New player I need help. This game seems unfair.

[EbonyDevil]

I'm having serious troubles with ammo. I'm playing as a tank character and I have no ammo. period. Ammo is too expensive to buy and I have nothing to fight the rathhounds with. I can't sneak because I have no sneaking ability. I'm getting frustrated at how seemingly impossible this game is. I'm barely at the start and already I'm screwed. I haven't even gotten to the harder parts yet. What do they expect us to have infinite ammo and infinite money? There just too many enemies. Any help is appreciated.

[Anuovis]

It's a bit unclear what exactly the problem is.

You can get a fair amount of ammo for free at the start of the game if you visit the SGS armory. Later you get money for doing various jobs and you can sell loot that you find while doing those jobs. Also, it might be a good idea not to use bursts all the time if you are playing with submachine guns or assault rifles. You can use bear traps for rathounds too.

I don't know, I never had problems with too little ammo. It was a bit scarce at first, now I have so many bullets I don't think I will fire them all till the end of the game.

It could be that you didn't invest enough skill points in guns and perception and just miss everything, then it's best to just start over.

[Elhazzared]

The problem might be a build problem more so than anything else, if you show what stats you took and skills as well as feats that will help.

[mattu]

I agree that more info would be helpful here. You could type out some details or use http://underrail.info.tm/ to show us your current character. Also you could give some more detail about what you're struggling with.

There's a couple places where you face several rathounds at once. They're kinda hard, but they're supposed to be, this is a game where combats are sometimes challenging. There are ways to deal with these encounters that will work for even fairly weak characters. More fun if you figure them out, but they're out there to find or be advised upon.

Ammo is pricey, especially in the beginning, but the starting ammo when you get your gun plus your starting money should get you off the ground. It is weird that you feel backed into a corner here. Something has gone wrong.

Maybe you missed the starting money in your room? That pocket money helps a lot getting started.

I agree that you can't go around bursting every rathound in the early game (if you have a burst weapon yet).

Also, you can try dropping down to Easy and playing at the lower difficulty for a while. That's what it's for. Once you get your cave-legs under you you can resume your game on Normal (or start a new one since you'll likely have learned a bit about about char building).

[destroyor]

Resource is *really* tight at the beginning for a gun user with the second quest (psi beetle fight) being the lowest point.

For a new player I would recommend pickpocketing. You only need 50 effective pickpocketing skill and you'll never run out of meds and ammo. Your skill screen should look something like: Pickpocketing 56 (50) - 56 is your base or "real" skill, and (50) is your effective skill. As a gun user I suggest you max gun (max this every level! Do not invest in a secondary weapon as you'll failed miserably if you do), mechanic, tailoring and pickpocketing (until you reach 50 effective skill for mechanic, tailoring and pickpocketing) every level.

Stealing everything - anything not bolted down to the floor is valuable loot. Loot is life. Life is loot.

Do you have aimed shot? This is a very useful gun skill you can get at the beginning.

You can shoot rathound through fences so try to position yourself behind a closed fence.

Use burst sparsely until you start fighting humanoid enemies (GMS). The recent (beta) patch seems to reduced rathound drop rate so you won't be able to make money off of them.

The two biggest drain of resources (early game) are ammo and repair kit. Don't sell melee (including shock) weapons as you can recycle them into valuable mechanical and electronic repair kits.

If you are still having difficulty post your current build and situation.

[EbonyDevil]

http://underrail.info.tm/?build=AwGloZhAOEqgjKJdUCYCsJNl+XOO+hWaa22U+keICMIAnI0A

I do have armor but, it wasn't listed. I'm using a generic hawker pistol from the start.

I finished the outposts but, now I'm empty handed and broke. Should I restart?

I tried going after Psi-beetles and died. i tried going into the barracks tunnels and stalkers killed me. The game seems too difficult. What am I supposed to do? Its made worse by the fact even with 10 PER I cant hit anything. I'm basically fucked aren't I? my knife is broken, my gun is nearly broken, I have nothing. How is this RNG even remotely fair?  It's not remotely fair. of course you people are experts at this game. I';m a newbie how am I seriously expected to kill psi-beetles and stalkers that can kill me in a few hits and attack every turn? How is that fair?

[Elhazzared]

It's not a build problem, I don't see anything inherently bad with it so lets go by parts.

First you grab all the stuff from your lockers, your money, armor and stuff, then you get to the armory and they give you your weapon back and 80 bullets if I'm not mistaken.

You will indeed spend most of your ammo in the first mission and if you were smart which I believe you were, you bought a haxxor, at least a batery (I usually get 3) and a few lockpicks. Buying a grenade or a molotof cocktail can help you greatly here and I always do that.

After that and assuming you talked to jonas, he gives you the quest for his watch which he then will reward you with 3 options of stuff but the only one that matters is the smg since it's the most expensive item.

Now once you completed the mission you should have found 1 or 2 guns in the mission, you get the crossbow from the guy in the big outpost that has 2 rathounds and the smg from jonas. This is worth some serious money although you may not be able to sell everything. Now, you also get 450 sgs credits for the mission. You should have a lot of money to restock at this point.

Now there are multiple ways to follow up from here. The way I did was keep a 5mil gun and a 7.62mil gun although to be honest, if the gun you get from jonas is a 5mil smg, keep that instead of the pistol, the damage is only slightly lower, but it only takes 10 ap to fire. Either way, the psi bettles are seriously strong until they expose their brain. What I always do is fight them one by one, never fight 2 at the same time this early on, you'll just die... When I restock, I buy ammo, the 5mil ammo I just buy it all, it's cheap after all. Other calibers if necessary I buy in less quantity... But back to the psi bettles, you may want to use grenades, honestly I just do it the easy way, throw one grenade which should at least cut their HP in half even if they haven't exposed their brains yet and then finish it off with whatever gun. Spi bettles are extremely armored after all.

After that you'll get to go to the GMS and if you thought the psi bettles were tough, yeah, this is gonna be harder. I could tell you many things but instead I'll just tell you the bare minimum and the rest if you need help ask. Pack a few EMP grenades and buy W2C ammo for your guns. However many they have for sale or you'll have no chance against the robots. Even then conserve your ammo.You will find 2 emp grenades down there, but there are at least 3 bots and you'll want at least 1 emp for each. maybe 2 if you use hit and run tactics cause bullets aren't cutting it.

[Anuovis]

Pistols are not that good for you, assault rifles or sniper rifles will suit your build because they require perception and strength. Eventually.
Pistols and SMGs work well with a lot of dexterity which you don't have. You have lots of constitution and strength so it's probably good to pick
armors that have heavier penalties but better resistances.

Stalkers can be quite dangerous. If people around you are mentioning something as a threat, it probably is. At least in the beginning. Avoid them for now.
As for psi beetles, there are areas with lots of them (don't go) and with just a couple of them in mushroom cove (could go there). Just keep in mind that they
are heavily armored creatures. Any time you seem something or someone resist a lot of damage from the regular bullets, you probably need green ones to do
more damage.

The robots later on are vicious though. You might want to use vents to get around them but it might be hard without sneaking. It's probably a good idea to try
and fight them one by one, trying not to attract too much attention. Not sure how doable is that without sneaking and scouting ahead.

By the way, you can make repair kits from metal scraps if you have 25 in mechanics and the required blueprint. That might help you save more money later.

[NEvercalled]

max perc and guns skill. EOT.
Guns skill gives you accuracy and damage.
If you need money just alt-tab the game and go back after 2 h so the stores will be restocked.

And you can get fairy amount of money (by selling stuff) from some raiders below SGS

edit:
And up to mutants you can use any weapon you like and you shouldn`t have any problems killing mobs.
Just loot corpses from guns/armor and sell it to the armorer.
Pro-tip: You can use ANY container to store loot - it wouldn`t disappear. So when you have any type of the box close to the shop  -> store loot there so you will not have to carry everything. At the end game i have had more than 800 items in Core City.

[EbonyDevil]

)= I went and farmed in the underworld place with the rathounds and stalkers. I figured out it was those lurkers killing me.

I found a ton of melee weapons, a new 5mm pistol and a .44 pistol and a bulletproof jacket. Apparently this jacket makes it so bullets do no harm to me. Just went up to 2 pistol stalkers and watched as they could only do 1-2dmg to me. Using my .44 and getting a crit from aim I one shot them.

Heres my new issue: nobodys buying anything from me. I tried to sell my crossbow and got maybe $50. Nobodys got EMP or rifles. I have no clue how i'm supposed to fight psi-beetles and now Robots. That's just ridiculous. Its like if they had you fight power armored wielding guys in fallout on the second mission.

[Megaost]

Merchants work like this: Merchants will only buy the same kind of stuff from you that they sell, and when you open the barter window, there's text at the top that lets you know what items they are willing to buy and how many. Merchants refresh their inventory (and the amount and kind of stuff they are willing to buy) about every hour or so. This is one of many good reasons to play underrail using speedhack. Just google Cheat Engine.

If you want EMP nades, those are electronic equipment. You buy them from people who sell electronics, who are located in the engineering section of SGS. You also find two EMP grenades in the same section you encounter robots in the GMS compound. Your bulletproof vest is good against robots. It makes them deal as little damage to you as you do to them basically.

You might also want to try to use higher caliber firearms, since both robots and azuridae have fairly high damage thresholds.

Underrail is a game that is designed to have challenging combat from the very start, so don't feel too discouraged. It doesn't get all that much harder. At least not with a build as decent as yours.

[destroyor]

You can sell your loot in Junkyard (go to cave tunnel exit and docks, talk to Captain Svana). You can get more money by repairing guns and armors before selling them, quicksave before repair and quickload if it's not worth it.

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Fighting tactics vs. psi beetle (from the wiki):
At lower levels (1-5) even a lone Azuridae can prove to be a strong adversary, and their powers multiply in groups via Psionic Synergy, to the extent of using new, more powerful abilities, such as being able to stun and chill the target. It's a good idea to try and separate them to weaken their power output first, before directly confronting them. The psionic capabilities of a single Azuridae are limited to Neural Overload.

Their tough carapaces provides some resistance against mechanical damage, but they expose a weak spot, their brains, whenever they use psionics.

When a player chooses to fight them it is recommended to use a close offensive, trying to force the Azuridae to fight with its pincers, as this form of attack is a lot weaker then their psionic powers.
---
- only attack a psi beetle with an opened carapace. Top: closed carapace; bottom: opened carapace
- hide behind wall and corner to lure them in, they will most likely waste all their MP and AP so they can't attack. Chances are pretty high they'll open their carapace as well.
- if you are fighting psi beetle in open space, don't attack a psi beetle with a closed carapace, walk toward it
- Incendiary/HE grenades are effective vs. psi beetle. Frag grenade also works on psi beetle w/ opened carapace

At GMS, don't fight robots if they are too hard for you. You can move inside the vent.

Resources won't be so tight after GMS. You will be facing the hardest part of the game after GMS, so allow me to pre-emptively answer to your question re: Junyard Depot A. I promise the game will be a breeze after Junkyard.

[addictedorc]

Your issue with merchants is not unique. I periodically have to make what I call "merchant runs" where I grab a bunch of stored loot and spend the next 1/2 hour fast traveling around to the world's merchants to sell what I've got. In contrast I am overflowing with cash and about a dozen sets of high value boots, and another dozen sets of armor that haven't been too popular with the merchants as of late (I'm sure demand will come back soon enough:)  Firearms are usually the easiest to sell, I had a glut of melee weapons a while back but after one good run I got those sold off.

As for your earlier challenge, understanding the nuances of how the armor works will go a long ways to understanding the game's mechanics with regard to equipment and combat.