Messages

1

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.

2

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.

3

Builds / Death's Door Fistfighter - Survival Instincts + Combat Gloves

« on: January 15, 2023, 03:58:37 pm »

Intro

I've never much liked the idea of crit-focused melee, except for swords, which don't need much investment to dominate with crits.
Outside of knives and fists, too few attacks per round and inability to boost crit chance as plentifully as with firearms made them seem inconsistent and potentially a source of endless reloading whenever RNG decided to be a pain.

The only way I could see of getting reliable results and avoiding savescumming was with a build that included a combination of low AP cost per attack and Survival Instincts.
Knives suck and use too much AP, bare fists don't need crits and so the obvious choice was combat gloves; the prospect of massively powerful pneumatic strikes was too much to resist.
Without further ado, here is the baseline setup for the build:

https://underrail.info/build/?HgMPBwkDAwUAwqAAwqAoAFAAAAAAZGQAGWkAAAAAAABPYjEkIBMGPAdLEsKz4p2NCuKnvgXfvw


Build Rationale

The skill points, base attribute stats and feats are all what I would consider to be absolutely necessary for the build, but the rest is up to personal preference.
With 18 Dex, maxed throwing, a knife thrower's glove and all relevant feats, throwing knives make an excellent long-ranged supplement to your primary melee weapon. Grenades can also be boosted with Three-Pointer and/or Grenadier if you so desire.
An extra point in Int will give you an extra Psi slot and premeditation and allow dabbling more thoroughly in a Psi school of your choice.
A point into either Agi or Con will give Uncanny Dodge or Thick Skull respectively.
There is a degree of room for specialization so plenty of skill points and feats have been left deliberately unspent to allow for it.


How Does the Build Play?

The build is strong both defensively and offensively.
Low AP cost per attack (5/4 once levels 16/26 are reached), powerful crits, CC from Cheap Shots, Combo and Pneumatic strikes make neutralizing the biggest threats on the map simple, whilst Fancy Footwork will give you the MP to run and hide after dishing out your beatings.
The build is weakest when it has no room to retreat and the lack of HP under the 30% threshold really demonstrates how deficient it is in raw survivability, but the many CC options available allows the reliable creation of blockages in choke points.
If you're ambushed, bad luck. You always want to be going first, so sneak is a priority for positioning and if you're unfamiliar with an area you're entering.
The only times I really found the build struggling was when facing the robotic hordes of Lemurian facilities, but even they could be put down with massive critical damage output and a bit of luck.


Important Gear

Head: Psi headband if you're making a hybrid/psi dipping, Tchortist Bioscrubber, Death's Grin for a bit of crit chance, motion detection goggles.
Body: Unencumbering armour, Infused Rathound Leather for crit chance at later levels.
Belt: Serpent slaying sash for initiative, doctor's belt for drugs, merchant packs to make up for your puny strength.
Feet: Tabi boots of your preference, you can guarantee crafting a good pair early by savescumming your first arena match until you get a 100+ quality ancient rathound hide.

Weapon choice is very important for the build.
The Claw is an obvious choice for any combat glove user as it can be obtained early, easily and has great on-hit effects as well as dealing bio damage.
You'll also want crafted pneumatic gloves for tough enemies and for getting those long incapacitations.
I usually make two; one reinforced with a metal plate and with the highest quality pneumatic hammer possible. This one is used for situations where you absolutely, positively got to kill every robotic motherfucker in the room.
Disabling on-hit effects won't work on them, so you want the highest base damage and hammer damage output possible.
Reinforcing the second glove with a serrated blade and using a pneumatic hammer around (but no less than) either 50 or 100 quality will allow you to bleed targets to activate Taste for Blood and get the longest incapacitations for the smallest energy cost; this one will be best against organic targets and for general use.
Offhand weapons are also important. Of note, the Kukri is always excellent for its ability to apply Expose Weakness.
The knife thrower's glove, as previously mentioned, will allow you to dominate with throwing knives.

Overall, I had a lot of fun with the build, even with managing my health levels - I enjoy working out the maths to keep me under the Survival Instincts threshold.
I know that managing health to be <30% can be a drag for normal people, but remember that your enemies can't injure you if they're already dead with a critical punch hole busted through their skull.
Well, most of the time they can't.

4

Builds / Re: Anyone have a chempistol build

« on: January 09, 2023, 11:43:28 pm »

Sheepherder put together a very nice chem pistol build, though I can't find an original post on the forum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwaeyuuZIio

Build breakdown is in the description, just cut out the temporal manipulation stuff if you don't want it.

Not shown in the video, but with CAU armour and infused mutated dog leather tabis, you can have 100% acid resistance for using XAL, which will only cost 5 AP per shot to fire.
You will entangle yourself, but it turns you into a death machine at later levels.
Escape Artist is mandatory to use it, though, and despite you not wanting to use Psi, it is almost worth it for access to Limited Temporal Increment alone.
Cutting down Escape Artist and Cooked Shot cooldowns is painful to go without.

5

Builds / Re: Discount Space Marine - Sword/AR Versatility

« on: January 04, 2023, 09:20:48 am »

>but they (with the added armour penalty) also dropped my Fancy Footwork down to +6 instead of +7

I thought that might be a problem.
Yeah, if you're willing to take the bonus per hit down to +6, you might as well go the whole hog and bring your damage resistance to up to 95%.
That would be possible with the addition of a super steel helmet to your loadout, which would replace the useless smart goggles that unfortunately no longer boost burst damage.
ARs are just so OP you'd think their damage is being boosted, I suppose.

I shilled the bioscrubber because I've been using it on an unarmed build and thanks to a good regen vest I found and its boost to healing, I regen an obscene amount per turn, something like 65 health.
It really shines with the serpent slaying sash because you end up with 40% damage reduction against poisons.
It's also nice to not have to worry about changing gear every time you come up on an area full of toxic clouds.

6

Builds / Re: Discount Space Marine - Sword/AR Versatility

« on: January 03, 2023, 11:46:44 am »

Sounds like an interesting build, tin can sword is fun enough on its own.
For the sake of a Str Versatility build, shotguns are my favourite firearm to use, though it can be very easy to use a shotgun exclusively whilst forgetting your "primary" melee weapon.
Not having Concentrated Fire for your AR probably helps keep it a Versatility build rather than an occasional sword-wielding AR one, so in a weird way it might actually be a good thing.

As for criticisms, did you consider using high density super steel striders over tabi boots?
They add a fairly low amount of armour penalty given their protective value, you're not invested in stealth or dodge/evasion so those detriments don't matter, the AP reduction doesn't really matter for swords and with a good boot spring you *might* end up with more MP than you would with tabis.

You also wrote that you use smart goggles, but I'm not sure if that would give you any benefit considering your lack of special ranged attacks.
Unless I'm missing something, any other goggle type would be better, though Death's Grin is a solid pick.
The Tchortist Bioscrubber is also a surprisingly good bit of general-use headwear thanks to the boosts it gives to both your health and the regen from your armour and I recommend it for any Versatility build that doesn't care about Perception.

If you really wanted to use the chainsword, the last I heard was that it actually works pretty well with multi-spiked metal armour due to the additional damage being applied many times per use of the Chainsaw ability.
Non-reinforced super steel armour can have up to 60% DR, which is more than plenty to survive when combined with mobility from Fancy Footwork, so it could be worth crafting another super steel suit if you have a decent plate to spare for a Space Marine RP.
Shame the in-game bolter is the Tommy Gun and not an AR.

I totally agree with using a blade on your main set of armour, it's a huge benefit to stacking and maintaining TfB for a very minor cost.
The fact that you're beaten all the really hard fights of the game speak more than enough for the efficacy of the build and it sounds like fun, so I don't think there's any point nitpicking it further.

7

Builds / Re: Any Crowd Control Build?

« on: December 31, 2022, 11:44:28 am »

Crowd control is inherently limited in Underrail due to its utility, generally by cooldowns.
You might be able to do quite well on lower difficulties focussing purely on crowd control, but I find it hard to recommend a pure indirect damage CC-focussed build to a newbie because they are generally meme builds that could easily end up being frustrating.
That includes traps, because the time taken to set them up before every fight can end up being quite a drag.

That being said, if you want CC, the obvious choices for skills are Throwing, Traps, Thought Control, Metathermics and Psychokinesis.
Melee weapons can also be used to proc many CC effects like stun, incapacitation, daze, fear and tackled, so combat gloves and bare fists are also excellent direct means of applying crowd controlling effects due to the number of times they can hit per turn.
Chemical pistols, as mentioned in the post above mine, are also excellent for the variety of effects they can inflict on enemies.

The use of the Versatility feat is deserving of mention too, because if you want high throwing skill for CC, then you need high dexterity.
High dexterity can be used in conjunction with Versatility to make a character proficient in firearms use, and is most effective when using pistols and SMGs.
If you really want to give a CC build a go as a newbie, I'd suggest going for high dex and throwing, traps and psi too if you want and then branching out into other skills later if you feel like the build is lacking.

8

Builds / Re: Need help with a balanced shotgun build. No psi.

« on: December 27, 2022, 11:22:23 pm »

It's been a while since I played the first build that I posted, but I remember that I started with survival instincts at level 1, requiring quite a weird starting stat spread. It was:
Str 4
Dex 5
Agi 9
Con 9
Per 5
Wil 3
Int 5
I played on Dominating, so I didn't expect to get a shotgun until at least level 4, hence the starting Str of 4.
Order of point allocation is Str, Agi, Per, Per, Int, Agi

High Agi makes dodge and evasion worth it, but I take them on all high Agi builds. If you're always staying below 30% health, you'd probably do fine just to ignore them and invest in other stuff. High Agi is also great for initiative and repositioning, which serves shotguns very well.

As for gear, I usually go with a psionic tacvest and siphoner leather armour, tabi boots and always seeker goggles up until completion of Depot A. The siphoner leather armour usually stays in use until I get access to infused leather, though the Rathound Regalia might get some use every so often too.

The build focuses on using pump-action shotguns, so a case could be made for going with 4 base Int considering how easy your core gear is to craft. You'd be able to then go for 9 Per and get Fragmented Chaos, which would make your critical hits even more powerful. There wouldn't be any space for getting Grenadier by dropping Int unless you drop it to 3, though.

9

Builds / Re: Need help with a balanced shotgun build. No psi.

« on: December 27, 2022, 08:03:39 am »

I have created a build that runs similarly to how you describe and is fairly conventional.

https://underrail.info/build/?HgUFCwkHAwbCoAAAAMKgwqBQRTYAAGppEjJpAAAAAAAASzliwrAZwpYkK0fCjygxwpAfDsKxwqXCpuKgigXis6wF4rewBd-_

It originally used psi, but psi was easily removed and the build should still function just fine without it. I've left
plenty of skill points spare, to distribute into throwing as you see fit.
You could drop a point of Int and put it into Dex for the sake of getting grenadier without much of a problem, too.

The main feature of the build is low Perception, which would be a handicap without ignoring enemy evasion via Leading Shot and boosting damage output via Survival Instincts.

I know that some people can find it to be a pain to use Survival Instincts, but I find it makes the build quite versatile as you can choose to take a hit to your damage output in exchange for keeping your health bar full.
You'll get a fair deal of survivability out of 9 CON in Normal difficulty.

You mentioned going with a crit build, so if you follow this build, you can easily get over 80% crit chance with infused rathound armour, seeker goggles and focus stim.

As for getting stuck, the solution is to hard save often and avoid the few areas of the game that lock you out of being able to leave whenever you want until you are confident that you can clear them.
Off the top of my head, I can think of the JKK questline, the Praetorian questline, Zaman's lair, the Gray Army base and the Darkdwellers lair, there may be others.

If you're up for a challenge, I posted another shotgun build that has maxed out throwing skill with 18 Dex, making it very deadly with grenades. The build is powerful but also unconventional and is a bit slow to get going, especially without a degree of meta game knowledge. Still, I'll link it and if you're interested (I included a demo video), I am happy to discuss it.

https://stygiansoftware.com/forums/index.php?topic=8933.0

10

Builds / My Most Powerful Shotgun Build

« on: November 27, 2022, 12:43:04 am »

Pre-Ramble

I adore shotguns, so much so that I can no longer use any other firearm type without near immediately giving up in disgust.
I've tried out using shotguns in many, many ways by now and finally have rested on the one that dominates the hardest.
Making a Dex Versatility shotgun build started out as a joke, but it turns out that the joke was on me for thinking it would be silly.
Here it is, in its janky glory:

https://underrail.info/build/?HgUQCgMDAwYUwqAAwqDCoMKgPAAXAABkZAAZZAAAADcAAEsvGcKjwrAWUVjDk14rPkfChyROwrN2J-KgigLiqLsD4rWuBeK3sAXfvw


Ultimate Gear U Need

- Seeker/Motion Tracking NV Goggles: NV improves throwing knife accuracy in the dark
- Your Shield of Choice
- Infused Rathound/Pig Leather armour: Pig for not being squishy, Rathound for crits.
Bear in mind that crit rate of throwing knives is not affected by Rathound leather, so tanking may be the superior option.
- Tactical Short Vindicator: Obviously
- Knife Thrower's Glove
- Commando Belt
- Infused Greater Siphoner/Bison tabi: For dodgevasion and resisting kneecap shots or extra health and fortitude, depending on which you choose.
- Throwing knives
- Throwing nets
- Frags/incendiaries
- Taser


Why It's Good

- You start off with 10 Agi, 10 Dex and pump 8 more points into Dex for a final initiative of 33, the highest base initiative possible.
Most enemies will be eating your dust throughout the game.

- Throwing knives are very powerful in their own right and compensate for the lack of range of a shotgun nicely.
Shotgun blasts often deal huge amounts of damage, annoyingly leaving enemies with a sliver of health that a follow-up blast would be wasted on.
Finishing them off with a throwing knife is an AP-efficient way of getting rid of them, and Fatal Throw is a bonus on top of this.
Pinning enemies to the floor can make holding choke points a walk in the park.
Pinning enemies can also be used to isolate them from groups and take them down silently without arousing suspicion, which is a great boon for a build that relies on a very noisy primary weapon.

- The drawbacks of Versatility (low accuracy, low damage early-midgame) can be mitigated quite readily.
There are no good belts for shotguns, so use of the Commando belt will give a nice boost to both your shooting and throwing prowess without taking the place of a belt that could be integral to the build.
High Throwing skill, Grenadier and Three Pointer allow you to cheese with grenades; dealing massive, reliable damage when you're still ramping up your shotgun's power.
You can also entangle enemies with throwing nets and pin enemies with throwing knives, removing their evasion and turning them into helpless fodder for your shotgun that would otherwise have little hope of hitting them.
Any turn where they're not rooted is an open invitation for a taser to the face, such that most enemies - except the spawn of Satan known as Greater Coil Spiders - can be neutered indefinitely with a bit of luck, allowing you to pump shell after shell into them at your leisure.
Cucking Carnifex in this manner was one of the highlights of the build.
Leading Shot is also available, though with the aforementioned ways of negating enemy evasion, I consider it to be a waste of a feat that becomes mostly irrelevant in the latter stages of the game.

- With a Knife Thrower's Glove, throwing a knife costs 7 AP at 18 Dex. Killing an enemy with that knife rewards 27 AP via Fatal Throw, for a net gain of 20 AP.
Blitz grants up to 20 AP
Psycho-Temporal Contraction grants 20 AP
Adrenaline grants 20 AP
Carrying over AP from a previous turn grants up to 10 AP
What does this mean? At endgame, with this build, one can have so much AP in a round that one can empty a fully loaded tactical Vindicator before running out of moves.
As far as I am aware, this is the only build that will allow such a feat, and it's not even that difficult to pull off.
Repositioning in between shots, vital for effective shotgun use, is trivialized by having the Hit and Run Feat.
This build, past a certain point, can stroll up to most any group of enemies excluding large encounters, win initiative every time, wipe them out like a crazed pinball and continue on its merry way without having to worry about ridiculous concepts like "surviving an enemy turn".
If push comes to shove though, high dodge and evasion will leave you in good stead, though Con is unfortunately lacking somewhat, an unavoidable annoyance and one of only two downsides of the build in my opinion.

- The only other downside is the fact that the Knife Thrower's Glove is not a viable weapon, though high melee skill and Dex will allow you to take down a rathound or other small fry with relative ease.
That being said, it's no match for having a second shotgun on hand. You'll have to make use of your extra AP from all of the boosts available to reload and swap shell types as necessary where otherwise you might have just switched shotgun.


Additional Verbiage

I choose Quick Pockets and Pack Rathound, both of which are kind of looked down on.
However, considering the rate at which this build burns through throwing knives, the use it gets out of throwing nets, grenades and a taser and use of the 3-slotted Commando belt, Quick Pockets is a no-brainer.
Pack Rathound's utility is more debatable, but those knives are heavy, 5 Str ain't much, and by the time it becomes a considerable Feat option, you will be overpowered enough.
The QoL is just nice to have at the end of the game.

Speaking of the end of the game, Tchort got absolutely wailed on whilst his minions were held at bay behind a wall of napalm and other minions pinned to the ground with throwing knives.
I've never had an easier time taking that meatball out.

A video of the build in use, taking down a few cans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEaGRxSzf_U

11

Builds / Re: Ultimate hammer guide

« on: September 12, 2022, 11:12:28 pm »

I still keep a pig armor in my inventory for fights where I have no choice but to tank lots of damage (especially Fire damage), but I think for most encounters, I prefer the offensive bonus.

Another good armour set for the build is infused ancient rathound armour. If you combine that with the obligatory lifting belt, mushroom brew, (infused) ancient rathound tabi and conditioning you end up with 40% mechanical damage reduction and +1 strength from the brew. The armour itself has excellent resistances and can be combined with a super steel helmet/trapper hat to have the player character taking around 30% damage through damage resistance and reduction before even taking into account evasion, dodge, morphine or Aegis.
I swear by my ancient rathound hides as a leather-clad hammerfag, plus they're available in up to 114 quality without even infusing them.

12

Builds / Nimble AR Tin Can - Braindead Difficulty

« on: August 26, 2022, 01:32:31 pm »

After having a lot of fun with a nimble SMG tin can a couple of times, I decided to see if the combo of good power, mobility and defence could be translated to other firearms types.
It works with swords too, but that's another topic.

One problem I have with making tanky builds in Underrail is that going all-in on being a tin can ASAP often leaves you up shit creek.
The tungsten available before killing the Beast is so poor (and by poor, I mean anything under ~140 quality for practical purposes) that even if you stuff it into every orifice of your character, you end up sacrificing all of your mobility for a mediocre damage resistance that doesn't make up for the impotence of having no movement points without using Sprint and/or Contraction - and God help you if you encounter a psionic.
Past Depot A, damage threshold is useless 95% of the time without a full, high-quality tungsten suit of armour; damage resistance is king.

Consequently, I prefer builds that are able to strike hard and fast and reposition that can then comfortably slip into a suit of super steel armour late-game to boost their tankiness with up to 95% mechanical damage resistance while still retaining a good portion of their earlier mobility and hitting power.
With high-enough quality super steel, foam and boot springs, you can reach 95% damage resistance and still have around 40 natural movement points late-game
That's great and all, but becoming a tin can should be a power boost to your character, not a necessity in my opinion.
Assault rifles are a perfect complement for this role.
Though assault rifles are my least favourite weapon type in the game, I still enjoyed playing this build (especially messing around with the Ambush feat) so I figure someone else might want to try it.

The build:
https://underrail.info/build/?HggDBwMPAwfCoFAAAAAAwqA_SwAAbnNKRmkANwAAAABGORkmOxUCSiQrSUsxKEUqwrZ8wqTip4IC4qeqA-KntArfvw

I didn't even bother taking the big-brain suppository until I got past Depot A because there's only one Psi ability I really wanted; Telekinetic Proxy for setting off Ambush.
You could go without Psi AIDS and just use flares and molotovs, but they don't always go where you aim them, especially with 3 DEX, so I prefer the consistency and added utility of the proxy.
Once you go for being a Psionic, you may as well get Electrokinetic Imprint and Telekinetic Grounding for their utility and you could even branch out into a bit of TM if you feel like being a shitter - I overinvested in crafting and still had plenty of points to spare, so it's easily done.
With 8 -> 10 Strength, pumping intimidation to REEEE your enemies into submission is also a possibility.

The main thing with this build is to always pump your stealth as not only is it a useful utility, but it is also one of your main sources of damage.
Before you get metal armour, therefore, black cloth and clothing like the fursuit are your best friends for getting massive critical chance in conjunction with Ambush.
As Ambush works based on your effective Stealth skill, metal armour and striders absolutely destroy its effectiveness, but even then it still gives about 40% critical chance boost when it's active, which is not too shabby on top of Recklessness, the natural critical chance of your weapon and Scrutinous if you don't quit before hitting level 30.
Anatomically Aware scopes are your best friend if you go with Critical Power, and a 9mm Chimera in your offhand will make the best use of your free Commando burst as is often the case.

I think that raising STR to 10 before reaching the veteran levels and taking Body Weight Training at level 26 instead of level 28 might be better than what I have proposed, as 13 PER is still plenty high enough, but that depends on the premium you put on mobility.

Aside from that, there's not much more to say about the build as you don't exactly need to be a genius to figure out how to do well with an AR, and I'd rather not be too prescriptive with how people set up a build.
Some of the feats I chose could easily be replaced with others according to personal preference and the fundamentals of the build would not be affected much at all.

13

Builds / Re: Glass cannon Regular Shotgun [Dominating] WIP

« on: June 13, 2022, 07:36:29 pm »

Damn, I was going to post a similar build in its own thread but I guess I'll put it here as a slight variation instead.
I call it the Zoomstick because of its high Agility.

https://underrail.info/build/?HgUFCwkHAwbCoAAAAMKgwqA_RDUAAG5uEjJuAC0APAAATzliwrAZwpYkK0fChygxKsKIwpAfwrHCpcKm4qCKBeKzrAXit7AF378

Once you get Expert Sprint, you'll be able to squeeze out 6 shots in the first round of combat using Blitz, Contraction, Adrenaline and Sprint plus your base AP. Hit and Run is for positioning your cone of fire just right between shots and replenishing MP after use of Blitz, and high dodge and evasion counter the inherent squishiness of the Survival Instincts and light armour combination.

7 Perception may seem pretty poor for a non-Versatility build that makes use of guns, but high critical chance and specced Leading Shot cancel out the negatives of low damage and low accuracy respectively. I had no problems beating the game on Dominating with this build. I always felt that shotguns were a bit lacking in the first round of combat due to the need to build up stacks of Sixth Shell and only usually being able to get 2 or 3 shots off, so this was my solution to the problem (as I saw it it was a problem, opinions may vary).

Strider is a cool feat too, I very much enjoy moving round the map at warp speed.

14

Builds / Re: SMG Versatility Build for Any Difficulty

« on: June 09, 2022, 02:41:32 pm »

I've done another playthrough with the build and I think I can make some final improvements on my original build:

https://underrail.info/build/?HggQBwMDAwZQwqAAwqAAAFBFKAAIeGkpRGkAAAAAAABPTxnCoyQVN0U-SVHCs8OY4qCKBeKnggLip6oD4rWuBd-_

I think I was a bit too prescriptive with my first build, because it really doesn't need a lot of feats to function pretty damn well. 4 go to the SMG, you get as much armour penalty reduction as you can (with the exception of body weight training) and you have hit and run for mobility. Throwing is an obvious choice to invest into thanks to high DEX, but again is not strictly necessary. The only thing that really matters is specialization point distribution, and even that has some leeway depending on how much you want to put into versatility.

The main thing I wanted to achieve with the final build was to be able to regenerate a full 40 MP per kill with Hit and Run whilst also having 95% mechanical resistance. Thankfully, it is possible (though it requires pretty high quality materials).

Through a combination of doubly-reinforced regenerative super steel metal armour, high-density padded springy super steel boots and and a low density padded super steel helmet, you can reach 95% mechanical resistance at 50% armour penalty. The bonus MP from top-tier striders combined with 7 natural AGI will give you ~40 MP combined with excellent protection against heat, energy and mechanical damage, health regen, a huge critical chance reduction against enemy attacks and flashbang immunity as general perks of the armour setup.

You might expect the build to hit like a wet noodle considering its survivability and mobility, but use of SMGs with high DEX, Versatility and a Commando belt still allows the dishing out of tons of pain to all but the most heavily armoured foes. Keep a pile of W2C ammo around and you'll be alright. Expose Weakness is optional, though a bit of a pain to use without prep.

I did invest into Temporal Manipulation, but once I got my final suit of armour, I basically never used it again. Bullet strap belts might be more optimal than the Commando belt, but again I almost never felt any pressing need to use one. I also invested far more into QoL and fun feats than I normally would simply due to the vast amount of options available. Paranoia and Trigger Happy gave God(man)-tier initiative, Pack Rathound negated the detriments of lugging around metal armour and so on. The only real weaknesses you'll have after you can up are acid entanglements (unless you get Escape Artist, hint hint) and psionics, but psionics ruin everyone's day so I wouldn't even consider it to be a particular weakness of the build.

Anyway, that's about all. I think I made the build as versatile and potent as I could.

15

Builds / Re: SMG Versatility Build for Any Difficulty

« on: March 18, 2022, 06:14:17 pm »

Personally I would drop the SMG idea if you are going for such high strength  you might as well take Assault rifles at that point and drop all dex for my con. If you want to stick with SMG, dropping full auto makes more sense because you are on average still shooting more often with Spec-Ops and high dex and using a Premeditation/Stasis with yourself to avoid dying if there are to many enemies around. Instead of super-steel armor get infused rathound leather to get more crit-chance for your smg.

I specifically wanted to make an SMG build, so this was what I came up with. The amount of strength may seem excessive, and on most builds I wouldn't agree with dumping that many points into a stat just for the sake of metal armour and Full Auto, but when I was experimenting with builds I realized that there really was nowhere else worth putting them. 3 Will is fine for Temporal Manipulation, Con is useless except for Survival Instincts (and I was ignoring crits) when I have roughly 2000-3000 effective HP against mechanical and energy attacks and high Per is a waste of points for a Versatility build unless you want it for feats, but I didn't consider any of them to be worth the additional investment of three points that instead got me:
-Enough Int for Armour Sloping
-Enough Agility for Hit and Run, Advanced Naval Combat and probably some more stuff I'm forgetting
-Enough Str for metal armour
Whilst allowing me to still reach the cap of 18 Dex.
Crits are nice and all, but pretty lacklustre on SMGs so I just binned them off entirely and focused on finding other ways to take down tough enemies.