A Perfect Slice
Knife is my favorite melee, and this is build is the product of a few iterations on knife builds. The end result is something that works so well together, it's almost a little too good. Enjoy!
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMQBwkDAwUAwqAAwqAowqBQACoAAFlcDy1eAAAAwqAAS0QrYsKDJiQTBjzCh0tREk7CgTHCs3vChcKtGsKbw47inY0G4qe-BuKouwPfvgHighlights
- Insane damage
- 5 AP attacks
- Excellent mobility
- Decent survivability
- Always go first
- Min-maxed skills
About the Build
Knives have a ton of crit damage, scale off of dex (which also reduces their attack cost), and have several ways to boost their crit chance. To attack with a knife, you need to get to the enemy, so there's a bit of a focus on movement points to make sure you can reach your enemy. This build takes these factors into consideration and to the furthest extent possible, resulting in a pretty overpowered but very fun build.
By the time the build is fully complete, you have ~400% crit damage, 90% crit chance when buffed, 37 initiative, >100 movement points, and 5AP attacks that do like 500 damage each.
Feats:
The goal here is to stack as much crit as possible, which leads to considering Survival Instincts for the Juicy +30% crit. Unfortunately you can't fit ripper in with 18 dex, survival instincts, cheap shots, and fancy footwork, so there ends up being no room for Ripper. The ripper version of this build has no SI. I've played both versions, and this version is superior.
A bit more on why SI is better than Ripper: when this build gets up and running, most enemies die to a crit. Ripper doesn't affect your first crit, just affects your subsequent hits. Additionally, you lose SI if you want Ripper (the other stuff you'd have to give up is even more important), thus losing 30-50% of your crit chance. So ripper applies 30-50% less of the time, since now you're critting even less frequently. I think it might help with hard bot encounters, but with Expose Weakness, Kukuri, EMPs, and corrosive acid, you have plenty of way of destroying those encounters.
Offensive Feats
Survival Instincts: +30% crit
Trigger Happy: 7 int, takes you up to 37 init which is 10 more than Coil Spiders. You will pretty much always go first.
Opportunist: Nice damage boost when you need it
Cheap Shots: massive boost to crit damage and 1/6 chance to incap. Amazing.
Taste for Blood: +50% damage for pretty much every fight. Amazing
Psycho-Temporal Acceleration: +20 AP
Critical Power: massive boost to crit damage
Fatal Throw: At 18 dex, your throws can generate up to net 18AP for you per turn.
Expose Weakness: Nice for big bots
Recklessness: More crit
Increased Dexterity: Gets you to 5AP attacks on tungsten knife with eel sandwich
Blindsiding: +15% damage
Mobility Feats
Fancy Footwork: Each attack gives you MP. Massive benefit with 5AP attacks
Flight Response: +25 MP all the time because of its awesome synergy with Survival Instincts
Defensive FeatsNimble: Gets your armor penalty down to zero and boosts your evasion significantly
Escape Artist: Nice for nets, can probably skip with your high evasion. I've ended up using it like 5 times.
Brutality: A fun feat, works well even at 75 intimidation. Can skip.
Spec:
Fatal Throw AP +3
Crit Damage +6
Cheap Shots Crit Damage: +6
Gear:
Head: Either deaths grin or a TM headband
Body: Infused rathound leather for, you guessed it, more crit
Belt: Dr's Pouch for 2AP meds, or Large Waist Pack for Al Phabet role play
Feet: Tabis, either black cloth or siphoner
Shield: Low Low Efficient
Utilities: Throwing Knives, Taser, Flashbang, Nail Grenades, EMPs
Weapons:
The best knife is a Tungsten Combat knife (most damage), and Super Steel Combat Knife for dodgy Enemies. Daggers do a little more damage for living creatures, but those never give you any trouble.
Energy edge emitter isn't really worth it, lots of the tough bots (nagas, strongmen, etc) have some amount of energy resistance. The best emitter is electroshock.
I also use serrated TiChrome for random shitty mobs for 5 AP attacks without eating my precious eel sandwiches, nor having to use nail bombs for TfB stacks.
A quick note on skills: you can drop TM to good ol 70 for more wiggle room with skills. Crafting and mercantile are min-maxed to use drugs, benches, gear, etc to hit breakpoints and craft end game gear.
To give you an idea of the power of the build: I was able to do the invasions without losing any Aegis troopers on my first attempt. Most enemies die in one hit. The only real troublesome enemies are bots.
