentalism. Experimenting constantly, creating new and horrible things, but with a clouded end-goal.

Was it really the institute's mission to take back the surface? Or was it just to feed Tchort? You could question the high level scientists beneath the Apex Technocrats experimenting with the mutagen compound in the same way. What was the end goal of their work? Really, it seems like it was change for the sake of change, experimentation just for its own sake. Yes, from that sort of work we can gain tremendous understandings, but we can also really do terrible things and can risk even losing sight of whatever goals we might have.

In a lot of ways, the work done by Dyson and others was vastly different to those of the mutagen scientists. Successes of the mutagen outcome were too random, or too unique to duplicate effectively (Anton 'Wight' Matveev, Wyatt Pear, Kirill 'Vovin' Gavrilyuk as examples). Two of those successes were, at the least, crafted genome by genome by Dr. Slavkovic himself, a giant amongst giants in the realm of genetics.

Dyson (the Dude) was more interested in a combination of cryogenics and psionics, as evidenced by Slavkovic's own state when discovered as Vitek in-game.

 

[CHEMS]

Also, I need to consider wether I want to go on a genocidal rampage on the Institute or not. Considering that the tunnelling Faceless in the University’s West Wing attacked me on sight it seems like I might have issues with them. I did talk to Six before reloading and it seems like the only other people I’ll meet down there will be that Monsignore I kept hearing about, so better to keep one faction friendly.

I never could bring myself to kill anyone in the institute. Sure the higher ups are a bunch of freaks, but i could never ever kill my bro Georgis. He's apex.

Honestly, it's not really that the higher ups are really genetic freaks either. Only Eidein himself is hinted at being some sort of monstrous presence beneath his mask. The rest of them are humans. Mengele-like in some ways? Absolutely.

In fact, they very much make me think what BioCorp was like at the end in some levels, but without the religious fundamentalism. Experimenting constantly, creating new and horrible things, but with a clouded end-goal.

Was it really the institute's mission to take back the surface? Or was it just to feed Tchort? You could question the high level scientists beneath the Apex Technocrats experimenting with the mutagen compound in the same way. What was the end goal of their work? Really, it seems like it was change for the sake of change, experimentation just for its own sake. Yes, from that sort of work we can gain tremendous understandings, but we can also really do terrible things and can risk even losing sight of whatever goals we might have.

In a lot of ways, the work done by Dyson and others was vastly different to those of the mutagen scientists. Successes of the mutagen outcome were too random, or too unique to duplicate effectively (Anton 'Wight' Matveev, Wyatt Pear, Kirill 'Vovin' Gavrilyuk as examples). Two of those successes were, at the least, crafted genome by genome by Dr. Slavkovic himself, a giant amongst giants in the realm of genetics.

Dyson (the Dude) was more interested in a combination of cryogenics and psionics, as evidenced by Slavkovic's own state when discovered as Vitek in-game.

They feel more like religious zealots then scientists, to be honest. I feel like Eidein just manipulates the Institute in order to gain power and he's not really that interested in humanity well being, the same can't be said by the regular scientists that seem preoccupied with issues like manipulating DNA in order to cure diseases (well they

Spoiler

turned demetrius into a freak in the process

, but i think you get my idea)

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Well, the thing is too you must remember about Tchort: he's an amalgamation of the scientists that were monsters themselves. So, yeah, it's a new personality, one that is identified by a hunger. But also one that is absolutely identified by the sick genius of those men and women that were the building blocks of organic matter that became it. Who's to say that it's not Tchort extending its will over the institute in this way, feeding the ego of the scientists/Tchort deity while at the same time feeding it. In some ways it's using Eidein towards its end goal. What is that? Feeding its hunger? Becoming something more?

 

[Spark Mandriller]

But given what I’ve found ingame I still don’t understand why we can’t just pour the Exitus-1 straight in.

If you try doing that the computer says that specific mutagen has been blacklisted. Too dangerous or something.

 

[Andnjord]

Got started on the Tin Can, Heavy Guns/crafting build, and damn if those rat hounds at the start weren’t a problem on Hard difficulty when having low Guns skill (due to pumping heavy guns) and no useful feats. Thankfully a combination of caltrops and flares ended up doing the trick, but it was touch and go. Saving Nevil from the Azuridae was a challenge too, but throwing nets saved the day. Managed to craft a LMG before going into GMS.

I stopped after finishing old Junkyard, them big mutants were also a serious danger but full dakka to the face saved the day eventually. On the other hand it was hilarious to craft a flashbang resistant helmet and metal armour to deal with the robots of Depot A, I was completely immune to anything they could do.

Hard difficulty is being fun so far, it’s nice to be forced to use all the consumables and tricks the game gives you. As for the build I can see it continuing to be fun, but damn if the ammo consumption isn’t a nightmare, seems like tagging Mercantile is mandatory and I’m seriously wondering if I shouldn’t also pick up the Disassemble Feat.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Hard difficulty is being fun so far, it’s nice to be forced to use all the consumables and tricks the game gives you. As for the build I can see it continuing to be fun, but damn if the ammo consumption isn’t a nightmare, seems like tagging Mercantile is mandatory and I’m seriously wondering if I shouldn’t also pick up the Disassemble Feat.

From my experience Hard is not really that hard if you know the basic mechanics - even without metagaming knowledge after Junkyard I was able to mop the floor with everything and mid game I was swimming in tons of adrenalines/morphines/focus stims etc that rarely had to use. That was with SMG build WITHOUT temporal manipulation dip.

I have the same problem with ammo consumption currently on DOM (similar SMG build, only this time with versatility and TM), and the remedy seems to be pickpocketing - with ~50 dip you can steal bullets from almost everyone, and they restock once in a while, so ammo-wise you can rely on loot and stealing most of the time. Problem on DOM is with W2C ones.

 

[Piotrovitz]

And mercantile is great to have on any difficulty, just for getting access to extra stocks which usually contain high lvl crafting components and extra W2C bullets. Disassemble is a waste of a feat.

 

[lukaszek]

remedy seems to be pickpocketing

pickpocketing is always the answer

ammo consumption currently on DOM

even better answer is adding sneaking on top and thus reducing consumption

only to come into realisation that any consumption is bad mkay, and switch to thrown spears/melee. Or at least pew pew small guns, not brrrr ones

 

[Piotrovitz]

running around and brrrrr'ing 5-6 times per round is just too damn satisfying : |

 

[Andnjord]

only to come into realisation that any consumption is bad mkay, and switch to thrown spears/melee. Or at least pew pew small guns, not brrrr ones

Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA!

And mercantile is great to have on any difficulty, just for getting access to extra stocks which usually contain high lvl crafting components and extra W2C bullets.

Yeah, thankfully I saw that issue coming up so I did pick mercantile as one of my primary skills, will be nice to get all those high level components and craft uber gear at end.

Disassemble is a waste of a feat.

Roger that, considering all the DAKKA feats I need and possibly some of the tanking ones I doubt I’ll have the spare feats anyways.

As for pickpocketing I’m afraid I just don’t have the patience for that kind of shenanigans.

 

[None]

I’m seriously wondering if I shouldn’t also pick up the Disassemble Feat.

If you're already putting points into Mercantile then why bother? You'll have access to the highest quality components, just at the mercy of randomness.