Messages

256

Suggestions / Re: More Psi equipment!

« on: October 21, 2019, 07:56:22 am »

Which is still less than the Noble Robe improves Thought Control, as I said.

Psi Crab is 70% armor penalty in Tac Vest, but 25% in Riot Gear.  However, in Riot Gear, you only get the 35% to block melee damage, and do not get the enormous physical DT (and thus the huge +200% vs bullets, which can easily take DT vs bullets way over 100), fire DR&DT, and Electrical DR&DT.  The psiregen 2 and +psi_skill is the same between armor types, though.  Given psi haste ignores armor penalty, there's not much reason to avoid psi crab carapace as a psi primary.

See attached for an apples to apples comparison

257

Suggestions / Re: More Psi equipment!

« on: October 21, 2019, 01:37:47 am »

there is tchortist noble robe, but idk how viable it is until DC, unless you're going balls deep on dodge + Eva for a chance not to die in case you made a mistake

Good psi play doesn't get hit, so the Noble Robe is perfectly viable. In fact, if you're playing a character that uses TC as their only main school and uses the others just for support, the robe might just be the best armor for that build since it certainly scales TC up higher than any player-crafted armor could.  There's no need for dodge or evasion even in such a build, because competent play will give you all the active defenses you can ever need; passive defenses are unnecessary for well-played psi.  There's on need to worry about hit chances or DR/DT when you just never get attacked.

That said, I wouldn't recommend a TC-only primary psi build for anyone but a real UnderRail veteran looking for a challenge.

258

Builds / Re: Shotgun and grenades build

« on: October 18, 2019, 07:11:07 pm »

There are three (four, counting this new one of yours) threads asking about shotgun builds just on the first page of the Builds subforum. Surely you could look around in them first, discarding the psi support suggestions, and at least have some better-informed questions to ask, couldn't you?

259

Builds / Re: An Average Explanation of Outstanding Psi Builds

« on: October 17, 2019, 10:37:56 pm »

Yeah but healing on dominating is a pain

Not at all.

First of all, if you're a psi crafter, you're going to have Biology because you'll need that for your gear.  That means you're going to have enough to make healing hypos and advanced hypos, at least.  Then all you need are a bunch of hearts, which are free, and a bunch of ampoules, which are cheap (in fact, you can just use the extra adrenaline glands you'll find to make a few adrenaline shots, and trade those in at the doctor when you're buying ampoules and flat beakers and syringes, and it should usually be a wash or even put a charon or two in your pocket) and you can heal right on up.

Secondly, once you've got Psionic Mania, you can just go back to Quinton if you're hurt, get him to heal you for free, then activate Psionic Mania a few times while you head back on out to wherever you want to go, to get your health back down into the ideal health window.

Finally, the game is just full of healing items even on DOMINATING.  Crates/lockers/boxes have them, vendors have them, enemies have them.  Between health hypos and bandages there's really a freakish lot of healing and if you're constantly running out, then it's because you're not yet playing well.  I say that as someone whose first thread on these forums was a request for more healing options, because I wasn't playing well and thought there weren't enough hypos =)

260

Builds / Re: An Average Explanation of Outstanding Psi Builds

« on: October 17, 2019, 07:33:32 pm »

after all you are running around with 1HP most of the time

With the 9 CON requirement for SI, if you spec into it, you'll be running around with SI benefit with nearly as much health as a 3 CON Tranquility build has at full. Indeed, safe play would have you running around at about 50-54% health, just outside SI range, so when you hit Psionic Mania and take the damage, you drop right into the top range of SI. No point having elevated crit chance when you're not using it.  That would have you running around well over the max health of a Con-dumped Tranq build.  If you're playing at 1HP, you've got nobody but yourself to blame. 

261

Builds / Re: An Average Explanation of Outstanding Psi Builds

« on: October 16, 2019, 07:12:50 pm »

[questions]

Either one is fine. Tranquility is more powerful if you're a skilled player; Psychosis is more powerful if you're still making mistakes. The reason for that is once you make a mistake and take damage in combat, you lose your Tranquility bonus (though if you can heal back to full, you can get it back) but the Psychosis bonus doesn't care.  Either one will work excellently with stealth.  The SI Psychosis build concept (like I described in the initial series of posts in this thread) lends itself well to being sneaky, then killing an entire room before anyone notices you were there.

There's no reason not to learn psi abilities; you don't have spell slots or anything like that.  May as well catch 'em all.  Every ability has use in certain situations - part of the fun of psi is figuring out what's the best or the most fun or the least risky ability for any given encounter.

262

Builds / Re: An Average Explanation of Outstanding Psi Builds

« on: October 16, 2019, 11:05:12 am »

Seriously, though, Depot A is absolutely demolishing me. [...]  Any tips or advice would be really appreciated.

What part of Depot A?  There's the "Pre-Depot" part which is the first maps you have access to, with Junkyard Muties, a few dogs, some Mutated Dogs, and a few turrets; then, the "Depot proper" which is what you get access to once you go through the locked gate, with full-on Mutants and Mutated Dogs.  If you're having trouble with the first part, then it's entirely how you're playing the psi character.  For example, you say you're always going last - you need to be manually starting combat, so you go first; start doing that, and you'll see a marked improvement right there.  On the other hand, if you're having trouble with the second part, it's possible you need to go pick up one or two more levels. There's no reason at all that you should ever be under level 8 when starting the Depot proper; if you're playing Classic XP, you can easily manage level 12 on DOMINATING, or even 13-14 if you really do absolutely everything first.

Pick the Pyromaniac feat at level 8 and you'll be able to crowd control the Mutated Dogs when fighting the Mutants; Mutants are immune to fear of fire but the dogs aren't and you can fearbounce them pretty reliably.  Between your four-turn Force Field (because you took Force User at level 4, right?) and your Premeditated Pyrokinesis (because you took Premeditation at level 6, right?) you should be able to throw down a couple caltrops (if you made/bought a stealth set, maybe even a few traps too) and get everyone in the entire map to bunch up at the edge of your force field, then pop Adrenaline and throw a grenade, toss out a fireball, and lob out an Electrokinesis and a TK Punch to get some stuns, then hop out of LOS to end your turn. Next round, do whatever you gotta do to survive - hopefully, it'll involve killing a few more enemies, then maybe finishing with a Morphine Shot if you see that you're going to have to facetank a Mutant. With a LTI, you'll then be able to hit a second psi booster for the fight and mop up.  Absolute worst case, you do stuff wrong and lose control of the fight - zone out, heal up, let all your cooldowns refresh, and go back in. It won't be as controllable the second time walking in, but at full health and with consumables and all your resources topped off, you should be able to survive one turn (again, you can pop Morphine if needed to survive that first messy turn walking into combat) and lay down the law.  By which I mean murder everything.

263

Builds / Re: An Average Explanation of Outstanding Psi Builds

« on: October 15, 2019, 11:52:55 pm »

Now that you've played through the game twice, you should be fine to play a 3 Con build through DOMINATING. I wouldn't recommend it for a first playthrough, or even necessarily a first-with-this-kind-of-build play, but your third psi character? You'll be fine.

Interloper never seemed worth it to me except for melee builds. For melee, you may want to get right up on top of someone, and that last little bit of closing in makes every fractions of a second count.  But for psi, you're going to be using stealth mostly for optimal far-field placement, and for that, Interloper really doesn't shine.  With infused hopper leather (+movespeed) and tabis (+movespeed) you'll be zipping along just fine without Interloper. As far as effective skill goes, 30-50 real points and 3 Agi will be fine in every situation, if you can also craft and use a stealth set.  A good cloaking device alone will get you 75+ effective stealth.  I stealthed Emporion once on DOMINATING with 0 raw skill and 3 Agi, though it did take a few reloads.

I'd rather go with Dexterity for a Con-dumped psi character. Not only will you be able to invest less in Lockpicking and still hit the late-game thresholds, but you'll qualify for Grenadier, Quick Tinkering, even Gunslinger (which, especially combined with the other +7 initiative feat, can get you easily up into the 30s if you want). 

You should absolutely not invest in Dodge or Evasion as a full psi character. If you for some reason feel the powerful need to have Uncanny Dodge, and you're going Agi for Interloper anyway, then you can find the 40 points to unlock it.  It's not necessary, but that's really the only situation where you should invest in Dodge or Evasion. The AoE reduction just isn't worth it - if you're getting blown up all the time, craft some armor with Blast Cloth.

I think Apostrophe gives a lot of good advice in the previous post.

264

General / Re: Crafting

« on: October 14, 2019, 02:41:06 pm »

Only quality.  Your skill determines the quality of the components you can use, but if you buff up and barely squeak by with enough crafting to make a q120 knife, it's going to do the exact same damage as a different character with 300 effective crafting making a q120 knife.

Obviously, assuming both characters have the same relevant crafting feats, if any.

265

Builds / Re: Regrouping your most fun builds in this topic

« on: October 14, 2019, 02:38:20 pm »

I really love tri-school or quad-school psi because it provides so many options. It's easy to get bored of it, if you only optimize your action sequence (that'd be Premeditation -> ThermoD -> TK Proxy -> TK Punch -> Cryokinesis/Cryo Orb depending on what's left -> Pyrokinesis if necessary; all easily manageable in one turn with Thermodynamicity).  But if you self-limit and treat each combat as a puzzle and look for elegant or novel ways to get through, then psi allows you to play a game while you're playing the game, dawg.  It's boringly powerful if you let it be, but it's delightfully varied if you make it so.

266

General / Re: Damage and crafting calculations

« on: October 10, 2019, 12:48:49 pm »

Also for example if i try to make infused leather from 160q super steel and 60q leather what quality of leather can i expect? Also if i try to make leather armor from 120q leather, 150q padding and 175q black cloth how exactly is skill requirement calculated?

Damage modifiers sit alone; if you have 30% special attack and 15% feat, it's (damage) x 1.3 x 1.15, not (damage) x 1.45.  The stacking arithmetic is why crits - especially plasma pistol crits - can be so ludicrously high.

The super steel and leather armor formulae are on the wiki; you should go check.

https://www.underrail.com/wiki/index.php?title=Blueprint:_Infused_Leather
https://www.underrail.com/wiki/index.php?title=Blueprint:_Leather_Armor

The only non-obvious bit is that if you use low-quality leather and high-quality components, the base quality is set to the highest component. For example, 24q hopper leather + 80q padding will require (0.8x80) + (0.8x80x0.1) or 71 Tailoring skill.  Add on a 140q cloth and you'd need (0.8x140) + (0.8x80x0.1) + (0.8x140x0.1) , or 131 skill.

267

Builds / Re: 19DEX SMG build, dominating difficulty need advice

« on: October 10, 2019, 12:23:02 pm »

I actually don't think you'd be having an easy time with the last boss on this build without it

That build will absolutely burst-kill Tchort in one turn.  Tchort isn't the PITA with a high-volume SMG build.

268

Builds / Re: Need some help for a scientist build

« on: October 08, 2019, 01:33:47 pm »

Exothermic aura wouldn't be a use-every-combat sort of ability.  It would let you stop being on fire (if you're an ambush build, you probably aren't wearing an antithermic armor suit) if something makes you catch fire, and it would provide several useful opportunities, like kiting Industrial Bots and letting them waste their flamethrower on you, or making a lake of fire to dissuade stealthed Crawlers from coming up and saying hello (they tend to wait, stealthed, at the edge of the fire, giving you time to see them and deal with them).

From a strictly lore standpoint, Persuasion isn't much help.  It does have impact on the game world, but for lore, I don't think it gives you anything you can't get via other means.  If you really want to maximize your ability to get game lore, you need to find four more points for Will (or go read the compilation of Mysterious Pillar text).

269

Builds / Re: Need some help for a scientist build

« on: October 08, 2019, 10:53:05 am »

1)  https://www.underrail.com/wiki/index.php?title=High-Technicalities

2) You've already got some investment in psi.  I'd suggest further investment. Even if you're only using it for support, you'd get mileage out of going another 20 points into Psychokinesis for the psi trap which helps you make great chokepoints; you might find some Metathermics helpful for Cryostasis and possibly - if you can spare the points - going all the way in for cryo shield and exothermic aura, which will let you trivially handle Industrial Bots which can otherwise be a bit of trouble for a pistol build.

You're actually somewhat over-invested in crafting as your build stands, unless you don't want to rely on using your crafting benches at your house.

270

Bugs / Re: Buying Jet Skis

« on: October 06, 2019, 08:54:46 am »

Did you do anything to them, like strip them of parts or blow them up or steal them?  That would prevent them from being sellable.  Otherwise, it should just be a matter of asking Ray to show you the skis, and he should take you to them and list them.  Just checked now on the current live version of the game; works fine for me.