Overview
With the release of the newest update, we have been graced with a new item to build around; the Master Demolitionist Belt.
While most may be dissuaded due to its penalties to movement speed, agility, and most importantly grenade ap cost, I saw its potential for massive area burst damage, and made a build around it. This guide is divided into two parts, with the first part being focused on obtaining the belt and the second part going over what the build can do.
Important DisclaimerThe Master Demolitionist Belt is not available every playthrough, due to it spawning in a randomly generated Core City Sewer fragment. Additionally, it drops from Master Demolitionist, who only spawns on Dominating. You may have to do multiple playthroughs to Core City to find the belt. With this in mind, Classic XP is the way to go, since it allows for quick leveling so you can save time early game if the fragment doesn’t spawn, and this build is built around that XP system. The fragment in question is a ladder next to the entrance to the Praetorian Security quest area, but it may be able to spawn elsewhere in the sewers.
Part 1: The Quest For The BeltLevel 14 build
https://underrail.info/build/?DgQNCgMDAwcAUABQAFBQMAAAAAwAUAUoAAAANwAAUCskLzkNIAZHBxLfvwThis build is your basic Dex focused time monk, and is mainly used to breeze through the early game and take on the Three Masters. Recommended factions are JJK and Procterate, but they aren’t required for the build. You can reach level 8-9 pre Depot A by following the gang warfare quest line, and can reach 14 quickly by doing the Oculus quests, Foundry quests, and JJK quests, which can all be completed fairly easily. You can also farm XP from the Coil Spiders in Zamans Lair and the caves below the Coretech warehouse, which give 800 and 1100 xp from the regular and greater spiders respectively. Speaking of Coil Spiders, get ready to fight through a gauntlet of them as you try to obtain the Power Fist, an essential item for beating the Masters. You can fight the Masters earlier than level 14 if you want to, but level 14 allows you to have enough stealth to consistently avoid being instantly detected by the Greater Coil Spiders that guard the power fist.
The Three MastersThe Three Masters are one of the most difficult encounters in Underrail, rivaling the quad nagas in difficulty. Each Master has 1.7k-2.3k hp and a Blast Suit to boot, making them some of the tankiest enemies around. Blaster has enough detection to instantly spot you with 150 effective stealth, and sports a high quality plasma pistol that hits for over 1k damage on its aimed shots. Time Master’s distortions are unavoidable damage that bypasses resistances, and he can dodge attacks even in the proximity suit with his Temporal Manipulation abilities. Demolitionist can intimidate you to neuter your damage output, and his super slams from his 2.3k health pool will turn any character to dust. The entire area is filled with napalm barrels which the Masters can easily wade through while you burn to death, and each Master carries MK 5 frag and HE grenades to detonate the barrels. To defeat this menace, you’re going to need to cheese them.
Recommend GearPower Fist (obtained from Hecate Research Outpost north of Foundry)
Black Balaclava (Constantine sells good quality)
Leather armor under 15% penalty, preferably with black cloth and soft foam padding
Ninja Tabis (Constantine sells good quality)
10+ adrenaline shots
10+ TNT charges
20+Beartraps
StrategyFirst, set up a bear trap behind the closed door to the west in the starting room, and 2 bear traps behind the closed door to the east. Once you are ready to begin, detonate a TNT charge west of the entrance ladder and position yourself out of stealth and out of sight next to the boxes near the east door. When the charge detonates, the Masters will come and investigate, approaching the west entrance first. Since the trap is hidden behind the door, the masters don’t have time to detect them, and Blaster will walk into the trap at the west entrance. It is recommended to slow down game speed here, as by manually entering combat as soon as the trap springs you can trap the master for 3 rounds instead of 2. After the trap is sprung, the other Masters will slowly make their way to the other door on the east side to reach you, allowing you to beat up the trapped Master with the power fist. Make sure to leave enough mp to break line of sight, to avoid being attacked or affected by the Masters abilities. When the bear trap wears off, hit the Master until the multi-turn incapacitate effect from the Power Fist is applied, and then enter stealth and sneak to the other side of the room. The Masters will walk to the detonation location and then return to their original spots, allowing you to repeat the cycle until they are defeated. It usually takes about 3 cycles to kill a Master, so you may be at this for a while. Do not rely on stun effects to cheese them, as all of the Masters have the Thick Skull feat. In addition to the Master Demo belt, each Master drops 3 MK 5 frag and HE grenades regardless of player level, allowing early access to a large supply of powerful explosives. Now that we have the belt, the real build can begin.
Part 2: Cooking With GasFinal Build
https://underrail.info/build/?HgQQCgMDAwcAwqAAwqAowqB4WgAAAFdXWgZiAAAARgAAcCskLzkNIAZHBxJIPkFRT8KzE8KH378Specialization is 1 Expose Weakness duration, 1 Blitz AP, 10 Three Pointer, and 3 Fatal Throw AP.
General InformationThe strategy of this build is to get up in the enemies face, blow your load, and then finish off the remaining enemies with a flurry of blows. The big damage comes mainly from the belt detonation, with the base damage values listed below:
2160-5760 damage with Plasma MK3
1122-7584 damage with Frag MK5
1140-3780 damage with HE MK5
All detonations are assuming 6 grenades, with either minimum damage or max damage with all critical hits. As I have discovered from testing, frag grenade shrapnel is only reduced by evasion, and not by explosion resistance. MK5 frag detonations will kill you whether or not you're wearing a Blast Suit, and are thus not recommended to be used with the belt. You should normally be carrying 5 grenades for detonation, and use your 6th utility slot for throwing knives/throwing nets to activate Fatal Throw or immobilize enemies. Three Pointer with maximum specialization gives you an 85% crit chance at max level, so you will frequently be dealing 2k+damage per detonation before resistances. Explosion damage is greatly reduced by evasion, so use Dirty Kick or a net to stun or immobilize enemies and lower their evasion to zero. Expose Weakness also lowers resistances and thresholds, so you can combine both to obliterate bosses in a single blast. This build also comes with massive AP, and under ideal circumstances you can obtain 137 AP to work with, which should be more than enough to handle any encounter. AP breakdown:
(27-7)fatalthrow+22blitz+25vit powder+20contraction+50base=137 ap=28 4ap punches, 10ap belt detonation and 15ap stasis, 115 ap next turn with fatal throw kill.
Gear OverviewDealing 5k+ explosive damage centered on yourself sounds great on paper, but in practice will usually result in complete disintegration without the proper equipment. To avoid turning into a splatter on the sidewalk, this build uses high evasion and blast cloth to reduce explosive damage. Evasion lowers explosive damage by evasion/400 and caps at 85% reduction, so while wearing Cave Hopper Leather armor with a Blast Overcoat and 20% penalty you will evade 57% of explosive damage. Additionally, Bakst Cloth reduces damage taken from explosions, so we will be using a Blast Overcoat and Blast Balaclava to reduce explosive damage. Q103 Blast Cloth provides 66% explosive damage reduction in leather armor and 34% reduction on balaclavas and tabi boots, so you don’t need super high quality Blast Cloth to make the build functional. From testing it appears that the clothier feat doesn’t affect Blast Cloth damage reduction, since with the feat the reduction on leather armor should be 75% with the Q103 cloth according to the wiki. The wiki also states that damage reduction maxed out at 75% for leather armor at Q120, but I was unable to verify this during testing due to not being able to find high quality Blast Cloth. I am also unsure if there is a cap on Blast Cloth Damage reduction, since I threw a MK 3 plasma grenade at the feet of a character with 0 evasion and 94% blast resistance and it reduced damage by 90%. For the purposes of damage reduction, evasion is applied first, and then armor bonuses reduce the remaining damage. You will take a small amount of damage from each blast, but it likely won’t send you under 85% health. Infused Greater Siphoner Leather is the best armor generally due to the evasion boost, low armor penalty, and resistances to heat and energy damage, but Infused Cave Hopper Leather armor is good if you want to focus more on mobility. Blast cloth adds a 15% penalty to armor, which prevents you from obtaining the Nimble feat boost to evasion, but will keep you under the lightning punches threshold while wearing most leather armors. It should go without saying that you should turn off your shield during detonations, since the blast will tear it apart regardless of frequency.
Recommended GearWeapons:
Leather gloves with spikes(blades if using taste for blood) and pneumatic hammer(natives have q160+ snake leather for gloves)
Knife Thrower Gloves(7ap knives for fatal throw at 18dex)
Electroshock gloves(build struggles against robots high mechanical dt)
Armor:
Blast Balaclava
Infused Greater Siphoner Leather Armor with Blast Overcoat and Soft Foam Padding
Master Demolitionist Belt
Any Tabi Boots(I prefer Ninja Tabis or Infused Sea Wyrm Tabis)
Energy Shield Emitter(Low/Low for melee, High/High for snipers)
Optional FeatsClothier-Taste For Blood/Opportunist: Clothier may not work with blast cloth, so Taste For Blood provides a damage boost instead. I don’t like the feat that much since it’s useless against robots, but it does rack up quickly with the amount of attacks you can dish out. You can also use vile weaponry with it to boost damage against a single target, but I find that most of the time targets die before getting more than a single stack of bleed. This build stuns, incapacitates, and immobilizes fairly often, so Opportunist is a nice 25% damage boost.
Expertise, Uncanny Dodge-Recklessness, Critical Power: This is for if you want to focus more on crits and free up 40 skill points from dodge, but focusing on crits isn’t really worth it without Focus stims and Survival Instincts, especially since throwing knives and grenades aren’t affected by critical power or most crit chance boosting effects.
Sprint-Pack Rathound: Plasma Grenades weigh .2 each and standard grenades weigh .3 each, so you may have difficulty managing weight with this build. This sacrifices some mobility for convenience, and can help carry around the bear traps and TNT needed to kill the masters early game.
ConclusionThis is a fun variant of the standard time monk if you like to live dangerously. The biggest challenge you will face with this build is finding good quality blast cloth, as while testing I could only find max q103 from the institute of Tchort after checking every merchant in the game. Despite its drawbacks, the Master Demolitionist Belt is a viable weapon that can give throwing builds some much needed burst damage.
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