Level cap and carry capacity

[Alex Leonhart]

I like underrail like i liked FO1&2 but there are 2 mayor issues that are holding me back to really enjoy the game:

The level cap: i hate level caps and 20 is way too low, i have been reading and someone said that 30 was planned to be the final cap on vanilla, this is like a massive letdown to me if its true.

The carry weight: im a hoarder, i like to pick everything and carry a lot of stuff, this added to the limited trading is making the play-through very painful for me i tried to hex editing the save but i couldnt find how to increase that cap either.

[Elhazzared]

How I feel your problem! I can't even play because of the carry weights and above all the traders not buying everything.

There was a time when both features were not in the game and the experience was very enjoyable. I thought at the time it did was a game who was going to be set apart from the majority in not breaking up the pace of things and just allow you to have fun. when the changes to that came I was incredibly disapointed and couldn't even play anymore. the carry weight is bad cause you have to stop, sell stuff and go back, it breaks game immersion and the sale limits makes it exploring not worthwhile because who cares in finding more stuff that you can't sell anyway?

At least Styg did said that at some point he might include an option to disable merchant limits. Although might is not a guarantee we can but hope. Still it's very likely that it will only happen when the game is very close to release which means to me that I just can't help with beta tests (nor have any fun playing the game which would otherwise be great).

[Zephyros]

I find the opposite to be true; a lack of carry weight would be immersion-breaking. A good solution I found is to break all armors, weapons etc. down into repair kits. Repair kits are lighter, more useful and many merchants buy 4-5 at a time. Even with 3 strength, I was more than capable of holding the important stuff in dungeon experiences (if I wanted to pick everything up, sure, but most things have essentially no value.)

The level cap does seem a bit premature with the contexture of the current system. Regardless of how I play, I find myself maxing out rather early in the game. Perhaps slowing down levelling would help but that would require re-balancing all encounters.

One gripe I have is about the economy. Apart from early on, I find it really easy to conserve money and there's not a whole lot to spend it on. Even high quality components are easy to afford.

[LightningMonk]

I find the opposite to be true; a lack of carry weight would be immersion-breaking. A good solution I found is to break all armors, weapons etc. down into repair kits. Repair kits are lighter, more useful and many merchants buy 4-5 at a time. Even with 3 strength, I was more than capable of holding the important stuff in dungeon experiences (if I wanted to pick everything up, sure, but most things have essentially no value.)

The level cap does seem a bit premature with the contexture of the current system. Regardless of how I play, I find myself maxing out rather early in the game. Perhaps slowing down levelling would help but that would require re-balancing all encounters.

One gripe I have is about the economy. Apart from early on, I find it really easy to conserve money and there's not a whole lot to spend it on. Even high quality components are easy to afford.

My exact feelings so far. I'm wondering how leveling up is going to work out later considering you character reaches the 20 level limit fairly quickly ( after Junkyard, Camp Hathor ,Railway Crossing and little exploration you should already be there.) After doing nearly all the quest I had 159 exp points unused after hitting the cap, and the character you can build up to that point is nothing to sneeze at.

[DMonin]

Level cap is awful thing in Underrail. I suppose my character will explode someday (128K/20K):

[UnLimiTeD]

Well there, that's the classic XP system. I don't think the game is balanced for that anymore.
Even if Oddity will require more XP for higher levels, and maybe reach a little bit higher (25?), you might see the same problems.

[Elhazzared]

WEll I don't think anyone was ever a fan of level caps. I remember when I used to play arcanum... yeah, I hit level cap when I wasn't even a third of the game in.

[Omegakill]

Surely the carry weight issue would be resolved by having some sort of storage in your private quarters, in fact wasn't this implemented? Or am I imagining things?

I haven't gone near the level cap at the moment so I can't personally say it's an issue that I could comment on but if things are still killing you too easy and you're trying different tactics then yes it's an issue, no build should really struggle unless you don't have anything invested within your combat skills.

WEll I don't think anyone was ever a fan of level caps. I remember when I used to play arcanum... yeah, I hit level cap when I wasn't even a third of the game in.

Arcanum was awesome! I would always hit the level cap but it could be raised by messing with one of the .ini files if I remember rightly? Not that you needed to at that point as I was always a master mechanic who could build the bot and have the best Armour. 

[Elhazzared]

I dunno, I never messed with game files and yeah, as far as being able to make a pretty good character. 20 strg, 20 dex, 15 charis, 15 will, enough into temporal to get stasis and yeah, immortallity was pretty much around the corner.

A tecnologist though? I considered them impossible, you'd need nearly all disciplines and quite a few high stats that it was impossible to make a really good one by comparison.

Anyway back to this game. Carry capacity is not solved by your locker in the room. Think about it. You are in the junkyard, have to travel all the way back to your room in the middle of clearing depot A, drop stuff but sell first what you can, the go back, possibly thing already respawned in the time being... Doesn't solves a thing. It also doesn't helps that merchants don't buy everything.

I feel the pain of the OP, I feel it so much that it's the reason I don't play the game. It is not fun in any way for me to leave loot behind, in fact it bothers me so much that I'd rather not play which is what I have been doing ever since the new economy came to being. I am probably going to have to wait until the game is released for either a developer limit removal or some mod being made to make the game enjoyable for me.

[Prytification]

Well, there should be a cap on skills, like 100, but no level-cap. So you can finally make a char that is good in crafting AND can survive, without having to exploit every enemy weakness and AI weakness in every fight.

I was a bit stunned as I suddenly was confronted with a level 20 enemy (Faceless) on Railroad-Crossing while being level 15. Though of course, it was not a problem since it's a full combat/Psi char (which had the luck to get a 410 EnergyShield) , but as a crafty one ... going there the first time and not knowing the other way around, might be problematic. Sure, lots of other areas to visit first, but ... well.


Regarding carry-capacity: You do not need to carry everything with you. Keep the stuff where it is. Just take the weapons and armor and maybe some of the expensive parts for weapon/armor. I'm always amused when people carry 20+ hearts around and moan about 'I can't carry anymore!'. Well, one heart is 2.5 ... that's a lot.


I'm doing pretty fine with my 3 strength char (which is 4 now), and I may put him to 5 on the next level up. So, with item-buffs and +str items I could, if in need, haul a lot of things.

[Eliasfrost]

You do have personal storage space in your room in the private quarters. So you can dump the stuff you don't want and get moving. Though I want to stress that you are not supposed to pick everything up, or sell everything. It was a bit of a hassle when the carry weight and vendor systems were implemented but that was because of habbits more than anything. You can play the game perfectly from beginning to end without being low on funds. In fact, you'll most likely be the richest person in Underrail despite those restrictions. And you'll be carrying more guns than you can handle but nowhere to trade it. So yeah.

As for level cap, I haven't reached it yet as I haven't played Underrail since like 2 updates ago or so but I can imagine that the cap will be raised as development progresses. Have anyone hit cap long before the end of the current version?

[Elhazzared]

I guess I'll have to stress this again to put my point across because it seems it's often ignored.

It's not about how much money I'm going to have. Yes, I know that I don't need to carry everything and I'll still have more money than I can probably spend.

It's about it not being right. You should be looting everything and leaving nothing behind. Let's not forget that it's going to be so incredibly rare that you find say, a gun better than yours because you already went to the merchant and bought a really awesome gun. So the point then becomes. Why am I even exploring? Why do I even bother? Doing the main quest alone will earn me more than enough money. Doing anything on the side will not give me any benefict at all because it's not like I'll be able to sell more stuff.

This is what is wrong. Exploration is not rewarded. Also no, i don't use the oddity system. I don't like it, feels plain wrong and artificial to look for stuff to level up. I'd rather level up by killing stuff and completing quests.

So in my opinion the current economy system paired with the carry limits severely hurt the game experience. I know not all share the same opinion but it is mine and the game feels so wrong that I can't get past the first quest. As soon as I return with the loot and can't sell it all I just quit, there is no point if I can't sell my loot. I couldn't care less as to whether or not I need all that money.

The old economy system was a lot better in my opinion. The only thing I'd have changed in it was the worth of damaged items so that it as never worth repairing stuff to sell. It created too much busy work savescuming just to see what was worth repairing or not.

[UnLimiTeD]

Well, see, that's the difference.
Judging by forum posts, there's just as many, maybe more, people who like it the way it is now.
Personally, it always breaks my immersion when in a game I run around with 5 platemails and then sell them to a serf for everything he owns.
Looting, to me, includes rummaging through stuff to find the useful bits, weighting this and that based on personal value, sell value in relation to weight/space, and potential utility/novelty.
To me, it feels wrong if I have reason to click the "Take everything" button more than once in a blue moon. Yes, that's once every 2.43 years.
I do agree the progression needs looked at; Maybe a slight bit more powercreep, and less money. If I run around with 30000, it feels a bit shale. Gathering yet more of it sure wouldn't motivate me, however.

In the end, it's two approaches to game mechanics that just won't meet. We have to accept that, I guess.

[Elhazzared]

I don't see how that can brak game immersion but I'll take your word for it.

You see items when they are dropped. I don't, I see rewards for my deeds, rewards that are to be converted into money because almost all of them are utherly useless. Much like an MMORPG. In the very beggining you find lots of useful stuff, but past the beggining you see money in them, you aren't expecting to find anything really good that you can use. You may find some, but it's incredibly rare. You need to go to certain places deafeat certain bosses to get the really good stuff. In this game you need to go to the store and buy the really good weapons for the most part.

So I strip things of all value and then give them a new value. Enemies are XP, loot is money. My rewards for fighting are exactly that, money and XP. Now XP, with level caps from what people say, you get to the cap so fast that you spend a rather big part of the game stuck there so it's not like you need to go out of your way to gain more XP and money. Well you already make more than enough without going out of your way.

However there is nothing wrong with getting more money. It even lets you be quite wasteful in the ways you play so getting out of the beaten path is a good thing right? Wrong. The game does not reward you in doing so because you just cannot sell your loot. You may be able to sell a tiny fraction of it because maybe you got one or two drops that your main storyline didn't gave you and thus the merchant still buys it. but otherwise you are not getting any rewards for doing it at all.

Getting all the quests done and exploring the whole map is nice, but there should be a real reward for it. Not a, thanks for wasting your time in something entirely pointless.

Also in a setting like underrail, do you think it is realistic by any streach of the imagination that any character would leave things behind? things that are actually valuable? Even if you are to say that people might not be able to realisticly carry everything, it's obvious they would stash stuff and make trips in between to get everything. But meh, reality has no place in vidio games anyway. It always takes a backstep in favor of gameplay.

BTW, you may be somewhat right about selling 5 platemails to a serf for everything he owns, this is because merchants should have an unlimited amount of money. It shouldn't make you feel like he is going broke just to buy your stuff. It should feel that he has enough to buy your stuff and still get by while he'll wait and sell those items back slowly and make a profit.

[UnLimiTeD]

You could reach level 20 before the latest version.