Messages

16

General / Re: Is my build hopeless? (minor spoilers)

« on: November 22, 2016, 05:02:06 am »

I will assume that you are playing on normal.

Yes, I am playing on normal.

Armor penalty reduces your dodge, evasion, stealth and movement points directly proportional to how high it is (not sure what the exact formula is). So lower armor penalty is better, but armor with lower armor penalty also offers less damage reduction, and herein lies the problem you will have to figure out.

Can't I just carry two armour suits around and swap when necessary? Also, I am planning on taking stealth (Interloper) and movement (Sprint, Hit and Run, Suppressive Fire) feats to be able to just run away from tough situations.

Normally you either go for high health or high dodge/evasion. However, the latter will spread you thin on skillpoints, which is a major concern since you say you want to go with guns, throwing, stealth, several other subterfuge skills, crafting AND talking skills.

Well, Guns would go to the max. Throwing - maybe 25 points or so. Subterfuge more or less to the max. Persuasion maybe up to 50 or 75. Crafting - I am planning on picking 2, at most 3 sciences. Mechanical and chemistry for guns, bullets and nades/mines. Then maybe some electrical or tailoring but probably not. I have no idea how high I need to raise them, I was just planning to explore the game and see.

If your plan is stealthy gunslinger, I would consider something like this:

Str 3
Dex 10 (extra points go here every time unless you have a well thought out reason for not doing so)
Agi 10
Con 3
Per 4
Will 3
Int 7

I was thinking more about a stealthy thief with guns but I guess you could call it that way?
I am a bit surprised I would need 16 Dex though, do I really? If I went up to 14 and just put the other 2 points wherever, would my build suffer a lot?

If you want to discard all of this build advice and just take a single piece of advice, the most important I can give is: Don't spread yourself thin. This is a game for specialists, not jack-of-all-trades.

Is being an excellent thief with excellent gun skills and then a bit of persuasion and some crafting already too much?

17

General / Re: Is my build hopeless? (minor spoilers)

« on: November 21, 2016, 08:28:25 pm »

Just to narrow it down a little...

It would start as:
Str 3
Dex 8
Agl 6
Con 3
Per 10
Will 4
Int 6

I would go for max Guns, just a bit of Throwing, a lot of Subterfuge skills, some tech (to craft silenced guns and maybe bullets and maybe grenades). Also Persuasion and maybe some Mercantile if I have any points left. So it would be a thief but using (silenced) pistols and (silenced) SMGs instead of crossbows. Maybe even chemical pistols. Would ignore assault rifles and sniping, no strength to wield those. Also planting traps and mines before the battle, using nades on groups of enemies and flashbangs to stun and retreat.

As for the feats, I am not sure but would probably go with Expertise, Packrat, Aimed shot, Spec ops, Commando. And whatever else to become more mobile and sciency-crafty.

Would this give me enough firepower to go through the game? Also, another fragile character but I am hoping that stealth, high initiative, extra movement and such would keep me alive. Lots of hiding, hit and run.

Looks good on paper but then I thought the same thing with crossbows...

18

General / Re: Is my build hopeless? (minor spoilers)

« on: November 21, 2016, 06:41:06 pm »

Thank you for the reply.

I have kept Will at 4 to avoid any penalties to Persuasion.
I was also planning to bump Int to 6 or 7, just wasn't sure how much crafting I wanted to do.
Con 3 was just a tradeoff to raise other stats.

I know I want to play a thief with a very developed Subterfuge tree. Would also like to spot secret places and have decent Persuasion.
Everything with this character worked like a charm, even better than I thought it would. But combat is really dragging me down.

Do you have any advice on how to make such a character into a decent fighter as well?

I though mine was too squishy for Melee (no dodge nor evasion) and Guns seemed really noisy so I went with Crossbows and Throwing as a secondary combat skill. Would happily use anything that worked with a thief build, including psi. But the game has no manual and all the information on the net is either very concrete builds (that I will probably tweak into something sub par) or really general information like the Wiki which is still quite limited or hard to understand unless you have experience within the actual game.

Would happily do my own reading and research, just don't know where to start.
Maybe I should just lower the difficulty and go with a suboptimal build but I quite enjoy the brutality of the enemies.

19

General / Is my build hopeless? (minor spoilers)

« on: November 21, 2016, 05:09:26 pm »

Hello fellow underrailers,
I hope it's not too rude to make the first post asking for help. I figured this place would be the best to seek advice.

Anyhow, I just bought UnderRail and started playing it for the first time. Loving every moment of it but so many mechanics are very obscure and I heard this game can be rather unforgiving.

After reading some wiki and watching some youtubes, I came up with a sneaky thief-trapper-crossbower build. So far it has worked well, I can destroy rathounds and psi beetles, could deal with the raiders in the GMS place. But now that I decided to fight some bandits near Junkyard and mutants in depot A, it does not seem so effective any more. In fact, I feel it is starting to plainly suck and that makes me worried.

My build is this:

Level 8 (just levelled up)

Str 3
Dex 8
Agl 8 (+1)
Con 3
Per 11 (+1)
Will 4
Int 5

Skills: 50 in all of these - Throwing, Crossbows, Persuasio and everything under Subterfuge.
Feats: Aimed Shot, Pack Rathound, Snooping (probably shouldn't have...), Interloper, Concussive Shots, Sniper.

My character has opened every mechanical lock I came across and most electronic locks. Also pickpocketed every thug and their grandmother in Junkyard. Now I am swimming in cash but have no crafting skills whatsoever.

My main problem and worry is the very low damage output from the crossbow. I have a Scoped Zephyr which seems to be the best I have come across but it still does a pitiful 16-33 mechanical damage. Snipe is nice and so is aimed shot but even with those I can take on maybe one tougher enemy during my turn. Then I have to pew pew my 25 damage bolts that don't do much good when the enemy HP is often over 100. Also, anyone with a firearm almost rips me to shreds in one turn. Even dogs at Depot A can take more than half of my health in one turn. No good.

Traps and grenades help a lot but I had to use 2 bear traps, one frag mine (Mk1), a flashbang and a frag granade (Mk1) to dispatch the three raiders in the caves near Junkyard. Still, took me a few tries and I was almost dead by the end of it. I feel like I could cheese through the Depot A (maybe) but it's probably not even that tough compared to what lies ahead.

So yeah... I guess crafting would have helped but I am not even fighting enemies with tougher armour yet and my regular bolts seem next to useless. I didn't take any feats for special bolts yet but now I see they might be a pain to use without crafting anyway. Crossbows seem to be very feat intensive but I decided to skip some of those and picked other feats.

Did I screw up building my character? Should I start over?
Or am I missing something?

I would love to build an excellent thief with high Dex and high sneaking skill (so decent Agl?) who also has high enough Per for the secret places and trap spotting. I'd also love to have some persuasion and it seems keeping Will at 4 can do that for me. But crafting is also mandatory, no? And I am quite lost how to make a combat-capable character within these stats. Nerd Commando offers some good builds but now I am a little afraid to tweak them to my liking.

Any advice on how to save my current build or make another character would be mostly appreciated.
Thanks.