Dev Log #56: Experimental Branch with Version 1.0.3.13

[Styg]

Hi guys, we are releasing a new major update of the base game on the experimental branch. If everything goes as planned, we'll be releasing it to the main branch as well soon.

To play experimental branch on Steam, you right click the game in your library and go to "Betas" tab. To do so on GOG, you select the game and choose More->Settings. Make sure you don't override all your live version saves just in case something goes horribly wrong.

We have new creatures, items and feats.




Here are the full patch notes:

Interface

• You can now configure transparency of transitions (also increased the default transparency)
• Objects that transition you between areas (transition that requires loading) when you use them should not display the transitioning cursor
• Added transparency to NPC health/psi/shield/cast bars on the map

Items

• Added new high-energy battery type
• Increased the weight of the fishing rod
• Removed cooldown for placing fishing rods
• Increased the damage and critical damage bonus of Quake
• Significantly increased the value of a lot of unique items (mostly weapons)
• Nerfed Power Fist
• Increased the max stack size of scraps to 999
• Trapper's Belt will now increase Traps skill by 15% (up from 10%); it will no longer reduce trap arming cooldown
• Added two new belts that augment chemical pistol attacks
• Regenerative Mixture will now be affected by game difficulty
• Special bolts affected by Elemental Bolts feat will now display the modified damage in the tooltip
• Reduced the infused leather quality slightly overall and also added diminishing returns when making infused leather above 100 quality
• Infused siphoner tabi boots will now give immunity to slow instead to immobilization
• Junkyard surprise can no longer increase perception, will or intelligence
• The following items will have their max stacks increase to appropriate amount: .44 Explosive Round, 8.6mm Incendiary Round, 12.7mm Contaminated Round, 7.62mm Micro-shrapnel Round, Corrosive Acid Vial, Incendiary Vial,
• Halved the move and shoot and action point cost penalties when attaching bipods to assault rifles (not applied retroactively)
• You can now use High Efficiency Energy Converter to reduce the energy cost of firing energy pistols
• Energy Pistols now have two enchancement slots when crafted
• Plasma pistol damage increased by 25%
• Laser pistol base action point cost changed to 15 (down from 22)
• Laser pistol usage energy cost reduced by 20%
• Changed the base value of psi boosters to 275 (down from 350)
• Changed the maximum duration of throwing net entanglement to 3 turns (down from 4)
• Increased the amount of EMP dischargers generated as loot/merchandise
• Changed the number of unsaturated psionic catalyst required to craft a psi booster to 3 (down from 5)
• Fixed the armor description when crafting riot gear and tactical vests from super steel sheets (will not be applied retroactively to the already crafted items)
• Changed the psi regen reduction of Mushroom Brew to 30 (up from 1). The previous value was geared towards non-regenerating psi pool of alpha version.
• Fixed incorrectly set impact speed of unique assault rifles (raised from medium to high, as should be the value for all assault rifles) and corrected the lack of move and shoot precision penalty for those guns
• Fixed Jawbone lacking move and shoot precision penalty (now set to 15%) as well as close quarters precision penalty (now 10%)
• Fixed low durability of armor worn by Tchortist rassophores and recombinants; only applies to npc armor (armor in the player's possession will remain unchanged)

Creatures

• Increased Coil Spider psi points and psi regeneration
• Coil Spiders now have darkvision
• Added Greater Coil Spiders
• Added a new machinegun turret to replace the regular auto-turret in certain places and on certain difficulties
• Increased dodge and evasion of burrower spawns, but also increased their susceptibility to AoE attacks
• Dogs will now attempt to bump you out of stealth when the detection gets into ALERTED state, just like human NPCs (on normal difficulty or higher)
• Added a stronger version of psi beetle
• Increased crawler attack damage a bit; they also regenerate health now (even in combat) and have dark vision
• Added a stronger version of crawler
• Added stronger version of mutants Hunchback mutants

Mechanics

• Added the global map
• Added DOMINATING difficulty, mechanically it inherits the modifications of hard difficulty and also increased NPC health by 50% and skill levels by 30%.
• Changed the way hit change display handles oscillating lighting or otherwise dynamic lighting. This also should fix some anomalies like the hit chances changing when saving/loading or transitioning.
• Removed cooldown for arming traps
• Removed cooldowns from lockpicking and hacking
• Reduced the time it takes for the game to yield the control back to the combatant after he kills the target; it doesn't wait for scrolling text and sounds to end now
• Hostilities will now instantly be triggered when you've been detected lockpicking (instead of at the end of the action)
• Increased the damage of chemical pistols by 50% (will be applied retroactively on exisiting items)
• Ground fire will now remove cryogas
• Starting pickpocketing (opening the pickpocketing window) will now require a certain amount of pickpocketing skill depending on the target's detection so not every character can inspect any NPC's inventory (without killing them!)
• Targets will no longer be able to block (in regular way) if stunned, incapacitated or frozen
• You can now unload chemical pistols
• As long as you haven't been fully detected by a NPC, that NPC's  detection will be reduced back to zero when you get back into an area where you've been sneaking
• Uncanny Dodge will no longer work while you're stunned or incapacitated in some way
• Dirty Kick will now be subject to Uncanny Dodge and other special defense mechanisms
• You can now root turrets (which makes them susceptible to acidic entanglement)
• On normal difficulty and above, transitioning between areas (red transitions) will now cost action points
• Improved NPC pathfinding slightly
• Primary non-mechanical damage (not caused by on-hit effect) on melee weapons will now scale with weapon skill (like the bio damage on The Claw), but will no longer scale with strength
• On hard difficulty EMP will drain energy (and subsequently deal damage to the holder) from all items in the inventory (not just equipped ones)
• Reduced the ranged weapon precision reduction from low light slightly
• Antidote will now randomly choose the order of poison removal, instead of going in the order they were applied

Tweaks

• Turn-based mode will no longer automatically end at the end of the turn if there are incapacitated enemies near
• Reduced the alpha on energy shields
• Removed the movement animation reseting when rapidly clicking (there's still a very slight stutter if you click very fast, though)
• You cannot change armor suit while in stealth or while stealth is on cooldown on hard difficulty or above
• Turrets will now drop aggro faster
• Getting additional burning damage will reset the burning debuff remaining time
• New combat taunts for military personnel

Psi

• You can now cast Cryokinetic Orb on any non-obstructing tile (such as water and other regularly non-traversable tiles)
• Improved the shard distribution of Cryokinetic Orb on impact
• Changed the range of Frighten psi ability to 5 (up from 3)

Feats

• Steadfast Aim strength requirement changed to 5 (down from 6)
• Cooked Shot special chemical pistol AoE attack with radius of 1
• Three-Pointer Changed Throwing skill requirement to 50 (up from 45); The crit chance will now scale by 1.5% per ten throwing skill points above 50, instead from dexterity
• Doctor will now also work with Regenerative Mixture as it should
• Expertise changed the max bonus to 20 (down from 25)
• High-Technicalities increases damage with energy pistols by 7% for each point of intelligence above 5

Quests/Maps

• Because of the global map, some areas had to be added and some had to be reorganized (especially around the starting cave areas) in order to achieve geographical consistency
• Added a number of possible random events around the world
• Reworked a lot of encounters to scale with game difficulty (from easy to dominating). Normal was mostly kept as it is, but some encounters (typically mid-late and late game ones) were made more difficult on that level.
• Reworked the Free Drone's final mission debriefing dialog with Trenton in order to better handle a certain optional outcome
• DC mindreading will now take into account the number of killed Faceless, which will have negative effects of varying degrees depending on that number; however, kills during certain story-related events where combat is unavoidable will not be counted
• Expanded the Hanging Rat bar and added a base ability check

Bugs

• Corrosive acid bolt crits will now multiply the acid damage done just like the regular acid ones
• Focus Stim will now properly display duration in the item description
• Fixed the Crippling Strike tooltip
• Fossilized Egg Oddity max studies changed to 3 as it should have been from the start
• Spore Turrets marked as ribles, kneeless and immune to critical hits
• Fixed the bug that caused NPCs to not properly react to being alerted (orange eye) to player's presence
• Fixed spelling errors in special ammo hit effect descriptions
• Fixed the bug that caused Eviscerate to do less damage than stated
• Fixed the rounding error with Critical Power feat
• Fixed a sneaky bug regarding status effect stacking
• Black Dragon poison icon fixed
• Fixed the bug that would sometimes cause player to become undead during cutscenes in which he unpredictably dies (this will apply retroactively, RIP)
• Fixed the 8.6mm Incendiary Rounds (they weren't igniting)
• Jookhela should now be immune to stun and incapacitation like the rest of senior raties (will not update for those who already encountered him)
• Removed Gauntlet advertisement from DC
• Crawlers and other NPCs should no longer unwittingly bump their own kind/faction out of stealth
• Suppressive fire will now only be applied to enemies, as intended
• There was a mess up regarding player's increased chance to get critically hit. Contrary to what the game has been saying, there is no universal to-get-crit (TGC) modifier, instead it only applied for weapon and unarmed attacks, which made things like Psychostatic Electricity rather useless. I've now added psi TGC modifier, so recklessness and psychostatic electricity will now apply to psi abilities as well. Everything else will only work for unarmed and weapon attacks. Tooltips have been updated to reflect this.
• Thought control psi abilities can now be properly centered onto non-traversable (but penetrable) terrain
• Disruptive Field will no longer get bugged out by Locus of Control
• You will no longer hear the sound of NPCs stealthing when you enter an area for the first time, unless you can see them already
• Swapping between two energy weapons while recharging the current weapon will now properly cancel the action
• Fixed the bug with plasma sentry when leaving the area while it's deployed in cannon mode
• Fixed an issue with player's house containers (lockers, shelves, etc.) wherein the items from upgraded or changed containers wouldn't transfer to an always-present shelf in the northeastern corner of the ground floor
• Fixed certain quest notes not being set as completed/failed properly
• Fixed a number of skill checks that used base instead of effective required value or had no value set at all
• Fixed Sneaky not registering the death of one important npc
• Expanded or reworked certain parts of npc dialogs (some more, some less) and also added a few new skills checks to some
• Replaced a few windows in fo_prison with solid walls so that the cameras inside the cell block can't see inside the security room. This was done to prevent the cameras from dispatching all the guards into the room even if the player had been granted access to it
• Fixed a minor issue with a certain Hathor Mine-related cutscenes
• Various minor map and dialog fixes

Have fun with the new stuff and please stay patient as we continue to work on the Expedition DLC.

Report any bugs you find on the forums and make sure you specify which version you're playing.

[MirddinEmris]

Holy crap! Awesome!

Nerfed Power Fist

Was that necessary? It was good, but it was good for unique weapon, meaning that it was still pretty meh. It was mainly used for it's +1 Str.

Also, maybe it's not too late to ask for a buff to all unique weapon, or at least most of them? They really need it.

[Altos]

• Trapper's Belt will now increase Traps skill by 15% (up from 10%); it will no longer reduce trap arming cooldown

At first I was concerned about this, but then I saw your bullet later on in the Mechanics section about how you're removing the trap arming cooldown entirely. I like it!

• Infused siphoner tabi boots will now give immunity to slow instead to immobilization
• Junkyard surprise can no longer increase perception, will or intelligence

Yeah, I saw these changes coming. The immobilization immunity was way too powerful, and everyone knows how abusive Junkyard Surprises were.
I guess it's time for me to change all of my builds. ;)

Any chance you'll implement hypercerebrix into the game before the rest of the DLC? :P

• Fixed Jawbone lacking move and shoot precision penalty (now set to 15%) as well as close quarters precision penalty (now 10%)

Ouch. The Jawbone was already useless for most crossbow builds, but now it's even more so. Why nerf it? I don't recall it having any extraordinary stats outside of the previous lack of penalties.

• Increased Coil Spider psi points and psi regeneration
• Coil Spiders now have darkvision
• Added Greater Coil Spiders
• Added a new machinegun turret to replace the regular auto-turret in certain places and on certain difficulties
• Increased dodge and evasion of burrower spawns, but also increased their susceptibility to AoE attacks
• Dogs will now attempt to bump you out of stealth when the detection gets into ALERTED state, just like human NPCs (on normal difficulty or higher)
• Added a stronger version of psi beetle
• Increased crawler attack damage a bit; they also regenerate health now (even in combat) and have dark vision
• Added a stronger version of crawler
• Added stronger version of mutants Hunchback mutants

All of this looks awesome and I'm really excited to see how strong the new enemies are. I hope that the black crawler has been similarly buffed? He's presently such a wimp for so unique an enemy.

• Added DOMINATING difficulty, mechanically it inherits the modifications of hard difficulty and also increased NPC health by 50% and skill levels by 30%.

Woah! A new difficulty? Sweet. That 30% increase to skill levels is mighty attractive (if I am understanding it correctly). I will have to try this out immediately.
(inb4 dominating ironman run)

• Removed cooldown for arming traps
• Removed cooldowns from lockpicking and hacking

Yesssss. I love you guys right now.

• On normal difficulty and above, transitioning between areas (red transitions) will now cost action points

Welp, I guess that means we can't abuse transitions during battle anymore (or at least not as easily). That's fine by me; it always felt like I was cheating, anyway.

• Improved NPC pathfinding slightly

lol

Psi

• You can now cast Cryokinetic Orb on any non-obstructing tile (such as water and other regularly non-traversable tiles)
• Improved the shard distribution of Cryokinetic Orb on impact

Woah. Does this mean that we can freeze water now? I know that the answer is no, but I'm really hoping it's yes. :P

• Steadfast Aim strength requirement changed to 5 (down from 6)
• Cooked Shot special chemical pistol AoE attack with radius of 1
• High-Technicalities increases damage with energy pistols by 7% for each point of intelligence above 5

I'm really liking all of these buffs to pistols, especially the chem and energy pistols. Time for an INT 16 energy pistols build.

• Because of the global map, some areas had to be added and some had to be reorganized (especially around the starting cave areas) in order to achieve geographical consistency
• Added a number of possible random events around the world
• Reworked a lot of encounters to scale with game difficulty (from easy to dominating). Normal was mostly kept as it is, but some encounters (typically mid-late and late game ones) were made more difficult on that level.

Yay! We finally have random events in the game! And a map! And new encounters!
It's like a whole new game! :D

• DC mindreading will now take into account the number of killed Faceless, which will have negative effects of varying degrees depending on that number; however, kills during certain story-related events where combat is unavoidable will not be counted

Welp, I guess that the families of the 200 Faceless I murdered out in front of the blockade have finally complained.

• Expanded the Hanging Rat bar and added a base ability check

Intriguing!

Overall, I'm super excited to see how all these changes play out in-game. You guys are doing great work here, and we definitely appreciate it.

Keep fighting the good fight, StygSoft! :)

[LightningMonk]

Sad to some nerfs  both agreeable and disagreeable (I guess I have to use other kinds of infused tabis now, eh?) ,but welcome giving some love to neglected weapons. Nice to see some buffs to pistols, especially chemical pistols. Might be actually interested in using them since they were introduced in EA though I do wish they got more crafting slots. Does Cooked Shot have a cooldown?

The new difficulty sounds interesting though potential making enemies meat sponges is a turn off. New critters are very welcome because the game's bestiary definitely lost a lot of relevance as the game went on. Overall, this all very tempting. I swore off playing a test build til expeditions dropped, but you guys aren't making that easy for me.

[destroyor]

• Junkyard surprise can no longer increase perception, will or intelligence
• Infused siphoner tabi boots will now give immunity to slow instead to immobilization
• On normal difficulty and above, transitioning between areas (red transitions) will now cost action points

These are major game changes! All build guides will need a complete rewrite now due to the nerf to Junkyard surprise. Infused siphoner tabi boots goes from the most OP item in the game to an item that's only good to very specific dodge/evasion centric builds. I will need to test the action point cost for transitioning areas, but it looks like farming Faceless oddities will now be harder than ever.

• Turn-based mode will no longer automatically end at the end of the turn if there are incapacitated enemies near
• Various buffs to pistol

Yes! Now that you can stay in combat after a successful flash bang certain tactics are now viable. I'm happy to see the various buffs to pistol - will test to see if they are enough to make them good. :)

Holy crap! Awesome!

Nerfed Power Fist

Was that necessary? It was good, but it was good for unique weapon, meaning that it was still pretty meh. It was mainly used for it's +1 Str.

Also, maybe it's not too late to ask for a buff to all unique weapon, or at least most of them? They really need it.

Agree, I don't think Power Fist needs a nerf. If anything there should be a buff to all unique weapons. I understand you want to make crafting attractive but unique weapons should not be useless either.

• Three-Pointer Changed Throwing skill requirement to 50 (up from 45); The crit chance will now scale by 1.5% per ten throwing skill points above 50, instead from dexterity

Question for Styg: Does this measure base or effective throwing skill points above 50? If this is measuring base throwing skill then this is a nerf instead of a buff. Throwing-only build is weak enough as it is and a nerf will really, really hurt.


Congrats on releasing this giant update, the inclusion of a map should change a lot of negative reviews. Overall I'm happy to see most of the changes and can't wait for the expansion.

[Tygrende]

Looking good. I have 3 questions:

Reduced the alpha on energy shields

What's "alpha on energy shields"?

Coil Spiders now have darkvision

Increased crawler attack damage a bit; they also regenerate health now (even in combat) and have dark vision

Given that crawlers don't have any ranged attacks and that electrokinesis can't miss, night vision will only affect how easy it is for them to spot the stealthed player right? Will they get dazed from flashbangs?

High-Technicalities increases damage with energy pistols by 7% for each point of intelligence above 5

Have you considered making this bonus a bit higher? Every point of perception increases gun damage by roughly 8% at level 25 with 135 base Guns skill, in addition to increasing precision. This makes investing in INT much less useful than PER, at least beyond 7 points needed for the majority of crafting feats. It could be interesting if INT offered a bit more damage at the cost of less precision.

Also the feat description says 8% in-game.

[Tygrende]

I have another question (besides the 3rd one I added to my last post).

What's up with the "Default/Original Main Menu Theme" interface option? It doesn't seem to do anything after restarting the game so I'm guessing it's meant for the expansion? In that case it would be kind of cool if there was a "Legacy" option with the drone from early access.

[hilf]

I don't think it was officially annouced:

Energy and chemical guns now have unique sprites! One for each category.


Stronger psi beetle, that's what i wished for.
Steadfast Aim now needs 5 STR, that's what i asked for.

Laser is faster than firearm guns just like 7 years ago, Styg got it right the first time. Range is still not greater but i'm not complaining.
I was about to express my butthurt about chem pistols but then i checked those new belts on wiki and decided to stfu.


Edit:
Unique chemical pistol is missing its damage bonus.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Awesome!  Thanks so much Styg and crew for this impressive list of changes.  Looks like almost everything we've been talking about on these forums in the last year or so has been addressed.  Very much looking forward to the expansion, but for anyone just getting into UnderRail this has got to be a big improvement.

Dominating difficulty, huh?  Were our tears of anguish not sufficient?  (Seriously, though, that'll really help keep the endgame challenging with the extra character levels from the expansion)

[mattu]

To play experimental branch on Steam, you right click the game in your library and go to "Betas" tab. To do so on GOG, you select the game and choose More->Settings. Make sure you don't override all your live version saves just in case something goes horribly wrong.

I must be doing something wrong on GOG--I don't see More -> Settings. See attached screenshot. Anybody see what the issue is?

[mattu]

Ah, that's too bad. Guess GOG gets their hooks into me a little further. Thanks for the heads-up.

[TheAverageGortsby]

This DOMINATING difficulty level is no joke, Styg.  I already died once and I'm only up to M'Lan Ratula. I'm going to enjoy these ulcers this new difficulty level will give me.

...oh my god, the psi beetles.  What the tapdancing Bob Ross is this nonsense?

[UnLimiTeD]

Saw underrail updating on steam earlier.
This is welcome, and unexpected. Looks like I've been away for too long yet again. (Looks like I already had the game set to "experimental" in hopes of this?)
Gonna try out all the juicy stuff. Well, time permitting.

[MirddinEmris]

Reduced the infused leather quality slightly overall and also added diminishing returns when making infused leather above 100 quality

Not so slightly, actually.

Materials which resulted in 194 quality leather previously (160 super steel fiber and 110 ancient rathound leather) now make leather with quality of only 139. And that is on top of reduced effectiveness of leather as component. Maybe you went tad far with this nerf? I mean at least let us make infused leather of 160 quality top, like with upper limit for every other component.

[Fenix]

Styg, you are the man!

Woke up, stretched and already translated update into Russian!

http://steamcommunity.com/app/250520/discussions/0/1500126447394183756/