Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[Trashos]

I consider it a personal challenge to rack up as many unread notes as I can by the end of the game.

That's a like an Ed Wood movie. "It is so bad, it is good." But Underrail deserves better than that.

You know I am waiting for you to continue your pacifist run, right? Yes, you do.

 

[Tygrende]

You know I am waiting for you to continue your pacifist run, right? Yes, you do.

You're not alone.

Spoiler

Soon™

 

[blessed king of longing]

Spoiler

New teaser material from infusion

 

[Werdnicus]

Still at it, huh?

 

[Whisper]

Why there are no Psi-users in Gray army base?

 

[Sarevok_]

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.

Can someone confirm or deny this? I mean, that by doing this we are getting 100% for Booth and not 50% for Booth and 50% for no one?

 

[razvedchiki]

time for valorous melee

 

[Lazing Dirk]

About 7 years after my previous incomplete playthroughs, I finally got around to completing the game along with the DLC. Ended up some weird hybrid sorta-stealth-sniper tincan-burster, but those things work so well it was more than enough to blast my way through on normal (I didn't dare play on higher difficulties after not paying attention to 7 years of updates), plus the extra levels and whatnot from the DLC probably helped too. Thoroughly enjoyed the stuff I'd never seen before like the Dude's total fever-dream of a quest and Oculus. Time to start a new character to try this mutant questline thing. I'm assuming it'll go better with melee skills and perks but maybe the mutant thing just overrides it all?

Also, fuck crawlers. They may stop being a threat (I'm a stun-immune walking tank, go away), but they'll never stop being a frustrating piece of shit.

 

[Blaine]

Also, fuck crawlers. They may stop being a threat (I'm a stun-immune walking tank, go away), but they'll never stop being a frustrating piece of shit.

Shield-and-spear hoplite is the only 100% viable final solution to the Crawlish question.

You don't need eagle vision and goggles, flares, flashbangs, molotovs, traps, sanic MP, Yell, or anything other than Fend, Spear Guardian, and Shield Arm (and a couple/three spec points here and there, haven't messed with it for years).

Their stupid, shitty little tails will crumple against your invincible shield, and then they'll sit there like the gimmicky assholes they are while you *KRUNCH* them up into a nice kebab.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

This game is so badass.

 

[Zariusz]

About 7 years after my previous incomplete playthroughs, I finally got around to completing the game along with the DLC. Ended up some weird hybrid sorta-stealth-sniper tincan-burster, but those things work so well it was more than enough to blast my way through on normal (I didn't dare play on higher difficulties after not paying attention to 7 years of updates), plus the extra levels and whatnot from the DLC probably helped too. Thoroughly enjoyed the stuff I'd never seen before like the Dude's total fever-dream of a quest and Oculus. Time to start a new character to try this mutant questline thing. I'm assuming it'll go better with melee skills and perks but maybe the mutant thing just overrides it all?

Also, fuck crawlers. They may stop being a threat (I'm a stun-immune walking tank, go away), but they'll never stop being a frustrating piece of shit.

Spoiler

* TELEPORTS BEHIND U *

 

[Blaine]

This game is so badass.

It's a shame that Fallout-caliber death animations weren't in the manpower and time budget, because the game deserves them and they would put a layer of buttercream frosting on the cake.

Bear in mind that I fully understand why choices had to be made, such as omitting crawling animations from vent ducts, and I acknowledge that gameplay comes first. Atmosphere is important too, though.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I would have loved FO style death animations. I never even thought of them as a possibility actually. Imagine a guy being melted painfully / horrifically in an acid puddle, or simply vaporizing with a plasma shot. A guy getting his arm and head blown off in a hail of shotgun fire. Critical melee kills (impalement, skull crushing). Crippled animations - you hobbling away after getting clipped with a kneecap shot.

That actually sounds pretty cool.

 

[ciox]

Infusion should allow for all of this stuff, all characters are 3D models.

 

[agris]

Just finished my first (and likely only) playthrough of everything. My sneaky-SMG-nader-crafter with 0 psi was a slow burner to start, but man did he take off around level 14 or so on Hard.

Before starting the DLC, I played up to the gates of the University. That meant clearing every quest in lower and upper underrail, with a few exceptions (Jet ski dungeon I couldn't be bothered to mess with, never figured out to rig the race in the Hopperdome, but those were the only things left undone). I was probably level 22 at the time I went to the Black Sea.

I'm of two minds of the expansion: on the positive front I liked the exploration and lore, the tension. On the other, I really disliked the condition for stopping native assaults was to genocide the natives. In the abstract that's fine, but in practice it was a *fucking slog*. By far the lowest point of the entire expansion. In terms of a lever to motivate the player, Styg was effective with those native attacks. After my second one, for which my build is total garbage, I was determined to stop them so I could explore the rest of the Lemurian's facilities in relative peace. I'm a dirty completionist and used the wiki moderately so that I could eek out all the content, I got the torch and destroyed the liths, helped the one native shed his scales etc.

DC was interesting, I did zero prep before starting the fight and going down. Didn't stock up anything, just went into it. That's because I thought there would be a rift down there. After dicking around in DC for about 5 hours, I realized I was wrong and *almost* loaded a save to stock up before I descended, but I'm glad that I didn't. Even though I had a stash of materiel that would have made Old Biocorp blush, I decide that being somewhat unprepared was the intended way to do it, especially given all the items available in the Warehouse district. So glad I didn't reload, because the zone itself was a cake walk as was defeating Tchort. I was level 28 at this point, and with tungsten carbide 7.62 and all geeked out on tribal nose candy I could shred multiple tentacles in a turn. Took 1.5 turns before I look at Tchort's HP. He died in a single turn, I think I took bio damage once.

Blaine thanks for your help while I was developing my character. It deviated a bit from what I planned, and for the better. Mostly in terms of feat progression, I sunk so much time into the game that each time I needed to choose a new feat, I knew damn well which one I needed. Same with spec points, I ended up speccing a few points into hit and run actually, as I could kill so many things in a given turn that MP became my limiting factor.

It was a masterpiece, I don't even want to look at the number of hours this took, and I'm cautiously fabulously optimistic about Infusion. It's a good thing that it won't be out until we're closer to 2030 than 2020. Underrail was great, but I need a break.

PS: ciox all the existing models in the game are from 3D models as well, just made into sprite sheets afaik. I think the real issue with the lack of gruesome death animations is the resources it would take to morph all the potential NPC models, which includes gender, armor and weapon, into the requisite death animations. Fallout obviously had a much more limited set of combinations they had to morph, and had a larger studio backing them.

PPS: my final build was https://underrail.info/build/?HAMIC...UfChVMvTijioIoD4qKNA-KktgLip6oD4qicAeKxggHfvw

OCD discussion of build

Compared to the build as I planned it, on Hard, I shifted some feats around and dropped a few as I became comfortable with the rhythm of my character. As I mentioned above, once I really started to get deadly (~16ish) MPs became limiting so I picked up Hit and Run a lot earlier than I anticipated - before blitz even. Another feat which sounded useful on paper, Escape Artist, I really didn't need until late in the DLC. You spend so much time sneaking and killing, roots weren't a large problem. Sure, rarely I would get hit by them, by they just added flavor to the ebb and flow of combat. Stuns on the other hand were usually lights out for my character, so I kept Bullheads handy.

In the same vein of MPs being limited, I only put a single spec point into Blindsiding because I wasn't damage constrained after spec'ing earlier feets, but I was MP constrained. Dropping those extra 3 or 4 pts into Hit and Run really maximized my per-turn-kills (I can't remember if I actually put a spec point into Escape Artist or not, if not then HaR got 4).

Weapons: I know Blaine was all about the 5 mm, and maybe that would have been even more efficient, but with 9 DEX (no food), I like the 7.62 crafted jaguar. My end game gun was crafted with a rapid reloader and muzzle break. This, combined with Commando and Spec Ops, made it so that I was like a self-whacking pinata with AP falling out. My 7.62's item description was 18 - 42, 8 ap cost. I did use a refurbished 5 mm Mini-izu as my silenced weapon, which I used a lot, because I just couldn't craft anything that touched it.

I didn't like the food mechanic very much, I dawdle too much to keep eel burgers always active, so I went with 9 DEX and pumped the rest into PER. As others said, you need it because PER will contribute directly to your GUNS score, and you want every bullet of that burst to make contact. Late DLC and DC enemies I regularly had ~70-80% chance to hit with burst, with no LS or forward grip and no light penalties. 1 point of PER in the end game is worth about ~10 gun skill points, you can see it yourself by examining the gun skill before/after equipping +1 googles.

Last point: grenades were a lot of fun. A lot of fun. I was frustrated early on that I couldn't throw them that often, but pick the right feats and you'll grow into them. This was the perfect build for me, I love slow burners and there was a huge amount of satisfaction to be had once the character got into it's prime. Too much perhaps, as I'm a little sad I didn't play on DOM. But who can say, maybe the start would have been too annoying and I wouldn't have finished?

Anyway, 10/10. Pure slavic cave wizardry. I'm just a dirty railrat, and I love it.


edit: oh gawd (it's heaven), I just logged into steam to leave a review and saw my hours. really need infusion to wait until 2027 at the earliest...

edit 2: no one will care, but this is my process for unloading this game out of the prominent position it has taken up in my consciousness. Some images:

end game stats

 

[jackofshadows]

In the abstract that's fine, but in practice it was a *fucking slog*. By far the lowest point of the entire expansion.

Ehhh, you don't really have to do that although why not to genocide them either way.

My complain when I first faced the natives attack was that it expose how artificial sight limit for the player coupled with an open battlefield makes it rather frustrating experience (xbow guys shooting from the dark in particular).

 

[agris]

In the abstract that's fine, but in practice it was a *fucking slog*. By far the lowest point of the entire expansion.

Ehhh, you don't really have to do that although why not to genocide them either way.

My complain when I first faced the natives attack that it expose how artificial sight limit for the player coupled with an open battlefield makes it rather frustrating experience (xbow guys shooting from the dark in particular).

If I had offed the king, and none of the other named NPCs and left the shadowlith shard to be worshipped in the temple, would the attacks have stopped? Or what was the exact criteria. I went Vietnam on them (except I won).

 

[jackofshadows]

You have to kill all the leaders and some amount of "ordinary" guys too. I don't remember exactly tbh, but the girl in tower is your in-game indicator, she must state that "no more lights there" or something like that.

But what I meant is that after the first attack you don't have to come back every time especially if you help via other ways (the mines, naga/turret) and even more so in a sense to kiss aegis goodbye.

 

[ItsChon]

Anyway, 10/10. Pure slavic cave wizardry. I'm just a dirty railrat, and I love it.

Where would you rate the game overall? You still taking FO over it?

 

[agris]

You have to kill all the leaders and some amount of "ordinary" guys too. I don't remember exactly tbh, but the girl in tower is your in-game indicator, she must state that "no more lights there" or something like that.

But what I meant is that after the first attack you don't have to come back every time especially if you help via other ways (the mines, naga/turret) and even more so in a sense to kiss aegis goodbye.

Yeah that was my understanding as well, but I wanted frustration-free passage by their coast as well which, at that point, means you have to start handing out pox-laden blankets.

The whole reason I went with Aegis rather than the pirates was the lore hook of the old PDAs. They aren’t all available, easily, online so if I wanted to decrypt them I needed to side with Aegis and keep them alive. Turns out Styg mostly front loaded the PDAs, for example none in LEMCO or Abyssal Station. The little lore I got from them was fine, but in retrospect the Grim Jetters would have been a better, less frustrating ally.

Anyway, 10/10. Pure slavic cave wizardry. I'm just a dirty railrat, and I love it.

Where would you rate the game overall? You still taking FO over it?

So I actually don’t see Fallout and Underrail as terribly similar. Underrail reminds me much more of, say BG2 w/ non-autism SCS config, than Fallout. Despite the superficial similarities.

But to your question: I don’t know. They’re so different. Maybe Fallout but for the purely practical reason that I can quickly replay it. Fallout’s aesthetics are still better than URs as well, but I’m sure many feel differently.

Sorry, not very satisfying of an answer I’m sure.

 

[lukaszek]

You have to kill all the leaders and some amount of "ordinary" guys too. I don't remember exactly tbh, but the girl in tower is your in-game indicator, she must state that "no more lights there" or something like that.

it got nothing to do with leaders. There are map squares assigned to natives, you need to clear a number of those squares. Fully

 

[agris]

Are you sure lukaszek ? I believe there was, at a minimum, the requirement to kill 1+ named NPC *including* the king.

 

[Trashos]

agris, the advice I was given here when I was new to Expedition was to do an Aegis playthrough for my first time, and then move on to joining the Pirates for later playthroughs. It turned out to be good advice. I prefer the sandboxy style of gameplay joining the Pirates, but I am also glad I did the Aegis playthrough to see the lore and how it plays.

 

[agris]

Trashos thats the advice I saw as well. My point here is simply that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze; there weren’t many PDAs to find, natives are annoying, worse quests etc etc

 

[Tigranes]

Yep, pirates are more convenient in an xpack area full of hassles. Especially now with dudejuice - before pirates had no fast travel to core city.

I keep saying, though, you really do not have to help aegis with natives. They do fine.