Messages

76

General / Re: Padding

« on: January 24, 2020, 08:13:40 am »

So regarding cold and electric resistance, how much do you really need them? As you said electric resist is fairly rare but is electric damage common late game?

It is good to have mechanical and electric resistance if you are likely to be ambushed by lurkers/muggers/other stealthy melee enemies who might wield electrogloves/knives. Or if you like to fight melee in close combat in general, shock melee weapons are quite common and hit hard.

77

Suggestions / Trap Expert feat improvement: halve carry weight of traps

« on: January 20, 2020, 01:39:05 pm »

The Trap Expert feat is for quicker arming/disarming of traps, and increased detection difficulty.
This is nice for those who like to prepare the battlefield with traps, but in no way essential. There are so many competing feats that are good.

However, a trapper character with decent dexterity and agility (good stealth) who could potentially have a use for Trap Expert, is unlikely to have high strength, and traps are heavy!

Suggestion is to make Trap Expert halve the weight of trap utilities in addition to what it already does, as you are an expert of handling them.
Ex, bear traps: 1 -> 0,5 kg, mines 2 -> 1 kg.

This does not alter the playing mechanics in any way, but enables you to carry twice the amount of traps, so you can actually be a trap expert in practice.

78

General / Re: Character Builder and Difficulty

« on: January 16, 2020, 02:34:46 pm »

When using the excellent character builder to play with various characters, know that there is a long way to max lvl.

Sometimes I see build suggestions with lvl 30 examples where every skillpoint is fine-tuned, but they fail to mention that those characters will not have half of the skillpoints available until well into the game, when they can start to divert skillpoint increases from essential skills that have reached their desired level, to others.

Remember to check what the characters look like at lvl 4, 8,12 or 16 also, to see what you will actually play with during the majority of the game, so you can plan accordingly.
This especially applies to crafting skills.

79

Builds / Re: Ultimate hammer guide

« on: January 10, 2020, 01:32:27 pm »

Really nice guide. Thumps up!

I like the Berserker variant, though all 3 examples are interesting.

I wonder what Oligarch to support with these hammer guys?, Leaning towards JKK for the Berserker, and Praetorians for the other two.

Correct, Praetorians is always a choice for metal armor wearers because Lt. Straford also sells carrier vests, besides explosives and other goodies that, despite being a hammerer, you will still find Praetorian gun shop still good
And I was kinda at lost for my Berserker, I went JKK because I assumed it has good stealth stuff, and since JKK are quests mainly revolving Stealth, I went for them

Inspired by your guide, I have started the "Berserker" hammer variant, now lvl 11 having returned the drill parts. (Hard difficulty, Oddity mode)

So far, I love the combination of being a nimble, agile, dodgy character who rely on stealth and traps, and the ability to full berserk in hand-to-hand, drugged up and quite tanky.

I consider a decent traps skill important, in order to detect and not step on all the mines.
It is not that it hurts that much with 10+ CON, good evasion for the level and damage resistance, but the noise alert all the enemies on the map, wich is not cool. (Also you can recover a bunch of useful traps to set yourself, wich is very cool.)

Skill distribution is indeed very tough, I have so far sacrified all social skills, tailoring, throwing and electronics in order to have decent dodge, evasion, traps, stealth, biology and mechanics. Working on improving tailoring first.

Feat distribution/lvl:

1 - Sprint
1 - Nimble
2 - Doctor
4 - Interloper (+1 AGI)
6 - Conditioning
8 - Fast Metabolism (+1 STR)
10 - Thick Skull

80

Builds / Re: Ultimate hammer guide

« on: January 07, 2020, 08:59:40 am »

Really nice guide. Thumps up!

I like the Berserker variant, though all 3 examples are interesting.

I wonder what Oligarch to support with these hammer guys?, Leaning towards JKK for the Berserker, and Praetorians for the other two.

81

General / Re: New decade.

« on: January 01, 2020, 11:02:33 am »

Godt nytt

82

Bugs / Re: Crawlers too difficult to detect

« on: January 01, 2020, 11:01:18 am »

Base Perception is based on your level, and unfortunately, your perception score that you set to minimum. Thus you have really poor detection for your level.
The food and goggles only modify that score, so it does not help that much.

If you are quite blind, you must expect to be ambushed, and take appropriate measures. If you, for example, also have your constitution score set to minimum value, then you pretty much ask for instant death from ambushers unless you have really good armor.

83

Bugs / Minidungeon minor bug II

« on: December 28, 2019, 05:19:53 pm »

New minidungeon lower level (Zone: dun_wasteWater)

in the middle of the water pools, there are 2x explosive barrels, these are transparent so you can walk right through them.

Edit: On closer inspection, this goes for 3x explosive barrels and 1x oil barrel in the same area.

84

Builds / Re: Advice for my sniper build

« on: December 19, 2019, 01:17:43 pm »

Expertise smg is good enough for very lightly armored guys. 5mm silenced won't be able to scratch tac vest guy, let alone tin cans. That's the retarded design of silencer, it reduced the average damage by ~20%. Around lv 18, expertise might carry you through enemies DT and probably able to kill 1 target in 3-4 burst.
Not sure about crit, but if you pick ambush (and you should as sniper), it should be good enough if you have decent crit chance.

Alternatively, just play crossbow. They're designed as silenced sniper. After level 14 (crit power) you basically 1-shotting people left and right without any noise. It's kinda boring afterwards tho

But you have W2C ammo readily available.
Use regular ammo for easy targets, JHP ammo for big, lightly armored targets and W2C ammo for heavy armor and tacvests.

A Silenced Rapid 5mm Jaguar burst for 16 AP, so for 64 APs you fire 28 bullets, (almost) emptying your magazine.
(You don't even need to use meds, can just activate sprint and Blitz to gain +15 extra APs with help from Interloper.)

Expertise for a 5mm silenced SMG means the difference between not being able to damage heavy tac-vest enemies, and killing them in one round.
In a worst-case scenario, you are up against a 50 effective DT enemy. That becomes 17 if you use W2C ammo. That is more or less the avg damage of your silenced SMG at lvl 10-12, so you do not do much damage.
With Expertise you effectively add your lvl/bullet on top of this, say you hit with 24 bullets out of 28, that is about 280 damage. This is not too bad at lvl 12.
As you go to lvl 14-16 and aquire better SMGs, you will do enough damage with W2C ammo to reliably take out anyone. For extremely hard enemies take Adrenaline and use a Taser beforehand to stun. Add in Blindsiding +15% damage on top and you are good to go.

85

Builds / Re: Advice for my sniper build

« on: December 17, 2019, 07:31:50 pm »

Interesting build. It depends a bit on what your approach is.

If you want to use a silenced 5mm variant to kill silently, you probably need Expertise, base damage is quite low.

A high caliber SMG like a Steel Cat to take advantage of your focus on criticals might be ok with what you have already.


(With your build, if you are in dark light, perhaps the following tactic might work: Sneak up to lone victim, drop flare right at his feet (100% chance), with Sprint and Interloper back away until Ambush activates, and burst fire away with 100% critical chance and halved evasion Sweet dreams. No need for Expertise then.)

86

Builds / Re: Sniper with a firearm pistol

« on: December 13, 2019, 12:16:18 pm »

Yep, that is why I eventually added Paranoia to the list. I thought that with that immense detection and nice initiative bonus it is worth the feat slot and seemed like a better choice than Trigger Happy if I can only pick one out of those two. I also like rounded numbers:) Yet, with the current setup and both taking Paranoia and Trigger happy with a Twich drug and the JKK Tactful Jacket, it's possible to reach 60 initiative but that's probably overkill of course.

Also I just recently discovered this wonder of an armor and now uncertain if it's even worthful to raise my tailoring skill higher than 50 (for repair kits). It's defense capabilities are as of a high quality Galvanic Vest, but has some crazy bonuses in addition. Gray Spec Ops Armor also looks amazing. Crafting armor is the territory I'm the least informed about. Should I stick with the idea of having 120 effective tailoring skill because crafted armors is the way to go instead of these two or should I spend those 70 points on other skills?

I can also decrease biology to 50 and pickpocketing to 50 in favor of increasing other subterfuge skills to something like this:
http://underrail.info.tm/build/?HgUICAMQAwPCoDwAAADCoMKfWDgmOMKGdUoswoYAAAAAAAAAMcKDKBcmOh4BEQIzS341FsKkwrXipI4F4qe-Ct-_


Btw thanks for the information given, you were all very helpful.

Well to be honest, you can avoid this question of taking tailoring skill or not.

The character builder is slightly misleading in that you can see the lvl30 end game character, but playing the game, you have less skills than this to actually spend per level.
You need to max out skills like throwing, and all the subterfuge skills in the beginning, otherwise they are useless to you. It is only further into the game that you can divert skills to branch out more.

If I were you I'd leave tailoring at 0, and buy perfectly fine ninja tabi boots, black balaclavas, and stealth tactical vests from the shops as needed, or find them.
Late game you have extra skills to put into crafting if you so choose.

Btw if you want to be a serious sniper, I'd take the Snipe feat earlier. It is very deadly, and in character. Alternatively you could simply skip it, as you are focusing so heavily on critical damage, wich does not help Snipe at all.

87

Builds / Re: Sniper with a firearm pistol

« on: December 13, 2019, 09:37:55 am »

Yeah, I have also played a high dex melee->guns versatility SMG character. This character get great use of versatility, and mainly shoot bursts at very close/point blank range. I also used a sniper for initiating combat sometimes, or trick shots at turrets out of range for example, and with a bipod and regular scope, you can hit easy enemies quite well.

But I believe, if you want to be serious as a sniper and kill difficult-to-hit targets at long range, you need to focus on high perception and excellent guns skill. It will only be frustrating otherwise. You also want to exchange your bipod and scope for a smart, rapid, anatomically aware variant, so you get more firepower at the expense of aiming assistance.

Also, a 3 con light armor guy pretty much have to have as good detection as possible from the start, else you get slaughtered by stealthed enemies.


(Btw, I will play with a mathematical excercise, if I get this right...:

For example, at lvl 16, with maxed dexterity and maxed melee skill, you have 14 dex, and 90 base skill => 166,5 effective melee weapon skill
Vith Versatility you get effective skill * 0,6 => 99,9 effective guns/crossbow skill

This is the equal of having about 5,3 perception and maxing out guns skill.
To me, this seems too low to be of any use as a sniper.)

88

Builds / Re: Sniper with a firearm pistol

« on: December 13, 2019, 08:32:59 am »

Your original character looks very solid.

I would not use Versatility, it is a very bad idea in this case.
A sniper needs high perception, and has little need for dexterity. For a dedicated firearm user you go for decent to high perception, and maxed guns skill.
(Versatility only give you mediocre skill with other weapons, not at all good enough to reliably hit anything at long range.)

Because of your excellent initiative, stealth and great detection (because of high perception) you will almost always go first in combat, a major point of a gunslinger character. As such, drugs like bullhead, aegis etc while westing a doctor's pouch is of great benefits for you, as you can take them before you get hit.

As for evasion, you need this, badly. Max it out. With 3 constitution and light armor, you are deader than disco if you get hit by a grenade, unless you have evasion. Not to mention steppinh on a landmine (it will happen even with great detection, trust me). With some tabi boots, and use of nice drugs like jumping bean and possibly adrenaline, your chances of survival are good against ranged enemies too.

Feat wise, you might try to cram in trigger happy as well, just to be 100% sure of winning initiative, against almost everyone. But only later on, if you feel like it, this is a matter of practical experience.

I would, however, switch trap master with quick tinkering. The ability to drop a bear trap and retreat if things go south (and they will) is priceless, and it helps a lot with sneaking in a trap in an enemy posistion quickly. I used to like trap master myself, but in practice, it is convinient but not really a must.

Traps skill I recommend going a bit higher, as the chance of recovering traps is not based on the trap difficulty, but by the hidden traps skill of the NPC that has set the trap. It is also not cool to have enemies avoid your traps.

89

General / Re: Is Mercantile Worth It?

« on: December 10, 2019, 09:30:45 am »

Mercantile is so good that it should be a core skill, if you are going to be doing serious crafting.  If you just want to dabble, or make some grenades and maybe cook some drugs, then Mercantile isn't necessary at all.  But if you intend to craft weapons or armor or shield emitters or stuff like that, to use throughout the game, then yes; you need Mercantile. Preferably you need enough that you can buff up to 105 effective skill to unlock the best tier of equipment from the hardest check in-game, but even 80 effective is enough to make a very large difference in what components are available for purchase.

This, TheAverageGortsby has got it.

If you rely heavily on being able to craft specific gear with the very best components then Mercantile is a good skill that will help you a lot.
But Mercantile is by no means necessary at any time, it is perfectly possible to find necessary components without it.
If you only craft a bit, or mainly drugs that you extract from mother nature, then skip it.

(As a side note, I have never seen any hard evidence that special merchandise is in fact of higher quality than normal goods, other than HEAVY confirmation bias. Anyone got proof of this? AFAIK It just increases your chance of finding something useful.)

90

Builds / Re: Dirty kick for dex versatility builds (question)

« on: December 07, 2019, 08:24:49 pm »

I dont know, tasers get resisted from time to time. Dirty Kick is a decent backup if you want to for example perform a silent assassination (flashbangs make noise) as a sneaky character. If you attack from stealth then Dirty Kick should benefit from the melee surprise benefit of halved opponent dodge (I believe it was), so it should be easy to hit with.

Problem is there are plenty of nice competing feats to choose from.