Messages

121

General / Re: Post your experiences with the new Dominating difficulty!

« on: January 19, 2018, 07:28:39 am »

Unfortunately I couldn't manage to beat the game without some significant save-scumming at certain points.

Can i ask how many reloads did you have to do in the final fight? To get some perspective)

122

Suggestions / Re: Increase damage stat of unique firearms

« on: January 11, 2018, 03:53:46 am »

Not just firearm, more like buffing all uniques across the board, period. They should be weaker than the top tier crafted items and/or offer special unique abilities not obtainable by crafting. Right now they are weaker than crafted item and offer less utilities (rapid reloader, smart module, etc).

What he said

123

General / Re: Sledgehammer build

« on: January 10, 2018, 09:39:18 pm »

You can't win dominating without stealth.

Oh, I have to disagree.  I've died a few times (three, maybe?), so it's not an Ironman run, but I'm 100% certain that I'm going to win with my zero-defense, zero-stealth character.  It's just going to be a while since I can't pour hours into the game like I could have a while ago.  At the very least, I'm finding DC manageable and for my other character, Tchort was easier than DC.

Are you playing some sort of sledg build?

124

General / Re: Sledgehammer build

« on: January 10, 2018, 07:25:56 pm »

When you say that combat won't work without stealth, what exactly do you mean?

Ability to pick the enemies in the area one by one (or by two-three sometimes). Ability to fuck with enemies using traps and noise. Ability to ignore some fights until later while having the ability to pass through that area. It's VERY important on dominating.

You can always gas the bladelings though.

That was just one of the examples, also the easiest one. There will be plenty of enemies that are much harder, immune to bio and don't leave you room for preparation (especially if you don't have stealth). And if you have no Expose Weakness + pretty low damage for sledghammer build due to having only 10 Str (meaning you lack both skill increase to accuracy and damage, and damage increase from having Str > + no stealth, you can just forget trying to play on Dominating.

Also, you should really use TiChrome setup for 3 strikes per turn.

Since you anyway need stealth, let's talk about stealthy sledgehammerer build. 

Did you finish the dominating difficulty with this build? IIRC you didn't even finish Hard with it.

Leaving aside my usual snide towards you, this is a thread where a guy asks about validity of the build for dominating difficulty, not a thread about quirky fun-builds.

I would take Grenadier earlier. I threw soooo many grenades on DOMINATING, and I was over and over waiting for the cooldown to expire on them. I took Grenadier late on that char, but it was a mistake to wait so long. Very valuable on DOMINATING.

COME WALK THE PATH OF EXPLOSIONS WITH ME!

Yeah, grenades are almost a must on this difficulty.

125

General / Re: Sledgehammer build

« on: January 10, 2018, 03:58:03 pm »

Good call on Cheap shots, no clue how that one slipped by me. As for crit dmg - I'd get quite a bit from Heavyweight, hence why I took Crit Power too.

You can take Cheap Shots as early as lvl 6. Heavyweight is like lvl 20 feat.

As for stealth, I could drop either Throwing or Traps and put them into stealth and carry an extra set of stealth gear with me - but I'd really like to see if combat would work without it.

It won't.

What makes Expose Weakness that good on a sledge build? I thought that was mostly useful for fast attacking low damage builds (fists, knives) that need to lower the DR threshold to deal any damage. Sledge has a pretty high base damage so that shouldn't be a problem, much like with heavy hitting ranged weapons like crossbows and snipers generally don't struggle with DR, correct?

Incorrect for several reasons. Threshold is not the problem. Resistance is. There are enemies with as much as 80% mech resist in this game. Bladelings for example have 75% (and immunity to crits by being such fun creatures), now imagine dealing with hordes of those before you can get your hands on super steel armor. Expose Weakness unfortunately does have a cooldown, but it still helps very much. Industrial bots, tin can enemies, most of the stuff from final area, including final boss. List goes on.

Snipers don't have problem with resist because W2C ammo exists. Crosbows actually have a lot of problems with it, but can somewhat go around it by having special bolts that can deal electricity/heat/acid damage (unfortunately their most powerful attack like Aimed Shot and Snipe can only deal mech damage, which is a problem).

126

General / Re: Sledgehammer build

« on: January 10, 2018, 02:57:05 pm »

First big problem: Str is too low, almost any sledg build should aim for 14-16 strength anyway and on dominating difficulty you would loose your biggest advantage of dealing damage in large spikes if you don't have max Str, which is unacceptable on this difficulty.

Second big problem: no stealth. You can't win dominating without stealth. Enemies hit hard and there are lot more of them. Even if at some point you get best super steel armor, psi enemies can still ignore it and there is at least one unavoidable fight with a LOT of them. Without stealth you just die even with all that hp and Thick Skull. You can be a heavy sledg, but you still need stealth and some stealthy clothes to use on such occasions.

Third problem: No Cheap Shot and Expose Weakness. Boi, you are in trouble. Those a must have for any melee characters. First one gives you 50% crit damage and without it your Critical Power feat is absolutely pointless, since you gonna have only base 100% crit damage bonus unless you wield tungsten sledg. Expose Weakness is a must because mechanical damage is the most resistant damage on this game and it's your only way of mitigating this. There are plenty of enemies with heavy mech resist (like bladelings, bots and so on) and you will have a very hard time killing them without this feat.



Small stuff: Bone breaker is mostly pointless. Even on dominating your crits will kill most of the enemies (with critical power and chep shots) or at least leave them with little health, so 25% increase in damage will not be useful 99% of the time. And enemies that have this much health often are immune to this debuff since it works only on targets that have ribs (so, no robots for example). There are exceptions on dominating difficulty where it can be useful, like a couple of human boss characters (Carnifex springs to mind), but it still is a VERY situational feat. Taste for Blood on the other hand is much more useful since you get buff, instead of giving debuff to the enemy, and you get one stack of it for every enemy you kill. In battles with lots of enemies it's not hard to get constant +50% damage buff on your character.

Yell can be actually useful since it's less known effect is getting affected enemies out of stealth. Probably not an intentional effect, but a very useful one, since it has a pretty big radius. You can get crawlers/gaunts/stalkers out of stealth with it much easier than with flares.

No Armor Sloping is a problem, since even with Sprint and Hit and Run (btw gains from Hit and Run are affected by armor penalty iirc) you gonna move like drunk tortoise if you want to get yourself good metal armor.

Here is a character that i finished the game on dominating with, if you want some reference

http://underrail.info.tm/build/?GRAGBgYDAwYAAADChwAARmdXADLCgGQAcG4AAABpAFAABg4SJCgtMTk8RUtQVA

P.S. Sorry for misspelling and typos. It's late and i'm slightly drunk and too lazy to check the text twice.

127

General / Re: Post your experiences with the new Dominating difficulty!

« on: January 10, 2018, 11:47:01 am »

Let's look closely what high Con can privide us? Almost nothing, at least on Domination.
I think my stealth-sledgehammer has more tactical advantages.

Кто о чем, а вшивый о бане.

Sorry don't have the time to read the entire thread right now but would a high str/con sledgehammer build work on Dominating? I want to try the build out because I've never played it before but I'm currently running 3 builds in parallel on hard and I don't want to do yet another one unless it's on higher difficulty.

In theory, yes, but it really depends on specific build and how good you are at the game. I do not recommend playing on Dominating unless you find Hard very easy. Post your build in separate thread and i'll say wherever it is possible for you to finish the game with it in my opinion

128

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: January 09, 2018, 01:42:36 pm »

Yeah, i give you that, since it's the only way for snipers to shoot twice per turn if they can't craft.

Actually, not only way.
You can craft Spearhead sniper rifle with Rapid Reloader.

129

General / Re: No-crafting exploration build?

« on: January 09, 2018, 10:33:42 am »

You can actually buy MK3 Shock bolts in _several_ shops.

Maybe, but in very small amount and in my experience you spend shock bolts very fast.

there is only one unique crossbow and it's pretty mediocre

Calling it mediocre is pretty generous 

The problem is not even in robots, since for most common ones (plasma turrets and sentry bots) even ordinary Shock bolts can suffice and those can be purchased in any electronic and general shops in abundance. The problem with final area where there is a lot of enemies with very high mech resist and without ability to craft mkII-III bolts in large quantities or corrosive acid bolts i just can't see how a crossbow user without crafted gear could pull off finishing final boss even after solving the puzzle.

130

General / Re: No-crafting exploration build?

« on: January 09, 2018, 08:35:00 am »

Crossbows have a hard time with robots; you're basically stuck with shock bolts and EMP grenades. 

Deadly Snares + Elemental Bolts + Critical Power + Acid Blob Trap + Shock Bolt MK3. 1-Shot all Robots, Industrial need 2-3 shots.

That's level 18 at least. You'll encounter robots long before that.

Also without crafting you don't get mk3 bolts, mostly mk1 with couple of mk2 from higher level shops. Same with acid traps.

Overall, i would not recommend playing crossbow build without crafting. It's one of the most crafting dependent weapon after all. I'm not even sure it's possible to even finish the game with non-crafting crossbow build.

131

General / Re: No-crafting exploration build?

« on: January 08, 2018, 08:24:04 pm »

Sniper build can fit the bill. You build it around max Per, so you will notice all those secret places, it's good with stealth, get lockpicking, hacking and pickpoketing on him and you are good to go. Best thing about Sniper build is that you need only 4 feats to be very good at it: Critical power, Aimed Shot, Snipe and Sharpshooter. Everything else can be whatever you want, including quality of life feats like Interloper, Burglar and so on. You can be pretty effective with it even without crafting - Dragunov will allow you to make 2 shots per turn and generic Corsair/Harbringer will get you very high damage against single target. Damage will be lower than with crafted rifles, but then again, damage from snipers already pretty high. I believe you can still one shot final boss with Black Arrow. Take best Smart goggles, stealthiest armor you can find and choose secondary weapon (either pistol for +7 init from feat or smg for more flexible damage dealing, or both, you have feats to spare) and you are good to go.

132

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: January 07, 2018, 01:51:32 pm »

Well, overall you have good points, but

Besides, why would i need a crafted or generated weapons (assuming the latter are better then uniques) if unique weapons do totally fine? I've used Syg MPX ona a pistol build in DC and it did fine with standard bullets on new Hard.

You need crafted weapons because you create them to specifically suit your needs. When you craft weapons you have MUCH higher flexibility, which is already a pretty big advantage on top of being able to have unique only to crafted qualities (like smart module). Now when you craft stuff, not only you do things you can't without it, you also outpace anything else so much that not having crafting skill on your character by itself can be considered a huge drawback.

Personally i think that most unique weapons should be on the level of q100 crafted stuff in damage at least to be at least somewhat relevant.

133

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: January 07, 2018, 04:22:21 am »

H&K chambers 9mm bullets.
Tommy Gun chambers .44s.

And who gives a crap?) What does it matter what ammo do they use, really? Especially when we are talking about tommy that has awful stats all across the board.

Jawbone and Wasteland Hawk have 150% crit damage. Jawbone's crit chance sucks but it does not matter for Deadly Snares or Aimed Shot.

Crit damage is nice, but their base damage doesn't really compare to crafted versions, so the point is really mute. Besides, Hammerer already has 125% crit damage, so the difference in that regard is not that big, while the difference in damage is just insane even without using Smart module. I speak as a guy who played with a character who used pistols without crafting. The Jawbone is the same except it doesn't even have real advantage in crit damage since anatomically aware scopes exist, so even low tier crafted crossbows will have better stats all across the board.

Basically, that was my whole point. Unique weapons often has nifty things like high crit chance/damage, some unique effects and so on, but practically speaking they are loosing because their damage and other stats are so pathetically low.

Kukri has 20% crit chance and can cripple its target.

But low damage and low crit damage, so it's still better to use crafted.

Dragunov shoots twice per turn.

Yeah, i give you that, since it's the only way for snipers to shoot twice per turn if they can't craft. Still if we compare it to crafted weapons, it wouldn't be even serious comparison.

Mind Cracker cracks minds.

It cracks ass. Burning psi points or applying debuffs is absolutely useless for playstyle that involves spending 1-2 hits on average to kill the enemy.

134

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: January 06, 2018, 07:41:41 pm »

The one thing I don't like though, which also confused the ever living fuck out of me is that if anything, I was expecting unique weapons to get buffed across the board, not a few getting nerfed.
Maybe somebody else can let me know why the ones that did get nerfed deserved it because I haven't actually used those ones but nothing about them jumps out at being nerf worthy to me.
I've always thought that unique weapons were underwhelming and I'd like to see them get bumped up a bit in terms of what they have to offer. I wouldn't mind there being more in the game too.
Obviously at the end of the day they should never be able to beat craftable weapons (since you're investing valuable skill points & in game materials & currency into creating them) but as of now they really are pitiful in what they offer.

I'm pretty sure unique weapons are not supposed to match crafted ones, but to exceed auto generated stuff.

We should also not forget weapons have something like level. Low level unique item does not need to be better than high level autogen. Good indicator of item "level" is its durability.

Uniques loose to most of the autogen stuff too. They probably shouldn't be more powerful than crafted stuff, at least top tier ones, but the should be at least comparable to mid tier crafted stuff. Crafted stuff already has huge advantage by being exactly what you want, uniques should be at least somewhat comparable in raw numbers. Otherwise they are nothing more than oddities that don't give you any xp. In all my games i can count on one hand amount of times i used unique weapons for something other than utility, and i often want to because they look cool and often have some nifty stuff in them, but then i look at other stuff i can get and just leave them in a locker at SGS or sell them. They are mostly useless.

135

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

« on: January 06, 2018, 06:21:35 pm »

The one thing I don't like though, which also confused the ever living fuck out of me is that if anything, I was expecting unique weapons to get buffed across the board, not a few getting nerfed.

You are not the only one here thinking that

So is expansion out?

Nope, just an update to core game with some new features (like map) and changes to core mechanics (mostly good)