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1

General / (Spoilers) Extra Part of Oculus Quest

« on: January 29, 2016, 09:54:11 am »

I didn't see this mentioned on the wiki, but I see in the game's dialog files that there's an entire segment where Twitch allows you to plant a burrower spawn in the Talloski Manor to spy on them, and you can bribe the family members and brag about being the invictus to get in.

I'm not sure what the complete flow of this quest is(such as how to initiate it): I just explored the manor because it was there and ended up finding Wit Nosek. It doesn't appear that Wit says anything different if you follow this more complete questline. I thought I'd mention it in case somebody wanted to add it to the wiki or knew more about it, though.

The relevant dialogs are:

Character: "I need some surveillance equipment to spy on the Talloski family in Core City."
Twitch: "Please wait... ::He hastily types something on the keyboard, then turns around to you. You feel like you have his full attention, as strange as it may be.::

I have just the right thing for you. As a matter of fact, I believe you're already familiar with the piece of equipment I'm about to present to you."
Twitch: "Twitch releases a loud whistle. Almost instantly, you hear the sound of something skittering across the metal floor, something tiny. You have heard this sound before, you remember. A burrower spawn reveals itself and comes toward Twitch, proceeding to climb his leg with quick motions of its tiny legs, going all the way up to his shiny bald head, on top of which it finally rests."
Character: "Don't you have something a bit more traditional? "
Twitch: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Whether you like it or not - the spawn is yours to command. As before, you are to release it in a ventilation shaft of your choosing; it will stay there and... do its job.
Once the spawn is in place, return to me. I'll keep a close eye on everything it sends back. Hmmm, I said, I'll keep a close eye on everything it sends back."
Twitch: "The creature climbs down onto his left shoulder. He brings his mouth close to it, just like Abram did before, almost like speaking to it, but no sounds come from either of the two strange creatures. Twitch then extends his arm toward you and touches your shoulder, allowing the little one to walk across to you. Again, it finds home in a comfortable pocket in which it finally comes to a still."
Character: "Thanks Twitch, I'll be on my way now. See you later."
Twitch: "Take care of it, and see you later. I have to return to my monitors; I've probably missed so much inf-- ::He turns around, instantly gluing his eyes one of the monitors."

After you plant it and ask him what he's found:
Twitch: "That sounded so... ominous. Release the spawn! ::Before you even get a chance to process what he said, he repeats it, as if expecting you to have answered it already.:: I said, release the spawn! Anyway, I am aware you released it, because I already had some information sent by it."
Twitch: "Well, so fa-- ::He focuses on one of the monitors for a brief moment.:: --r, the only thing of any interest was a discussion between a man referred to as Vlatko and his son, Maxim. It appears that their big-screen... ::He quickly glances at another monitor.:: big-screen monitor broke."
Character: "::Let him continue.::"
Twitch: "This prevents them from watching ArenaNow. They seem pretty... ::He focuses on one of the monitors.:: pretty distressed by this"
Twitch: "That is all I can tell you at the moment. Hmmm? Hmmm? I said, that's all for now. ::He focuses on one of the monitors."
Character: "I see... Okay, call me if anything new happens. I'll see what I can do with this information."

After you deliver the spawn back to him:
Twitch: "Twitch stops what he was doing and focuses on the matter at hand. You let the spawn cross over to him, after which they again perform the "silent speaking" ritual. Finally, after their communication is over, the spawn climbs down and skitters away into darkness."


There are some more dialogs with Sophie, Maxim, and Vlatko. I think you can pretend to be a TV repairman, to brag about being the gladiator, and to bribe Sophie with one of the worms from Foundry.

2

General / (Spoilers) Finishing the Game as a Mutant

« on: January 29, 2016, 02:38:20 am »

If you beat the game after turning into a mutant while gassing the Free Drones, the game doesn't make any comment during the ending. It seems like this might be an oversight.

Most people attack on-sight as a mutant, but the people at Hanging Rat Bar don't seem to mind you. Rude Bob still comments on your ugly face, but that actually seems appropriate as a mutant. I half-expected him to compliment me on how much better my face was looking.

I notice that you lose the Psi Empathy feat, but retain all of your other feats. So you can use Locus of Control, Premeditation, and Psionic Mania as a mutant. Only Locus is useful, though.

I also noticed that a gas mask and biohazard suit don't stop you from inhaling the gas in the first place. It must be strong stuff.

Anyone else find anything interesting playing as a mutant?

3

General / (Spoilers) Mysterious Cube

« on: January 28, 2016, 11:54:23 am »

Is there a way to steal the mysterious cube? That is, to leave the DC with it still in your inventory. I've tried:

1. Leaving it in random lockers: The Faceless find it
2. Leaving it on the ground: The Faceless find it
3. Leaving it on the ground with a force field around it: The Faceless find it, and the force field remains around it.
4. Beginning battle with the Faceless, but running past them: Six takes it from you
5. Getting past the Faceless, but leaving it on the ground before you get on the elevator: Six mentions the Faceless find it despite your foolishness.

I haven't yet tried:
6. Killing every last one of the Faceless in DC, but leaving it on the ground before the elevator.
7. Hacking it into my inventory after giving it to the Faceless(to see Six's response)
8. Hacking it into my inventory after leaving the DC
9. Hacking it into Leo's inventory and then buying it from him once you get past Six.
10. Hacking it out of the game completely before talking to the Faceless, so that it no longer exists at all(just to see what happens).
11. Leaving it on the ground after killing Tchort. I'm sure the Faceless will find it, but I saved shortly after picking it up and don't want to redo the Tchort fight.
12. Inspecting the game code to see if there are any missing dialog options.

Anyone have any ideas?

4

General / Where to find Acid Vials?

« on: January 01, 2016, 11:05:50 pm »

I'm doing one of the Tchort quests where you need to test a chemical pistol. I'm having trouble finding a merchant that sells acid vials, and don't have the chemistry to craft them myself. What's a good place to get acid vials?

5

General / Breaking the Faceless Barricade?

« on: January 01, 2016, 11:09:58 am »

I was able to break the Faceless barricade using AoE Enrage, a 729 capacity high frequency shield, abusing zone transitions to heal/save/recharge, and using adrenaline/morphine before entering. However, they seemed to keep coming as I killed them. I got especially suspicious when I saw a couple coming from the drill area late into the fight.

Do the Faceless at the barricade keep respawning, or can you actually free Core City from them? Even if not, is there anything good to loot if you somehow keep them all occupied?

6

General / You should raise Underrail's price

« on: December 29, 2015, 07:33:01 pm »

This is such a great game - I've bought a couple copies for myself and friends, and I really hope you're successful with it. I think it's underpriced right now at $14 or $15: I've paid more for games that have not been given the attention to detail and love that this clearly has. I feel people who enjoy hardcore RPGs like this - that often require you to reload many times or plan out every little fight in detail - are going to be more price-insensitive than the usual gamer since they're looking for a good game above all else.

If you raised it to at least $20 and probably even $25, I don't think you'd drive too many people off and with the extra money you could make your next game even bigger. Then you could drop it to its current price during Steam sales or similar.

In any case, thanks for the great game!

7

General / How to reset Abram's quest state if you've messed it up

« on: December 29, 2015, 01:03:40 am »

I accidentally told Abram that there were dogs in the Junkyard Embassy compound, but realized too late that this would cut me off from the questline. I didn't want to redo all of my progress because of that one mistake, so I cheated by editing one of my saves. It appears to work, so I thought I'd document what I did here in case anyone else finds it useful. Be sure to save a copy of your game before attempting anything like this.

I'm not sure I actually recommend doing this, but it's here if you're desperate. I'll note that I'm writing this immediately after noticing Abram pick up the change, but I haven't gone through the entire questline yet to see if there are any issues.

1. Quests often have  a simple 'yes/no' trigger  that tracks your dialogue options, whether you've killed people, where you've been, who you've talked to, etc. These are stored in your 'global.dat' file. This files consists of a 16-byte GUID that identifies the file as being Underrail-related, an 8-byte version marker, and then the gzip'ed output of serializing some internal game data structures. So you should remove the first 24 bytes and unzip the remainder(let's call this remainder the 'Unpacked File'). You can use the 'unpack' option on my program below[1] to do this step.

2. Notice some interesting strings in the resulting file with names like "npc_abram_saidHeWantsEmbassyInfo" or "npc_abram_toldHimEmbassyHasDogs" that all look relevant, next to some binary gibberish. I believe that these are set when the dialog files("Data/Dialogs/Characters/abram.udlg") are interpreted by the Underrail engine. You should only have flags in your save that the game has actually set, since it lazily creates them as needed. Your action here should be to review the Unpacked File for Abram-related flags using any text editor.

3. Underrail treats a missing flag as equivalent to being false. Observe that the byte immediately following all quest flag names has a value of 1. It will be significantly easier to change this value to a 0 than to attempt to remove the flag entirely. Using your hex editor of choice[2], locate and change all of these bytes to 0.

4. The Unpacked File needs to be packed again in order for Underrail to read it. Gzip it, and then prepend the 24 bytes that you removed in step 1. You can use the 'pack' option on my program below[1] to do this step. Then name it 'global.dat' and replace your original 'global.dat' with it.

[1]
Binary: https://github.com/MichaelBurge/underrail-unpacker/releases

Usage:
Main.exe unpack < original_global.dat > unpacked.dat
Main.exe pack < unpacked.dat > new_global.dat

Here's an example of me building this, unpacking one of my example saves, repacking it, and then confirming that the files match. You'll want to have 'make', 'csc'(the C# compiler), and 'md5sum' in your PATH to follow along.

Code: [Select]

C:\Users\mike2_000\Desktop\repos\underrail-unpacker>make
csc.exe Main.cs
Microsoft (R) Visual C# Compiler version 12.0.21005.1
for C# 5
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


>Main.exe unpack < "C:\Users\mike2_000\Documents\My Games\Underrail\Saves\a\global.dat" > unpacked.dat
>Main.exe pack < unpacked.dat > packed.dat

>md5sum "C:\Users\mike2_000\Documents\My Games\Underrail\Saves\a\global.dat" packed.dat
\e12ab7cfcdde5281b93ab502bb197dc0 *C:\\Users\\mike2_000\\Documents\\My Games\\Underrail\\Saves\\a\\global.dat
e12ab7cfcdde5281b93ab502bb197dc0 *packed.dat

[2] If you're on Windows, I used HxD to edit my Unpacked File:
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

8

Bugs / Port Zenith Constant Loading Bug

« on: December 28, 2015, 06:03:08 am »

There is a non-deterministic bug in Port Zenith that me and several others encountered in Port Zenith in the warehouse map that contains the shipment of shield emitters that you are supposed to steal. If you are spotted while sneaking in stealth or carrying Bob's armor and keycard(when the guards say their dialogue), often the cursor will change to the spinning hourglass loading symbol and you will be unable to advance or do anything, including reload the game.

9

Bugs / Burrower Egg Crash Bug

« on: December 28, 2015, 05:57:15 am »

Steps to replicate:

1.) In Camp Hathor, head north to the burrower's nest
2.) Let a burrower lay an egg.
3.) Kill the burrower and all spawn, but not the egg
4.) While the game is out-of-combat, charge a Cryokinesis to attack the egg
5.) If the egg hatches while the Cryokinesis projectile is heading towards it, the game will crash when it hits

10

Bugs / Zone Transition Exploit

« on: December 27, 2015, 12:26:40 am »

If you are struggling in a certain zone against certain enemies, there is a way that you can abuse the zone transitions to get a huge advantage. It goes like this:

1. Focus all of your power using every tool to kill a single enemy, but hang near a zone entrance
2. After killing the enemy, retreat into the next zone.
3. Recharge your shields, psi, health, grenades, etc.
4. Save
5. Go back into the zone with the enemies, and go to step 1 unless all enemies are dead.

This offers a couple advantages:
* They will remain with status effects when you next enter the area, so try to fear, fire, freeze, etc. them before you leave again.
* You can recharge everything you need in between each enemy
* You can save after killing each enemy
* You can apply buffs like food, morphine, adrenaline, etc. before initiating on each enemy.

And one disadavantage:
* It looks like you take a -10 penalty to initiative when you do this. I'm not sure if it's a byproduct of another mechanic or intended just for this.

Even with the disadvantage, this seems extremely powerful so I thought I'd report it in case it was unintended.

11

Suggestions / Keychain for Quest Items

« on: December 26, 2015, 06:26:04 pm »

Quest items, keys, keycards, etc. have no weight, so you can carry as many of them as you want. However, they do take up inventory slots which makes it harder to see at a glance the state of your inventory. I suggest either creating a separate tab(maybe call it your 'keychain') for quest items, allowing them to be hidden from view, or sorting them at the bottom of your inventory.