Post your experiences with the new Dominating difficulty!

[Twiglard]

I killed Carni at the first attempt. What the hell.

I'm so jealous! Nice job!

What was your build/spec? :O

SMG with Grenadier. Didn't need to shoot much. Flashbang does wonders and napalm makes for some silly AI/pathfinding. The incendiary AI is almost an exploit in my book.

Oh, and I lost Everard's "abandoned rifle". Gotta make a different build. I was already doing univ quests.

The first time playing on Normal I had to use serious tactics -- hard metal armor below strength limit, then throw napalm at my feet.

[Dieusama]

I'm at Silent Isle, classic glass cannon stealth PSI build.

The new uber PSI beetle is fucking retarded bullshit. Stuck because of ONE FUCKING SINGLE critter.

Can't stealth because of strange feeling + sheer number of critters. Can't kill everything without Broderick dying (fucking stupid retarded IA with no sense of self-preservation)

Can't do anything (because of course if Broderick die, you're FUCKING STUCK)

[TheAverageGortsby]

I'm at Silent Isle, classic glass cannon stealth PSI build.

The new uber PSI beetle is fucking retarded bullshit. Stuck because of ONE FUCKING SINGLE critter.

Can't stealth because of strange feeling + sheer number of critters. Can't kill everything without Broderick dying (fucking stupid retarded IA with no sense of self-preservation)

Can't do anything (because of course if Broderick die, you're FUCKING STUCK)

It can be tough but if you have a save from before you left, just reload it and go get a bunch of traps and grenades.  Make sure you're at least level 6 so you have Premeditation, or if you're on Classic XP, at least level 8.  You should be able to delay Silent Isle until at least level 8 Oddity/ 10 Classic if you want.  For me, I find the +30 health belt, plus two pieces of Pig Leather are a huge help.  Eat a CON burger too.  You'll have enough health to survive a Psicognitive Interruption.

Anyway, use grenades to make a lot of racket.  It'll pull some of the beetles and the rathounds.  Your goal is to lay down a bunch of molotovs and flashbangs to keep the big beetles out of the fight.  Use Premeditation to get your electrokinesis out to them, while you stand on that little spit of land where Broderick drops you off.  Don't be afraid to hide yourself behind a Force Field to break LOS as well.  You'll be drinking Psi Boosters like they're juice pouches but you should be able to do it.  Once you've taken out the first group (which may come in two waves, if you're lucky), you can Premeditation and then run along the western side of the Isle until you're just barely in sight range of the Goliaths. You'll have about 3 stacks when you get into sight range.  Manually start combat, chuck a grenade to make some noise, and hit one of the goliaths with a fireball or lightning, then start running back.  When your doppelganger coalesces, just mindmurder it and get back to Broderick.  If your traps don't take out the beetles, your grenades will.

[Dieusama]

Op . . . tional . . .

Optional ?

Optional ?!

NOTHING IS OPTIONAL IN A C-RPG !

COMPLETIONISM OR DIE !

Ok thanks to a lucky molotov I manged to clean the "harbour" and keep broderick alive, I shut down the MP and got Bilocation . . . and I'm still fucked because their is way too much critters including 2 uber beetles around the cargo

Strangely now deaf critters so I can't have them to leave the area using a grenade/pyrokinesis.

Just bullshit. Stupid plain retarded bad Underrail design at it's finest. Thanks Styg.

[TheAverageGortsby]

COMPLETIONISM OR DIE !

After my own heart, I see.

Strangely now deaf critters so I can't have them to leave the area using a grenade/pyrokinesis.

Well, premeditation will let you tag anything that's at the edge of your sight radius, or if you don't have premeditation for some reason cryokinesis has a very long range.  So run over, tag one, and run back.  Probably fewer than all of them will follow. If you've set mines and got grenades, you can safely pull them back and kill them one by one.  Stay on the landing, keep the big beetles locked down, and Broderick will both be helpful and survive.  You can bandage him up between the fights.  It's just a matter of pulling well. 

it would be nice if you could sail back to Junkyard and play the rest of your playthrough without a ferry captain in there, essentially removing fast travel from Junkyard and cutting off access to Silent Isle without a jetski.

Can you imagine Gorsky's reaction to that, though?  There'd be nothing to influence Junkyard away from total Protectorate control.  He'd lose his mind.

Then, later, you could get him to recommend Dan as a replacement boat captain.  Foundry got boring after the mine kerfuffle was resolved, so you can get Gorsky to recommend lazy old Dan to take over that - actually quite economically important - job.
"Man, why would I want to go run a boat service when I can just stand here and watch nothing happen?"
"Dan, you could be your own boss.  And who knows, maybe there would be pirates to shoot at sometimes?  You'd make better money than you do here.  And if a customer tries to stiff you, you can punch him and drop him into the lake."
"...you had me at punching random people."

[Dieusama]

Industrial bot + triple 40 hp regenerating Death Stalker . . . Thanks, door that let me close/open thee for 30 min to regen my Premeditation ! What an interesting fight !

The archetype of badly done """"""hardcore""""""" difficulty.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Industrial bot + triple 40 hp regenerating Death Stalker . . . Thanks, door that let me close/open thee for 30 min to regen my Premeditation ! What an interesting fight !

The archetype of badly done """"""hardcore""""""" difficulty.

Oh, that little fight?  Why wouldn't you just lay down molotovs, and keep the Death Stalkers incapacitated so they stay stuck in the fire?  DoTs don't break incapacitation.

You know, your complaints are more and more showing that you don't understand how to play the game, not that the game is bad. You're obviously playing Psi, so here's how to do that fight.

Sneak/walk to near door and open it.  Cryo on kamikaze bot.  Noise pulls Death Stalkers and industrial bot+plasma sentries.  EMP to stun the bots while the stalkers get closer.  Molotov.  Force Field to protect you when the EMP wears off so that all the enemies end up standing close around you. Premeditate.  Force field drops - molotov, EMP, flashbang.  TK Punch if a death stalker resists.  Skip a turn.  Molotov, Locus of Control, Mental Breakdown.  Step inside room, close door.  Open+close on your turn. When Breakdown wears off, open, adrenaline, molotov, EMP, flashbang.

Fight's over but the cleanup.

[Dieusama]

Industrial bot + triple 40 hp regenerating Death Stalker . . . Thanks, door that let me close/open thee for 30 min to regen my Premeditation ! What an interesting fight !

The archetype of badly done """"""hardcore""""""" difficulty.

Oh, that little fight?  Why wouldn't you just lay down molotovs, and keep the Death Stalkers incapacitated so they stay stuck in the fire?  DoTs don't break incapacitation.

You know, your complaints are more and more showing that you don't understand how to play the game, not that the game is bad. You're obviously playing Psi, so here's how to do that fight.

Sneak/walk to near door and open it.  Cryo on kamikaze bot.  Noise pulls Death Stalkers and industrial bot+plasma sentries.  EMP to stun the bots while the stalkers get closer.  Molotov.  Force Field to protect you when the EMP wears off so that all the enemies end up standing close around you. Premeditate.  Force field drops - molotov, EMP, flashbang.  TK Punch if a death stalker resists.  Skip a turn.  Molotov, Locus of Control, Mental Breakdown.  Step inside room, close door.  Open+close on your turn. When Breakdown wears off, open, adrenaline, molotov, EMP, flashbang.

Fight's over but the cleanup.

COUGH*

Sorry, I obviously missed the part where a PSI user must use more grenades than PSI abilities and trick even more the bad IA/design oversights (DoTs don't break incapacitation ! Molotov/flashbang/LoC induced mental breakdown spam ! I'm such a GOOD Underrail player !) even more => So I confirm : stupidly bad """""hardcore""""" difficulty done extremely wrong.

Note that I have NEVER said that Underrail itself is bad :wink:

[TheAverageGortsby]

Sorry, I obviously missed the part where a PSI user must use more grenades than PSI abilities and trick even more the bad IA/design oversights

No, the part you seem to have missed was that Dominating isn't meant to be "facetank, I win" every fight.  I was just giving you the way that requires no luck, and the fewest special abilities so it doesn't much require you have a certain build.  Want a way to handle that with mostly psi?  No problem.

When you pop the kamikaze bot, throw caltrops so you can see the Death Stalkers coming. One EMP for the plasma sentry because you don't want to have to fight through those shields with raw damage. When the stalkers get close to the robots, Premeditate, Psionic Mania, Cryokinetic Orb.  That'll probably kill the Death Stalkers, but if not, follow up with either a Pyrokinesis (if you have Pyromaniac and/or Thermodynamicity) or Electrokinesis (especially if you have Electrokinetic Induction).  Put a ThermoD on the plasma sentry if you feel like it, or Implode the Industrial Bot, but heat and mechanical aren't much help against Industrial Bots on Dominating.  Cryo spam with electro as possible until the bot gets close, Cryo stasis, run to the other side of the hallway, cryo spam + electro.  Eventually it'll die.

Don't want to run back and forth?  Bring a bunch of HE mines, one EMP, and four frags.  Don't want to do any of that?  Figure something else out.  There are lots of ways to win that fight, but if you think you can just run through Dominating relying on raw damage, then the failure really isn't the game.

[Dieusama]

I play PSI and you think I think i intent rely on pure damage ? If it isn't an ad personam . . .

I was just giving you the way that requires no luck

Yeah sure, throwing a lot of grenades with 0 throwing skill surely doesn't involve luck . . .

[Dieusama]

Ho ho ho the arena . . . 400% more health on DOMINATING! (why, I thought it should by 50%, how naive of me), right.

I know you had this conversation on RPG Codex forum epeli, but seriously, that hp bloating looks so amateurish . . .

Carniflex down, meh. Thanks proxied implosion.

[Fenix]

COMPLETIONISM OR DIE !

Haha, classic! That's my fixed idea motto too.

[harperfan7]

Sure is middle school in here alluva sudden.

[Twiglard]

Most damage should break incapacitation, but there is no strict game-mechanical rule to the exceptions. They just try to follow common sense. So while DoTs like poisons and bleeds won't break the effect, being on fire certainly should.

You meanie! That breaks Carni cheese too!

[Sykar]

Since I was railing hard on the codex on this difficulty I'll just throw in my two Stygian Coins:

1.) I call the new difficulty "Autistic" due the damage increase and more importantly the annoying HP bloat which makes bursting even more important since the majority of builds are at risk to die in one round anyway or in just a two or three rounds if they cannot CC/LoS the enemy properly though this depends a little on the numbers, level and gear/skill available to the enemies. On top of the substantial HP increase there is also a significant increase in the amount of enemies, easily tripling or quadrupling effective HP to burn through in many places. I hate this kind of artfificial difficulty already in other games and therefore criticize it here as well.
2.) This leads to what I call cheese tactics are even more invited now like knowing where and in what numbers enemies are and using/abusing Crawler poison caltrops and molotovs even more as a band aid to the absurd numbers in certain areas or on certain quests. In my opinion if a difficulty requires meta knowledge and the abuse of cheese it is a bad difficulty.
3.) The new monsters are cool but far too common. They should be roadblocks or tough encounters to certain optional content not there being dime a dozen of the mill grunts. Furthermore in some places this breaks my immersion completely like the 6 Goliathus beetles near the Hanging Rat. Why? Because they can murderize even high level characters if caught unprepared. This is important since the Hanging Rat does have patrons which implies they go in and out there on a more or less regular basis. Considering the proximity of the beetles to the final cross road leading to the Hanging Rat makes me wonder how come that they have not wiped it out yet. Whats worse beetles are usually found around Mindshrooms yet there are hardly any Mindshrooms if any in that area. Gigantic psi beeltes like those should be more interested in areas which are full of these not mere bridges.
4.) Death Stalker comes too early and many stealth builds can not deal with them without cheesing aka throwing Moltov or Caltrops or Flares around where you assume they are even though your detection has not even begun to pick up on them. It is bad difficulty design if a person has to know where the enemies are in order to deal with them. Certainly there are builds which can deal with them even early on without using what I call cheese but stealth builds can get easily creamed by them even with shields up. On top of their special debuff against medicines and the usual hit and run tactic they deal a very high amount of damage per round. Meeting them before level 10 which is easily possible and worse even in large packs like in Core City if you go through the underground unto the Depot is pretty tiresome.
5.) The AI cannot handle the increased amount of enemies and the new types. The best example is Roderick on Silent Isle. Previously I would very patiently stealth through this section but the absurd amount of critters now makes this approach basically impossible without a lot of save scumming and luck since on top of the increased numbers Roderick has a penchant for attacking the critters on his own and him dying means automatically a reload since you cannot escape from the island without him. What is even more hilariously stupid and immersion breaking that in real time the PSI beetles tend to no use PSI at all and just rush to him in melee. It bums me that the Silent Isle is now basically a combat exclusive area.
Another example are Dan and Saban during the Beast quest. Due to the insane amount of extra spawns they will run out of ammo and run into the Bladelings in melee. What is worse is that Saban's Plasma Sentry is utterly retarded. Far too often does it waste a turn just transforming into a plasma turret dealing no damage at all only to revert back and shooting with its laser cannons anyway. Also it does not really deal any more damage as a plasma turret so I fail to see why it even does that.