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General / Re: Todd's new home
« on: August 27, 2020, 10:44:04 pm »
The other choice is pirates, if you aligned with them.
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Suggestions / Re: Underrail developers, ATTENTION PLEASE - Solid suggestion regarding Deep Caverns
« on: August 14, 2020, 08:41:53 pm »Seems excessively pointless and petty for a creature that powerful. Is he a low-budget anime villain now?
Given his lengthy speech at the final confrontation, I'm inclined to answer "Always has been".
Jokes aside, I wrote the actual suggestion quickly, and used Tchort taunting the player as a simple example of some sort of hostile interaction with the player character. The main point of the suggestion is not to specify *how* Tchort should antagonize the player, but *that* Tchort should antagonize the player. You mention that he's a psionic demigod trying to kill everyone who approaches except high ranking Tchortists, but that's something that needs to be established before it can used as motivation.
You're correct, that the game does provide good reasons to want Tchort dead. He sends hordes of respawning monsters after you, he has a legion of brainwashed followers attempting to continue Biocorp's mistakes, and if the Faceless are to be believed, he is a soup of Biocorp scientists, who are responsible for hideous experiments and set the stage for the current geopolitical conflicts of Underrail.
Here's the problem: This information is found by exploring the environment. An environment you can't explore until *after* you are tasked with killing Tchort. In short, you find out why you should do something *after* you are instructed to do so. It's completely backwards, and why the quest comes across as contrived. Indeed, prior to entering DC, you aren't even certain that Tchort exists; you only have the Tchortists' word for it that it does, and cults aren't know for being unbiased. Sure, like me, most will roll with it because the choices are either kill Tchort or stop playing, but that doesn't make the narrative any better.
As for Tchort's motivation for the contact, the natural answer would be curiosity, or perhaps territoriality. The player is a new presence in Tchort's domain, and Tchort would only expect Eidein or his trusted guards to enter from that elevator, so when the player arrives, Tchort might want to investigate. It could be a good moment to revisit your roleplaying decisions. If you were an obedient Tchortist, he might be willing to let you go until he finds out you're after the Cube. If that suggestion sounds like the player character is being treated as too important, remember that there is currently a dialogue option where the character feels like a chosen one and IIRC Six doesn't deny it. It might not be great, but the writing wouldn't be getting worse.
Now that I think about it, another way of getting the player on board with the killing Tchort agenda would be to force the player through Hollow Earth for a little bit, getting attacked by Tchortlings, and end up meeting Six by the mutagen gates, where he can launch into his exposition dump. That way, the environment can do the storytelling, which is Underrail's strong suit. It would require more work though.
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Suggestions / Now It's Personal: Improving the writing in Deep Caverns
« on: August 10, 2020, 01:57:25 am »
I'm expanding on something I wrote in a Reddit thread:
Much has been said about DC and its frustrations, but the harshest one for me is the final quest's context, or lack thereof. You are ordered by Six to kill a creature with which you have no direct contact or antagonism, and thus the player character has little to no motivation to comply, in or out of character. Your questgiver Six becomes intensely dislikable and untrustworthy, because when you ask for clarification on who he is, what's going on, and why you should do what he says, he all but refuses to answer, and berates you for asking questions.
It's total whiplash. The world building in the rest of the game is top notch, a large part of which is that you can ask questions for more context, development of the character speaking and the world around you, reinforcing the game's stellar atmosphere.
What's worse is that there are plenty of great reasons to kill Tchort aside from those that are presented. "He has the MacGuffin" and "You can't leave until you do" both come across as contrived, which shattered my immersion and suspension of disbelief. I stopped thinking about the world or its characters, and began thinking about how the plot is constructed; the artifice of the story was laid bare and I was left to conclude that Six was merely a transparent plot device, merely an ad-hoc tool for the authors to tell players what to do without providing the requisite narrative motivation.
So, my suggestion is to do just that, in a way that changes little about the game, its world and the rules of its fiction. When the player arrives in Deep Caverns, Tchort psionically contacts you, wanting to know why someone is entering his domain (that isn't a full Tchortist). He then attempts to force you to join him (or maybe eat you, considering he's hungry), and he attacks you for resisting. Then, before your death, Six saves you with his time lord powers, then you wake up outside of Hollow Earth and he can launch into his existing dialogue.
This is an improvement for several reasons:
1. The player is given a personal hostility with Tchort, and thus they are motivated to fight against him. The final fight will be more climactic, since there is a clear antagonism between you and the villain.
2. It makes Six more sympathetic, and makes the player more willing to hear him out.
3. It doesn't change too much about the existing dialogue or structure of the game. You still go on a mighty scavenger hunt to open the path to the final boss. Indeed, the added motivation for revenge might make the player more willing to struggle through DC's harsh challenges.
4. It builds upon, and is foreshadowed by, previous encounters in the game. Between Ezra's Neural Overload lesson and Dr. Mason's hallucinations in the Lemurian Health Centre, telepathic contact is very well established. It's perfectly believable that a soup of Biocorp scientists would have the same kind of psionic contact as the totally-not-a-Biocorp-scientist Ezra.
Let me know your thoughts, and if this gets enough interest I might write a prototype for how the interaction could play out.
Edit: changed reason for why Tchort would contact the player.
Much has been said about DC and its frustrations, but the harshest one for me is the final quest's context, or lack thereof. You are ordered by Six to kill a creature with which you have no direct contact or antagonism, and thus the player character has little to no motivation to comply, in or out of character. Your questgiver Six becomes intensely dislikable and untrustworthy, because when you ask for clarification on who he is, what's going on, and why you should do what he says, he all but refuses to answer, and berates you for asking questions.
It's total whiplash. The world building in the rest of the game is top notch, a large part of which is that you can ask questions for more context, development of the character speaking and the world around you, reinforcing the game's stellar atmosphere.
What's worse is that there are plenty of great reasons to kill Tchort aside from those that are presented. "He has the MacGuffin" and "You can't leave until you do" both come across as contrived, which shattered my immersion and suspension of disbelief. I stopped thinking about the world or its characters, and began thinking about how the plot is constructed; the artifice of the story was laid bare and I was left to conclude that Six was merely a transparent plot device, merely an ad-hoc tool for the authors to tell players what to do without providing the requisite narrative motivation.
So, my suggestion is to do just that, in a way that changes little about the game, its world and the rules of its fiction. When the player arrives in Deep Caverns, Tchort psionically contacts you, wanting to know why someone is entering his domain (that isn't a full Tchortist). He then attempts to force you to join him (or maybe eat you, considering he's hungry), and he attacks you for resisting. Then, before your death, Six saves you with his time lord powers, then you wake up outside of Hollow Earth and he can launch into his existing dialogue.
This is an improvement for several reasons:
1. The player is given a personal hostility with Tchort, and thus they are motivated to fight against him. The final fight will be more climactic, since there is a clear antagonism between you and the villain.
2. It makes Six more sympathetic, and makes the player more willing to hear him out.
3. It doesn't change too much about the existing dialogue or structure of the game. You still go on a mighty scavenger hunt to open the path to the final boss. Indeed, the added motivation for revenge might make the player more willing to struggle through DC's harsh challenges.
4. It builds upon, and is foreshadowed by, previous encounters in the game. Between Ezra's Neural Overload lesson and Dr. Mason's hallucinations in the Lemurian Health Centre, telepathic contact is very well established. It's perfectly believable that a soup of Biocorp scientists would have the same kind of psionic contact as the totally-not-a-Biocorp-scientist Ezra.
Let me know your thoughts, and if this gets enough interest I might write a prototype for how the interaction could play out.
Edit: changed reason for why Tchort would contact the player.
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Suggestions / Re: Remove one tile of Mutagen Gas in the Drone hideout?
« on: August 07, 2020, 09:49:46 pm »Yeah, looks like you're trapped. It's best to try from the last save, or if you don't, you can use cheat engine to teleport yourself over the barrier without walking through the happy gas. I can do it for you if you can send me a save file.
I only play with one save per character so that's the save right there.
Man, it would be really awesome if that can happen, thanks for suggesting. I haven't ever used cheat engine - only heard about it - but it if you could give me a hand with that I'd appreciate it. Is there a convenient way for you to get a hold of the save files?
You can make a copy of the save folder. It should be in Documents->mygames->underrail->Saves. Attach it to an email to a gmail account I just made:nickydeedles69420@gmail.com
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Suggestions / Re: Remove one tile of Mutagen Gas in the Drone hideout?
« on: August 06, 2020, 09:42:40 pm »
Yeah, looks like you're trapped. It's best to try from the last save, or if you don't, you can use cheat engine to teleport yourself over the barrier without walking through the happy gas. I can do it for you if you can send me a save file.
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General / Re: Any way to backtrack from the cave (expedition) to the East?
« on: August 04, 2020, 03:27:47 pm »
Pretty sure there isn't. You'll have to push forward into the nexus to get back to your jetski.
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Suggestions / Re: New Update
« on: July 24, 2020, 07:33:06 am »- penalties for having multiple schools innervated might be expanded to include modifiers to reserve utilization efficiency. For example, as long as you only have abilities from a single school you only use 7 reserve points to restore 10 actual psi points. While 2/3/4 schools would increase it to 10/15/20 points of reserves for 10 psi points.I'd caution against that sort of thing on the grounds that it directly rewards the most boring play possible, and further punishes newcomers to the game who don't know how to optimize every action. As it is, I can't say I'm a fan of increasing psi cost combined with global scarcity of psi points, because it actively punishes people looking for variety in how they play the game, and that's just poor design. With additional reward for single-school, you provide a strong psi bonus for builds that only dabble in psi, or use a minimal selection of it. The cumulative effect of higher costs and reduced reserve efficiency, combined with the current inability to restore reserve during combat, nearly guarantees that in any difficult fight, bringing a generalized loadout will result in depletion and failure. If you want to do the same thing every fight for the whole game, there's tin can AR, already.
Reducing effective skill values for multiple schools - because it's so very hard to magically cave wizard in several different ways all at once and you mix up the tiny details and as a result don't do everything just right - would have weakened psi generalists compared to psi specialists without also mechanically punishing players for trying out new things. We've clearly seen that Stygsoft can add in debuffs quite easily, so causing activation of a psi school ability to effect a psi school debuff (penalizing skill values, durations, and/or psi costs) on the player would have been simple and it could have done for psi generalists just as well as the current system, but without also sucking quite as hard as the original idea does. But having "psi bullets" as an actual consumable resource, and then rewarding players for not using variety, and punishing them when they do use it, isn't an effective way to reign in power; it merely reigns in player agency. If you can't manage the first without disturbing the second, then you don't understand the system you're changing.
I can't help but agree. The sheer versatility of a pure psi character was one of its greatest strengths; while having a tool for every situation was one reasons pure psi was overpowered, it meant that there was always another way to handle the situation. Psychosis Psi was my first dominating build, and when I died, I would constantly take a step back, bring up my spell list, and think up a better solution. The versatility forced me to improve and engage with the game's deep systems and rules, rather than trying the same thing again hoping for better luck. It's diametrically opposed to the save scumming that the game currently rewards*. The new system encourages you to find a specific set of actions to repeatedly perform, and punishes players from deviating too far from using just one school, which is problematic since "Which one of the three** psi schools is best for this encounter" is a far less compelling question than "How do I leverage the abilities I have".
I'm worried that the psi cost increases along with psi reserves will leave dedicated psi characters not only limited in their accessible toolset, but also simply unable to survive marathons of combat. Once the reserves are tapped, they simple hit a brick wall where they're waiting on the cooldown of psi boosters before being able to do anything. Sadly enough, the in-game solution to the "running out of reserves in long combats" is zone abuse. The strategy*** will be to walk to the edge of the zone once low on reserves, head out, take a hit from the psi bong, and re-enter the fray. Sure, there are AP penalties, but cave wizards have no other option, aside from using cheat engine to respec their skill points.
In terms of solutions, I would prefer a feat that allows some restoration of reserves rather than a consumable. This is three-fold: First, spending a feat incurs an opportunity cost, which tunes down the power of dedicated psions, which seems to be the ultimate goal of the update. Second, it makes your character more defined, and creates a real identity for the "Dedicated Mage" to separate it from "The guy who picked the best school or two and has a backup plan when s/he run out of psi". Third, in the late game, the monetary costs of consumables becomes negligible, and another resource to manage will become more about inventory management than cost management.
*Because functional builds demand specialization that limits what your character can actually do well.
**Three instead of four, since Temporal on its own requires a weapon for damage, which the archetypal pure psi will avoid.
***That the mechanics flat-out encourage!
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Suggestions / Re: New Update
« on: July 22, 2020, 12:51:04 am »
In terms of constructive criticism:
Psi Reserves is a good change. One benefit of Psi is your only "operating costs" were psi boosters. You might consider new spells as an operating cost, until you realize it's a weapon that doesn't need repairs. It creates more parity between different builds.
Toning down the more broken spells is also good, since it was easy to cheese a ton of areas with LOC+enrage, or force field, or blow up a dozen baddies with TD after luring them into standing next to each other with explosives.
I've saved the big one for last: limiting spell slots is certainly going to accomplish its goal. The more schools you learn, more inaccessible spells and therefore wasted skill points you've got. The exact implementation is pretty severe at the moment, requiring 15 Int (or all stat increases up to level 20, and completely ignoring Will) to access all 6. Even if I'm using a hybrid character with 9 Int (4 Circuits) and only using one school, I would be hard pressed to settle on just the 4 I need.
On one hand, it's good because it forces you to think of how you're going to tackle a given room (e.g.: no thought control against tons of bots), and has a real cost to re-innervating. The downside I see is that it's going to make a ton of spells functionally useless. With Circuits at such a premium, I can hardly see myself ever equipping Entropic Recurrence, or Pyrokinesis, or Disruptive Field, or Bilocation except as a gimmick. Even just 2 schools with a dedicated psion is unwieldly at best with the extra costs and wasted spells.
Where I can really see this system shining and evolving is if there are feats that extend the circuits at a cost or with some uncertainty. I would love a wild mage feat that randomly selects on spell each round that you can use in addition to those you've innervated, or a feat like premeditation with an enormous cooldown that lets you cast an non-innervated spell, at the cost of half your maximum reserves. That way, dedicated psi users *can* work, but will become addicted to huffing psi glue. Hell, you could even have a Tranquility-Psychosis dichotomy so that you only get one way of extending your Circuits. Maybe Wild Mage vs Focused Mage?
The point I'm getting at is that the system has a solid framework, although it feels pretty bad right now.
Psi Reserves is a good change. One benefit of Psi is your only "operating costs" were psi boosters. You might consider new spells as an operating cost, until you realize it's a weapon that doesn't need repairs. It creates more parity between different builds.
Toning down the more broken spells is also good, since it was easy to cheese a ton of areas with LOC+enrage, or force field, or blow up a dozen baddies with TD after luring them into standing next to each other with explosives.
I've saved the big one for last: limiting spell slots is certainly going to accomplish its goal. The more schools you learn, more inaccessible spells and therefore wasted skill points you've got. The exact implementation is pretty severe at the moment, requiring 15 Int (or all stat increases up to level 20, and completely ignoring Will) to access all 6. Even if I'm using a hybrid character with 9 Int (4 Circuits) and only using one school, I would be hard pressed to settle on just the 4 I need.
On one hand, it's good because it forces you to think of how you're going to tackle a given room (e.g.: no thought control against tons of bots), and has a real cost to re-innervating. The downside I see is that it's going to make a ton of spells functionally useless. With Circuits at such a premium, I can hardly see myself ever equipping Entropic Recurrence, or Pyrokinesis, or Disruptive Field, or Bilocation except as a gimmick. Even just 2 schools with a dedicated psion is unwieldly at best with the extra costs and wasted spells.
Where I can really see this system shining and evolving is if there are feats that extend the circuits at a cost or with some uncertainty. I would love a wild mage feat that randomly selects on spell each round that you can use in addition to those you've innervated, or a feat like premeditation with an enormous cooldown that lets you cast an non-innervated spell, at the cost of half your maximum reserves. That way, dedicated psi users *can* work, but will become addicted to huffing psi glue. Hell, you could even have a Tranquility-Psychosis dichotomy so that you only get one way of extending your Circuits. Maybe Wild Mage vs Focused Mage?
The point I'm getting at is that the system has a solid framework, although it feels pretty bad right now.
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General / Re: (Spoilers!) Any unique dialogue for...
« on: July 19, 2020, 06:10:03 pm »stuff
Really? I was able to get something approximating a good ending, where they were defeated but their society grew peaceful. The subtext of the scene implies that they are better off without the shadowlith. The exact slides can be seen here: https://imgur.com/a/6d5tgyP
I got this ending by staying with Aegis, and destroyed both the shadowlith and its shard in the Sormirbaeren temple. I killed a lot of them, both those who attacked the camp and their ambushes outside the geothermal plant and JSHQ. However, when in their village and graveyard, I attacked no civilians, and stealthed/ran past all the guards. The only ones I killed were the priests and the guards inside the temple, who I didn't object to killing since they were clearly complicit in exposing the population to an empirically corrupting influence.
I've still got the save file if you'd like it.
I wrote that post before some bugs related to Expedition's ending slides were discovered and fixed.
https://www.underrail.com/wiki/index.php?title=Endings/Expedition
This should list all the current ending slides and their conditions, but it's based on my research before the bugs got fixed so there's a small chance I missed some changes to the ending conditions.
Glad to hear it. Thanks for compiling all of those endings; I never got to see them all.
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General / Re: (Spoilers!) Any unique dialogue for...
« on: July 18, 2020, 12:27:24 am »https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/underrail-the-incline-awakens.105387/page-495#post-6427787I thought he was joking, but looks like codexers took his post at face value.
https://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/562/544/0b4.jpg
Anyways, saving the sormirbaeren was never an option. Here's why. I haven't seen any players reaching this conclusion yet, so it's definitely going to be spoilery.
Sormirbaeren are to Flottsormir what tchortlings (tchortbaeren) are to Tchort.
They're Serpentborn and Tchortborn in a quite literal sense. Less literally in the cases of normal sormirbaeren villagers and tchortists, but those groups are also analogues of each other. Unwitting, subtly controlled human pawns. Raw material.
If you talk with Yngwar after Deep Caverns and draw the Institute to him, you get a bit of discussion on the similaries of tchortists and his people. Tchortbaeren is the word he uses. The similarities of their natures are further enforced by the behavior of tchortlings and sormirbaeren once the link to their deity is severed - both fly into bloody rage. You get to see this in-game with tchortlings and the sormirbaeren psionics becoming permanently enraged, and sormirbaeren also get the aforementioned ending slide. ("The destruction of the Shadowlith fragment evoke bloodthirsty madness in the Sormirbaeren, and in their mutual butchery they spared no one." and "The lights turned dim, the villages fell quiet but for an occasional painful cry, and the northern coasts of the Black Sea became redder than they'd ever been.") Also, it seems to me that Oyensorm (Serpent's Eyes) is a very apparent analogue of the Mouth of Tchort. Leviathans really work in similar patterns when it comes to using humans, don't they?
You could say that this whole Expedition is yet another "Deep Caverns" and you fight the "tchortlings" of another, more distant Leviathan.
But not only that, we also get to see the Godmen/Leviathans proxy war playing out right before our eyes. Shadowlith doing its thing and Glowing Canine having appeared at a later date to interfere. And then we have Yngwar shedding Shadowlith's influence with the Glowing Canine's help... man, just what is he and what is his role in all this?
edit: whoops, post got cut off by styg's forum bugs.
Really? I was able to get something approximating a good ending, where they were defeated but their society grew peaceful. The subtext of the scene implies that they are better off without the shadowlith. The exact slides can be seen here: https://imgur.com/a/6d5tgyP
I got this ending by staying with Aegis, and destroyed both the shadowlith and its shard in the Sormirbaeren temple. I killed a lot of them, both those who attacked the camp and their ambushes outside the geothermal plant and JSHQ. However, when in their village and graveyard, I attacked no civilians, and stealthed/ran past all the guards. The only ones I killed were the priests and the guards inside the temple, who I didn't object to killing since they were clearly complicit in exposing the population to an empirically corrupting influence.
I've still got the save file if you'd like it.
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Bugs / Magnar's ghost failing to spawn from ashes
« on: July 17, 2020, 08:30:11 pm »
Killing Magnar while he's affected by Thermodynamic Destabilization will not trigger the shadowlith version of him to spawn from the ashes. I did the fight again, this time without TD, and he spawned normally. Pretty sure it's not intended since it's a nice spot of intrigue and shows the shadowlith's influence over the natives.
I have a save file if you'd like to reproduce it it.
I have a save file if you'd like to reproduce it it.
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