Commando Build

[DunderFail]

http://underrail.info.tm/build/?HgMHCgMOAwbCoEAAAB5OwqBlW3EyeHgfKngAAAAAAAAAJwEZHRY1Ajd-RzNJwoU7wrXCpE7ipKIK4qWfBd-_

After completing the base game as a pure psi user with low initiative and stealth but high speech abilities, I wanted to try something completely different for my first Expedition character; a stealthy, anti-social crit-commando.

Thought about adding in some Temporal Manipulation so I could experience that for the first time, but I feel I need to dump will and I want to craft all my equipment.

Didn't invest much into chemistry since the only grenade I want to have in abundance are flash bangs; they are crucial for crowd control now since I don't have any other way to stun/incapacitate. I feel I can buy all the other grenades I need.

Concerning attributes, I'm torn about whether perception or agility should be higher. Perception basically increases my gun damage but agility governs movement points, stealth, and initiative. I think 10 is enough for the latter but let me know. Hopefully its enough to spot crawlers either way...

Regarding equipment, I wanted to go for a sniper rifle with high crit chance and a silenced SMG for silent takedowns. I'd love if I could use throwing knives instead so I can have a beefier SMG, but I don't want to invest anymore into throw than I already do.

I'm not so sure about traps. I though there was a perk that lets you deploy them in combat more easily but I can't seem to find it. How useful are they in the player's hands with limited investment in chemistry?

All in all really excited for this build, its truly going to be something completely different to what I'm used to. And I get to experience the whole game all over again with the expansion!

EDIT:

New build with Temporal skills
http://underrail.info.tm/build/?HgMHCgMOAwbCoB4AAABMwqBlW3EyeHgbKngAAABGAAAAJwEZHRY1Ajd-M0nChTsrwrVHMOKkogripZ8F378

[harperfan7]

Temporal manipulation doesn't require any will to be useful.  You can invest just 70 points and be good.  You can find/buy plenty of traps/grenades up to mk3, but in in lategame these are pretty weak, especially on dominating.  Perception should be higher; no need for more than 10 agility.  If you take ambush (not to mention aimed shot/snipe), you dont need to worry about crit chance with snipers.   You can use a silenced smg if you care about silent takedowns.  You dont have to have chemistry for traps, you can find/buy regular traps, then later you can craft plasma mines with electronics.  The feat you're thinking of is Quick Tinkering.  Traps are very useful, basically broken. 

[DunderFail]

Temporal manipulation doesn't require any will to be useful.  You can invest just 70 points and be good.  You can find/buy plenty of traps/grenades up to mk3, but in in lategame these are pretty weak, especially on dominating.  Perception should be higher; no need for more than 10 agility.  If you take ambush (not to mention aimed shot/snipe), you dont need to worry about crit chance with snipers.   You can use a silenced smg if you care about silent takedowns.  You dont have to have chemistry for traps, you can find/buy regular traps, then later you can craft plasma mines with electronics.  The feat you're thinking of is Quick Tinkering.  Traps are very useful, basically broken.

Thanks for reminding me of the trap feat, but now I can't decide which feat to drop in favor of it.

To learn the temporal skills, do you just need 70 points invest or do you need an effective skill of 70?

Would you say there is any such thing as too much stealth?

[harperfan7]

70 actual skill points.

Too much stealth?  Not for somebody with snipe, ambush, or interloper, no. 

[DunderFail]

Well, I had fun finding out that sniper rifles need 5 strength once I got all the way to junkyard...

[Bruno]

Looked at your build, looks solid, but a few thoughts:

I'd drop Hit and Run. Problem is if you miss or fail to one-hit-kill your target, it does not help you.

For 5 STR, just redistribute some points from perception. If you want to salvage your build, put next point into STR and eat a barbecue when you need your sniper while waiting for lvl 12.

I'd never play a sniper without Paranoia. You are completely a glass cannon, you need all the detection and initiative you can get, or lurkers/crawlers/arena fighters etc will eat you alive.

Interloper, I'd only take on a melee build. It is very much a luxury feat for you, and slower stealth movement is actually a benefit, as you will spot traps without walking on them first and dying with 3 Constitution and little evasion/armor.

[kamax3]

Ya was gonna say...  for sniper rifles you're gonna need 5 str or so.

[DunderFail]

Could someone explain the Critical Power feat to me? I don't quite understand it.

[Vokial]

Crit Power means better additional damage when a critical hit happens. If you use for example an anatomically aware scope on your rifle, then you get 50% boost to your crit damage - now it being 150%. And with a basic Crit Power feat, that becomes a total of 225%, which is awesome for single shots with high chance and of course guaranteed crits with Aimed Shots alike (which you should use sometimes every round with Shooting Spree). It worths to specialize on Crit Power a lot more than Snipe - which is good on it's own with high enough Stealth.

As for your build, I think you're overinvested in Hacking and Lockpicking. For example an effective 100 with Jackknife should be enough for the latter to reach 130 with Engineer's Suit, Haxxor and Eel Sandwitch. Temporal is enough for 55 (56 for an effective 50 for a better Entropic Recurrence) if you're not planning to use Stasis, however I heard it has it's uses. Do pick up and specialize in Psycho-Temporal Acceleration for that sweet MP, AP buff, so you can shoot your Rapid Spearhead 3 times for an additional round too.
Also, exactly to have better even better Initiation aside from the Paranoia boost + to make the most out of the Sharpshooter feat, I went for pistols as a sidearm. Better crits, and more chance too upon picking up Steadfast Aim as well, especially since a sniper rifle need 5 STR, so I really had no excuse. Biggest bonus is granted while using a 44 Hammerer, whih means that we get to use explosive rounds too (a true wonder that happens to be pistol exclusive only) although Falchions are great too for additional crit chance. And unlike the bursts from SMG's, pistols actually make good use of smart modules.

I went for a hitman kind-of character (just some firearm assassin, no relation to agent47) that has Mercantile instead of pickpocket after I pictured him gearing up from a secret stash of weapon storage before a mission (enable Jackknife and Trapper's Belt pls).
http://underrail.info.tm/build/?HgUICAMNAwbCoDgAAADCncKdTToAPmVlNz5lAAAAOAAATRcBMToeRn41K8KHM0tbKAIwwqTCteKnjAPip74I4rGWBN-_

Alternate take with lower agility but higher intelligence and perception, now with 100 on pickpocket too, enough to serve you well (steal oddities even the one from the Faceless boss and the symbol from Mordre for the appropriate quest). And while still able to craft the best Incendiary grenades and Hypercerebrix, explosives of mkIV and Bullheads are now also restricted to a bench in addition to top tier plasma and emp:
http://underrail.info.tm/build/?HgUIBQMOAwjCoDgAAADCoMKgRDtLO1paKjBaAAAANwAARBcBMToeRn41K8KHM0tbKAIwwqTCteKnjAPip74I4rGWBN-_
(with 8 INT, it becomes debatable not to switch out something for Power Management too)

[DunderFail]

Crit Power means better additional damage when a critical hit happens. If you use for example an anatomically aware scope on your rifle, then you get 50% boost to your crit damage - now it being 150%. And with a basic Crit Power feat, that becomes a total of 225%, which is awesome for single shots with high chance and of course guaranteed crits with Aimed Shots alike (which you should use sometimes every round with Shooting Spree). It worths to specialize on Crit Power a lot more than Snipe - which is good on it's own with high enough Stealth.

As for your build, I think you're overinvested in Hacking and Lockpicking. For example an effective 100 with Jackknife should be enough for the latter to reach 130 with Engineer's Suit, Haxxor and Eel Sandwitch. Temporal is enough for 55 (56 for an effective 50 for a better Entropic Recurrence) if you're not planning to use Stasis, however I heard it has it's uses. Do pick up and specialize in Psycho-Temporal Acceleration for that sweet MP, AP buff, so you can shoot your Rapid Spearhead 3 times for an additional round too.
Also, exactly to have better even better Initiation aside from the Paranoia boost + to make the most out of the Sharpshooter feat, I went for pistols as a sidearm. Better crits, and more chance too upon picking up Steadfast Aim as well, especially since a sniper rifle need 5 STR, so I really had no excuse. Biggest bonus is granted while using a 44 Hammerer, whih means that we get to use explosive rounds too (a true wonder that happens to be pistol exclusive only) although Falchions are great too for additional crit chance. And unlike the bursts from SMG's, pistols actually make good use of smart modules.

I went for a hitman kind-of character (just some firearm assassin, no relation to agent47) that has Mercantile instead of pickpocket after I pictured him gearing up from a secret stash of weapon storage before a mission (enable Jackknife and Trapper's Belt pls).
http://underrail.info.tm/build/?HgUICAMNAwbCoDgAAADCncKdTToAPmVlNz5lAAAAOAAATRcBMToeRn41K8KHM0tbKAIwwqTCteKnjAPip74I4rGWBN-_

Alternate take with lower agility but higher intelligence and perception, now with 100 on pickpocket too, enough to serve you well (steal oddities even the one from the Faceless boss and the symbol from Mordre for the appropriate quest). And while still able to craft the best Incendiary grenades and Hypercerebrix, explosives of mkIV and Bullheads are now also restricted to a bench in addition to top tier plasma and emp:
http://underrail.info.tm/build/?HgUIBQMOAwjCoDgAAADCoMKgRDtLO1paKjBaAAAANwAARBcBMToeRn41K8KHM0tbKAIwwqTCteKnjAPip74I4rGWBN-_
(with 8 INT, it becomes debatable not to switch out something for Power Management too)

Interesting that you have crafting so low in your 8 int build. Referencing a guide on Steam it seems you want to shoot for 160 effective skill in order to make the highest quality stuff. But I'd like to know if you could reduce that amount since crafting is such a points hog.

What you said about using pistols instead of SMGs since they also benefit from strength and benefit from the same feats as snipers rings true. I still want to use SMGs but I'll remember it for the next run. Explosive ammo sounds very useful.

[Vokial]

The reason of me having relatively low on Machanics, Electronics and Tailoring is to save points and put it to somehere else. While using a bench or a Hypercerebrix that we can craft independently with 70 Biology, we can have these 3 skills on an effective 135. That should be enough for us to produce level 3 emp and plasma explosives and to use components of 160 quality.
Still, since top quality components will make our end-game gear, we don't need to have our skills raised to a level where whe can mass produce those items anytime and anywhere - we will only craft equipment of this kind once or maybe twice. If upon being ready to craft our final instruments, we can even pop a Hypercerebrix AND use our bench too, raising the 3 crafting skills to 155.

Thanks to that allocation of points I can now have a Mercantile skill that will grant me better prices and most importantly I can raise it to 105 (with Hypercerebrix + UnderPie) and get all the access of secret stashes from all merchants. Hoping that they will grant me access to those elusive items of 160+ quality we want to work with. No use of having high crafting skills if we don't have the materials we need them for.



As for pistols, it just makes the build more wholesome in my opinion. With those, everything connects better, the stats have more purpose, strength for feats and weapon requirment too - it will also make crits frequent and more devastating benefitting both weapons, initiation will be boosted... everything just fits.
SMG's are have good damage with bursts, so that's allright I guess - don't intend to change your mind, just provide a different view which I thought will be better for you to know about upon making the choice you prefer the most.

[DunderFail]

The reason of me having relatively low on Machanics, Electronics and Tailoring is to save points and put it to somehere else. While using a bench or a Hypercerebrix that we can craft independently with 70 Biology, we can have these 3 skills on an effective 135. That should be enough for us to produce level 3 emp and plasma explosives and to use components of 160 quality.
Still, since top quality components will make our end-game gear, we don't need to have our skills raised to a level where whe can mass produce those items anytime and anywhere - we will only craft equipment of this kind once or maybe twice. If upon being ready to craft our final instruments, we can even pop a Hypercerebrix AND use our bench too, raising the 3 crafting skills to 155.

If thanks to that allocation of points I can have a Mercantile skill that I can raise to 105 (with Hypercerebrix + UnderPie) and get all the access of secret stashes from all merchants. in hope that they will grant me access to those elusive items of 160+ quality we want to work with.



As for pistols, it just makes the build more wholesome in my opinion. With those, everything connects better, the stats have more purpose, strength for feats and weapon requirment too - it will also make crits frequent and more devastating benefitting both weapons, initiation will be boosted... everything just fits.
SMG's are have good damage with bursts, so that's allright I guess - don't intend to change your mind, just provide a different view which I thought will be better for you to know about upon making the choice you prefer the most.

Assuming I'm fine with just 160 quality components that would mean I only need crafting skills effect to 135, correct?

So 135 = 160 quality items? And 160 quality items are more than enough for end game? I'm just trying to establish some rules of thumb.

Assuming this I went ahead and buffed throwing and evasion:

http://underrail.info.tm/build/?HgUHCgMMAwbCoEAAAABbwqBlVnEtWVlRKlkAAABGAAAAARY1Ajd-M0nChTsrRzAeOcK1KEvipZ8F4qe-Ct-_

[Vokial]

Assuming I'm fine with just 160 quality components that would mean I only need crafting skills effect to 135, correct?

So 135 = 160 quality items? And 160 quality items are more than enough for end game? I'm just trying to establish some rules of thumb.

Kinda yeah... for example tactical vests need 80% of the quality in points points of tailoring. So a quality 160 vest (which is the max) need 128 tailoring. If you add any other components, like a black cloth for example, this number will increase though. So it all depends if you plan on using Hypercerebrix or not. If you don't, maybe you can reduce Biology in favor of some other crafting skill. I choose 70 Biology since I might need it anyway should I decide on Regenerative Vests (however Sturdy seems great as well) because of my low Constitution and the option to produce other chems doesn't hurt either. Although Hypercerebrix boosts all skills significantly that are governed by Intelligence, it is hard to come by because of rare ingredients, so it's usage will be limited.

[DunderFail]

Sounds great. I'll take the extra evasion and throwing even if it means slightly less OP equipment. I'm just playing on normal anyways.

I hope the extra points in throwing will make it viable for me to do silent take-downs with throwing knives instead of having to make my submachine gun a 5mm.

[Vokial]

Now that I'm playing around with reallocating points and stats, I found a few other good versions too.
Although I don't have much experience with throwing. Did not even use grenades that much to be honest despite having a lot of them. If I need to make a guess based on just gut feeling, I would say that throwing knives might not be the best option to take.
Actually I think there's nothing to fear from being noisy. You'll have an SMG, that is considered to be one of the best means of offense in the game and also able to hit multiple targets with a single attack, so you probably won't have to worry. Also, since riles are able to one-shot most enemies, I felt quite safe and comfortable with sniping from a distance despite it being loud, especially from the point I was able to shoot twice per round.  And if I realized that the coming wave is more than what I could handle, I reloaded the quicksave before engaging and placed some traps or caltrops before my ambush from afar. Kneecap Shot also works wonders to slow enemies down.

Traps and mines I also found more useful than grenades, despite not being able to deploy them in combat (without Quick Tinkering). Usually I just kited the enemy with a rifle. Restealth when possible - which could result in them loosing track, but even just for the purpose of using Snipe again.