Messages

76

General / Re: Psi crab coak is not worth it.

« on: July 21, 2020, 02:50:58 am »

At that kind of armor penalty psi crab regen needs to be way higher - something like 50% psi bar regen to feel worth it.
Alternatively it should just offer a higher psi cost reduction like 15%.

Are you forgetting how insane the protection value is from the carapace?  It's basically an anti-rifle plate that's also strongly fire and electricity resistant, with higher psi skill boost caps than beetle carapace (same scaling, higher quality cap).  Sure, 2 regen is nothing compared to 10% cost reduction, but armor penalty be damned, psi crab carapace turns you into a tank.

And psi haste ignores armor penalty, so you can still move around just fine in it when you need to.  If it had 5% cost reduction I'd use it in all my psi builds as a carry-around-for-dangerous-places suit with Kevlar cloth, netting me a bullet DT around 120-140, and wear a stealthy or antithermic psi beetle overcoat for normal waltzing around.

77

General / Re: Tips for playing oddity

« on: July 20, 2020, 10:45:56 pm »

How necessary is pickpocketing in oddity?

It's never necessary.  There's enough Oddity XP to get you to 30 without ever pickpocketing anybody.  That said, if you're playing sniper/SMG then you're going to have rather high ammo costs throughout the game, and pickpocketing can really help in the earlier stages when you're mostly just broke.  Plus, it'll get you up to those mid-levels just a little faster.  General consensus is that 50 or so is enough pickpocketing to get ammo and most of the pickpocketable oddities; when I've played builds with pickpocket skill, that's as far as it goes and it pays off nicely.

78

General / Re: Tips for playing oddity

« on: July 20, 2020, 01:54:19 pm »

What Tamior said is right, but I'd like to generalize it one step further: on Oddity XP mode, you should be ready to walk away from the hardest content in most areas and circle back later to grab what you missed.  There's more backtracking and careful dancing around problems until you get your build really going with some choice feats and equipment, usually somewhere around level 14-16.  After that typically your character has come together well enough that clever play is more significant than character power.

79

Builds / Re: SMG Jack of all Trades review

« on: July 20, 2020, 01:43:02 pm »

You can absolutely get 172 quality gear from Hannah and Frasier with their second tier unlocks.  I've seen it several times since Expedition's full release.  You absolutely cannot get 170s (or even 160s, that I've seen) quality gear from them in their base inventory.

But even if in the code there's nothing preventing that highest-quality stuff from showing up (and I do believe there is; I've checked enough inventory restocks to be awfully close to statistically significant) then getting the unlocks still does increase the quality of gear you get, because that's how mathematical averages work.  Player time is a finite set and over the course of two or three playthroughs nobody's going to approximate infinite restocks so they won't get a nice pretty Gaussian distribution of qualities.  Having more opportunities gives you a better chance of seeing the unicorn at the very top end, and you're working with probabilities rather than amplitudes.  More rolls of the dice gets you better stuff except for the very luckiest of players.

80

Suggestions / Re: Wording change on Kevlar items

« on: July 19, 2020, 02:22:50 pm »

Well, 19 presumably anonymous uncontrolled-sample votes isn't a sample size or methodology I'm comfortable with, but if that extrapolates at all, I'd say it's pretty clearly support that armor DT isn't universally clear enough, and may warrant clarification.  You've got almost a 30% rate for incorrect responses, even when the question is specifically worded to remove the ambiguity I was talking about in my OP.  If a system has a 30% failure rate, it's a flawed system.

81

Builds / Re: First time Dominating build. Looking for suggestions/improvements.

« on: July 18, 2020, 12:58:54 pm »

Anyways here's a revised build.

If you have any place you might want to put them, you're 65 points overinvested in Mercantile on that one.  With the UnderPie buff, you can get to 105 even without Hypercerebrix.  If you assume both, then you can pull as many as 78 points out.  That would in turn give you enough points free to get Intimidate (or with just a few more points from elsewhere, Persuade) to the skill caps you need to use them everywhere, if that's of interest to you.  There's really not much use in taking Mercantile beyond 105 effective unless you're playing a Salesman & Major Supplier spec build, which is...well.  If that's what you want to do, you're clearly not optimizing much 

82

Builds / Re: First time Dominating build. Looking for suggestions/improvements.

« on: July 18, 2020, 08:30:29 am »

Honestly, I'd rather go with a modified blind sniper build for rifle + pistol.  15-16+2 Dex, Versatility, max melee, 10-11 Per 60 Guns for feats.  Dump Con and Agility to get the stat points you need and swap out Fast Metabolism for Doctor (pulling 15 points for Bio either from Throwing/Traps which you've crazily overinvested in, or from crafting which you've lightly overinvested in), which is nearly as good for a build that doesn't use psi and wears stealthy leather armor.

If you really want to use pistols, get that Dex way up there.  Otherwise by late game they just won't be doing much and you'll be stuck having to either rely extremely heavily on traps and grenades, or else mostly just using your sniper and sneaking in a pistol shot every now and then just to feel like it was worth it.  Very high Dex, and it will be.

With that much Chemistry, I'd much rather haul around a chem pistol of my own crafting than Wyatt's 44.  The 44 is a good choice in early game but chem pistols are nice.  If you did go that route, since your stealth is so high that you'll always be starting combat on your own terms anyway, you could drop Gunslinger for Cooked Shot and vastly increase your ability to control the battlefield - but that would also mean you can't get 2 shots a round with the .44 unless you use Adrenaline, unless you go with the higher-Dex build concept.  (edit: case in point - with 18 Dex, you can get 5 chem pistol attacks a turn with Magic Voodoo Amphetamines; add in an Advanced Catalyzing Belt and you can do 6 a turn with regular Adrenaline, or 5 + Cooked Shot with tribal cocaine.  That's going to be a tremendous short-range output. Use XAL-001 instead of a crafted pistol and it gets even crazier.)

Your build will basically always be better with psi than without, but you don't need psi to beat DOMINATING.  You can do just fine without it.

edit: 15 points out of Electronics and 30 points out of Traps (which will still be very high if you take a Dex versatility route) lets you put 45 points into Bio, which with housing bonus lets you craft Hypercerebrix, which in turn allows you to free up a few more points from your crafting skills or just make higher quality stuff.

83

Suggestions / Re: Wording change on Kevlar items

« on: July 17, 2020, 06:20:19 pm »

It's already clear enough.  The green text will say "increased by 242% vs bullets" or whatever.  That's their number; it's right there on the screen.

It's clear enough for me and for you.  But I'm in messages right now with yet another person who doesn't understand it even after reading the wiki.  You and I aren't the folks who need concessions; we've learned all there is to know about the game.  But this message exchange reminds me that again and again I've seen people here, on the Discord, and on reddit  just flat out fail to understand how the percentage boosts are applied, so, no, it's not clear enough.  Not for everyone; and, by my guess, not even for nearly everyone.

84

Suggestions / Wording change on Kevlar items

« on: July 17, 2020, 05:23:28 pm »

I've seen a lot of people misunderstand how Kevlar works.  A simple wording change on Kevlar items might be in order to help people understand and avoid frustration.  The same change might be appropriate for tac vests/riot gear/padded leather armor, if it were made, to keep things consistent and avoid confusion.

Currently, the wording is "Mechanical damage threshold increased by X against bullets and shotgun shells" and I must have seen at least two dozen people over the years complain about having 300% or 400% or 500% bullet resist but still taking so much damage.

Maybe it would be clearer if it said "Mechanical damage threshold for this item (or 'this item only') increased by X against bullets and shotgun shells".  Or, still simpler for the user but more complex for the coder, have the protection line on the item show as Mechanical: 20%/8 (20%/24 against bullets and shotgun shells, 40%/16 against melee), or whatever the item in question would offer.

85

Development Log / Re: Dev Log #66: Shiny Particles

« on: July 16, 2020, 09:02:04 pm »

If it's going to be several more months I can obviously safely finish a run before the update drops.

In the announcement mentioning the changes, Styg said the patch would be in beta for a good while to allow for bug checking, feedback, and any necessary balancing.  As long as you opt out of the beta channel, you should have several months even after the patch is first released, assuming the plan remains the same.

86

Builds / Re: Looking to make a Spear build need help/tips

« on: July 16, 2020, 08:34:14 pm »

Taking psy emp and losing max HP does not feel very useful if the next roadblock after dealing with the first set of rat hounds in the generators is the beetles...

I didn't really notice this little tidbit.  If you're going directly from Retake the Outposts to fighting the beetles, then you're rushing content and probably under-levelled, which will also make the game harder.

Right after Retake the Outposts, you've gained a level and are getting better at dealing with rathounds.  That makes it a great time to go out the Level 1 gate of SGS and go kill rathounds in the three screens where they're easy.  You've got the ones right outside where Bisson and gang are trying to clear the cave-in; you've got a group in the map immediately north there, which has - hooray, hooray! - an unlocked gate that you can go hide behind and zap the rathounds at your leisure with your psi powers which reach through gates (Temporal Distortion or Neural Overload); and you've got the group of rathounds outside the GMS Omega compound. 

After killing all those rathounds and exploring the maps you've just opened up, you probably gained another level.  Now you can go and do the easiest parts of the Underpassages.  Go back to the screen right outside SGS and go down those stairs.  There are four Lurkers in that map; two by themselves, two standing together.  Take out the individuals first - because they're easier - and then save the game and try the pair.  If you can't do it, no problem, come back later for them.  But for now, you should go one screen east.  There are several Lurkers in this map - one with a nice aluminized tac vest you might want; one with the first AR you're likely to find; one stealthy one near the gate behind which are locked some rathounds and some loot.  At the very least, kill those three Lurkers and those rathounds, and get all that assorted loot.

You're still not ready to go fight the beetles!  Now you can go talk to Jack Quicksilver and take his delivery quest.  Buy one frag grenade to help with the upcoming fight, then go do the delivery which will be extra easy because you'll have cleared the map of rathounds so you won't have to worry about them adding in to the fight.

Now?  Now, if you want, you can go start Hopper Round-Up.  Assuming you farm a couple cave hoppers for the oddity (it's worth 150xp even on Classic) and turn in the quest to Mordre (100xp, IIRC), you may even be getting close to another level, making those beetles even easier.

Don't rush.  If the game is kicking your teeth in, that's how it's telling you to go explore, level up, gear up, and learn how to optimize your character.

87

Builds / Re: Looking to make a Spear build need help/tips

« on: July 16, 2020, 05:27:39 pm »

Also what do you recommend I do to farm out money to get the things I need? Because I always get stumped on where to get enough money for these materials/blueprints or where to grind EXP for the points to craft these things.

On Normal, you can get infinity money through crafting if you take your time.  Buy components, craft them on the spot, sell the completed gear back to the merchant for profit.  Early game (Pre-Depot) your best bets are Fixer, Lucas, and Ezra.  You can also make a tidy profit running through the rathounds that respawn, grabbing their hides and turning them into advanced repair kits, and making adrenaline shots from the occasional adrenal gland you get.

This'll require investment in crafting skills, obviously, but also mercantile so your profit margins increase.  Unless you're quite lucky you'll be buying most of your blueprints and that takes a chunk of change upfront.  If you're not sure what to make to maximize your profits, then check out this wiki page: https://www.underrail.com/wiki/index.php?title=Blueprints#Value_multipliers

88

Builds / Re: Looking to make a Spear build need help/tips

« on: July 16, 2020, 03:55:57 am »

That stat profile is causing me anxiety.  Sure, on Normal you can do that, but you can optimize your character a lot more if you drop your Con and Per to 3 (there's never a good reason to have a stat at 4 unless after building your level 1 character you had one stat point left over) and also your Will.  Then you've got four more points to play with so you can top off your Strength for better stabbyness.  Maybe add a point or two to Int since you've got 4 skills already that feed from it, and presumably you'll add one more at least.

Dodge and Evasion are reduced by your armor penalty percentage, so for a heavy weapon no-stealth build, I'm not sure I'd bother with either one very much.  Maybe get bare minimums to qualify for feats, but probably not much beyond that.

Temporal Manipulation is really very helpful even for a 3 Will, minimum-investment character.  If it fits your character concept, you might want to get at least enough TM to get the psi haste and Psychotemporal Acceleration feat.  Even at 0 skill, Temporal Distortion is very helpful for melee builds in the early game, also; and everyone benefits from LTI.

89

Bugs / Re: Super soldier drug and conditioning

« on: July 15, 2020, 02:33:12 am »

That sounds rather Zen though, doesn't it?

If you take Super Soldier and then do nothing, did it increase your stats?

90

Bugs / Re: Crawler bug

« on: July 06, 2020, 05:37:03 pm »

There are different types of Crawlers.  Any chance you found a Death Stalker?  They're extremely stealthy, and it's not a bug.

edit: I mean, it is a bug.  The crawler, that is.  It's a bug.  But it's not a bug that the bug bugs you.