Underrail Forum
Underrail => Builds => Topic started by: NumberTJ47 on July 05, 2025, 03:56:30 am
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Hey there, I've recently beaten dominating for the second time with a sword build that uses no psi or crafting. I've created and tested 4 sword builds in total, though the first two weren't that great. I think I'm ready to create a decent guide for the sword, but it's hard to feel qualified to give advice in a decade-old community that has people that can beat the game without dying a single time.
With the amount of experience I have with swords I'm confident that my guide would be mostly correct and helpful to plenty of players, but I still feel like there's a ton of sword builds I haven't tried. If I tested every build I had in mind to make the guide I'd be spending 300 hours playing builds that feel really similar, and I'd probably just be confirming my own biases.
My guide would mostly be made for people who want to play dominating for the first time, so I'd would really appreciate some feedback so I can avoid misleading newer players. Swords make good use of all the OP tools a new dominating should use, such as traps, stealth, crafting, and TM. They also have lots of damage for those 400% HP bosses. The final boss is an absolute cakewalk when you use the sword, though the weapon tends to struggle against groups of armored enemies.
Sorry if I gloss over some stuff. I'm assuming that if you're reading this you've either played a sword build on dominating before or have enough experience playing melee to get what i'm talking about.
Build Priorities
Every time I start thinking of a new sword build I use this template. It primarily contains feats and skills I consider mandatory on a sword build, such a as flurry and critical power. I usually remove a skill or feat here or there though (Usually TM). I always increase strength or dexterity to at least 12 for psi builds and 14 for Versatility builds. Template: https://underrail.info/build/?HgUGBgMDAwYAADwAwqAAADIyMgAAAAAAAAAAAABGAABQKzE5wowSBhZLwo3Ch-KyiAXisokC37w
The sword has a few weaknesses you'll want a secondary weapon to deal with:
- Accuracy issues.
- Little to no AoE.
- Bad vs armor.
These are the best secondary weapons/abilities that I've found to mitigate these weaknesses:
- Grenades and traps (obviously)
- Electrokinesis with Psychostatic Electricity.
- Versatility with the Thumper, or the Punisher for strength builds.
- Temporal Distortion is good early on. Haven't tested Continuum Ripple yet.
- Knives are helpful early if you're playing a dexterity build. They don't need to commit to a single target and don't require a 95% chance to hit to function.
I'm certain you can beat the game using only the sword for damage, but it'd be a lot more tedious. Most of the weapons above don't require heavy investment to be useful.
Testing
Here's some of the builds I've been wanting to test. Keep in mind that these builds are very much in the works. Most of my crafting skills are temporarily set to 90 when I'm prototyping. I also haven't ordered the feats super well for each level. Didn't fiddle around with the Special points much.
Taste For Blood + Bladed Metal Armor + Chainsword: https://underrail.info/build/?Hg4HCgMDAwYAAGkAwqAAAABkZABGWlpaWloAAABGAABaKzE5wqPCjBIGFkvCjcKHPEJFMCR8wrbisogF4rKJAt-8
I have confirmed that the chainsaw specially ability can proc the bleed. Might be the only decent non-flurry sword build, though I'd still say there's no reason not to take flurry.
Sword + Energy Pistol/Chem Pistol: https://underrail.info/build/?HgUQBgMDBQgjADgAwqAAAGRaNwAyWlpaWloAAADCoAAAWisxOcKjwowSBjAWS1zCjcKawocpWsK04rKIBeKyiQLfvA
In theory, energy pistols should cover all the main weaknesses of the sword. The electroshock pistol can stun and do AoE, and having electric and energy damage will help bypass armor. Blob pistols should also help with the accuracy issues due to their ability to root enemies.
Sword + Crossbow. No build for this one. I've never used the crossbow so I have no idea if it'd be good with the sword.
There's also some feats that could be good that I haven't played with much:
- Continuum Ripple
- Decapitate - The exposed head things kinda always kept me from taking this.
- Hit and Run - Doesn't proc from psi kills. Could be really good with blitz.
- Fancy Footwork - If this works with chainsword it could be pretty amazing. I'd worry about killing enemies too quickly and not getting enough movement points.
- Dirty Kick - Only just thought of this, but the stun could be really useful. Because unarmed damage scales with melee damage this should do decent enough damage to get the stun past the enemy's mechanical threshold. (As I recall, stunning attacks have to deal damage to enemies to apply the stun, but don't quote me on that.) Might be useful if you're not using the taser.
- Blindsiding - Doesn't look like a very significant damage boost, but I've seen it in a few people's builds.
- Monster Slayer - There are a few creatures that swords can struggle against. This one is hard to evaluate due to the sheer number of creatures in the game. Doesn't work with psi.
- Decommissioner - Swords really struggle against robots, so this could be somewhat useful. Doesn't work with psi.
What doesn't work
There's a ton of sword builds I've written off.
If you've used a decent sword build that used any of the firearm-type guns effectively then let me know. I didn't see any way to make a good build with them. This includes LMGs and miniguns. None of the other melee weapons seem useful in a sword build. Metathermics isn't great vs robots and has no CC. I really wanted to use Thought Control, but I don't see a way to make it good.
As for feats, here are some that I really don't think are any good:
- Parry and Riposte - Having only the chance of blocking SOME of the damage coming at you isn't great. Riposte definitely isn't worth it without Captain's Cutlass, but even then you need to get hit by 3 melee attacks to get as many attacks as a single flurry. Might be okay in long fights if you miss.
- Future Orientation - Good in theory, but when I got stasis it became irrelevant. Might be good if you're using TM with stasis banned.
- Serial Killer - The sword doesn't struggle so much against humanoids. Only does 10% extra damage. Doesn't work with psi.
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Future orientation is pretty good if you take tranquillity on your sword build.
Serial killer is pointless, so is robot killer really, you should only take monster slayer for Tchort at 28 or 30.
Surprised you haven't played many sword builds with fancy footwork, I would consider that a core sword feat because of how stacked it can get with low ap flurry spam.
Sword ideally has a knife sidearm for when you miss flurry but outside that it can deal with mostly everything fine on its own.
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Future orientation is pretty good if you take tranquillity on your sword build.
Serial killer is pointless, so is robot killer really, you should only take monster slayer for Tchort at 28 or 30.
Surprised you haven't played many sword builds with fancy footwork, I would consider that a core sword feat because of how stacked it can get with low ap flurry spam.
Sword ideally has a knife sidearm for when you miss flurry but outside that it can deal with mostly everything fine on its own.
Ah, so that's why I saw tranquility without meditation on your "Siphoner Man" build.
I personally wouldn't bother building around the tchort in a sword build. I think pretty much any decent level 25+ sword build can walk into the boss room and kill him without much issue. I killed him at level 22 with the claymore on my non-psi/crafting run, so I certainly haven't found it too difficult.
The damage given from Decommissioner is definitely too low to be useful for everyone. Maybe if someone REALLY hates arke power station it'd be a good choice late though.
I never really felt like I needed the extra movement points from Fancy Footwork or Hit and Run. Going by other people's builds, my tendency to undervalue movement points may be my weirdest quirk as a player.
I personally find that knives are really nice for dex builds. My alternative for strength builds is to have the chainsword as a secondary because its ability can be used so long as you have at least 5 AP. I've only recently warmed up to sword + gun builds, mostly because the Thumper is OP as hell early and you can shoot it at the ground to lure enemies to you without wasting a grenade. Before trying it out I'd have said sword + grenade launcher was a waste of time, but it proved shockingly useful throughout the entire game.
Just realised when reading expert sprint that it adds action points and not movement points. Probably gonna start taking 13 agility more often.
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If you mean the "Siphoner man" build in my builds page yeah, the actual credit to "Siphoner man" is harper's sword post.
And yes absolutely, sword doesn't need to build around Tchort but at lv30 what else is there to do?
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I prefer to kill tchort at level 25, so I usually have plenty of quests left after killing it. If I like my build I'll keep playing even after hitting the level cap. I usually only stop once I've killed the tchort, magnar, and finished most of the main quests. Whatever I take in my build is whatever will let me do all of that as easily as possible.
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Then yeah if you finishing the game that early then any of the "slayer" feats are pretty bad. Serial killer is good for the compound but that's about it. Cant even take them till level 26 anyways.