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Underrail: The Incline Awakens

Tigranes

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You god damn knife fundie fight me and my rusty appendage
 

Blaine

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Can you make the Supersoldier Drug or any other endgame drugs before DC now? The wiki says it requires tchortling brains.

You can make Regenerative Mixture thanks to the Tchortists and Grim Jetters, provided you can pass the Mercantile check to access their special merchandise.

Investigator Vuk sells Biofusive Scoby and Clean Blastema, and Katya sells Biofusive Scoby and Muscarine. Prednisone Solution does indeed appear to be DC-exclusive, so in terms of Supersoldier Drug, you're limited to the very few doses you can buy (2 from Ladelman's special merchandise) or find.

Furthermore, Investigator Vuk always sells one Crawler Poison Gland per refresh, and Becket (Free Drones) sometimes sells one dose of prepared Crawler Poison. This is helpful, since in an entire 100+ hour playthrough you might end up with about 30ish vials of Crawler Poison due to the fact that they have an MMO-tier drop rate, even though you have to fight hundreds of the fucking things. My vague guess is that the drop rate of the poison glands is around 10%.

Short list of things to always buy on sight, no matter what stage of the game you may be in or how broke you are:

  • Crawler Poison/Gland
  • Napalm C
  • Image Intensifier Tube
  • Pentapus (if you can craft Psionic Reinvigorators)
  • rare acids
 
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Blaine

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Stygian Software "balancing" in action:

stygian_software_quote_unquote_balancing.png


These jets are essentially identical, and with identical parts in the comparison, but with tweaks. The Cruiser has 33% more HP, 5% more cover, and +10% DR/+10 DT; the Patroller has a 7% higher speed modifier (you would need a computer program to measure the realtime speed difference during play) and 5% more Maneuverability. Basically, you'd only be able to notice the slight benefit of using the Patroller if you're melee, whereas the substantial malus to survivability is very noticeable. All things considered, the Cruiser is straight-up better. According to the Wiki's heavily outdated info, the Patroller may have had 375 HP at one point. No doubt this was changed for some bizarre reason, most likely because, as an Aegis quest reward, Styg decided it was "too good" compared to purchased jets. That's just a guess.

"Well, the Patroller's probably made more cheaply," I can anticipate someone suggesting. Don't even start with that shit.

Also, my choice of the XG Beta 3.5 and BArm Lightstep 250 engines is no accident. These two green-quality engines provide 600 power for 80.00 weight and 200 consumption, whereas the BArm Hauler 600, a blue-quality large engine, provides 600 power for 100.00 weight and 260 consumption. BALANCE! In any case, in the real world, one large engine will always be more efficient than two independent engines working in tandem when producing the same amount of work, given the same technological framework. You can't even use the excuse that the smaller engines are made better, because the Hauler 600 is a higher-quality engine. BALANCE!

On the plus side, the Cruiser remains the best all-rounder in the game. It excels at nothing, but has penultimate (that is, one step from the best; if you're a pirate, might as well be the best, easy to 100%) stability, penultimate survivability, good and very customizable speed/haulage/consumption ratios, and you actually get paid to take one when you strip the loot off the useless tin cans you mowed down in order to access it.

Anyway, I'm pretty grumpy because the Freighter now constantly drops its tow cable on all jets in all conditions when going in a straight line unless I slow it down to a total crawl by putting in a tiny engine and overloading it. I know that I'd be asked to provide a save file and a DXDiag, etc., but it likely won't do any good, because I'm 99% sure I already know the reason: The updated game engine allows me to run the game at a higher refresh rate. I have a 144Hz monitor. That is the major change between my last few post-Expedition playthroughs and this one. It's the refresh rate.
 
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ItsChon

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
It's not a moot point when shock bolts are clearly the elemental bolt that Crossbows players rely on the most, and the ones used to justify the current balancing of the weapon.
You can use any of the quiet elemental bolts in a silent way if you're planning to silently kill three or even four enemies. Your whole point was about how elemental bolts aren't quiet, which nullifies one of the whole points of playing a Crossbow build. I just demonstrated how that's outright false. If that doesn't make your point moot, I have no idea. And I'd argue you're wrong about Shock Bolts being relied on the most. I used Acid Bolts the most due to the rarity of shock bolts and incendiary bolts. The common nature of Acid Bolts allowed me to get my high elemental bolts damage without having to worry about dipping into my more valuable CC bolts. Acid Bolts are also incredibily useful when dealing with Crabs or Strongmen or other highly resistant enemies, with Corrosive Acid being a must. Incendiary Bolts are great against enemies weak against fire, as well as for providing an alternative CC method when an enemy is immune to shock. All the bolts are useful, and shock being loud doesn't devalue the build like you're claiming.
With Spec Ops SMG, you can clear every single Ironhead out of Warehouse Block Beta without any of them knowing you were there or what hit them.
SMG/AR are two of the strongest builds in the game, doesn't mean the other builds aren't worth playing. Just because SMG can do that, doesn't make a Crossbow build any worse.
Gunslingers absolutely are stealthy if using a silenced pistol, and I'm sure there are plenty of builds that could take out a roomful of enemies with one.
Fair enough, but a silencer can only be used on 5 mm pistols. That's one build, and an Elemental Crossbow Bolt Build would fair just as well, assuming no Time Wizard Fuckery is involved.
Snipers aren't quiet, and neither are crossbows when using noisy bolts, such as the shock bolt you yourself used as an example of how crossbows can clear a room. Except a sniper rifle can clear a whole-ass screen. The enemies needn't be bunched together to stack shock bolts onto.
I went out of my way to explain how you can clear a room just as easily without using shock bolts, I don't know why you ignored it, but that doesn't make it any less true. And a Crossbow can stun six enemies in one go, reducing them to below half health, if not outright killing them. That's about as effective as the average Sniper turn will be.

You also ignored a good half of my post that picked apart most of what you said. I'm not trying to go for some gotcha moment, but you shitting on Crossbows and putting off people from trying them when it's actually a pretty fun build is annoying, especially to someone who played the build and enjoyed it.
 

Blaine

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Failing to respond specifically to something you posted doesn't necessarily indicate dismissal. It may simply mean that I'm posting at work, and ran out of time (or whatever).

In any event, you've assured me that with acid and fire Elemental Bolts, as well as crit feats and so on, several enemies can be dispatched silently in a turn. All right, I'll accept that, because strong acid bolts and Elemental Bolts didn't exist when last I played.
 

Tygrende

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Stygian Software "balancing" in action:
I'm missing what's bad about the free but slightly harder to get jet being slightly better than the other free but slightly easier to get jet.

You get the patroller by either stealing/killing sec-troopers or recovering/preventing the professor from being kidnapped. Getting it by following the questline is very easy, the 1st quest to recover the chip from mutie refugee is necessary to find the acorn and the second quest can be basically skipped with pickpocket, done very easily through negotiations, etc. Killing sec-troopers is on the easier side and you can steal one from the expedition camp without witnesses if you use noise right.

Cruiser on the other hand you can only get through killing marines or stealing it. Marines are stronger, they almost always travel in packs of about 5 (there is one that's alone in the water, but he's at port Zenith and there's tons of enemies behind him, including 2 snipers). Unlike the patroller, cruiser cannot be stolen without being seen, you will either have to wipe out a Protectorate outpost or trigger hostilities with the whole faction or turn the whole Rig hostile. Or join pirates and have marines spawn during the Armstrong raid, which makes the whole thing one of the harder fights in the game.

Or is bad for lore reasons? It's not believable that the biggest, strongest military force in Underrail has slightly better hardware than PMCs?
 
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Major_Blackhart

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\

Or is bad for lore reasons? It's not believable that the biggest, strongest military force in Underrail has slightly better hardware than PMCs?

Eh, there's a cost thing to consider too. These things are only as viable as the marines using them. Can they make a ton of Devastators? Absolutely, but the cost is just insane and it might not be worth a human life.
 

Blaine

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I'm missing what's bad about the free but slightly harder to get jet being slightly better than the other free but slightly easier to get jet.

You get the patroller by either stealing/killing sec-troopers or recovering/preventing the professor from being kidnapped. Getting it by following the questline is very easy, the 1st quest to recover the chip from mutie refugee is necessary to find the acorn and the second quest can be basically skipped with pickpocket, done very easily through negotiations, etc. Killing sec-troopers is on the easier side and you can steal one from the expedition camp without witnesses if you use noise right.

Cruiser on the other hand you can only get through killing marines or stealing it. Marines are stronger, they almost always travel in packs of about 5 (there is one that's alone in the water, but he's at port Zenith and there's tons of enemies behind him, including 2 snipers). Unlike the patroller, cruiser cannot be stolen without being seen, you will either have to wipe out a Protectorate outpost or trigger hostilities with the whole faction or turn the whole Rig hostile. Or join pirates and have marines spawn during the Armstrong raid, which makes the whole thing one of the harder fights in the game.

Wiping out the cans guarding the Cruiser at the northernmost Protectorate outpost is quick, easy, and free of consequences. It's also accessible as soon as you reach Camp Hathor, and without needing to start the Expedition.

Also, +100 HP, +10% DR, and +10 DT isn't "slightly better" in the world of jet skis. That's virtually a whole class upward in the survivability department, and it's almost the only difference between the two models.

It's like saying the Patroller is "slightly better" than the Torpedo, which has 100 less HP and around -10%/-10 DR and DT. The proportional magnitude of difference is greater when comparing the Patroller to the Torpedo, but my point is clear. Of course, the Torpedo is much faster than the Patroller, so this disparity is justified.

Or is bad for lore reasons? It's not believable that the biggest, strongest military force in Underrail has slightly better hardware than PMCs?

It's bad because I want them to be legitimate side-grades, each with strengths and weaknesses and interesting reasons to use one over the other, rather than one simply being flat-out superior to the other. They clearly were conceived that way, but this was altered later, possibly post-release. There is a halfhearted attempt to make the Patroller very (literally a tiny fraction) slightly faster and more maneuverable, but it's nowhere close to compensating for the huge drop in survivability. Absolutely no one has nor ever will choose the Patroller over the Cruiser because of +5% maneuverability, which is its sole noticeable advantage.
 

Blaine

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Well, I was slightly incorrect regarding the use of sniper rifles from jet skis, once 100% stability has been achieved. It's still pants versus sea serpents, since they have an immersion-based special accuracy malus (or perhaps just super-high Evasion when immersed), but a 55% chance to one-shot them when they're lurking below is still quite good. For everything else, there's SniperCard. Abandoned Waterway Facility is pretty much just a mop-up operation where I obliterate everything from outside its range, occasionally boating around a corner, but usually for caution's sake rather than extreme cornerfagging.

"Bigger is better" is a real bummer in the jet ski department. Bigger jets can carry a lot more and don't blow up as easily. Simple, right? Just get a big one. Yawn. I feel a trick was missed here, because you'd think that a fast-moving jet ski would also be harder to hit. Doesn't seem to matter how maneuverable your jet is or how many tiles you move, though—you might as well be standing still as far as the game's calculations are concerned. This is okay for the rest of the game, but stands out as inadequate here. Your own defensive stats, be it resistances, Dodge/Evasion, or what-have-you, only come into play when you're hit instead of the jet. Most of the time, when riding a faster jet, I'd much rather my character take a hit than allow the jet to be hit; and even low-STR/stealth characters can afford to wear heavier armor while aboard a jet, at the very least LemCo Marine and Biohazard Boots. I rode the Phaser into battle recently, and one burst from some random ferry guard shredded it from full HP down to a few bars.

If I have a point here, it's that I can't help but think Maneuverability or perhaps tiles moved should contribute to avoiding damage unless the jet hasn't moved last turn or the driver is incapacitated—and this would affect the player, too. Otherwise, all light jets are basically sitting ducks. The exception is if there is a disembarkation point. You can Turbo right up to an enemy ship and board it in one turn, and indeed, in previous playthroughs, I often did just that. The pity is that there are only a small handful of raid missions, and random encounters that allow boarding are fairly rare.

Don't get me wrong, fast jetting and fast boarding are powerful tools, but there's a lot of combat slog in Expedition, and the Devastator being the overall best regardless of slowness (even in terms of loot haulage capacity) removes potential interest from customizing jets.

To be sure, jet skis in general tend to reward tin can builds the most (less likely to get obliterated when disembarking into a bunch of enemies, can wear a can while on the ski, isn't robbed of important combat tools like Stealth and Sniper, etc.), and I'm all right with that.

One other thing: Jet ski logistics remain annoying. Getting from your house to your jet can be done conveniently only through rifts. The most convenient by far is to Camp Hathor, though Camp Hathor is furthest from any point of interest; the Pirate Bay has the closest rift in Expedition, although getting out to the Black Sea proper is more tedious, followed by the rift in the Aegis encampment, which requires moving a couple screens total to reach, but the docks themselves are in the middle of everything. Your house needs a moon pool down at the docks or something.
 
Vatnik
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Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
First time I have won this fight, had to go back to Core City house to get Corrosive Acid vials, the good drugs (including a Regenerative Mixture), plus it's the first time I've used the AI Scrambler - which was very effective.
I tried using the Blast Suit (85% reduction of Naga ranged attacks), but having 10 less AP, and no MP was too painful when using EMP III grenades with only 30 throwing skill invested. So I just went back to my regenerative overcoat, which is a kevlar variant (blast cloth variant would be more powerful). 38% explosion reduction from blast cloth tabis was nice too.
PAjELi2.png
Also hacking for the plasma turrets.
 

lukaszek

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Blaine small top line fast jet skis are meant not to be hit at all. You can easilly get in and out of harms range within single turn
 

Blaine

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Blaine small top line fast jet skis are meant not to be hit at all. You can easilly get in and out of harms range within single turn

Sort of. If you're using something like an SMG, let alone a melee weapon, then you need to approach fairly close to your target before jetting away. A Phaser on Turbo has about 200 MP, I believe, which is a lot, but is only ten grid squares toward, and then ten away. Most enemy jets will be able to cover most of those ten grid squares of retreat.

Also, on initial approach, you can easily spend almost all of a fast jet's MP just getting close if you're starting at the edge of the screen. Therefore you'd need to burn a turn to get a bit closer first if your plan is to dart in and retreat. This is clearly not a problem for me at all currently, since I'm playing a sniper, but your allies will use up all their MP and then get blown to smithereens while you're positioning for your hit and run maneuver. Probably this shouldn't bother me, but it does.

In any case, fast-moving vehicles with inertia do tend to exaggerate the obvious limitations of turn-based systems, and allowances must be made.
 

Sykar

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I am pondering to make a Cyclops build, spamming Plasma Beam all day long, resorting to grenades against enemies like Nagas who would be too resistant against fire and energy damage. Question is, can you even plan for basically waiting to get a random item and how fast can you rush to get Plasma Beam, unless you get lucky and find it as random drop or with a vendor.

Something like:
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMHA...MKgACoAYStjUCxiKmVfLmYfwoQWPsK8wrfCuOKjiQrfvw

Probably would have to get grenade feats much earlier but just spit balled this together in a few mins.
 
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Tigranes

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I am pondering to make a Cyclops build, spamming Plasma Beam all day long, resorting to grenades against enemies like Nagas who would be too resistant against fire and energy damage. Question is, can you even plan for basically waiting to get a random item and how fast can you rush to get Plasma Beam, unless you get lucky and find it as random drop or with a vendor.

Something like:
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMHA...MKgACoAYStjUCxiKmVfLmYfwoQWPsK8wrfCuOKjiQrfvw

Probably would have to get grenade feats much earlier but just spit balled this together in a few mins.

I did this a few weeks ago (Dom/Oddity). It's viable in the sense that you can play a straight up Metathermics guy until then, and be creative around robots/etc., but it's only worth it with Speedhack to spam Constantine and grab cyclops' eye, and it is stupid design decision that the beam cave spawn is random.

To maximise beam time,
1/ go to rail crossing as soon as world opens and hope the cave is there;
2/ if not, beeline the Tchortist break-in to enable Utility Station 6 and then get it there (you could use Phreak but meta vs coil spiders is kind of ass)
3/ then do Oculus and speedhack the Cyclop's Eye.

Beam is definitely fun to use, though, once you get it. Nothing like burning 12 natives in one beam or something.

Build - Why fast metabolism, stoicism and hema for SI char? You only want to SI sometimes? Up to you but seems odd. Dropping all that would free up Grenadier at lv4, and whatever else you need that will really help you survive early game. You could also take TC, drop CON to 9, Locus of Control, given there's SP to spare. You definitely want TM haste to maximise beam casts.

My setup was quite different, based on maximising AP for multiple beamcasts (since it's hard to line everybody up). Can't remember exactly what I did but this was one of the ways:
https://underrail.info/build/?FAMDCgUDDgcAMgAAAABkPFAAAFBQFABQbgBuAAAAUCsxOT89KmRHwrwhZkYp378
 
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To maximise beam time,
1/ go to rail crossing as soon as world opens and hope the cave is there;
2/ if not, beeline the Tchortist break-in to enable Utility Station 6 and then get it there (you could use Phreak but meta vs coil spiders is kind of ass)
3/ then do Oculus and speedhack the Cyclop's Eye.
If you save before entering the caves you can keep reloading until the metathermics beetle cave does spawn. Holes are randomly generated when you first enter the area they're in, so if you walk to Rail Crossing and back then it'll change the RNG and they may decide to spawn if they didn't the first time. And if they don't then load the save again and walk in a different combination so the RNG changes again until they do spawn. It's a little exploitive, but it's better than having to wait until the utility station to get it.
Yeah I kinda cheated a little when I was testing leprechaun related things.
 

Sykar

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You cannot use anything with Cyclops Eye. You have only 1 slot so TM is useless. I guess it is useful until then but dont think it is that useful overall. Meta helps with 25 extra PSI points per booster, Hema helps getting your health down without waiting for Mania, Stoicism for extra safety with Morphine and Aegis. Stocisim can be taken much later though since it works best when you have a decent pool. Hema can be skipped for sure. I just like it but it is far from vital.
 
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Tigranes

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To maximise beam time,
1/ go to rail crossing as soon as world opens and hope the cave is there;
2/ if not, beeline the Tchortist break-in to enable Utility Station 6 and then get it there (you could use Phreak but meta vs coil spiders is kind of ass)
3/ then do Oculus and speedhack the Cyclop's Eye.
If you save before entering the caves you can keep reloading until the metathermics beetle cave does spawn. Holes are randomly generated when you first enter the area they're in, so if you walk to Rail Crossing and back then it'll change the RNG and they may decide to spawn if they didn't the first time. And if they don't then load the save again and walk in a different combination so the RNG changes again until they do spawn. It's a little exploitive, but it's better than having to wait until the utility station to get it.
Yeah I kinda cheated a little when I was testing leprechaun related things.

I thought this might be the case, but I reloaded about 50 times and it was either no cave or wrong cave - maybe the key is that it changes the seed depending on, say, where you're entering the zone from or at what time? FFS.

Re. TM/TC with Eye - sorry, forgot about this as I actually got the Eye quite late when I played. I think again it comes down to how many things you take for the game up to the Eye and how much you suffer instead.

There certainly is nothing quite like beaming thousands of damage supercrit beam several times a turn.
 

Sykar

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Man I am cursed with Coral. Third time she appears in a row. I even check the SGS docks but it seems like she can also start in other locations at random. I have never seen her charms do a damn thing apart from wasting a quick item slot.
 

Parabalus

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Man I am cursed with Coral. Third time she appears in a row. I even check the SGS docks but it seems like she can also start in other locations at random. I have never seen her charms do a damn thing apart from wasting a quick item slot.

Epeli spoiled some mechanics here:

charm mechanics

though I'd rather get the tattoo, at least it doesn't take up a slot.
 

Sykar

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So apparently there are some minor benefits:
https://stygiansoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=Charm

Though only for some charms. Which begs the question Styg why the flying fuck do they not only occupy a freaking quick item slot, but also have a god damn drawback in many cases? Booth tatoos have neither and you know very easily what they do.

Man I am cursed with Coral. Third time she appears in a row. I even check the SGS docks but it seems like she can also start in other locations at random. I have never seen her charms do a damn thing apart from wasting a quick item slot.

Epeli spoiled some mechanics here:

charm mechanics

though I'd rather get the tattoo, at least it doesn't take up a slot.

Luckily the bonuses are rather low and far from vital. Still stinks that her charms are so terrible in comparison to Booth and I am a strict enemy of repeated reloading for better starting conditions.
 
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Man I am cursed with Coral. Third time she appears in a row. I even check the SGS docks but it seems like she can also start in other locations at random. I have never seen her charms do a damn thing apart from wasting a quick item slot.
I'm told that if you go to Underrail\data\fragments\frags\ and delete gc_gypsy.obj then you're guaranteed Booth every time. Might be something to try.
I'm also told that hopper foot is a global crit chance increase, so that seems nice. Also that deathstalker makes you count as less illuminated when you're in stealth mode, so that'd be a nice edition to the usual black balaclava+black soft padded cave hopper overcoat+ninja tabis+cloaking device setup that people switch to for sneaking.
 

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