Rambo. Live off the land. Genocide the world.

[TheCONMan]

Overview

What you will be doing the entire game:
https://youtu.be/6ulWGiJb1uI?si=WQ8ZOihLxHBhITmP

Do you like to play as Rambo? Do you hate crafting? Did you play the game so many times that you just want to skip all questing? Do you hate replenishing supplies from merchants? Would you like to murder the merchants for always not giving you your desired components when refreshing their stocks? Would you like to measure your worth in Advanced Mechanical Repair Kits instead of charons? Do you want to genocide every single town and not just the natives in the Black Sea? Do you want to be the apocalypse in this post-post-apocalypse world? This build is for you!

Disclaimer: requires both Expedition and Heavy Duty DLC. This build was played through on Hard Classic difficulty. Also, I was not strong enough to win any fights in The Compound, so please do not adopt this build and be disappointed that you cannot clear Heavy Duty content.

Build

https://underrail.info/build/?HgsDAw0IAwXCoMKgwqAAwqDCoMKgwqAAAAAAwocAABkAAAAAAAAAAGMkJjsVw51KEsOhSSdQDgjCsnNP4p2gAeKfhAHip6oD4qe0Ct-8

Knowing the land

After playing through the game many many times, I noticed that enemy mobs drop a lot of supplies, so much so that, for specific builds, it may be possible to sustain the character throughout the entire game. Here, I recount the loot encountered throughout Underrail and their abundance:

Base Underrail:

• Very common:
• ammo
• health items
• health hypos
• advanced health hypos
• bandages
• sources of metal scrap
• guns
• knives
• sledgehammer
• crossbows
• metal armor, helmets and boots
• Still common
• grenades
• flashbangs
• throwing nets
• crossbow bolts (normal bolts)
• psi inhalants and boosters
• energy shield emitters
• sources of fabric scrap
• leather armor
• tactical vests
• Rare
• adrenaline shots
• batteries
• sources of electronic loot
• shock knives
• shock sledgehammers
• energy pistols
• emp grenades
• Almost nonexistent
• w2c ammo
• any other special ammo other than standard
• any special crossbow bolt other than normal bolts
• any other combat enhancing drug apart from adrenaline shot

For ammo, I noticed that 7.62mm was the most common, followed by 5mm, followed by 8.6mm, followed by 9mm, followed by .44. Typically by the time I hit University, I would have acquired perhaps total 7000 ammo of differing types.

Standard ammo is very abundant, but W2C and other special ammo types were almost non-existent. For example, I only had 70+ 7.62mm W2C ammo looted from Terrence's body, and 70+ 9mm W2C ammo from Dreadnaught in Epione lab.

Natives in Black Sea:

• Common
• consumables
• healing salve
• vitality powder
• spirit potion
• crossbow bolts (normal bolts)
• Non-existent
• sources of scrap
• native spears/swords/knives/sledgehammers/crossbows cannot be recycled although considered mechanical

Mutie refuge in Black Sea

• Rare
• ammo
• sources of mechanical scrap

Pirates in Black Sea:
Profile is very similar to base Underrail, except:

• Common
• shotguns and shotgun shells
• morphine
• tabi boots
• i looted my endgame durability 1500 ninja tabi boots here
• Almost non existent
• psi-related items and consumables (only 1 psion in pirate base)

Aegis camp in Black Sea:
Profile is very similar to base Underrail, except:

• Very common
• batteries (every Aegis sec trooper carries shield emitters and batteries)
• shield emitters

Build requirements

This build is a direct successor to my experience with my previous hammer/LMGs/ARs build https://stygiansoftware.com/forums/index.php?topic=10521.0. While that build only achieves independence of ammo from merchants, this build goes even further and tries to achieve independence of everything from merchants, including healing and repair kits. My first version of this build designated refurbished guns as the final recipients of all the ammo lying around, but that involved interacting regularly with merchants to check their refreshed stocks, having high mercantile skills to unlock high quality components, and slaving away in the world doing odd jobs to get charons to buy such high quality components when they do finally appear. All in all, too much hassle. This build was crafted without refurbishment in mind; Myles shall die the moment he saw this character.

Having total independence from merchants also includes doctors, that implies looting enough health items to survive through the entire game.

Having total independence from merchants, it is also just too good an opportunity to pass up on doing a genocide run, to depopulate the entire game and see what happens.
Crafting the build

Combat in Underrail in any build involves spending resources of some kind. Psi involves psi reserves, guns involve ammo and mechanical durability, melee weapons involve mechanical durability, crossbows involve bolts and mechanical durability, shock/energy melee weapons and energy pistols involve batteries and electronic durability. (Bare fists (see my Naked Puncher build) and crowbars have infinite durability and does not expend any other resources, but their damage output is so low it is hard to consider them in a normal build).

Surveying the loot landscape, the lack of anything electronic is evident. Batteries are rare, electronic loot that can be turned into electronic scraps to make electronic repair kits are rare. Hence, energy pistols and any shock/energy melee weapons are excluded. On the contrary, there is an overabundance of mechanical loot, that can be recycled into mechanical scrap, to create mechanical repair kits. In fact, my stocks of advanced mechanical repair kits surpassed 200 merely halfway through the game. There is also an abundance of ammo, albeit only the standard kind. Such a loot landscape naturally nurtures a guns build, and as guns go, ARs and heavy guns have the best and most powerful uniques. ARs builds and heavy guns builds are also among the most powerful builds in the game.

ARs and heavy guns builds are great, but this specific build involves a critical weakness: the total lack of W2C ammo. W2C ammo is not craftable in this build, and is almost non-existent as loot. To compensate against the lack of armor penetration, I looked to another feat: Expose Weakness. It is a melee feat, but heavy guns builds naturally require high strength, both for weapon and feat requirements. With investment into the melee skill, this character can become a decent melee fighter too. Coincidentally, the high strength enables the use of sledgehammers, of which there are excellent uniques too. The use of a melee sidearm also solves the problem of ammo inefficency on LMGs. Trash mobs or easy fights can be dealt with using hammer smashes instead of expending full LMG bursts, saving ammo in the process. Sledgehammers also requires no feats to be effective, yet another less impendiment to incorporating melee into this build.

Caveat: due to the abundance of mechanical repair kits and the scarcity of batteries and electronic repair kits, only non shock hammers should be used. This directly impacts the weapon selection, as detailed in a later section of this guide.

Expose Weakness has a 4 turn cooldown and needs to be in melee range to be used, but these are compromises this build has to work with due to the total lack of armor penetration otherwise.
Build explanation: attributes

Strength: 11. Start with 10, +1 at level 4.
11 strength is required for the Brute Aim feat. 11 is also enough strength for the use of all unique guns in the game. I choose to hit 11 strength as soon as possible, because early game (from start of game to end of Depot A) is cleared using sledgehammers.

Dexterity: 3
Dump stat. 3 dexterity causes a penalty to throwing skill, but will have to live with it.

Agility: 3
Could have taken some points from CON, but I was used to playing with 3 agility for many builds. Also could not find spare feat points for the feats that are enabled by having higher agility.

Constuition: 15. Start with 10, +1 at level 16, 20 and 24 each, take Increased Constuition feat for +2 at level 26.
Constuition has always been the stat that I worship. All my builds have 10 CON minimum, for the Thick Skull feat, and for enough health to survive past turn 1 in any encounter in the game. This build has the luxury of extra attribute points, which I invested all into CON for even more extra survivability. For context, in my playthrough I had around 700 hp at level 26 and around 800 hp at level 28. I was surviving sniper crits, sometimes even 2 sniper crits, by the pirates in the Black Sea.

Of course the build could have used less CON and still be viable. I have listed some ideas on where to invest and build around the extra attribute points in the section below.

Perception: 8
8 perception is required for Concentrated Fire, the most broken feat for ARs and LMGs. From previous playthroughs, 8 perception is also enough for ARs and LMGs to clear the game with, since they do not need 100% precision. LMGs also have the Brute Aim feat to help out, so 8 perception is alright.

Will: 3
Dump stat. 5 Wil is required for Bullet Trance, but from my previous playthrough with https://stygiansoftware.com/forums/index.php?topic=10521.0, Bullet Trance turned out to be useless. Interweaving hammer attacks and LMG bursts meant the Bullet Trance stacks stay mostly expired. Moreover, half of the time this character (and that character from my previous playthrough) will be using assault rifles, which does not benefit from Bullet Trance at all.

Intelligence: 5. Start with 3, +1 at level 8, +1 at level 12.
5 intelligence solely for Expose Weakness feat. Investment of 2 extra attribute points solely to get a feat, to compensate for the total lack of armor penetration.
Hitting 5 intelligence at level 12 meant Expose Weakness can be taken earliest at level 12.

Build explanation: skills

160 (214) Guns
Max Guns skill for using ARs. You could drop this to 80 for the Commando feat, and rely on synergy with Heavy Guns skill to pump this skill up, but it will only cap at maximum 160 this way.

160 (255) Heavy Guns
Max Heavy Guns skill for using LMGs/miniguns.

160 (143) Throwing
110 effective Throwing skill is enough for me, but invested extra points so that can retain throwing accuracy when yelled at.

160 (255) Melee
Max Melee skill for using sledgehammers.

160 (159) Dodge
160 (159) Evasion
Max defense skills because no reliance on crafting overpowered armors for this build.

An intriguing thing is, Dodge and Evasion are both supposed to be at 143 effective skill thanks to the penalty from having only 3 Agi, but thanks to these 2 skills having synergy with one another, if both of them are levelled up they end up at 159 effective skill, almost equivalent to having no penalty at all.

160 (143) Stealth
Stealth is very important for Underrail. I maxed this, to compensate for the 3 Agi penalty, and because not much points needed for crafting or social skills.

135 (146) Mechanics
Mechanics this high solely for 3 recipes: Recycle Item, Repair Kit and Bear Trap. The higher the quality of the loot, the higher the skill needed to recycle it, hence this high a mechanics skill.

In hindsight, 75 effective mechanics skill is enough to recycle 95% of acquired loot, able to recycle up to durability 1770 items. Only items acquired in the last areas of the game, both the base game and Expedition, have durability higher than 1770.

25 (27) Biology
25 points in Biology to fulfill requirements of Doctor feat.


0 Tailoring
As I played through the game I found myself missing the tailoring skill to recycle leather armor and tac vests for tailoring kits, but I just could not find the points to invest into Tailoring in this build. Maybe if I min-maxed more I could spare the points, but for this run I made do with just stocking up on looted tac vests, and every time the current tac vest gets broken I just dump it and equip a new one.

0 Lockpicking
I chose to drop 0 points into lockpicking to fit the theme of Rambo, who just fights his enemies head on; who cares about subterfuge? But as I played through the game, I realized that lockpicking is needed for sightseeing in parts of civilization that is not possible without aggroing the population; Foundry comes to mind. Many homes have locked doors, never saw what was inside of them in a thousand hours of gameplay, could have finally saw the insides of those houses in this genocide run, but no lockpicking skill. Sigh.

Also, I have always wanted to open a jet ski buffet at Ray's shop for the longest time, to have access to every single jet ski in a single playthrough. I thought after I conquered Core City and put down Ray I could fulfill this dream, but as soon as his life disappeared into the netherworld, the keys to his jet skis appeared to have disappeared along with him. Only option left is to hotwire. Devastator requires 130 lockpicking. Double sigh.

Really have no idea how to squeeze in so much lockpicking in a build with 3 Dex.

Build explanation: feats and feat order

Level 1: Nimble
Level 1: Thick Skull

Standard feats that I stand with at the start of the game. Nimble provides more dodge and evasion, and nullifies any armor penalty smaller or equal to 15%. Thick Skull at level 1 means immunity to stuns for the entirety of the game, necessary because stuns are a guaranteed death sentence in this game.

Level 2: Suppressive Fire
Level 4: Opportunist
Level 6: Full Auto
Level 8: Brute Aim
Level 10: Concentrated Fire

From level 2 onwards, start to prepare the character for using an LMG, particularly the N60 which can be obtained immediately after Depot A. So LMG feats are taken in succession.

Level 12: Expose Weakness

The remaining LMG/AR feats have to be taken at level 14 minimum. Expose Weakness has to be taken sooner or later, so I took it at level 12.

Level 14: Mag Dump

This is the last LMG feat relevant to this build. I took this over Commando at level 14 because the N60 is a mainstay weapon after Depot A, and it is uncertain when a good unique assault rifle will be obtained.

Level 16: Commando

The is the last AR feat relevant to this build. During my playthrough I got my first assault rifle, the Steyr Auch, way past level 16, but it is good to complete the AR build as soon as possible, to be ready to use an AR anytime.

Level 18: Pack Rathound

By this time, after looting half of Underrail the weight limit is severely weighing down on my gameplay. The 50 additional weight limit grants a lot of relief.

Level 20: Fast Metabolism
Level 22: Doctor

As the character levels up, his HP pool grows exponentially due to all the extra investment into CON. These 2 feats are to increase healing efficiency, both to spend less time waiting to heal up between combat encounters, and to spend less of the looted stockpile of health hypos and healing salves to heal the character to full.

Level 24: Conditioning

With a final CON stat of 15, conditioning grants 20% mechanical, heat and cold damage reduction. It is too good to pass up when CON is this high. Also, less damage taken means less health items used, helps with healing efficiency.

Level 26: Increased Constitution
Level 28: Bodybuilding

More health. Flex my 830 hp at level 30.

Level 30: Expertise

In hindsight I might have taken this earlier. The problem with using un-refurbished ARs/LMGs is that the damage on some of them is really low, notably the Brno, sometimes hitting for 60+, 70+ on the first hit. The extra 20 damage from Expertise is not game changing, but it is not insignificant either, especially with so many bullets flying around.

Build explanation: specialization points

Concentrated Fire (10/10)
Full specialization into this feat turns it into one of the most broken feats in the game. This, fully specialized, is the feat that allows end-game bosses to be shot down in 1 turn. Max this first.

Commando (3/3)
On a pure AR build I would recommend maxing Commando out first, the 9 extra AP per turn is really good. But since this is a mixed AR/LMG build, Commando specialization comes after Concentrated Fire.

Expose Weakness: Duration (1/1)
Just 1 more turn just in case 2 turns of Expose Weakness are not enough to shoot down something. After completing the whole game, realized that this is really not needed in Hard difficulty. Maybe for DOMINATING difficulty.

Conditioning: (1/5)
One last specialization point to place into anything. I chose Conditioning.
...continued in next post due to character limit...

[TheCONMan]

Choice of weapons and order of acquisition

1. N60 the Warthog
This weapon is the first unique weapon that would be acquired in this build. It can be easily obtained by doing the Buck Nimble quest, right after Depot A. For such an easily obtainable weapon its quality is also great, and can be used into end-game with no problems (even without refurbishment!) (at least, on hard and below difficulty). It is so good that I would recommend this weapon to be used for the rest of the game in this build, provided there is infinite 7.62mm rounds. But alas, ammo supply is finite, so this list of weapon choices do not end here.

Anyway, the N60 has great damage, and its ap cost of 35 is a good number to work with. With 50 ap, you could throw a grenade + burst. With any ap points leftover you could do a burst + 16ap hammer swing to finish off foes. With adrenaline shot, you could burst 2 times in a turn for 3 turns straight.

With a magazine capacity of 65, most fights are finished before a reload is needed. Hence, I typically pair the N60 with a lifting belt and a sledgehammer as a side weapon. This allows the flexibility of using the N60 when the going goes tough, then switching to hammer swings for finishing off wounded foes or trash mobs to conserve ammo.

2. Quake
With 11 strength, the character is well suited to use sledgehammers. Fortunately, there are good unique sledgehammers, which high qualities are atypical of other melee weapons. One such hammer is Quake, my favorite unique hammer. In my past build https://stygiansoftware.com/forums/index.php?topic=10521.0 this was my end-game hammer. It does good damage by itself, its shockwave ignores DT and does decent damage too. It costs only 23 ap to swing, reduced to 17 after lifting belt and tabi boots, which is a good number to work with. Its ability to clear rocks is also vastly underrated.

Unfortunately, it is considered an electronic item and requires scarce electronic repair kits to repair. It also requires constant replenishnent via batteries. This alone prevents Quake from being the main sledgehammer used for combat in this build. The reason to obtain it, is solely for its ability to clear rocks, since in this build no merchants are alive to sell TNT charges.

However, Quake is still most likely one of the first uniques to be obtained, as it is quite easy to do so. The encounter with Gubbins is not gatekept behind anything else, it is easily accessible at Upper Metro. Moreover, while Gubbins and his gang are not pushovers, cheese like bear traps and nets can be liberally applied.

3. Mindcracker
With Quake unable to fulfill the role of our main melee weapon, the responsibility falls upon Mindcracker instead. The main draw of it is its relatively high quality, evidenced by a durability of 2220 (no other class of melee weapons have such quality) (Damage is equivalent to a steel sledgehammer (dmg 47 to 73, dura 2130) looted from the final dark area in Expedition DLC) and ap cost equivalent to that of a TiChrome hammer. The legendary 3 hammer swings per turn @ 16 ap per swing can be achieved with the Mindcracker. But most importantly for this build, it can be repaired with mechanical repair kits, which are in extreme abundance for this build.

Unfortunately, Mindcracker is locked behind a hard combat encounter. The encounter is easily accessible though, just a few maps behind Foundry. But the encounter itself involves numerous stealthed Azuridae Golathus, they can snipe from afar with icicles, cause weapon attacks to miss with foggy shadows, etc. I always relied a lot on save scumming and molotovs to push through this encounter. The N60 helps a lot by being able to eat through their pseudo-spatial projection stacks easily.

Despite the difficulty of the combat encounter I pushed to obtain this weapon early in order to have a good secondary weapon to pair with the N60.

Fun fact: it is for this weapon alone that psi is not in this build. Mindcracker wrecks psions when equipped. Originally I intended to incorporate psi into this build to make use of all the spare inhalents looted from psions, but Mindcracker is too good a melee weapon to pass up on for a non crafting build. That, and thanks to a lack of skill points/feat points to invest into psi, although Mindcracker is the majority deciding factor here.

4. Steyr Auch
The Steyr Auch is on Simon Peres, inside one of the Ironhead camps. Apart from being deep inside Ironhead territory, there is not any other obstacles to obtaining it early. I chanced upon it while leveling up around the Ironhead areas, could have gotten it earlier if I had made a targeted run to Simon.

Steyr Auch is a decent receptient for 9mm ammo if the GlaShaG-9 is not obtained yet. Its main advantages are its high damage, its precision, and its slightly longer range than other rifles. This assault rifle is pretty good at killing when bursting over range. However, there are several drawbacks that prevents it from being a top tier assault rifle. The biggest has to be the AP cost. It costs 48 ap to burst, meaning no other action can be taken in a normal turn without adrenaline shot, and that includes reloading with a bullet strap belt (4 ap) too. In fact, I have to save up 2 ap from the previous turn, then couple it with the remaining 2 ap in the current turn to reload. 48 ap to burst meant even using an adrenaline shot or vitality powder would not afford another round of burst.

Also, reloading is especially problematic because the Steyr Auch has a smaller than usual magazine capacity of 25 only. Last but not least, the Steyr Auch does not offer any extra burst shots. It limits its damage on single targets via low concentrated fire stacks, and many a time Commando is not procced because the rifle missed the final shot against an enemy.

All in all, a passable weapon until the others are obtained.

5. N16
This weapon is the natural receptient for 5mm ammo, because no other assault rifle or lmg, no matter looted or crafted, uses 5mm ammo. Note: K&H KH416 is a direct competitor to the N16 for 5mm ammo, but KH416 is only obtainable during Gorsky's questline and this is a genocide build, so no KH416 this run, only the N16 is considered.

On paper, the N16 does not measure up to even the Steyr Auch: low damage, slightly less precision bonus, same magazine capacity. However, in my playthrough I had far more success with the N16 than the Auch. The ap cost to burst is only 36, which still leaves enough ap in a turn to throw a net (10 ap), use medicines (10 ap), or throw grenades (15 ap) if there are any ap saved from the previous turn. The +1 extra burst shots does not seem like much, but it felt like night and day when using the N16 vs the Auch. I had Commando proc more consistently with the N16 than with the Auch. Last but not least, N16's damage is low on paper, but fully specced concentrated fire shreds everything, even armoured targets. I used the N16 to great effect in the Black Sea fighting the natives, pirates and mutie refuge, and I was surprised that it can kill Colossal Crabs in 1 burst using standard rounds. It can even take on plasma turrets, on the condition that the character gets close to minimize misses.

The N16 is a great rifle, but obtaining it is an audacious task. Typically it is obtained as part of Gorsky's questline (along with the KH416 at the end of the questline), but being a genocide build and Gorsky being dead, the way I did was to do a full frontal assault on Port Zenith. I went to Expedition, got an Aegis Patroller, came back to Port Zenith and did hit and runs/guerilla warfare until the dock is cleared, then proceed to clear the inner Port area where the N16 is. The assault on Port Zenith was not easy, which was why rifle was acquired very late in the game. In hindsight, I could have just killed the supervisor, got the shack key, sneaked into Port Zenith and stolen the rifle, but with no pickpocketing that would also trigger a war with Core City.

As with other assault rifles, this has to be paired with Bullet Strap Belt for constant reloads.

6. Brno LMG
The Brno LMG could have been obtained very early, but at first glance, I did not have a good impression at all. In Underrail, the durability of a gear is closely related to its quality, and Brno only has a durability of 840, which is equivalent to early game gear. LMGs are supposed to have higher damage per bullet than ARs, but looking at the Brno, its damage is equivalent to the N16, or the Tommy Gun. Even the NF F2500 assault rifle has higher average damage than the Brno. But alas, the Brno is the only unique gun among ARs/LMGs that can use 8.6mm ammo. When starting the build, I had thought of just giving up on using 8.6mm rounds altogether. But as my stock of 8.6mm rounds accumulate into the thousands, not using this stock meant a huge drain on the stocks on other ammo types. So I experimented. I tried using a randomly looted durability 1590 8.6mm huszar to attack Epione lab. It sucks! Too little bullets per burst. The Huszar was also not accurate enough, very little bullets hit = low stacks of concentrated fire = low damage. It took 2 bursts to kill any guy in Epione lab, 3 bursts if that guy heals with a health hypo. It was a miserable time.

Then, I cleared core ring protectorate outpost with a randomly looted durability 1410 8.6mm Hornet. Hornet is really better than Huskar thanks to its precision bonuses. But the same Hornet, when taken to the Black Sea, still could not kill an Aegis Sec Trooper on a jet ski in a single burst.

Frustrated with the damage output on these looted assault rifles, I went to try the Brno as a last resort, and I was surprised by how capable it was. It can easily kill any mob that is not too armoured/has too much health, thanks to its 11 bullets per burst creating large stacks of concentrated fire. It also costs only 30 ap to fire. This leaves many ap for other actions in the same turn, or, if one saves up 10 ap for the next turn, 60 ap can be used to burst twice during the next turn.

University really showcased the strengths and weaknesses of the Brno. The Brno can kill any mob with 1 burst, except the Recombinants and Eldein (wtf Eldein? How you get so tanky wearing robes). The Brno can kill a Recombinant in 3 bursts in separate turns, 2 bursts in the same turn, and 1 burst if preceded by Expose Weakness. Eldein was downed also by 1 Expose Weakness and 1 Brno burst.

Apart from University, the Brno also performed well in Expedition. It could shoot down a strongman with one burst despite how armored it is. Same goes for a locust hive, down in 1 burst.

A significant weakness of the Brno is that it holds only 30 rounds. The low magazine capacity makes Bullet Strap Belt mandatory for the Brno. Fortunately with the Bullet Strap Belt, it costs only 8 ap to reload, so firing and reloading every turn is possible.

7. GlaShaG-9
The GlaShaG-9 was the one of the last unique weapons that I obtained in the game, but in hindsight could have obtained it much earlier, after all, it is only gatekept behind 3 enemies. This is another weapon that at first glance, I did not have a good impression of: only 6 bullets on the first burst; 40 ap to burst, leaving little ap left to do anything; less accurate than the other ARs and LMGs. I only obtained it and tried it out after I exhausted all other options on the assault on Fort Apogee. And it shone in Fort Apogee. Despite the low precision and 6 bullet burst, the first burst can generally still make kills if made in point blank range, thanks to its high base damage. And after acquiring the maximum of 6 wind up stacks, the GlaShaG-9 was able to spew out 18 bullets for a total 16 ap. That means 3 bursts of 18 bullets in a single turn, it wrecked everything. Even the dreadnoughts; they took just 2 of these 18 round bursts of standard 9mm rounds to kill.

8. MG3-42
Truth be told, I was satisfied with N60 and totally neglected the MG3-42. I got this weapon very late in the game, having completed Expedition and about to go into DC, despite this weapon being very accessible, just locked behind a bit of getting lost in Upper Caves and some Ironheads.

Stat wise, the quality and damage values do not measure up to the N60, but at a durability of 2640 it is still decent. It is considerably less accurate than the N60, with higher spread angle, higher move and shoot penalty and a penalty to burst precision. But the defining feature of this weapon is its 25ap cost to fire, meaning 2 bursts of 5+2+2+5 extra burst shots = 28 bullets per turn without buffs, or 3 bursts totalling 42 bullets per turn with Vitality Powder.

In practice, this gun totally makes up for its lesser accuracy and damage with the biggest volume of fire. 14 bullets per burst, 2 bursts per turn meant 2 reliable kills per turn, as compared to only 1 for the N60. I brought this to DC and it performed admirably well, especially in the assault against the Faceless Commander's base.

With the highest volume of fire, the rate of expenditure of 7.62mm rounds was very noticeable too. I paired this weapon with Lifting Belt and used the Mindcracker to conserve ammo whenever the going is not so tough (e.g. against a single Deep Worm) and paired it with Bullet Strap Belt in anticipation of large battles (e.g. against Faceless Commander's base).

With so many rounds per burst I was able to kill Tchort in 1 burst with this weapon when preceded by Expose Weakness.

9. NF F2500
This is a good weapon. It has good burst precision, and +2 extra burst rounds, so despite its lower damage, it can reliably burst down targets at ranges where LMGs will be missing 80% of their shots. The biggest downside is that it is obtained in one of the last areas of the game, so this weapon did not see much use. I used it to great effect fighting the Lunatics at the start of the Heavy Duty area. That is all the use I had out of it, the rifle is too weak to take on the soldiers in the Compound.


Armor and other gear
Without questing, this build does not have access to powerful unique gear, such as the Bioscrubber, CAU armor, or Vathosphore armor. Have to make do with randomly looted gear.

Headgear
Usually empty. Would wear a Gas Mask when heading into toxic clouds.

Body
Randomly looted tac vests. As mentioned above, keep looting new ones and changing into new ones whenever the current tac vest broke.

Or naked. During the assault on native villages, my current tac vest broke and I did not have spares on hand. Too lazy to go back base to get another one, opted to clear native areas naked, turned out just fine.

Belt
Bullet Strap Belt when equipping ARs or Brno. Lifting Belt with LMGs/Miniguns if encounter is not tough or long, can use sledgehammer attacks to save ammo. Bullet Strap Belt with LMGs/Miniguns if fight is tough and long. Lifting Belt if area/encounter is easy enough to tackle entirely with sledgehammer attacks. Large Waist Pack for looting run.

Footwear
Bought a pig leather tabi boots from Blaine before completion of Depot A, used it for half the game, looted a durability 1500 ninja tabi boots off a pirate in the pirate base.

Shield emitter
Randomly looted Efficient Shield Emitter, totaling about 500 capacity. It's child's play when compared to crafted ones reaching 2k capacity, but it's better than nothing during tough fights.
...continued in next post due to character limit...

[TheCONMan]

Playthrough and review
Early game, up to and including Depot A, was a featless sledgehammer run. Was not able to be totally independent from merchants at this early a point in time, so yeah bought a total of 6 MKI frag grenades, 6 molotov cocktails, 2 emp grenades, 1 lifting belt, 15 bear traps, a sledgehammer handle and a quality 44 metal plate to craft a durability 690 sledgehammer, 2 MKII frag grenades, and a pig leather tabi boots from various vendors.

Also bought 3 blueprints, the only 3 blueprints needed for this build: Recycle Item, Repair Kit, and Bear Trap.

After Depot A, immediately headed to finish Buck Nimble quest to get the N60. That was the start of the genocide run, beginning at level 9.

Recount of the massacres:

• Core City gangs
• Got the Mindcracker!
• Random Ironheads
• Rail Crossing
• Random leveling in Lower Underrail
• Panacea Lab
• Marty's scavenger camp
• Gubbins and gang
• Balor's camp
• Lurker base
• Foundry
• Core City: all levels except upper residential floor (where the headquarters of the 3 factions are). In hindsight, should have started the war on Core City from the upper residential floor instead of the lower level. The elevator is the only entrance to the upper residential floor, and it unstealths the character when used. The moment the character steps out of the elevator onto the upper residential floor, he is immediately jumped by Praetorians from the west and Coretech on the east. Coretech has snipers and emp grenades; it took many level ups later to be strong enough to survive the entrance to the upper residential floor.
• Lunatic Mall (cleared with Steyr Auch)
• Joined Aegis Expedition (somehow did not aggro Aegis Sec when the character was at war with the rest of Core City)
• Upon disembarkation, immediately killed everyone in the map (with Steyr Auch) and stole an Aegis Patroller
• Learnt Naval Combat feat from Lance
• Cleared Port Zenith to get N16 assault rifle
• Took N16, 2901 5mm standard rounds, a dozen or more 25mm frag grenades and a randomly looted petard to assault everyone in Expedition
• Cleared Mutie Refuge (excluding underground area) and natives (excluding Magnar), left 716 5mm ammo
• Cleared pirate base, running out of 5mm ammo, looted another 760 5mm rounds from pirate base and pirate patrols
• Cleared Port Crag and the last pirate outpost, 33 5mm rounds remaining
• Cleared Epione Lab with N60
• Cleared Core Ring Protectorate outpost with a randomly looted durability 1410 8.6mm Hornet
• Core City upper residential floor
• Coretech cleared with N60
• JKK cleared with Brno
• Praetorian Security cleared with Brno and a 40mm 4-chamber Mangonel Bipod (40mm HE grenades)
• Gattler and gang cleared with Brno, got GlaShaG-9
• Fort Apogee cleared with GlaShaG-9, used about 800 9mm rounds
• Expedition, spent 1800 8.6mm rounds on:
• West Storage Depot (not including Mutie Refuge)
• Horticulture Center
• Lemurian Health Center
• Nexus of Technology
• Aegis Sec camp cleared with N60
• 3 Naga fight cleared with N60
• Magnar map cleared with N60
• Completed cleared Expedition, got ACORN
• Utility station 6 and 7, cleared with Brno
• University cleared with Brno
• Deep Caverns cleared with MG3-42, total of 767 7.62mm casings obtained at the end of it
• Lunatic area at start of Heavy Duty cleared with NF F2500
• The Compound was too difficult for this character

After completing the game, I must say that the build works as expected. By being able to utilise every ammo type looted in the game, there is enough ammo to clear all content in the game. Except the Compound, which is too hard. In fact, I was more worried about healing items than ammo towards the end of the game. My entire stock of healing salves looted from the native villages (I estimate 300 to 400, couldnt remember) was running out, a rare phenomenon in my runs. So thankful for Fast Metabolism and Doctor feats to increase healing efficiency.

The massive health pool of this build meant that most encounters are a matter of tanking and shooting till enemies are dead, then replenishing it back with the abundance of looted healing items. Only harder encounters are afforded the use of adrenaline shots or shield emitters, since there is relative scarcity of adrenaline shots and batteries in base Underrail.

Vitality Powder is a lot more common though, I find myself abusing Vitality Powder for sledgehammer attacks a lot more after I returned from Expedition.

Expedition represents a net expenditure of ammo instead of gain. Only pirate base and Aegis Sec camp has any ammo to loot. Spiders, strongmen, handmaidens, crabs, hives, locusts, etc. are all a drain on ammo supplies without anything worthwhile to loot. I had made 3 trips to and fro the Black Sea, bringing in thousands of ammo and dozens of repair kits each time, in order to sustain the assault on the Black Sea.

Fully specced Concentrated Fire is a sight behold. The Brno was able to down a strongman in 1 burst despite the Brno having low damage and the strongman being moderately armoured. The Brno was able to down a Recombinant in 2 bursts in the same turn despite the Recombinant being well armoured and having a lot of health. In the 3 Naga fight, each Naga can be downed by 2 bursts of standard 7.62mm ammo by n60 in the same turn (must be near to minimize misses). In Fort Apogee, each Dreadnaught can be downed by 2 bursts of the GlashaG-9 in the same turn. And all these without W2C ammo, just thanks to 1 fully specialized feat.

Despite the power of Concentrated Fire, I am really glad that I took Expose Weakness as it trivialized boss fights even further. E.g. with Expose Weakness, Eldein took just 1 burst with Brno; with Expose Weakness, Tchort took just 1 burst from MG3-42; the MG3-42 merely tickles the Faceless Commander as his armor is too high, but with Expose Weakness the Faceless Commander is also downed in 1 burst. I also recall using Expose Weakness on Recombinants, Cuttlesnails, and any number of enemies in metal armor to make them more vulnerable to hammer strikes.

Was not able to kill Magnar's second stage because I killed Dude.

Build variations
In my build I invested 15 into Con, but it does not really need such high Con to complete the game. The extra attribute points can be invested into other attributes to enable certain feats. E.g.

• 7 will, for Stoicism and Bullet Trance.
• 5 Agi and 5 Dex, for Strafe. LMGs/miniguns have a moderate move to shoot penalty (15% to 20%) that can be removed/reduced by this feat. Given that this build does not rely on heavy armor, and hence needs to move around a lot, this feat could be useful.

Also, the build could have used lockpicking, for accessing typically off limit areas and for stealing jet skis as explained above.