Custom Difficulty: Let Us Raise Attributes

[Sarokan]

Hello Styg,

I really appreciate the new custom difficulty box – it massively boosts Underrail’s replay value and was a great call.

What I don’t quite understand is why you didn’t go one step bolder to further increase player freedom and replayability.
Without even touching mods, there’s a huge opportunity here: let us customize base attributes as well.

Concretely, I’d love to see an option in the custom difficulty menu to set how many attribute points the player gets at each usual allocation step (instead of being locked to the standard progression). That way, we could intentionally create runs that push certain stats close to their maximum, just to see how the system behaves at the extreme.

Of course this would be strictly limited to custom difficulty. But for people who want to go crazy: if we’re already allowed to crank bosses up to +1000% HP, it feels like a missed opportunity that the player side can’t go equally wild.

This would open up completely new playthroughs on top of the existing game – the same world, but a totally different experience, and a big extra boost to Underrail’s already strong replay value. In other words, take the handbrake off in custom difficulty and let attributes and a few more parameters off the leash, so every player can truly build the kind of run they want – whether that’s unlimited money, absurdly tanky bosses, or a deliberate David-vs-Goliath power fantasy.

I’d really appreciate it if you considered something like this for a future patch.

[Albert Altmann]

Generally speaking, the console already allows to edit attributes freely, meaning that every four levels you can just pretend to gain more than 1 base ability point and increase the desired stats manually. Not the most elegant solution, but it works and is already in the game.

[Sarokan]

Using console commands is not the same as a real gameplay option. Opening the console every few levels, typing in commands and adjusting stats by hand is clumsy, breaks the flow and most players will simply not bother with it.

Custom difficulty exists to put this kind of thing into the front end. We already have sliders for enemy health, damage, experience and level cap. An attribute option belongs in the same place.

That is why I am asking for an official attribute setting in custom difficulty, not a “just use the console” workaround. The console is fine for testing and experiments, but a proper menu option would make these extreme runs practical and attractive for many more players.