Post your experiences with the new Dominating difficulty!

[crumbhouser]

But if you don't want to be a cave wizard, an assault rifle will clear the way all the way to Tchort just fine, and when you pop adrenaline you can kill his eye in one turn of bursts.

Huh, is that really possible? I thought Tchort has way more health on Dominating than on the lower difficulties.

There's a guy who beat dominating at level four using AR bursts.

Does he have any videos/documentation? That sounds really cool

[crumbhouser]

But if you don't want to be a cave wizard, an assault rifle will clear the way all the way to Tchort just fine, and when you pop adrenaline you can kill his eye in one turn of bursts.

Huh, is that really possible? I thought Tchort has way more health on Dominating than on the lower difficulties.

There's a guy who beat dominating at level four using AR bursts.

Does he have any videos/documentation? That sounds really cool

http://underrail.com/forums/index.php?topic=3388.0

Cool, thanks!

[bati]

Question for you bloodthirsty maniacs - do you try to finish all pieces of content on Dominating? Minus some extremes, like Oculites questline if you're playing a char with no stealth. Or do you strictly stick to the critical path?

Also, what would be a good option for a brute force/ironman like approach? I'm thinking full PSI char with 10 con, but if there are other options hit me with them. Ideally as little reloading as possible.

Always all content.  Gotta get that exp

Psi is a very good choice, *if* you'll pick up Locus of Control. Stealth AR is also not a bad choice because ARs are ridiculously powerful, but you'll want Thick Skull for the stun prevention, unless you're really quite sure that you'll be carrying around a ton of Bullhead and using it all the time. .  But for minimum possible reloads, you're going to want to be in stealth all the time so you usually have the opportunity to set up positioning first.  You won't need Grenadier or Quick Tinkering for success, but if you've got free feat slots in your build (edit:and, obviously, enough Dex) those are the first two you'd want to pick up, in whichever order suits you. 

Basically, psi is possibly the single strongest thing in the game, but it's very close with stealth.  Put 'em together and you're a wrecking ball.  But if you don't want to be a cave wizard, an assault rifle will clear the way all the way to Tchort just fine, and when you pop adrenaline you can kill his eye in one turn of bursts.

Figured I'd give you an update, since you were kind enough to hook me up with builds - I'm using a modified version of your PSI template http://underrail.info.tm/build/?GQMDBQYDEAoAAAAAAAAoV3MAAFVVCy5VwofCh8KHMgA_KyhQPxQ9Vy4qZ2RmIScc . Hit 25 yesterday, still have entire Upper Underrail to explore, but I did pretty much everything in Lower/Caves already, including Balor, Arena (at lvl 16), Foundry quests, even got to the last step of Oculite questline AND successfully navigated the Gorsky's warehouse quest, despite very low stealth. That actually ended up being a really nice surprise. Couple observations from my run so far:

1) Dominating is so much fun that I don't think I'll be able to go back to Hard.
2) Mercantile is god-tier skill. Holy shit.
3) I've changed my mind about the usefulness of evasion/dodge. Maybe I'd actually need them on other types of characters, but PSI can get by with 0 investment just fine.
4) I expected more enemies to be honest. Most encounters don't seem that different from hard, an enemy or two on top of the standard formation, from what I can tell? Please tell me if I'm wrong.

If you have a template for a stealth AR build I'd LOVE to see it as well, because I'm really tempted to start a parallel run. Crafting with Mercantile is so much fun that I literally don't mind playing the game again lol.

[TheAverageGortsby]

1) Dominating is so much fun that I don't think I'll be able to go back to Hard.
2) Mercantile is god-tier skill. Holy shit.

If you have a template for a stealth AR build I'd LOVE to see it as well, because I'm really tempted to start a parallel run. Crafting with Mercantile is so much fun that I literally don't mind playing the game again lol.

1) I agree. I would only play below Dominating if I needed to test something out. It's too fun a difficulty.
2) You think that's amazing, pair it with Salesman. You'll be hard-pressed to ever play a build without it once you try one or two merchant runs with 100+ Mercantile and Salesman on top.

How are you liking Hypothermia? I never actually used it because I didn't imagine up very many scenarios where it was helpful.  Are you finding it helpful?

As I recall, I restarted twice on my AR, but ended up with something like this: http://underrail.info.tm/build/?GQcHBQcKAwfChx4AAB5kRkEyADxkZCc0WgAAAAAAVCRTUBYwRU4VSSY7SktV
That's the bare minimum on every crafting skill to make what you need, with house crafting bonus: quad-plated super steel armor; top-quality energy shield & cloaking device; incendiary rounds; bullhead; and top-quality carrier vest in your armor, plus good-quality infused cave hopper leather armor with soft padding and black cloth for your stealth set.  The hacking and lockpicking are obviously optional but I'd have a fit if I had to pass up all that potential loot. If you don't mind, you can claw back a good number of points there.

The build has some real drawbacks, because it tries to do a bunch of things.  You *must* always keep the Rathound Barbecue buff up, if you're going to use heavy armor (and if not, take out 1 Con and Juggernaut), because you don't have the Str. That means even one Crippling Strike and you're losing action points. Your dodge is crap but with QT you can usually just drop a bear trap and keep melee two tiles away so you can burst them to death safely - except sometimes you can't.   Didn't take Sprint and missed the lack of it sometimes, but as a ranged character mobility is only highly useful, instead of essential. Passed on aimed shot because I found I never really used it after Depot A, and couldn't afford a "wasted" feat.

Still, it's a build that can (and did) win with some planning before the big, setpiece fights.

[bati]

I only took Hypothermia because I didn't have any better ideas at the time. It was my second to last perk pick (before Pack Rathound, which I took for carrying quest items in DC). It's somewhat useful because I use Cryokinesis a lot, but I was also considering a number of other perks - Nimble (for more stealth, but I realized I don't need it), Conditioning (very small bonus), Sure Step (never saw the need for it), Clothier (would gain some extra stealth from it, hardly worth it), Power Management (this would be useful since I rely on Cloaking Device sometimes, but both my CD and shield have ~110 capacity so it's not exactly mandatory), Cerebral Trauma - this one seems like the best replacement candidate because I use Neural Overload a lot as well, but in the end I picked Hypothermia for tanky targets like Burrower Warriors etc.

I didn't take Salesman on purpose because my understanding was that it doubles the number of items that merchants buy at 100 skill - so instead of 2 firearms they'd buy 4, but it didn't mention if their funds go up as well and I often can't sell more than 2 or 3 items to a single merchant anyway. Two weapons worth ~7k and the merchant is 400 charons down already. Did I misunderstand how the feat works?

Thanks for the AR build, I'll look it over later when I have more time and see if something can be changed.

The hacking and lockpicking are obviously optional but I'd have a fit if I had to pass up all that potential loot.

No kidding lol, I'm the same.

[TheAverageGortsby]

I didn't take Salesman on purpose because my understanding was that it doubles the number of items that merchants buy at 100 skill - so instead of 2 firearms they'd buy 4, but it didn't mention if their funds go up as well and I often can't sell more than 2 or 3 items to a single merchant anyway. Two weapons worth ~7k and the merchant is 400 charons down already. Did I misunderstand how the feat works?

Well, Salesman's greatest use is that it makes all those *other* merchants viable sources of charons.  You're right that weapons merchants are easy to pull money off of, but when you're in Foundry and the guy next to Kevin is willing to buy 12 of those Advanced repair kits? Suddenly you can get all his money *too* and maybe one or two nice components as well.  Fixer, in Junkyard, when he's buying 5 chem pistols at a time?  You can buy out his entire stock. Heck, you can show up with no chem pistols, buy up his stock, craft on the spot, sell them back to him, and still walk away with all his drugs and money.  Salesman isn't really about making the weapons merchants better sources of income, it's about making everyone else just as good as the weapons merchants.

[bati]

That makes sense. Ultimately I don't think I need it though, I've never had money issues in UnderRail, even when I bought all the workbenches and some house upgrades. I'd prefer if Salesman allowed you to invest in stores to increase their liquidity. There was another RPG that I played where this was possible, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. Skyrim maybe?

[Dieusama]

Skyrim and Oblivion yeah.

[Yonaiker]

Welp I finally managed to finish my Dominating playthrough with a subpar psi-unarmed build, there are very unsavory areas I wish not wanna return ever, a shame the final boss turned out to be a cakewalk but the optional one was plainly impossible so I decided to eat the pride and turn in the McGuffin, maybe I will take another ride in Expedition... maybe.

[Ravager]

I know it's been a while, but can you post this build? I'm interested in playing a sniper/pistol in Dominating.

Gear:
Seeker night vision goggles (smart A-A spearhead with all the crit damage feats is enough to reliably 1-shot almost everything, at that point crit chance becomes more valueable than another smart bonus)
Efficient double low freq shield
Infused pig leather armor with high density foam and black cloth
Utility belt
Infused pig leather tabis

Rapid smart Anatomically-Aware spearhead
Rapid neo luger with a laser sight

Taser and all kinds of grenades

It's kind of an iroman-y build (only reloading on death, goal is to die as few times as possible)  I came up with after the infused siphoner tabis nerf, wasn't really meant for dominating in particular but worked really well regardless. I think I died once or twice, can't remember exactly. The overall idea is to have high initiative in case the stealth approach fails or is impossible, high mech DT/DR against melee, shield against guns that also helps against low speed projectiles, high HP for anything else. Also high mobility with a way to break free from immobilization.

Always walk around with the pistol in the hand for bonus initiative, switch to the rifle when needed. Pistol is mostly used to apply Kneecap Shot, reliably hit enemies with high evasion (that's why it's a Neo-Luger and laser sight, also makes it more likely for the Kneecap Shot to hit), delete squishy enemies with low DT/DR up close with Rapid Fire and HP rounds, killing or finishing off other enemies with W2C, etc. Biology is to make focus stims for that sweet 15% crit chance, chemistry is for making W2C rounds.

Thanks, again. I know it has been a while yet again, but I am curious about your build. It is a sniper build, yet persuasion is very high. What are you using it for? To get optimal quest outcomes [such as SGS allying with Eels]?

I just didn't think that there would be a lot of synergy with that skill on a sniper build. You don't have a lot of points to spare on Dominating.

Given the improvements to the barter system, I would have thought that if you were to invest in a social skill, it would be barter. Maybe even take some barter feats - getting good gear is important.


Also, how do people feel about these modifications to the build in Dominating:

Constitution from 5 - 4

Intelligence from 5 - 6

Taking a point from CON into INT because Int 6 is more useful for crafting + it can go up to 8 in the expansion, which opens up more options.

Also, I could go with barter instead of persuasion.

[Zzealot]

All good in dominating, except of many over hp buffs, which make fightings prolonged and boring.

For example, Pulveriser received  2k hp, but still not learn how to throw flashbangs, not good.

[Fenix]

What do you mean? Last time I fought him, he do threw flashbangs, which was a death sentence.

[Zzealot]

Recently killed him with a dagger and traps at low lvl, for the energy shield. There were a lot of opportunities to throw a flashbang, but he didn't.

[Fenix]

He doesn't do it immediately as it's death sentence to player, on;y after his adrenaline expired I guess.