The Endgame Sucks Too

[DunderFail]

On their own, the Deep Caverns are cool. A bunch of abandoned laboratories with shady shit going on and some interesting lore dumps. That's where the positives end.

Not only do you have to deal with re-spawning enemies, not only do you have a constant debuff, not only will the Faceless not help you if you played the game well, not only do you have to do a shitty scavenger hunt, not only do you have to constantly backtrack to manage the power, not only do you have to do some random chemistry shit (and another scavenger hunt) but then to cap everything off you have to fight a truly awful final boss.

I've never been a fan of 'big dumb object' bosses, and this one is the biggest and the dumbest. Regenerating AND re spawning tentacles that are tanky as shit? PLUS random mobs attacking you all throughout?

I can't do it. Maybe if this is what I faced right off the elevator I could get through it, but after spending six hours trudging through the worst gaming experience I have ever had I just can't. Was Styg high, drunk, or filled with malice towards all Mankind when he designed this part? Banging my head against a wall would replicate the experience, it might even surpass it.

It's such a shame the game has to end this way. It was really good! But like many good games, it shits the bed in the end.

[DunderFail]

Okay, so I was a bit mean here. It was 5 in the morning and I was playing all night trying to get through the DCs. I don't know how anyone did this shit without a guide. Then I bounced HARD against the boss. I think I'm just going to use a cheat engine to finish since the last thing I want to do is find the remaining mutagens to get rid of his tentacles. 

That whole puzzle should have been solved by a chemistry check OR a bonus dungeon where you just get Exitus-1 at the end. I don't understand why Styg expects the player, who is probably already exasperated just trying to get through the door, to then try to do a complicated puzzle that requires a bunch of pieces scattered around the map you had no previous knowledge of.

I think the entirety of DC would have been made more tolerable if instead of a scavenger hunt you explored and raided sites to make the whole experience easier. For instance, after getting Leo his knife back, he could send you to fetch other items of his with the reward being a greater and greater increase to your resistance to the Eye until its nullified completely. 

You should also be able to get back in the good-graces of the Faceless by doing a quest for them. Seriously, the conditions to befriend them are so unfair to new players; I recognized that deciding to help the Faceless in Core City and peacefully resolve the situation in Foundry would probably effect the game somehow but would never have guessed the amount of Faceless you killed factors into the equation as well. For fucks sake, the final level before DC is a wave defense AGAINST the Faceless! How are you expected to not to kill a bunch of them?

Raiding labs to get pieces of knowledge to use against the boss would also have been a preferable alternative to all the gate stuff. My first stop after meeting Six was actually to go west to the Mushroom Forest cause he hinted that there was something there that would keep the boss creatures away. An hour of frustration later, and I have nothing to show for it but an XP item while I'm max level. I didn't even get the grenade substance since it overlapped with the remains of the root (why couldn't this have just been one container?)

Being able to repair the elevators to the surface would also have been nice. I'd be much happier finding parts for those than the stupid gate.

I'm sure all my grievances are old hat by now, a scour of the internet shows a consensuses that the Deep Caverns cause a lot of people to quit. But they are still no less valid. I hope the expansion learnt lessons from this.

[Riggs]

I don't blame you for being upset, and you're certainly not alone. I've sunk a LOT of time into Underrail and Expedition but I've never bothered with any of the content past the elevator. Why? Because it's not worth the trouble to me. The payoff isn't enough to put in the effort required to deal with all of the bullshit involved in making it through that content. I'd rather just spend the time rerolling a new char instead. It should be said that I play on DOMINATING, and I don't have a problem with "difficult" content. In fact I gravitate towards games in general with punishing difficulty levels and unforgiving mechanics - I cut my babyteeth way back in the day on games like Angband and Moria and still love them to this day. The issue isn't that DC and the final boss of that area is "too hard". It's that the entire process of getting through the content is simply tedious and uninteresting to me. Aside from post elevator content, Underrail is a game I adore so I choose to ignore the elevator and what lies beyond it entirely.

[Ikafati]

I agree with DC being "tedious" but not with it being hard. The only really aggravating area for me was the Labyrinth - happened to be really easy for my build, but still annoying. I guess I made the correct choices throughout the game, since Faceless were friendly with me. I guess I'm lucky for thinking for a minute and managing to befriend the Tchortists and getting access to their shop. I guess I made the right choice to play on Oddity XP and didn't have trouble finding all mutagen samples because I explored everything. I guess I just had a good build, since I killed Tchort in 2 turns. But that's what I like about the game - it doesn't hold your hand, it's difficult, but gives you all the tools to deal with all the obstacles. I think Underrail is just tedious in general and DC needs preparation just as any harder area in the game

[Vokial]

I agree with DC being "tedious" but not with it being hard. The only really aggravating area for me was the Labyrinth - happened to be really easy for my build, but still annoying. I guess I made the correct choices throughout the game, since Faceless were friendly with me. I guess I'm lucky for thinking for a minute and managing to befriend the Tchortists and getting access to their shop. I guess I made the right choice to play on Oddity XP and didn't have trouble finding all mutagen samples because I explored everything. I guess I just had a good build, since I killed Tchort in 2 turns. But that's what I like about the game - it doesn't hold your hand, it's difficult, but gives you all the tools to deal with all the obstacles. I think Underrail is just tedious in general and DC needs preparation just as any harder area in the game

I like this post. Never got to DC yet because of my mind changing and rerolling my character so we'll yet to see how it goes, but the above is a good description of the games I like. The ones that actually trusts the player to have some god-given wits and treats him accordingly, not assumes it to be a dummy. And propose a challenge with that in mind. When the game is not only made of just a single part, the entertainment it offers through visuals, sound, story and gameplay, but a combination with the second part - the one that the player have to put in, realizing that his abilities are actually required to reach the conclusion. Games where the person of the player actually matters are much more satisfying.