Messages

1

Builds / Re: 3 PER Shotgun Tank

« on: February 07, 2024, 10:51:46 am »

I haven't reached Tchort yet, but I've beaten him with similar builds and builds that felt weaker, so I shouldn't imagine it would be too much of a problem.
I'd probably go in with a 40mm grenade launcher of some form to kill the scanners, grenade launcher belt and a million napalm grenades to build a wall of fire between myself and the Tchortlings.
Similar to caltrops, I guess.
When I've done that before, they'll often bunch up and form a choke point that I can then exploit with electrokinetic imprint/telekinetic grounding to keep them from breathing down my neck.

As I'm posting, I figure I'll include my more minmaxed "serious" build with Last Stand here:

https://underrail.info/build/?HgUHAw4DBwfCoBcAAAAewqBkPAAAAF9pECJkAAAAwqAlAEfDjmJfwrDCg8KWXWMIJCtOH8KHUHpxwrLioYcE4quGBeKzrAHit7AF37w

2

Builds / Re: 3 PER Shotgun Tank

« on: February 07, 2024, 02:06:22 am »

I play all builds on Dominating, I'll edit my post to say that.

3

Builds / 3 PER Shotgun Tank

« on: February 06, 2024, 03:48:50 pm »

To start this post off, I'll give a shoutout to TheCONMan for his 3 PER shotgun build.
I've played around with low perception shotgun builds with Leading Shot and Survival Instincts compensating for low accuracy and damage before, but I never had the balls to drop PER all the way down to 3.
After seeing his post, now I have, and it's glorious.
This build was played on DOMINATING and had a predictably tough time until a shotgun and Leading Shot were obtained, at which point it became fairly strong and only got more powerful from there.


The Build:

https://underrail.info/build/?HgUHAw4DBwfCoBkAAAAewqDClkAAAABfaRAPZAAtAMKgJQBHYl_CsF3ClmNQCCQoU8KDTivCh3rCncOO4quGBeKzrALit7AF37w

I haven't been particularly minmaxy with the skills and the feats aren't in much of an order, but this is the general gist of the build.


Gear You Want:

Head: Seeker Goggles
Shield: Whatever you fancy, high INT means good crafting if you so please
Armour: Tactical vest (psionic) -> Ancient rathound leather -> Infused pig leather
Main Weapon: Tactical short shotgun (Vindicator preferred)
Offhand Weapon: Shotgun -> Thumper -> Refurbished Thumper
Belt: Shell strap/Grenade launcher/Large waist pack depending on necessity
Feet: Whatever tabis/striders you can muster -> Ancient rathound striders -> Infused pig striders

The main departure from the build that inspired this one is sacrificing a little CON and AGI for WIL. You could probably sacrifice more CON and get away with it, but I wanted to properly honour the true Chad base stat as much as I could.

Why this is an improvement for the way I play is that I like to have Survival Instincts and, when I get it, Fight Response active most of the time.
As my effective maximum HP will be 30/25% of the maximum total, the difference in a few points of CON and having/not having psi AIDS doesn't actually matter too much.
This is also my reason for going with Paranoia and Trigger Happy, but if you don't like to recklessly charge into combat guns blazing and instead want to leverage your massive HP pool, then they can be ignored.

At level 28 with infused pig leather armour and boots, I have a little over 700 HP anyway, which is more than enough to play with and makes staying under the 175 HP threshold actually pretty easy.
If I do heal past it, I can very easily cast electrokinetic imprint and walk over it if necessary.
And of course, if I want to, I can heal up to full health and take one hell of a beating.

Again, with my endgame armour, I had around 60% mechanical damage resistance plus around 50% mechanical damage reduction on top of that once I got down to the 25-30% health range.
In other words, I was taking 20% mechanical damage before even taking Aegis or food into account.
I also reduced mechanical damage taken even further by using ancient rathound leather gear before I got my pig leather gear.

In my opinion, having Stoicism beats having more HP as you get more bang for your buck out of each hit point.
This improves the value of healing in combat and also lessens the detrimental effects of morphine debilitation.
It also allows you to reach the mech. damage reduction cap, which leads to truly absurd damage reduction figures unobtainable without it.
It also allowed me to pump Temporal Manipulation pretty high via the WIL requirement, which gives access to all the usual cheese as well as Precognition giving a substantial bonus to dodge and evasion, further reducing damage taken on aggregate.
Despite how much I like Stoicism, however, I still spec into Sixth Shell first as damage output suffers horribly without it.

With blast cloth and high density padding on my leather armour and maxed out Evasion skill points, I took essentially no damage from non-spear melee (I took 13 damage and resisted 490 damage from a hit from the Abomination, for example) and explosions past a certain point, which was especially helpful when using the Thumper with 3 Per.
I like the Thumper because it expands my repertoire far beyond what another shotgun besides my primary weapon can, especially with regards to attacking long-range targets/enemy clusters, and it's pretty powerful in its own right.

Being able to use Fight Response to attack three times per round lategame without any temporary AP boosts has also been greatly appreciated, as your damage is predictably low even with Survival Instincts, so building up Sixth Shell stacks ASAP is a good way to counteract this. It also gives more of an allowance for the constant reloading you may end up doing with your Refurbished Thumper.
Well, I could list any number of other benefits, more AP is always good.

I'm currently at level 28 with this build and have thus left the final two feat options unfilled.
I could go for Bodybuilding and Increased Constitution to flex my massive HP pool, which is tempting, but most likely I'll go for Tempered: Electricity and Iron Will so I can finally give TC'ers and coil spiders the middle finger they so richly deserve.

One last thing of note is that a lot of feats I have chosen are down to my preference, and aside from the shotgun and tanking feats, you're pretty much free to chose whatever and still do well.
I specced into Leading Shot, but my accuracy against evasive targets was adequate even before doing so.
I can see the potential for including Last Stand into the build and speccing into its duration instead, but I personally don't like the feat, so I didn't.

Anyway, I've had a lot of fun with this build and I thought it was worth sharing.

4

Builds / Re: First timer looking for a knife build

« on: December 17, 2023, 10:12:42 pm »

I will start with a disclaimer that I have played through the game with more or less every weapon class, and knives are one of my least favourites, so don't take this as Gospel.
First of all, a sword build!
If you look up the Siphonerman build by Harperfan7, it's a fun Dex sword build that I found effective for Dominating.
It's not specifically a knife build, but as it is Dex based, it makes good use of a backup knife whilst giving a bit of variety.
That's the beauty of knives, they don't require any base stat investment outside of Dexterity, so you are free to spread your base stat points around quite a bit - though this can be a double-edged sword as too much freedom can lead to very odd builds that don't work too well, especially if you're new and figuring things out.
Strength and Perception, for example, should be avoided on knife builds.
A popular complement to knives is the Thought Control (TC) school of psionics.
The school gives you a silent ranged attack and many crowd control options as well as Locus of Control, a feat that allows you to negate some very annoying negative status effects that can be inflicted upon you.
You can get a lot of fun and mileage out of it - you will be weak to robots, but all builds have weaknesses, so don't let that perturb you!
Playing on difficulties lower than Dominating will mean you won't end up pitted against swarms of plasma turrets and Industrial robots either, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem anyway.
If you do go for knife/TC, look up the action point tables on the Dexterity page of the Underrail wiki.
It will help you decide where to get your Dex score to at endgame depending on how low you want your knife AP cost to be.
18, 17 and 14 are all viable options, though 18 will leave you a little strapped for attribute points.
Other important stat point targets to consider are 7 Agility for Fancy Footwork, 5 Intelligence for Cheap Shots and Expose Weakness and 10 Will for Locus of Control.
In terms of skills, you will obviously want to max melee and TC, stealth is universally good, hacking can save a lot of pain, and throwing is a definite consideration due to your high Dex.
If you're having trouble, you might want to take some grenade feats to really supplement your damage and crowd control ability.
Throwing knives can work too, though they are quite feat-heavy and harder to work with (but rewarding if used correctly).
If you are stuck in Depot A in particular, make sure to craft yourself some siphoner leather armour from the siphoners you can kill around the Junkyard area - it will help greatly in resisting acid damage from the Depot mutants.
Siphoner inventories are generated after they jump out of the water, so if you want to guarantee getting leather (or high-quality leather if you're really picky) from them, save before you aggro them, kill them and reload until you get what you want.
Tabi boots are extremely powerful for melee builds, you can find the blueprint for them in Blaine's shop.
Alternatively, they have a small chance of being sold by Old Jonas, Lucas, Colton or Gort, so check their inventories for tabis before unlocking Blaine when you get the chance.
Other gear that could be important is a crafted psionic tactical vest to boost your TC skill, reduce its cost and give high ballistic protection.
On normal difficulty, you will also be able to buy the components for items such as tactical vests, assemble them and sell them for more than you bought the parts for.
If you ever have problems with not having enough cash, this is an easy way to break the economy.
Past a certain point, it won't be necessary, you'll be swimming in currency.
A final hint is that, if you are still struggling early on, killing Mordre with a gas grenade will get you a powerful knife without aggroing SGS. This is a bit meta and interferes in a later storyline (it won't break any quests, it will just reduce your options with a small one), so you may not want to do it unless you are desperate.
Hopefully, with a good knife/TC build, you won't be.

5

Builds / Re: Need advice for Dominating Psi-Punchman w/ a shield.

« on: December 10, 2023, 10:16:29 am »

If you've never played Dominating, attempting it for the first time with this build might pose a serious health hazard.
Riot armour is bad, metal gloves are a meme and you're schizophrenically trying to be both agile and tanky whilst achieving neither.
Go all in on metal armour and heavyweight if you must, it can work but it's the kind of build you run when you've run out of sensible things to try.
Either that or make a nimble puncher who can hit hard and fast and run away from/dodge attacks.
You only lose out by trying to compromise between the two except if you're going for super steel armour, but that's an entirely different build philosophy to what you've put forward in terms of base stats.
I've tried super steel punching with psychokinesis, it works okay and it's fun, but that was only with bare fists.
Metal gloves would be worse, and it's not very newbie-friendly either, I'd say.
I'm sorry, it seems like you put a lot of effort into your post, but the short and only answer is no, God no. Just don't.
Adding another plate to combat gloves increases their base damage.

6

Builds / Re: Build for a complete noob

« on: December 03, 2023, 03:46:57 pm »

I think your concern about the dex required to use pistols well is unwarranted, 14 dex is perfectly adequate for pistols at endgame, and it boosts a number of useful skills unlike perception, which only boosts guns.
You can also afford not to put too many points into perception due to the lack of skill requirements and evasion negation inherent to pistols.
When I make pistol builds, I find I have plenty of choice for base stat points even after the essential assignments have been made.
It's quite rewarding for new players to be able to take down a tough enemy and immediately be able to use their weapon, which can make up for the lack of power in early game pistols as well.
Weapons all have drawbacks and sniper rifles are no exception, massive overkilling and paucity of attacks per turn being the main offensive points despite their good range.
ARs make a good fallback weapon once the gap is closed, but at that point I'd rather just use an AR instead of making a slopbuild that's spread far too thin taking feats and base stat points for different weapon types, when I could just be focusing on one and enjoying more of the flavour feats.
Depot A is the great filter for a lot of players, and a weapon type that only starts to get good once you should already be through it is not a good choice for it.
Just because you can level up to use decent feats for it, doesn't mean a newbie stumbling into the place will.
Shooting spree is a good feat, but requires heavy investment in specialization to be so, which is unavailable until long after the early game struggle is over whilst impinging on your other specialization options as a generalist guns build.
There's also the topic of crafting, where pistols are extremely easy to craft in comparison to other weapon types in terms of skill requirements, so more powerful pistols can be crafted at a given skill level than their equivalents for other weapon types.
Low AP shots does indeed mean lower damage per shot, but overall damage output can still be high if you take a lot of them.
Pistols allow for a precise application of firepower that is not reliant on good RNG for hits in a cone of fire like for AR bursts and has a far smaller propensity to waste a ton of potential damage overkilling targets like snipers do - nice feeling of control for new people whilst also still putting out a lot of damage onto potentially many different targets.
I've never understood why people think pistols combo well with anything other than SMGs, their AP usage per shot is appalling with no real investment into dex, which you shouldn't do when using an AR or sniper.
A shotgun is a far more synergistic option for a close range finisher, and only requires one feat to be dominating.
Finally, this is a thread about good builds for newbies, so whether or not pistols gel well with the base stat distribution you have suggested is not particularly meaningful as it is not the final word in good stat distributions.
Not to say it is particularly bad, but there is plenty of room for variation around it whilst remaining beginner-friendly.

7

Builds / Re: Build for a complete noob

« on: December 02, 2023, 11:27:10 pm »

It is true that the economy in Normal difficulty is busted, making money from buying components and assembling them being its most exploitable aspect.
Still, as a new player, it may take time to cotton on to such exploits - I remember fretting about spending money as a beginner as I wasn't sure how badly I'd need it later on - having your main weapon given to you for free is a nice antidote to this.
I tend to find that long range is rarely a huge boon due to the harsh effects of light level and target distance on accuracy, especially on assault rifles that are reliant on inaccurate bursting to reach anywhere near their full potential.
The hardest part of the game is the start unless you really mess up your build, so my advice is aimed toward getting someone new through that part of it. Trying to fight at long range with low skill levels is asking for trouble.
Pistol accuracy and range is surprisingly good and more than adequate for nearly all situations, they also allow a lot of control over how you spread out your damage with low-AP shots.
Sniper rifles are a real turn-off early on, they need a lot of early-mid game feats and specialization to be anywhere near good, and they are still frustrating as hell to use with those feats.
I wouldn't recommend them at all.
Pistols, on the other hand, let you feel like you are developing your build consistently from the very start of the game all the way through, which is a nice feeling.

8

Builds / Re: Build for a complete noob

« on: December 02, 2023, 07:45:44 pm »

I will always recommend a pistol build for new players.
AR is easier to get to grips with mechanically, because it is very simple and thus can get a bit dull.
Also, at the very beginning of the game, which is where you'll struggle the most with getting to grips with things, you won't have an assault rifle, you'll have a pistol.
Building for it right out of the gate will let you get off to a strong start, and mechanical pistols are one of the most reliable and powerful weapon types in the game all the way through.
A lot of enemies in the early game make use of them, too, so that will naturally help you have at least one functioning weapon with ammo to go along with it.
Another bonus of pistols is a good stat distribution for them will also work well for SMGs, so if you find yourself a little lacking in the dakka department early on, you can always pick up an SMG for burst fire - they are also fairly common weapons.

9

Builds / Re: Unarmed Nimble Tin Can

« on: November 29, 2023, 08:43:07 am »

Depot A can be cheesed in a variety of ways.
Hacking is a good skill to set aside 60 points for, which makes the Depot a cakewalk if you simply avoid combat with the acid dogs and mutants.
If you want to fight them, find a chokepoint to keep them incapacitated at, use siphoner leather armour and a spear to hit past the enemy blocking the chokepoint.
Muties and normal dogs are trivial enough to take out as long as you have a decent tac vest.
Spears are easy to craft if you need the reach and damage to punch through the armour of robots, or if you are lucky you might be able to buy a javelin off of a merchant.
The build's ability to crowd control allows you to beat a lot of fights that other builds can't, so you can farm a little extra experience from enemies like the warthogs in the caves if you're still coming up short.

10

Builds / Re: New Player: Help with a Psychokinesis Build

« on: June 20, 2023, 02:32:37 pm »

Your idea sounds somewhat counterintuitive as psychokinesis benefits greatly from having high strength if you want to use it as a primary source of damage, but high strength doesn't synergize well with pistols/SMGs.
You'd probably end up relying on your firearm and using the utility psychokinesis options much more than the directly damaging options.
I've had reasonable success running a shotgun versatility build with high strength and psychokinesis, so that could be a way for you to have both strong weapon and psionic options on a hybrid build.

11

Builds / Re: Unarmed Nimble Tin Can

« on: June 06, 2023, 08:28:09 pm »

I never filmed the Beast fight because it wasn't really representative of the build; reason being is that I used a spear against the bladelings.
Obviously you can always spam bear traps and gas grenades, but as long as you have a good spear it's not really necessary due to a spear's ability to ignore damage resistance.
Usually I fight it around level 16-18, I get a guaranteed high-quality tungsten steel plate from the Lost Vault to craft the most powerful spear possible, then poke away at the bladelings as they come.
If I need a bit of extra MP to run away from them, I switch to my fists and hit them a few times to get bonus MP from Fancy Footwork.
Just poke, poke, poke; kite, kite, kite until they're dead.

12

Builds / Re: Unarmed Nimble Tin Can

« on: May 28, 2023, 03:28:16 pm »

>What about vile weaponry? Why you didn't used this feat?

I'd like to, but as I said, this build really doesn't have a lot of wiggle room for feats and vile weaponry just isn't good enough. You'll likely get your first decent suit of metal armour at around level 16-20, so it won't be of much use up to that point and the build doesn't struggle to kill/crowd control organic foes at any rate. Sometimes, it can be an advantage to do less damage to organics too, though only in limited situations.

I don't particularly have any issues with Destroyor's comments, I might disagree with some of the changes suggested but it's mostly down to personal preference whether you want to be a bit more tanky or a bit more powerful, with my choice of Body Weight Training over Blindsiding erring on the side of survivability in extended fights.
I wouldn't take Bone Breaker simply due to low crit chance, as the build completely ignores crits (they're nice, but can be missed).
Caltrops are fine too, I just don't like them.

13

Builds / Unarmed Nimble Tin Can

« on: May 13, 2023, 08:43:31 pm »

After having played through the game a few times with the best melee weapon, bare fists, I have refined my ultimate pugilist. Mobility, defence, offence, crowd control, it has it all - check it out.

https://underrail.info/build/?HgwMBwMDAwYAAwDCoGTCoFAADwAAZGQaMmQAAAAAAMKgS08kJiATBsKoBzzCgRJFRE7CqXzCtsKewp_CoMOO4p2MBeKfhAHip4IC4ragBeK2oQLfvw


Build Philosophy

I didn't start out looking to make an all-round effective build, it just came together naturally from the starting point of wanting to use bleeds and Taste for Blood.
Naturally, a suit of bladed metal armour was the means to accomplish this task.
At endgame, I realized that I would be able to create a suit of bladed regenerative super steel armour with 66% damage resistance whilst still retaining the AP reduction from Lightning Punches.
Low armour penalty would make dodge and evasion viable, which in turn would make the character pretty tanky in combination with the resistances from the metal armour and his tabis and health regen added on top.
Using metal armour would eat up feat slots and make boosting crit chance via infused rathound armour impossible, so I decided to forget about crits and boost unconditional, non-crit damage as high as possible through feats and specialization.
4 AP attacks and the multitude of on-hit status effect options available to bare fisted fighters (daze, stun, incapacitation, fear) meant that boosting the chance of inflicting status effects via specialization allowed me to reliably disable large groups of enemies one way or another and block choke points with disabled foes for as long as they could take a beating.
Before I get onto the last part of this section, I'll list the endgame gear of the build to give a clear picture of what you're working with.

Head: Tchortist Bioscrubber/Death's Grin - Boost healing, health, bio resistance + reduction and Brutality, respectively.

Body: Bladed Regenerative Super Steel Armour/Rathound Regalia - Metal armour decently boosts fire/energy resistance on top of aforementioned benefits.
Rathound Regalia for dealing the maximum damage possible to take down Nagas.

Belt: Serpent Slaying Sash - Unfortunately RNG-based but provides good boost to bio reduction and vital initiative.

Feet: Infused Greater Siphoner/Black Cloth Tabis - Infused greater siphoner tabis are almost always the best choice, providing lots of dodge/evasion, slowing effect immunity (more versatile than you might think), AP reduction and additional fire/energy resistance and uses leather available in very high quality.
Black cloth for sneaking, obviously.

Utilities: Taser and whatever else you fancy. Molotovs are always nice.

Weapons (main hand): Your mitts

Weapons (off hand): Kukri for applying Expose Weakness (EW) against those pesky robots, spear for bladelings, cuttlesnails and stabbing enemies caught behind choke points, Quake for dazing crowds.

Finally, there was the question of the bane of all unarmed builds: robots.
EW is always handy, but limited in Lemurian robot swarms.
Luckily, at high levels, the build deals such high base damage that it can even punch through the damage threshold of strongmen fairly reliably.
Handmaidens are taken down in 2-3 turns without any DR/DT reducing effects having been applied to them.
On top of this, the build has the survivability to whittle down crowds of robots whilst taking constant hits and waiting for EW to come off of cooldown and trying to weaken them with your kukri.

Videos of the build in action. I wouldn't recommend watching them all the way through as they're long and I managed both runs on my first attempt so they weren't very well planned out. They're more a proof of concept than anything else.

Grey Army Base being cleaned out, no reloads and no psi.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/MPqhOEDcHfb3/
I'd say that the best part is 1:00 to 1:30, which demonstrates the amount of crowd control potential the build has.

Fort Apogee being cleaned out, with minimal psi cheese and no reloads (and 20 seconds of dead air at the start).
https://www.bitchute.com/video/5jhJqZrEZPdy/
At roughly 0:50 and 19:40 my 3 CON character tanks plasma pistol crits, it's a pretty good demo of how good the combo of infused siphoner tabis and super steel armour is.


What about Wrestling?

Since I first made this build, I have come to the realization that Wrestling is a bloody good feat. Unfortunately, the build is very tight on feat choice and the only ones I'd be willing to switch out are Escape Artist and Yell. I'd still recommend taking Wrestling instead of Yell and putting spec points into Wrestling at the cost of unarmed combat daze chance and cheap shots incapacitation chance, as tackled stacks function as a superior version of daze anyway.

14

Builds / Re: help with unique 44 mag build for dom

« on: February 18, 2023, 09:10:43 am »

Paposik pretty much nailed it with the criticism, one thing I'd add is a mention of the extraordinarily high AP cost of using magnums, especially without rapid reloaders.
You will be relying heavily on your one turn of bullet time to get enough lead downrange to make a good starting dent in any encounter, and you'll want to have as much AP during that turn as possible.
You'll also want a low(er)-AP finisher for enemies that only just survive your powerful attacks, which is where specced fatal throw comes in - either that or a grenade once you've softened up a group of enemies.
Since you have 18 DEX and a lot of skill points to spare, going all-in on throwing probably won't do you any harm.
Just for the sake of variety, I'll include a build that uses Survival Instincts for high critical chance at the cost of special attacks.
Whether you think it's worth the pain of dealing with Survival Instincts is up to you, though I have beaten DOM with a similar build.

https://underrail.info/build/?HgMQBwkDAwVGwqAAwqAAAFA8IAAAI2kRMmQAAAA3TgAAK2IxF8KjGVs-w5JRwodLw5HCs-KouwPita4H4r2EBd-_

Lack of special attacks means you have a few options open for feats depending on how you want to specialize.

15

Builds / Re: My Most Powerful Shotgun Build

« on: February 11, 2023, 07:26:16 pm »

With regards to not levelling chemistry, whenever I post a build I try and leave a few skill points spare for personal preference, which could potentiallly go into chemistry.
That being said, I don't like levelling chemistry high enough just for the sake of mk5 grenades and I have access to nail bombs through the Free Drones, so I can mostly just ignore crafting my own.

As for the shell strap belt, I guess it's fine but the fact that it only reduces shotgun reload cost by 7 AP is kind of underwhelming, especially considering how this build can boost its AP in a lot of ways if needed. I prefer the extra accuracy and damage afforded to both my gun and my thrown weapons by the commando belt. As long as you watch your ammo supply and reload sensibly, you won't really notice the loss of a shell strap belt.