Messages

1

Builds / Re: Newb Sniper/Ar build

« on: March 14, 2025, 08:54:35 am »

Yeah but it feels like a luxury talent, I'm considering taking it for the veteran levels.

2

Builds / Re: Newb Sniper/Ar build

« on: March 13, 2025, 11:39:24 pm »

I know critical power is a pretty strong (and popular) talent, but I feel it as the weakest choice here.

Its the strongest choice there, snipers rely on getting 1 shots to refresh shooting spree. Usually you have 100% crit chance from ambush and you always use aa scope on snipers giving you lots of crit bonus dmg.

Having more crit dmg ontop means you will be 1 shoting always and getting your refreshes.

Indeed, I eventually took critical power. My build doesn't revolve around crits though and has a rather low critical chance. Still a chunkier amied shot felt ultimately more usefult then the other options.

I'm not going to argue over what's has been proven to be optimal already.

SMG's are DEX based, Snipers are governed by PER. Aiming to use them together will make both worse than speccing on one. This is for people who cannot make a decision and get the worst of both worlds. Probably play on a gaming laptop too.

If you're going with the sniper rifle, you aim to refresh that Aim Shot and Shooting Spree by using your rifle as much as possible. Every time you park it in favor of another gun, you weaken it's potential. Same goes for taking different feats instead of ones that buffs your chosen gun. It's a waste.

Not sure if you're replying to me or Eidein. Personally, I don't like smg that much, it feels just weaker than AR. Or... I don't know, let's say I don't see its plus.
The fact needs dex to shine also puts me off.

AR on the other hand is a strong and versatile weapon, easily made into a side weapon, in my opinion. And it just feels more homogeneous to the sniper rifle.
Also I like the idea to just open fight sniping, then change to Ar, then reposition and snipe again. 4-5 five kills first round, 3-4 second - snipe, aim, burts, burst, burst, lti, aim, burst, burst, then stasis or whatever depending on the situation. If needed when I come out of stasis, killing spree is ready to go again.

For me that works, and I'm already playing on dominating, so...

SMG / Sniper is great SMG can do with 8 dex only which fits perfectly into a sniper build. I beat dom without dying with psiless trapless SMG/Sniper. Its a perfect build.

https://underrail.info/build/?HAUICAUOAwPClgBkAChnwpbCgig3AMKCwowtEAAAAAAAAABlATl_TjUCfjdLM0FJwoXCg8K1eGzipKII4q-8BOKvvQHfvg

SMG/Sniper build btw. Both weapons complement each other perfectly and each fulfil a specific niche unlike assault rifle with can do everything at any range without the help of sniper.

You have way to much experience mate, not very reletable. 

I mean it in a good way. Thanks for your replies, by the way, always informative.

Though from my prospective, I must say I'm not sure I will play dominating again. Not because of it's difficulty, rather for how tedious is the start. Dominating economy is really fucked up, and even if I'm kind of obnoxious with picking and selling stuff, I really don't think I need to be enabled to do it even more. That's probably unhealthy, I guess?

Pity, because I liked the chunkier Bosses and special encounters.

That said, I really can't think of playing a dominating run with handicaps and no deaths. 

One day, maybe 

3

Builds / Re: Newb Sniper/Ar build

« on: March 05, 2025, 07:18:40 pm »

I reiterated my initial idea and brought this build, after some minor tweaks and a little more experience, into dominating.

The gist of it is still the same: sniper rifle + assault rifle + temporal manipulation.

Talents as follow (order is casual):

-aimed shot
-sprint
-snipe
-opportunist
-premeditation
-tranquillity
-sure step
-granadier
-shooting spree
-commando
-Psycho-temporal Acceleration
-blindsiding
-concentrated fire

Stats are like this:

• str6
• dex6
• agi6
• per15
• con3
• will3
• int6

I know it's not perfect, I realized too late a glaring mistake with dexterity, but right now its working very well.
I'm lv 23, approaching 24. So I'm about to pick my last talent and last stat point.

Given my points allocantion, I could add that one last point to either dex, agi, int, or even strength, in case I'd want to pick a specific talents.

I'v narrowed down my options to:

• nimble
• paranoia
• full auto(needs +1 to str)
• critical power
• skinner(needs +1 to int)

I know critical power is a pretty strong (and popular) talent, but I feel it as the weakest choice here.

At the moment I'm leaning towards nimble, with paranoia and full-auto both in second place.

Thoughts anyone?

4

General / Re: A few Psi related questions

« on: January 11, 2025, 08:34:52 am »

My limited experience with that wasn't very smooth. I started a tranquillity build and in the first 10 levels

t wasn't terrible, and surely my build wasn't optimized yet (I aborted the game because I inadvertently messed up the Oculus questline), as I said it just wasn't great considering my innervation was at 100%, I had my 12% mufflers, meditation & thermodynamicity (albeit no fast metabolism).

If it wasn't clear, I was level 10, an those were my first mufflers.

5

General / Re: A few Psi related questions

« on: January 07, 2025, 03:35:12 pm »

Like I said before a lot of spells are pretty situational so its not something you would have innervated the entire time. 35 points isn't a particularly crazy investment I do it because I generally play on ironman so having strong stuff early is important.

I totally get that, it's just not my cup of tea, I guess.

The psi points issue might be because you are innervating more than 2-3 schools or have bad quality mufflers. Remember also to have a filter for whatever damage spell you are primarily using on your headband. More damage = less casts, so it will save you a lot of psi in the long run combined with mufflers. With TM you can also spam boosters like your life depends on it (it does) with limited temporal increment.

I was running a two school tranquillity build, MT & TK on Hard.
It wasn't terrible, and surely my build wasn't optimized yet (I aborted the game because I inadvertently messed up the Oculus questline), as I said it just wasn't great considering my innervation was at 100%, I had my 12% mufflers, meditation & thermodynamicity (albeit no fast metabolism).
Thinking about it, maybe the real problem was on the other end of the stick and I was just doing too little damaged per spell.

Cryostasis is good because you can do damage, cryostasis, and leave combat. Making fights with lone enemies like Vilmer or the camera guy in the protectorate embassy trivial. It remains useful for bosses later, on a full-psi build you wont really be shattering enemies with cryo-induction unless you have a good enough TK punch.

I can see how that could be useful, especially with high health enemies and especially if you need to keep it quiet.

6

General / Re: A few Psi related questions

« on: January 07, 2025, 09:23:00 am »

Thanks for your reply.

Psi points really aren't such a big deal for psi builds,

My limited experience with that wasn't very smooth. I started a tranquillity build and in the first 10 levels, despite mufflers and flexibility talent, I did run low on psi points quite a few times.
It was okay-ish, just not great.

MT is nice with a minimum of 35 early, you get to spam cryokinesis for the first 6 levels which trivialises all early encounters (beetles and gms) and then you get cryostasis which is a un-resistible incap that is used through the entire game.

I would hate to pick 35 points just for the early game, I'll consider them wasted later on, even if they were needed for that build to survive the first levels.
Also I didn't really get much use of cryostasis, maybe because I wasn't playing on dominating.
I find it expensive, unreliable (bots and enemis resist to cold) and not really worth the slot, even with cryogenic induction for shattering it.

I did read your guide already. 

7

General / Re: My thoughts on the new combat system

« on: January 04, 2025, 02:09:13 pm »

Welp, knowing there won't be the same AP turn based combat system is quite a bummer.

I don't doubt the new system will work out fine, one way or another, like may other games do in fact, but I am disappointed at the prospective of losing what made this game stand out from those others. 

8

General / A few Psi related questions

« on: January 04, 2025, 01:11:08 pm »

Hi, y'all.

I'm messing around with a possible Psi build. I know is common to copy other's build as a reference but I don't do that, I prefer to understand how things are supposed to work.

So a couple of questions came up:

- Several talents use a wording that seems to exclude psi form their benefits (Opportunist, Ambush, Blindsiding), is that right? I mean, are these talents useless to a psi user? Generally speaking, does psi damage have to be specifically included by the wording of an effect to be taken into account?

- Since playing psi essentially means having a kind of a second AP bar to manage in addition to the standard one, is there any point in taking the usual 70 points in Temporal Manipulation?
As I see it, adding a third school to the mix (I'm assuming a 2 schools build here, MT&PK ) would increase the general cost of spells and also would probably eat up your premeditation with Contraction (on non Psi focused build Contraction is just free AP ), both things increasing your psi expenses and thus ultimately countering the whole point of picking 70 TM, i.e. to be able to cast more spells per turn.

-As consequence of of the previous question, is there any point in off-speccing 70 points in either Psychokinesis or Thought Control? (thinking always of two schools builds here, either PK&MT/TM or TC&MT/TM). I'm leaving out MT as I don't see a point in half-assing that one.
I can see 70 TC being useful for Locus control and some additional crowd control.
70 PK doesn't seem much worth though.

Thoughts, anyone?

9

General / Re: Junkyard Gang Showdown question

« on: November 28, 2024, 12:33:16 pm »

So after a few tries I managed to get everyone dead 

I have noticed that there is a huge difference if your character is in combat or not.

When you're in combat the Protectorate Soldiers and the Scrappers fight in turn based too, and the match is a little more fair.

If you're not in combat though, the Cans completely overpower the Scrappers with what I guess are real time fight mechanics.

Also I can confirm that sometimes the Protectorate stop reacting after a certain point.

It is as once they exit combat after killing the first wave (Elias, a few dogs and a couple of thugs), they refuse to fight the remaining  forces coming from the other side (Gort + stragglers of the other side of the assault.)

My last 2 Cans died this way in fact, standing still while Gort and another thug attacked them.

In my experience Silas gets killed 95% of the times, 100% if you're not with him.

Are the odds so unfavorable to the scrappers that they can't kill even one measly Protectorate?

More often than not they should kill at least one soldier. With SGS they somehow managed to kill two.

Although, and that is already explained above, game difficulty matters. Soldiers outmatch gangsters. If you start on easy/normal there's 90% chance of you getting at least one ally corpse, be that of SGS or Protectorate. Sometimes even Silas can get an unlucky crit and whole Eel party may appear dead.

Me personally always attacked with Eels. That always (again, depending on difficulty) resulted in one heavy trooper body. Probably them dogs and sniper at the entrance did it, I dunno.

Never managed to get SGS on board. I really never leveled persuasion, which is needed as far as I know.

On the other hand, I don't recall ever finding a dead trooper when I attacked with the Eels.

10

General / Re: Junkyard Gang Showdown question

« on: November 26, 2024, 12:34:18 pm »

Found 2 major differences:

Old game: I was lv 11, game difficulty was normal

New game : I'm lv 8, game difficulty hard

I can try to delay the showdown and see if I can level up. No idea if that has an impact though.

11

General / Re: Junkyard Gang Showdown question

« on: November 26, 2024, 12:23:22 pm »

Level is of no consequence, but difficulty might have an effect on the outcome. It's likely that Protectorate schmucks benefit more from higher difficulty settings due to their base stats, equipment, etc., which makes them outscale some shitty gangsters despite increased difficulty values being the same for them and gansters alike.

Yeah, I thought of that too. I'll try to see if I have the old savegame available because I can't remember for sure if the old game was on Hard difficulty too or not.

Could also just be plain variance. Perhaps you should conduct the showdown experiment a couple hundred times more for more comprehensive data

I'll definitely try a few things.

12

General / Junkyard Gang Showdown question

« on: November 26, 2024, 09:46:34 am »

Hi, y'all.

I was meaning to ask if anybody knows if there is some scaling involved in the junkyard showdown between Black Eels and Scrapper.

While I was doing an old playthrough I came upon a discussion that explained how to exploit the showdown in order to loot a few Protectorate corpses:

• pick to fight from old junkyard
• start fight an hide
• wait (reload) untill protectorate have it bad

Apparently sometimes the 4 protectorate soldiers should freeze after entering the Scrappers' hideout. I have never seen this happen though.

But, in that old playthrough, I managed to get serveral times where one, two or even three Cans where lying dead afterwards. (I was aiming for four, doh!)

Now that I'm doing a new melee playthrough, I gave a shot at it and this time the Protectorate soldier are just wasting everyone without losing more than 10% of shields (did a few reloads).
It doesn't really look like the Scrappers have the slightest fighting chance. I think they're non even drawing their weapons

So, what gives? Are the odds so unfavorable to the scrappers that they can't kill even one measly Protectorate?

That would kind of make sense, storywise, but if so, how did they manage to kill 3 Cans it in my old game?

My question is: has it something to do with my level\the game difficulty\something else I did?

13

Builds / Re: Versattility build, common Questions

« on: November 20, 2024, 09:25:36 pm »

Hey, I'm kinda new too, but I guess It couln't hurt to point out a couple of possible mistakes you seem to be about to do.

First off, choose one kind of damage just one. You want swords? Go melee. You want shotguns? Go guns. Not both.

In that regard, Versatility is kind of a trap. There are builds that use it, yes, but very specific builds. Don't expect to damage with both shotguns and knives(swords).
One of the two will be better, and progressively you will ditch the worst one when faced with tougher encounters.

You can take a bit of throwing though, 30 points to get the granadier (and 6 dex) for the granadier talent. Really cuts the cd on granades.

Same story with stats. When you create your character ( or in the builder) drop to 3 all the stats and then raise only the ones you really need.

If you're doing a knife build, I guess dex is your main stats.
You really should leave willpower to 3 on the other hand.

Intellect helps you with crafting, mostly. Or psi. 6 for premeditation, really useful. 7 for crafting talents.

Can't tell you much about shotguns, really.

I can tell you you should chose if you want to create a tanky character, or a glass cannon. Middle ground doesn't work much.
Either you move out of harm's way or you prepare to take it.

Stealth is your friend. It really shines in this game, it gives you control to engage in fights only when you can win. It lets you overlook initiative. Let's you gap close if you're melee.

You can do without, of course. But I wouldn't advise it for a first run.

Hope this helps untill someone more experience comes by.

14

Builds / Re: Newb Sniper/Ar build

« on: November 19, 2024, 08:50:54 am »

Well, for this playthrough I lost my chance when I took concentrated fire instead of spec ops.

Next time, I guess 

Or the next after that, because next run is going to be either psi or pistol 

15

Builds / Re: Newb Sniper/Ar build

« on: November 18, 2024, 01:15:39 pm »

AR kills everything and anything, my AR build 1 burst 8k hp off the final boss.

Yeah, I'm sure of it. My point was exactly that it may feel a little boring to just burst things down after a while.

But that's just my opinion or a matter of personal preference if you will.

After all this is my first full fledged playthrough, I think it's understandable I wanna try and mix things a little.