Noob questions: Building an "Inventor"/"Engineer"

[Sillyweasel]

Hello people! I'm quite new to this game/forum (although I've had my good share of turn based RPGs) and I'd like to ask a few questions regarding the building and the gameplay of an "inventor". To make myself clear, I've been meaning to play the kind of character which focuses on crafting skills and who gets ahead by having a steady supply of consumables and being able to turn almost all the junk it finds into something useful.
So now my questions are:
-Would such a build be viable?
-On a scale from 1 to 10  how hard would playing such a build be? (1 being left click to win and 10 being extremely tedious and requiring a good bit o luck just to get through)
-How would you build such a character?
-what are some of the most important materials I should be gathering?

[TheAverageGortsby]

I've played two of those to compare side by side.  Both were 16 INT builds (because obviously I wasn't trying to make things easy for myself) and both played fine on DOMINATING.  The first one was a metal armor stealth sledgehammer build (with Body Weight Training and Nimble coupled with specialized Armor Sloping so I could stealth while wearing Super Steel armor) and the other was a 3 Will 4x70 "full psi" build.  So, to answer your questions:
1&2) Perfectly viable, though what you start with for combat options will make or break your build.  I'd roll it as either a high Will, high Int psi character (1), a low Will psi character (3) or a moderate Perception tin can AR (4 early, 2 later) or  High Technicalities Versatility energy pistol user (6 early on, 3 later).
3) Make sure you get Disassemble, and pick feats to support whatever your main combat technique will be, as much as your stats allow.  I'd also pick up Salesman if you've got a free feat slot, and depending on how silly you want to be, maybe max out Mercantile
4) depends on your difficulty level. On Hard and lower, all you really need to do is make a few merchant runs with high Mercantile to unlock top-tier inventories, buying whatever you want and crafting on the spot to resell your lower quality merchant fodder.  While you're doing that, you'll eventually find that 160, 170 quality stuff and tuck it away to make your end-game stuff.  On DOMINATING you have to be a tiny bit more careful because you don't have infinite money, so you want to only spend what you have to.  You want highest possible quality armor, weapon, energy shield, and cloaking device. Anything else will be fine with whatever you've got laying around.

Of course, you could just play one of the full psi builds I recommended in my guide.  They're 10 Int, by my recommendation, and can easily get enough crafting skill points to make everything in the entire game.  And since you're psi, it sort of sticks to the inventor theme since even when you have to fight, you kill things with your mind =)

[Vokial]

The way I imagine this guy is either a laser / chemical pistol wielder with focus on all kinds of grenades and traps from the improvised to the exotic and scientific. With all the necessary feats involved on using such weaponry. OR a crossbower with a good selection of different bolts, one for each situation. A  build where the enjoyment comes from carrying around a lot of throwable and deployable contraptions and projectiles - using them a lot and constantly crafting them from everything we find, regardless if it's gasoline, mushrooms or poison glands.
Also being a heavy user of self-mixed drugs to boost performance, always high on something with different effects.
Naturally all self crafted gear and mostly of the gimmicky kind: regeneration vest, some heavily pimped-up crossbow or energy pistol with night vision googles. Low and High frequency shield emitters and cloaking. Power Management feat is a must an of course siding with Coretech.
Not using psi at all. This guy is a mad doctor unbound by his vows, driven by curiousity, a talented McGyver and a man of science. Fascinated by psionics, but confident that knowledge is the true merit of a man.



Still, if your main goal is to live out this roleplay, then ARCANUM is the best game for you, there you can invent all kind of guns, pyrotechnics, steam engine powered spider robots and various tonics. Electricity deflecting top-hats and who knows what. It's a great game and while you can't go wrong with UnderRail, I had to mention Arcanum after reading your preferences.

[l0cus77]

It looks like a laser pistol high technicalities build, for sure. It is the only thing that scales from int.

For that kind of build You do not need to fully max int, with 8 - 9 is more than enough (both for crafting and power reasons). If you go that road I recommend you search for storm trooper build in this forum (maxes Dex versatility critical build with high int, passes every check in the game and crafts everything relevant).

If you want to fully role play and go max int then you will need perception rised to a decent value plus all the int you want.

[Sillyweasel]

Alright, thank you all for the suggestions so far. (Vokial, seemed to put in words quite well what I've had in mind.) Guess the kind of build I'm looking for is something focused on grenades, traps and laser/chem pistol or Xbow(not sure which one of these three I should pick but out of what I've read from your posts I see the energy pistol is the preferred/most recommended option). This raises another three questions that I'd like to ask:
1) What's the difference between chem pistol, energy pistol and xbow?
2) Is it viable to actually alternate between two of these or even use all three?
3) For this build I'd prefer to not use psi but I'm also quite fascinated with weird, mysterious, magical, occult, mystic stuff, will I miss out on many "psionic only" quests or dialogues if I decide not to take the pill? (Will I miss out on other stuff if I take it?)

Yes, I love ARCANUM (I wish there were more RPGs set in the 19th century or the fantasy equivalent of it), haven't played a technological character run yet, been mostly using magic but I think I'll give that a try as well.

[l0cus77]

1) Energy pistols have immense crit damage multipliers when crafted, and with Dex build can get many shots per turns, probably the strongest in a critical build. Also requires a few specific feats for them to use.

Chem pistols have great utility (fear and dot with fire, acid entanglement effect with acid), also requires a few perks to be used, less damage than laser in most cases. This one can complement laser if you want perfectly, not needed tho.

Xbox incurs in armour penalty (robots and armoured enemies can be tricky to kill if you don't have the proper tools) but can be extremely strong in good hands and also lots of tools to play with different bolts. Probably requieres a very specific build and not so mixable with others, only exception would be a versatility build with laser pistol, or versatility with cooked shot acid pistol to trigger deadly snares (there is a build called versatility crossbow in this forum that explores that very well).

2) the first 2 are very mixable with little effort, Xbow I recommend you plan ahead and probably not the easiest to pull off on a first play through. Using the 3 of them is possible, but you would spread too much imo.

3) there is lore that only psi can access, but requieres high amounts of will (never played full psi so I do not know exact numbers, but thresholds are posted in this forum). If you want to learn everything about lore probably full psy is the best option.

[Sillyweasel]

OK, I think I'll reserve the psi for a second play-through and read some energy/chemical pistol build guides. Will having a lower DEX but higher INT incentivize to employ a more crafty use of the chem pistol and consumables instead of just blasting away and dealing high crit damage with the energy pistol (but still keeping it as a good option for direct damage)? I don't want my build to turn into some sort of "why use all these utility items when simply shooting them till they're dead is a more efficient strategy"

[TheAverageGortsby]

Will having a lower dex but higher INT incentivize to employ a more crafty use of the chem pistol and consumables instead of just blasting away and dealing high crit damage with the energy pistol

Not really.  Energy pistols - specifically laser and plasma, but to a lesser extent electroshock as well - are pretty much one-hit-kill devices when you build to them.  Their critical damage multiplier becomes absurdly high, and most things don't have terribly high energy resistance so once you get past a shield (if applicable) you're going to land a large fraction of your theoretical damage.  Early on, it's nice to have that high Dex so you can get several shots in a turn.  Your gear and your feats aren't fleshed out, and unlike, say, ARs or sledges or psi or unarmed, you really need both a good set of gear and a good set of feats for energy weapons to really show off their power (but with grenades and traps, you'll do fine in the early game as well).  By later in the game, you're going to be doing absurd damage so the damage boost from higher Int will often just be wasted.  The most efficient use of energy pistols is getting to that one shot one kill point, and then having a lot of shots.

edit: you won't likely get to the point where using utility items becomes inefficient.  Energy pistols only really have one trick when it comes to crowd control, unlike say chem pistols which are CC central.  You may find that you don't use damaging grenades as often, but EMPs and flashbangs and incendiaries are going to absolutely be high-priority items for your entire playthough

[Sillyweasel]

Alright thanks for all the clarifications! I think I'm ready to start this character now that I've got a better idea of what to expect. Cheers!

[Bruno]

While very nice for a stealthy crafter (because of silent shots, snipe etc), I'd not use the crossbow as a crafting-focused macgyver-type myself.

The reason is purely one of game mechanics: You have very limited space in your utility belt compared to all the fun grenade types, nets, stealth device, taser etc that you want to craft and use. Crossbows need those same slots for the special bolts that make them so crafting friendly, so compete directly with your grenades.