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16

Suggestions / Make Hard and Dominating Harder (Spoilers)

« on: July 20, 2021, 05:29:40 am »

I've been playing a lot of Dominating recently, and was struck by a bit of a revelation; the hardest part of Dominating is the early game (pre Depot-A). In the early game, your options are limited for gear and experience, and many of the enemies have been replaced with significantly harder versions of themselves, such as in Silent Isle. Once you get past Depot A you are presented with a plethora of experience and easily obtainable high quality gear, which makes the rest of the game a breeze. I've compiled a list of changes that would make the later stages of the game more interesting than just rush Constantine and buy cool stuff.

Hard Specific Changes

NPCs have a 125% health modifier and 115% skill modifier-Right now there is a huge gap between Hard and Dominating, in large part thanks to the health and skill modifier. This provides more of a gradual transition to make combat more challenging, sine otherwise the main difference between Normal and hard is extra enemies and the stealth and EMP changes.

Dominating Changes

Mechanic Changes

This section is mainly focused around various methods that can be used to cheese combat encounters.

• No Zone Transitions during combat-Any area with multiple exits makes combat fairly easy, since you can camp out near an exit, retreat when health is low, and reenter from a different exit without having a swarm of enemies immediately attack you. This is most noticeable in the native villages, where you can pull all the melee enemies to one side of the map, circle around, and then kill all the ranged enemies. You can also cheese the Praetorian security warehouse mission this way by throwing a gas grenade next to the window, leaving the zone, and then entering the walkway outside the area to pull the enemies into the gas grenade, or to pull them away from the entrance. 
• Enemies gain temporary resolve after each incapacitation- Right now it is very easy for melee builds to stunlock enemies with cheap shots, mental breakdown, flashbangs, and stuns, which can allow players to access endgame areas right after depot A with a little luck (example: stunlocking arena gladiators or stunlocking the greater coil spiders in Hecate labs for an early power fist, stunlocking the three masters with the powerfist and cheap shots). Giving enemies a 30 resolve buff after each incapacitation would make it a lot more difficult to chain incaps and cheese enemies.
• Have Merchants only sell items above a certain quality after certain story checkpoints- Most experienced players rush Constantine immediately after depot A to get high quality items very quickly such as knives, energy shields, ect. Merchants should only sell up to a maximum of q120 before helping rail crossing, q140 before the coretech research facility, and have no modifier after the research facility.
• Eye of Tchort is permanently active near the gate leading to Tchort and the areas behind it-Most Tchortling encounters can be easily skipped, even on dominating, and this would make it feel more climactic as you approach Tchort.

Enemy Changes

This section is mainly focused around making some mid and late game enemies more threatening.

• Azuridae Goliathus Int raided to 6, gain premediataion- This is mainly to let them cast PSP without expending action points, which in turn gives them a bit more movement on the first turn to increase their chances of landing a disruptive field or psionic inhibition.
• Alpha Rathounds are no longer afraid of fire- Alpha Rathounds are fairly rare early game, but become much more common late game. Giving them fire fear immunity makes their encounters a bit more challenging, so they can actually pose a threat to weaker characters.
• Ancient Rathounds gain the Taste for Blood Feat- This makes encounters with these enemies much more tactical, as preventing bleeds from alpha rathounds becomes much more important.
• Burrower Warriors gain Charge-Burrower Warriors currently suffer greatly from a lack of movement, and giving them charge would let them temporarily overcome this weakness and let them threaten faster characters
• Greater Coil Spiders gain tranquility-This lets the spiders shoot off 2 electrokinesis instead of 1 when at full health. This also makes combat more tactical by encouraging the use of crowd control such as grenades to lower the damage capabilities of these enemies.
• Cuttlesnails leave behind a trail of toxic gas and acid puddles- This would work similar to the zoner from that one core city sewer fragment, and make it harder to move around snails without proper protective gear.
• Plasma Sentries change into their turret form after attacking, changing form costs 0 ap- This would increase the damage output of these robots, and prevent easy escapes from the bots while they waste their turn entering and leaving the turret form.
• Melee Bandit  gang members (Ironheads, Lurkers, and Lunatics) spawn with rathound or pig leather tabis- This lets these enemies more easily reach characters, and increases the attacks that knife bandits can make.
• Give Knife Bandits (Lurkers, Lunatics) Expose Weakness- Knife bandits currently struggle to damage any enemy with decent tactical vests or stronger armor, and this change would make them a lot more dangerous to fight.

Boss Changes

These changes aim to make some boss encounters a bit more challenging.

• Carnifex and Balor gain Thick Skull-These bosses currently can easily be defeated with dirty kick, cut-throat, and even a taser, and this would make it a lot harder to do that
• Vanga, Frost, and Firecracker gain the Dominating boss modifiers, remove several of the lunatics on the upper level of the mall-These are the leaders of the Lunatics, but are currently just a slightly special lunatic Nuker, Freezer, and TCer. Giving them the boss health modifier makes them a bit scarier, but is slightly counterbalanced by removing a couple of lunatics from the horde on the second floor.
• Balor Gains Truesight-He has a mechanical eye, so this makes sense.
• Tchort Gets the Dominating Boss HP modifier, regens 200 hp per Mutagen Tank- A lot of builds can Take Tchort down in 1-2 turns, and he currently barely has more heath that Gubbins or Fatso at this difficulty, and even has less health than Jet Eater on Dominating. Now, instead of just rushing him down, players have to destroy the tanks and prepare for a long fight, which would also cause a lot more people to do the mutagen puzzle.

Native Raid Changes

This could have been a separate topic but it fits well enough here. After Defend the Island, each subsequent native raid should receive buffs based on each of the native chieftains. The buff can be prevented for future raids by killing the corresponding chieftain.
Raid 2- If Eldran is alive, in this raid and all subsequent raids enemies permanently gain 4 stacks of Warmed Up, which increases movement speed, healing recieved, and cold threshold, as well as providing immunity to chill.
Raid 3-If Baenkraster is alive, in this raid and all subsequent raids enemies gain bone armor, a buff that gives 10 bonus mechanical dt and 20% mechanical resistance.
Raid 4-If Oyensorm is alive, in this raid and all subsequent raids enemies gain Battle Trance, which increases all offensive and psionic skills by 50%, similar to buff that the faceless receive when attacking the Institute.
Final Raid-If Magnar is alive, all non-boss enemies receive a permanent Vitality Powder effect. Additionally, at the end of the battle an additional wave will spawn for each chieftain still alive, with Eldran leading a wave of 6 random krisfargers, Baenkraster leading a wave of 6 random Skaaders, Oyensorm leading a wave of 3 spaaters and 3 Oyetspaaters, and Magnar leading a wave of 3 Krisfarger, 3 Skaaders, and 3 Oyetspaaters.

17

Builds / Ripping a Hole in The Space Time Continuum: 3 Million Damage Eviscerate Build

« on: July 13, 2021, 06:55:51 am »

A while back someone posted a screenshot in the discord of a 55k crit plasma pistol execute. This sparked my curiosity, and I set about attempting to find a way to surpass that number that is actually feasible in game. From my findings, I have created this build.
https://underrail.info/build/?HgsNAwMDBwYywokAwqAAAG0AAAAXX1URPzfCoAAARklLbBrCncKtw4grJkUkIEIGKsKHXDxLwoUQMcKzfHrinrAK4qqoBd-_
As you can probably guess, this build uses the ripper glove with Serrated Super Steel Armor to inflict the maximum number of bleeds per attack, and uses eviscerate to turn those bleeds into over 3 million damage. The rest of this guide will be on the setup, target, and actions required to achieve something close to this damage in game.

Part 1: Required Gear

For this build you will need the following:
High quality Tungsten Dagger (q179 dagger used for calculations)
Rippers Glove
Triple Serrated Super Steel armor (13% penalty with Armor Sloping, nimble, and body weight training)
Tabis of any kind
Doctors Belt
3 Leper Poison Throwing Knives
1 Leper Poison Bear Trap
Toxic Gas Grenades
Super Solider Drug
All In
Adrenaline
Psi Booster
It should go without saying that you should be max level, and have Deep Caverns completed to hopefully get some high quality Tungsten Plates.

Part 2: The Target

If we are going for maximum damage, we need to pick the right target, as certain feats only work on certain enemy types. Creature is the best enemy type for max damage, since hunter boosts knife damage and we use a knife to eviscerate. We also need an enemy who has enough health to survive our ripper punches and bleeds, so we will have to do this on dominating with a boss creature. Luckily, one of the latest updates added Fatso, a large boar with 2.6k health on Dominating. Additionally, Fatso gains 75% damage reduction while under 75% hp, so he should be able to survive before the eviscerate. Sadly, Fatso also gains immobilization immunity under 75% hp, so you will have to rely on a lucky incap right before the eviscerate or replace a feat with combo and only stun Fatso on the 3rd turn for the opportunist bonus damage. From here on out our calculations will assume that the enemy we are fighting is a hypothetical walking punching bag creature that is susceptible to fear, poison, immobilization, and contamination, and who can’t kill us.

Part 3: Setting up the Eviscerate

Now that we have all the right equipment, we can start to set up the big number. This maximum damage number will assume that each punch inflicts 6 bleeds, that the eviscerate crits and does maximum damage, that the target is at exactly 1% hp when we eviscerate, and that we never miss. We start out at 25% hp for the fight response and under the effects of All In, and have a gas grenade already spewing toxic gas that is contaminating the punching bag. We have a doorway with a leper poison bear trap blocking it, and we set up a loud noise that the punching bag goes to investigate. We pop a super soldier drug exactly 5 seconds before the creature walks into the leper poison trap, and manually enter combat as soon as the trap goes off. If timed correctly, the creature will be immobilized, fully contaminated, and poisoned with 3 stacks of leper poison for 3 turns, and we will start combat with full AP since the super soldier drug was technically used on the previous turn. We have 100 ap with contraction, adrenaline, and fight response, and we are going to use that to our best ability to stack as many bleeds as possible. Our first turn is pretty simple, as after using adrenaline and contraction we attack with the Rippers Glove 25 times, inflicting 150 bleeds. On the second turn, we punch 18 times, cast frighten on the punching bag, use a psi booster, and then enter stealth for the blindsiding boost, using 99 ap to obtain an additional 108 bleeding wounds. On the final turn, we punch 17 more times, throw 3 leper poison knives to achieve maximum stacks of leper poison, use premeditation, predation, and then finally eviscerate, using 100 ap and bringing our total bleed count to 361, with 360 bleeds from our serrated armor and ripper gloves and 1 bleed from the beartrap. If everything went according to plan, we should have dealt 3,050,124 damage, slightly beating the 55k execute that inspired this guide.

Part 4: Damage Breakdown:

Let's talk a bit about how damage multipliers in Underrail work, since understanding them is key to maximizing damage. Our q179 tungsten dagger has a damage range of 11-31, which is our starting damage. We then multiply this by our weapon skill damage bonus, 417%, to get 129.27 damage. We then add the weapon strength modifier, which is 39% of base damage since we have 18 Str from All in, adrenaline, and Super Soldier, to reach 12.09 bonus damage from strength, bringing our total up to 141.36. We also get a 25% damage bonus against organics, bringing our base weapon damage up to 176.7. We then multiply this by our damage bonus from feats and abilities, which is 25% from opportunist, 50% from Taste for blood, 15% from blindsiding, 20% from hunter, 10% from the beast tattoo, and an assumed 40% damage bonus from predation. I say assumed damage bonus because the formula for how predation scales with TC is still unclear, so for now we will assume that at 240 skill predation provides a 10% damage bonus, which is raised to 40% when the attack is melee and the target is feared. This gives us 260% damage from feats, bringing our damage up to 459.42. We then multiply this by the mechanical damage received modifiers, which are 200% from contamination, 30% from infected wounds, and 60% from the leper poison, bringing the damage total up to 1791.738 damage. Now for the main attraction, eviscerate, which grants us 70% bonus damage per bleed stack thanks to specialization. We have 361 bleeds, which means eviscerate deals 25370% of our base damage. This multiplying our already impressive 1791.738 damage takes us to a monumental 454,563.931 damage. That’s already pretty good, but lets say, hypothetically, that our eviscerate crit. This would multiply our 454,563.931 damage by 671% due to the base 270% of the dagger from tungsten, cheap shots, crit power, and ripper at 1% health. This is how we obtain the damage total of 3,050,123.98, rounded to 3,050,124. More realistically, we obtained 90 bleeds from our actions and have the target at about 5% hp, giving us a final damage of 739,079 if we get a max damage stab, which is still quite impressive.

Part 5: Final Thoughts

I set out to make a build that could consistently deal more damage than 55k, and I have succeeded in that regard. You can theoretically obtain higher damage through a couple other methods, but these methods are statistically impossible to accomplish in game. One such method to crank out more bleeds is by using a Skaader sword with specced flurry, which can attack 3 times with flurry for 10 ap compared to 12 ap with the gloves, and doesn't have to worry about armor penalty. The problem with this is that the combo falls apart if a flurry misses, and is thus not obtainable in game. Another option is to use a Torpedo jet ski, which provides a maximum of 202% bonus melee damage, and use the Sea Dog and pirate tattoo feat to boost weapon skill damage and perform the combo against Jet Eater, who has 2.9 k health on Dominating. The problem with this method is that Jet Eater doesn't spawn every playthrough, and Jet Eater cannot be immobilized or poisoned, not to mention the accuracy penalty for fighting on a jet ski. Hercules is an option to free up more stat points, but it only slightly increases the strength bonus damage and lets you increase will to boost predation damage. I left electroshock and energy edge emitters out of the equation because I am unsure how they interact with predation, eviscerate, and some of the damage feats, but they could be used to increase damage even further. With the amount of attacks you make against Fatso with your damage you probably don't even reach 90 bleed stacks before he dies, so the in game obtainable amount is likely much lower than the values listed above. Fatso also becomes immobilization immune after reaching 75% health, so you either need to incap him at the end of your turns and before the eviscerate or you can stack mechanical damage reduction to tank him at 25% hp with +100% crits received. I don’t plan on running this build myself since I don’t have the patience to constantly reload on the quest for perfect damage, but feel free to try it out yourself if you like big numbers.

18

Bugs / Bug: Industrial Bot melee attack not treated as a melee attack

« on: June 15, 2021, 04:58:01 pm »

Industrial bot melee attack ignores uncanny dodge, and also ignores bonus melee resistance from dense foam padding and snake leather armor.

19

Suggestions / Suggestion: Merchants only buy weapons and armor above a minimum value

« on: June 15, 2021, 04:27:33 pm »

It always struck me as a little strange how merchants would be willing to buy nearly broken knives and guns that are far below the quality of items they sell. Having a minimum value that merchants accept would also discourage people form developing alphabet syndrome and carrying around 17 guns in hopes of selling them to squeak out a few meager charons. Minimum value would be the item’s base value without mercantile/difficulty modifiers. Merchant minimums would be something like SGS 3k, Junkyard 4k, Blaine/Hawthorne/Rail Crossing 5k, Core City/Marty 6k, Foundry/Free Drones/Procterate/Expedition merchants 7k, Oligarch merchants/Constantine/Hannah 8k. Inferior quality weapons and armor will no longer be flooding the economy with this change.

20

Bugs / Bug: Mutant Bladed Claw works with combo but not Crippling Strike

« on: June 02, 2021, 05:01:10 pm »

The bladed claw cannot be used to perform crippling strike, despite combo only working with fist weapons and unarmed. Either combo shouldn’t work with the bladed claw, or crippling strike should work with the claw.

21

Suggestions / New Weapon Suggestion: Clubs

« on: May 20, 2021, 01:19:16 am »

I was recently doing a playthrough focused around riot armor with shields, and realised that there really aren’t a lot of good melee options to use with shields. Most knife and fist weapon builds don’t have enough strength or want mobility and evasion, swords and spears make shields redundant with parry and spear guard, and sledgehammers can’t use shields. To remedy this and to add a third category of blunt melee weapons, I propose adding clubs.

Features:
Blunt one handed melee weapon with low strength requirement (5-6 str) that do not benefit from dex ap reduction. Damage Increased by 9% for every point in Strength above 7 (117% bonus damage at 20 Strength).
Base 15 ap cost, tight damage spread (12-14 q15, 22-26 q70, 40-47 q160 when crafted with steel plates), base 80% critical damage bonus, and a base 5% crit chance with steel plates.
Has an inherent 25% chance to daze targets with each attack.
Crowbars and the Rolling Pin benefit from club feats.

Crafting:
 4 component slots: Metal Plates, Metal Plates/ Spikes (optional) , Power Module (optional) , Energy Core (optional).
Crafting with 2 metal plates creates a reinforced club that deals bonus damage similar to reinforced combat gloves, while crafting with spikes deals additional damage similar to spiked combat gloves, and changes the weapon name to mace. The power module slot allows an electroshock generator to be added to the club.

Feats:
Benefits from Crippling Strike, Bone Breaker, and Heavyweight.

New Feat: Staccato Rhythm-Each successful club attack lowers the ap cost of further club attacks by one, and increases damage of club attacks by 5%. Stacks 5 times, stacks last for 3 turns. Requires: 8 Strength, 6 Dexterity, Melee 30.

New Feat: Hobble- Perform a melee attack with a club that deals normal damage, reduces a target's movement points to zero for 3 turns, and reduces a target's dodge and evasion by 50%. Only works on living targets (that have knees). Cooldown: 4 turns.
Requires: 9 Strength, Melee 40.

New Feat: Debilitator- Whenever you apply a non bleed debuff (crippled, expose weakness, dazed, hobbled, infected wound, incapacitated,stunned, broken ribs, inhibited) to a target using a club, apply a stack of debilitated, which increases all damage taken by 10%. Lasts 3 turns, and stacks up to 5 times.
Requires: 5 Intelligence, Melee 60, Feat:Crippling Strike

New Feat: Bludgeon-Your club attacks ignore mechanical damage threshold and mechanical damage resistance based on your level, up to 15 DT and 30% DR. (.5 DT and 1% DR ignored per level)
Requires: 10 Strength

New Feat: Disorient-Perform a melee attack with a club that deals normal damage and prevents the target from invoking psionic abilities for 3 turns. Only works on targets with exposed heads. Cooldown: 4 turns.
Requires: 7 Strength, Melee 50, Biology 50

Unique Clubs:

Morningstar- 30-35 damage, 15 ap, 5% crit chance, 100% crit damage bonus, 5 Minimal Strength. Incurs 125% mechanical damage resistance and threshold, 30% chance to inflict a bleeding wound that deals 100% damage over the next 3 turns. Found on a dead man in the lost vault dungeon.

Ennervator-20-25 mechanical damage, 15 ap, 2% crit chance, 75% crit damage bonus, 6 minimal strength. 50% chance on hit to create an EMP grenade blast centered on the player with the effects of a standard emp grenade. Crafted by using the strange power cell in the power module slot of a club, requires 120 effective Electronics skill to craft, and has fixed stats.

Rusty Pipe-13-16 mechanical damage, 15 ap, 3% crit chance, 80% crit damage bonus. Stater club weapon, found in the under passages between SGS and GMS in a barrel.

Plasma Mace-20-30 mechanical damage, 20-30 energy damage, and 20-30 heat damage, 20 ap, 5% crit chance, 100% crit damage, 6 minimal strength. 200 energy, uses 20 energy with every attack, loses energy and heat damage when unpowered. Found in Fetid Marsh at the entrance to Viridescent Quarry.

22

Bugs / Bug: Smoke Particle Effects From Luben's Corpse Present Before He Dies.

« on: May 19, 2021, 08:21:26 pm »

In the Core City Sewers, the smoke effects are present before he dies. I know it just got fixed where his corpse would stop showing up early, but they forgot to remove the smoke effects.

23

Builds / Master Demolitionist Belt Build-Surprisingly Not A Meme

« on: May 12, 2021, 10:57:58 pm »

Overview

With the release of the newest update, we have been graced with a new item to build around; the Master Demolitionist Belt.

While most may be dissuaded due to its penalties to movement speed, agility, and most importantly grenade ap cost, I saw its potential for massive area burst damage, and made a build around it. This guide is divided into two parts, with the first part being focused on obtaining the belt and the second part going over what the build can do.

Important Disclaimer

The Master Demolitionist Belt is not available every playthrough, due to it spawning in a randomly generated Core City Sewer fragment. Additionally, it drops from Master Demolitionist, who only spawns on Dominating. You may have to do multiple playthroughs to Core City to find the belt. With this in mind, Classic XP is the way to go, since it allows for quick leveling so you can save time early game if the fragment doesn’t spawn, and this build is built around that XP system. The fragment in question is a ladder next to the entrance to the Praetorian Security quest area, but it may be able to spawn elsewhere in the sewers.

Part 1: The Quest For The Belt

Level 14 build
https://underrail.info/build/?DgQNCgMDAwcAUABQAFBQMAAAAAwAUAUoAAAANwAAUCskLzkNIAZHBxLfvw

This build is your basic Dex focused time monk, and is mainly used to breeze through the early game and take on the Three Masters. Recommended factions are JJK and Procterate, but they aren’t required for the build. You can reach level 8-9 pre Depot A by following the gang warfare quest line, and can reach 14 quickly by doing the Oculus quests, Foundry quests, and JJK quests, which can all be completed fairly easily. You can also farm XP from the Coil Spiders in Zamans Lair and the caves below the Coretech warehouse, which give 800 and 1100 xp from the regular and greater spiders respectively. Speaking of Coil Spiders, get ready to fight through a gauntlet of them as you try to obtain the Power Fist, an essential item for beating the Masters. You can fight the Masters earlier than level 14 if you want to, but level 14 allows you to have enough stealth to consistently avoid being instantly detected by the Greater Coil Spiders that guard the power fist.

The Three Masters

The Three Masters are one of the most difficult encounters in Underrail, rivaling the quad nagas in difficulty. Each Master has 1.7k-2.3k hp and a Blast Suit to boot, making them some of the tankiest enemies around. Blaster has enough detection to instantly spot you with 150 effective stealth, and sports a high quality plasma pistol that hits for over 1k damage on its aimed shots. Time Master’s distortions are unavoidable damage that bypasses resistances, and he can dodge attacks even in the proximity suit with his Temporal Manipulation abilities. Demolitionist can intimidate you to neuter your damage output, and his super slams from his 2.3k health pool will turn any character to dust. The entire area is filled with napalm barrels which the Masters can easily wade through while you burn to death, and each Master carries MK 5 frag and HE grenades to detonate the barrels. To defeat this menace, you’re going to need to cheese them.

Recommend Gear

Power Fist (obtained from Hecate Research Outpost north of Foundry)
Black Balaclava (Constantine sells good quality)
Leather armor under 15% penalty, preferably with black cloth and soft foam padding
Ninja Tabis (Constantine sells good quality)
10+ adrenaline shots
10+ TNT charges
20+Beartraps

Strategy

First, set up a bear trap behind the closed door to the west in the starting room, and 2 bear traps behind the closed door to the east. Once you are ready to begin, detonate a TNT charge west of the entrance ladder and position yourself out of stealth and out of sight next to the boxes near the east door. When the charge detonates, the Masters will come and investigate, approaching the west entrance first. Since the trap is hidden behind the door, the masters don’t have time to detect them, and Blaster will walk into the trap at the west entrance. It is recommended to slow down game speed here, as by manually entering combat as soon as the trap springs you can trap the master for 3 rounds instead of 2. After the trap is sprung, the other Masters will slowly make their way to the other door on the east side to reach you, allowing you to beat up the trapped Master with the power fist. Make sure to leave enough mp to break line of sight, to avoid being attacked or affected by the Masters abilities. When the bear trap wears off, hit the Master until the multi-turn incapacitate effect from the Power Fist is applied, and then enter stealth and sneak to the other side of the room. The Masters will walk to the detonation location and then return to their original spots, allowing you to repeat the cycle until they are defeated. It usually takes about 3 cycles to kill a Master, so you may be at this for a while. Do not rely on stun effects to cheese them, as all of the Masters have the Thick Skull feat. In addition to the Master Demo belt, each Master drops 3 MK 5 frag and HE grenades regardless of player level, allowing early access to a large supply of powerful explosives. Now that we have the belt, the real build can begin.
Part 2: Cooking With Gas

Final Build
https://underrail.info/build/?HgQQCgMDAwcAwqAAwqAowqB4WgAAAFdXWgZiAAAARgAAcCskLzkNIAZHBxJIPkFRT8KzE8KH378
Specialization is 1 Expose Weakness duration, 1 Blitz AP, 10 Three Pointer, and 3 Fatal Throw AP.

General Information

The strategy of this build is to get up in the enemies face, blow your load, and then finish off the remaining enemies with a flurry of blows. The big damage comes mainly from the belt detonation, with the base damage values listed below:
2160-5760 damage with Plasma MK3
1122-7584 damage with Frag MK5
1140-3780 damage with HE MK5
All detonations are assuming 6 grenades, with either minimum damage or max damage with all critical hits. As I have discovered from testing, frag grenade shrapnel is only reduced by evasion, and not by explosion resistance. MK5 frag detonations will kill you whether or not you're wearing a Blast Suit, and are thus not recommended to be used with the belt. You should normally be carrying 5 grenades for detonation, and use your 6th utility slot for throwing knives/throwing nets to activate Fatal Throw or immobilize enemies. Three Pointer with maximum specialization gives you an 85% crit chance at max level, so you will frequently be dealing 2k+damage per detonation before resistances. Explosion damage is greatly reduced by evasion, so use Dirty Kick or a net to stun or immobilize enemies and lower their evasion to zero. Expose Weakness also lowers resistances and thresholds, so you can combine both to obliterate bosses in a single blast. This build also comes with massive AP, and under ideal circumstances you can obtain 137 AP to work with, which should be more than enough to handle any encounter. AP breakdown:

(27-7)fatalthrow+22blitz+25vit powder+20contraction+50base=137 ap=28 4ap punches, 10ap belt detonation and 15ap stasis, 115 ap next turn with fatal throw kill.

Gear Overview

Dealing 5k+ explosive damage centered on yourself sounds great on paper, but in practice will usually result in complete disintegration without the proper equipment. To avoid turning into a splatter on the sidewalk, this build uses high evasion and blast cloth to reduce explosive damage. Evasion lowers explosive damage by evasion/400 and caps at 85% reduction, so while wearing Cave Hopper Leather armor with a Blast Overcoat and 20% penalty you will evade 57% of explosive damage. Additionally, Bakst Cloth reduces damage taken from explosions, so we will be using a Blast Overcoat and Blast Balaclava to reduce explosive damage. Q103 Blast Cloth provides 66% explosive damage reduction in leather armor and 34% reduction on balaclavas and tabi boots, so you don’t need super high quality Blast Cloth to make the build functional. From testing it appears that the clothier feat doesn’t affect Blast Cloth damage reduction, since with the feat the reduction on leather armor should be 75% with the Q103 cloth according to the wiki. The wiki also states that damage reduction maxed out at 75% for leather armor at Q120, but I was unable to verify this during testing due to not being able to find high quality Blast Cloth. I am also unsure if there is a cap on Blast Cloth Damage reduction, since I threw a MK 3 plasma grenade at the feet of a character with 0 evasion and 94% blast resistance and it reduced damage by 90%. For the purposes of damage reduction, evasion is applied first, and then armor bonuses reduce the remaining damage. You will take a small amount of damage from each blast, but it likely won’t send you under 85% health. Infused Greater Siphoner Leather is the best armor generally due to the evasion boost, low armor penalty, and resistances to heat and energy damage, but Infused Cave Hopper Leather armor is good if you want to focus more on mobility. Blast cloth adds a 15% penalty to armor, which prevents you from obtaining the Nimble feat boost to evasion, but will keep you under the lightning punches threshold while wearing most leather armors. It should go without saying that you should turn off your shield during detonations, since the blast will tear it apart regardless of frequency.

Recommended Gear

Weapons:
Leather gloves with spikes(blades if using taste for blood) and pneumatic hammer(natives have q160+ snake leather for gloves)
Knife Thrower Gloves(7ap knives for fatal throw at 18dex)
Electroshock gloves(build struggles against robots high mechanical dt)
Armor:
Blast Balaclava
Infused Greater Siphoner Leather Armor with Blast Overcoat and Soft Foam Padding
Master Demolitionist Belt
Any Tabi Boots(I prefer Ninja Tabis or Infused Sea Wyrm Tabis)
Energy Shield Emitter(Low/Low for melee, High/High for snipers)

Optional Feats

Clothier-Taste For Blood/Opportunist: Clothier may not work with blast cloth, so Taste For Blood provides a damage boost instead. I don’t like the feat that much since it’s useless against robots, but it does rack up quickly with the amount of attacks you can dish out. You can also use vile weaponry with it to boost damage against a single target, but I find that most of the time targets die before getting more than a single stack of bleed. This build stuns, incapacitates, and immobilizes fairly often, so Opportunist is a nice 25% damage boost.

Expertise, Uncanny Dodge-Recklessness, Critical Power: This is for if you want to focus more on crits and free up 40 skill points from dodge, but focusing on crits isn’t really worth it without Focus stims and Survival Instincts, especially since throwing knives and grenades aren’t affected by critical power or most crit chance boosting effects.

Sprint-Pack Rathound: Plasma Grenades weigh .2 each and standard grenades weigh .3 each, so you may have difficulty managing weight with this build. This sacrifices some mobility for convenience, and can help carry around the bear traps and TNT needed to kill the masters early game.

Conclusion
This is a fun variant of the standard time monk if you like to live dangerously. The biggest challenge you will face with this build is finding good quality blast cloth, as while testing I could only find max q103 from the institute of Tchort after checking every merchant in the game. Despite its drawbacks, the Master Demolitionist Belt is a viable weapon that can give throwing builds some much needed burst damage.

24

General / Your Thoughts On New Lost Vault Dungeon?

« on: February 28, 2021, 12:03:49 am »

Recently started a new playthrough using the newly buffed pistols and went through the new Lost Vault dungeon. I wanted to share my thoughts on it and see if I missed anything. I went through the dungeon twice, once with a pistol build at level 15 on Dominating and once with an existing Strength Spear build on Dominating at Level 26.

Contents:
The vault itself is a flooded room filled with cargo containers and shelves that you hop across like agility checks. Notably, hopping across does not break stealth. The north side and the eastern side don't require any skill checks to traverse, although to loot some of the shelves you will need 8-10 dexterity. You can hop across some of the gaps during combat, but you cannot hop across the gap leading to/from the central area during combat. There is a plasma turret on the central pillar when going across this route, but you can easily take care of it by hiding behind the 2 crates stacked on top of one another. Melee users can hop across the gap to attack it directly. On the north wall are some rooms guarded by 2 plasma sentries, with one in stationary cannon form and another patrolling and entering/exiting the form whenever it turns around. The eastern room is an armory and contains several locked weapons lockers ranging from 75-90 lockpicking. Most importantly, the room contains 2 Mk 4 HE and frag grenades, 2 MK 2 plasma Grenades, and 2 MK 3 EMP grenades. There is an industrial bot in the room to the east of the armory guarding a corpse with a tac vest and a pistol, so you can skip it without losing much. There is an island in the northwest corner where you can use dex to snag some items from shelves.

The other 2 areas in the dungeon are the south supply room and kitchen and the west toxic storage area. The southern area requires 11 agility to enter, which is kind of annoying, but you can get +8 agility with white dude/all in, super solider drug, a cave hopper steak, and cave hopper leather armor and boots. The Kitchen has some food items and the supply room has some extra components. The west toxic storage area requires 11 strength to access by pushing aside a crate, and has 2 plasma sentries and a industrial bot in the northwestern room. You can get +8 strength with vitality powder, Rathound regalia, Power fist, and junkyard surprise/super solider drug. The only thing of note here is a fair amount of toxic waste, so you aren't missing out on much if you skip this portion.

Your reward for completing the dungeon is some components that range from q100-135. Most of the components are paddings, armor plates, cloths, and various electronic components.

Final Thoughts:
I think this is a cool and unique dungeon, and I like the various mechanics introduced within. I think its a little annoying that half of the dungeon is locked behind pretty demanding skill checks, but you can get about 70% of the components without going into the skill check areas. If you are considering running a build with tactical/riot armor, then this is a great place to go to get decent quality materials post depot A.

25

Bugs / Bug-No Exp awarded from completing Kill the Rathound King

« on: January 10, 2021, 01:46:18 am »

Recently encountered this bug in my latest playthrough. If you kill the Rathound king before completing the Burrower Emergency quest and go to turn in the quest, there is special dialogue when speaking to Edgar mentioning that you already met and killed the Rathound King. When the quest is completed in this manner, you are awarded he money and the option to gain the hunter feat, but do not receive the 3500 Exp you would when completing the quest normally. This bug happened for me on the classic exp system.

26

Builds / Versatility Dex Energy Pistol Build- Making Plasma Pistols Viable.

« on: January 06, 2021, 06:24:26 am »

Build Link- https://underrail.info/build/?HgUQAwMHAwlGPADCoAAAwqBQHgAAZGRQU2QAAADClwAAasKjASYeWcKaAlpLOinChSs_wofCsyox4qe-BeK1rgrfvw

Starting stats are: 5/10/3/3/7/3/9

 Do you like Energy Weapons? Do you want to deal MAXIMUM DAMAGE and wipe out hordes of devolved inbreds with a single well placed aimed shot? Do you like to suffer? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this build is for you. This build takes advantage of the dex ap reduction on light weapons combined with the versatility feat to allow you to get the most bang for your buck when using plasma and electroshock pistols. As a disclaimer, this build was tested on dominating, but this build should perform well on lower difficulties.

The Gear

Electroshock Pistol- This bad boy will be your primary weapon for most of the game. At 18 Dex it costs 21 ap to fire, which is reduced to 19 ap with super solider drug. With adrenaline, and temporal contraction, this lets you attack 4 (5 with SSD) times in a single turn with regular shots and point shot. With a high quality circle wave amplifier you can easily get over 500% critical damage, and when combined with a high quality smart module and high quality smart goggles you can get over 100% special attack damage bonus. An aimed shot from stealth usually does about 1500-2000 damage, and chains to nearby characters for 65% of previous damage, letting you easily clear most groups of enemies, in addition to often stunning the primary target if they somehow survive the initial attack. Be warned that the electricity can chain to you or nearby friendly characters, and has been the source of a fair amount of deaths in my playthrough of this build.

Plasma Pistol- This is where the big damage comes from in this build. At 18 DEX it costs 24 ap to fire the plasma pistol, which is lowered to 22 under the effects of super solider drug. With adrenaline and temporal contraction this lets you attack 4 times with regular attacks and point shot. The plasma pistol can easily reach over 600% crit damage and get the aforementioned 100% special attack damage bonus, letting you easily obliterate the tankiest of enemies. Under ideal circumstances, you can do 3500+ damage aimed shots and crits. Unfortunately, high quality plasma dischargers are extremely rare, as I have gone an entire playthrough without finding a 135+ plasma discharger, so you may have to use a weapon with sub-par components. The electroshock pistol already does plenty of damage, so the plasma pistol is mainly used to one shot bosses and deal with coil spiders.

Ti-Chrome Knife with energy edge emitter- Takes advantage of this builds high dex and melee to deal good damage without alerting enemies. You could swap out recklessness with cut-throat if you want to reduce an enemies evasion (more on that later) and have an easier time against human enemies, but its a matter of personal preference.

Armor- Smart Goggles are great for the special attack damage, Infused Rathound leather for the crit chance, and Ninja tabi boots to boost stealth. I recommend a low-low efficient energy shield, but this is more up to personal preference.

Psi-The only 2 psi abilities this build needs are temporal contraction and stasis, although you can use others if you feel like it. Temporal contraction acts like a second stackable adrenaline shot with bonus movement, while stasis effectively gives you a second turn to finish off any remaining enemies that survive your initial attacks.

The Cons of This Build

This build probably has one of the worst midgame experiences of any build out there. You will start to encounter some trouble in depot A, where on dominating you have a 65% chance to hit the mutant dogs. This build only needs 25 guns skill for feats, but I pumped it to 70 to have a decent chance to hit anything. Without full specialization points, it takes until about level 15 for high dex melee versatility to surpass 70 guns skill with 7 perception. Endgame, 18 dex with 10 specialization points in versatility equates to about maxed guns skill with 13 perception, but before then get used to seeing 49% accuracy on Ironhead bandits. Additionally, this build is a glass cannon, so 90% of the time if you miss your aimed shot your probably dead. This build also
has low movement points without high quality tabis, so don't expect to be able to outrun melee enemies. If luck is on your side, you can steamroll through tough encounters without taking damage. If you get unlucky, get ready to f5. You have been warned.