Crawlers / Death Stalkers

[len]

I am at a loss on what to do against them, that's the reason why I made an account here to ask people what they do against them. Running a melee sledgehammer build, currently level 13 - stats are 13/3/6/10/3/3/5, as for skills I leveled melee, evasion, lockpicking, hacking, mechanics, electronics, biology and tailoring, my feats are Conditioning, Recklessness, Sprint, Pummel, Vile Weaponry, Thick Skull, Guard and Taste for Blood. Have a good Tungsten sledgehammer equipped with a solid metal armor. I'm stacked up on torches but they literally don't do anything, I can throw them around all day but they don't detect anything, they stab me and they vanish even if I sit at the top of the thrown torch. I have motion detection goggles with 75,25% increased detection and a low frequency shield (which gets drained in the end anyways)  but they don't seem to be helping at all, it's so frustrating. I never have enough AP to walk around and find them in time, and even if I do they just vanish into the ceiling the second I spot them, not to mention the ridiculous amount of dodge they have meaning most of my attacks don't even connect. Is running literally my only option against them? Help.

[destroyor]

Which difficulty setting are you playing on?

In general you need incendiary grenades, caltrops (Crawlers are immune to poisons so use regular version) against Crawler/Death Stalkers. You will also need taser/flashbang/throwing net to bring their dodge down to zero if you are having trouble w/ accuracy. One strategy I like to use is to light everything on fire using incendiary grenades and leave a single "safe" path (one tile path that's not on fire, use wall to block the other side) in turn based mode. The crawlers/Death Stalkers will attempt to walk on the "safe" tiles so you can use mp to bump them out of stealth by walking back and forth on these "safe" tiles. You can watch your combat feed + caltrops on the ground and throw grenades/flares to bring them out of stealth.

Running away is also another option. They don't really drop anything good unless you are farming crawler stinger for meds.

Forgot to mention: you might want to consider crafting a TiChrome hammer and use tabi + lifting belt as this will allow you three attacks per turn without the use of adrenaline.

[len]

I am playing on Normal difficulty, I haven't tried the incendiary grenades or caltrops thingy, will try that. Can I use caltrops while being in combat? Also I tried using tazer on a Death Stalker and he was immune, if I remember correctly. Can't remember if regular crawlers were immune to stunning from it. I am using the lifting belt with pig leather tabis, but the dazed effect hurts me so much, I barely manage to find one and I'm all out of AP already.

[destroyor]

Yes you can use caltrops while being in combat. You can manually enter combat by pressing the "ENTER" key.

I'm not 100% sure but I don't think Death Stalkers are immune to taser. What probably happened was it "resisted" the stun (see http://www.underrail.com/wiki/index.php?title=Fortitude#Defense).

Again if you are not farming for their stinger running, if possible, is the best option. If you do want to take them on run to a corner, manually enter combat, set your surrounding on fire and leave a "safe" path, use caltrops for extra detection. Flashbang is your safest bet to bring them out of stealth; throwing net is pretty good if you have high effective throwing skill; taser should be use as a last resort. Note you might not have enough utilities slots so you might have to swapped or equipped during combat for 50AP.

[len]

Alright, I will try your suggestions, and  thank you for the tips. 

[SubterminalOptimization]

I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned here but if you *know* there are Death Stalkers ahead, setting several bear traps to make a wall (outside of combat) and waiting for them to come to you (or throwing a grenade or using TNT to attract them) is basically a 100% autowin.

This may be considered cheesy but it's definitely not an exploit or bug or anything like that.

In all of my runs I have always used bear traps unless I absolutely had to use a flashbang or something else "dynamic" (but that's very unusual).

Also, if you have the Intimidating "Yell" feat that is almost literally a sonar for scorpions and makes it probably 5x easier to find/kill them consistently.

[destroyor]

He's playing a hammer user so he doesn't have quick tinkering and likely wouldn't be carrying any bear trap. But yes, you are right bear traps are very effective vs. crawlers/death stalkers. Yell ... not so much due to the long cooldown.

[TheAverageGortsby]

I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned here but if you *know* there are Death Stalkers ahead, setting several bear traps to make a wall (outside of combat) and waiting for them to come to you (or throwing a grenade or using TNT to attract them) is basically a 100% autowin.

Yeah but there are a bunch of tools that you can use if you've got metaknowledge.  I know you haven't played much psi yet, but my favorite example of meta breaking the game is that Force Field reveals hidden units anywhere.

[Sykar]

Just another example as to why Death Stalkers need some extra tuning.

[Ronin]

Alright. just to be clear, I registered just to whine about death stalkers.

 I don't know why people don't just flat-out say what they think. Afraid someone on the internet would call you noobs or what? Sure, the game is supposed to be hard. I get that, it's not your everyday ho-hum game where you just max one stat and kill everything with one click of the mouse. But is it supposed to be stupid hard, like in a stupid way? Be honest here, did any of you beat death stalkers the first time you met them in each area where they lurk? Like anyone, ever? I bet not. So the only way to beat them is basically "save scumming" after you know they're coming for you. There are no telltale signs for their presence(red dream mushrooms aren't always around), no hints about their weaknesses (if they actually had any), nothing. You're left with just some tips on the forums and a your best friend F9 to help you beat them eventually when they run out of luck under your blind bombardment.
  I'm playing on hard and the first time I met a stalker I got crit'ed right off the bat for 160 damage (before reductions), which is a-freaking-lot at level 13. Then when I found out I can't heal I said to myself "oh ok, antidote it is then"... nope not an option either. Then I used a molotov to try to reveal it while at the same time cutting it off. Of course it wasn't there because it has crazy stealth MP. So I thought I was safe for the stun duration, tried to wait it out but the damn thing actually appeared next to me again. Turned out they crawl on the ceiling pipes or something... Not sure how that goes together with you trying to detect it when it's nowhere in your 2D plane. Long story short, eventually I used the best way to deal with a death stalker, namely caltrops+flare(or any other aoe) the moment you see they stepped on it. Just when I said to myself "well, at least they're beatable when you know they're there", 2 more appeared +1 crawler, one of them critting me. End of story.
 So... I ask the devs, how do you beat 3 death stalkers+1crawler at level 13 without reloading till you meet them 1 by 1? Is this the "hard" you were aiming for? Hard to load into the right situation? And this is just one of the over the top enemies. How about those machinegun auto-turrets at level 8-9? Unless you hack them, I'd like to see you dispatching them with a melee character. 5 bullet bursts with 60% armor penetration and each bullet hits twice. Not to mention the increased mechanical threshold.

This way of making a game more difficult isn't challenging, it's frustrating and annoying because no matter how smart you are or well equipped your character is, you still depend on the right circumstances and anticipating your enemies.
 

[TheAverageGortsby]

Be honest here, did any of you beat death stalkers the first time you met them in each area where they lurk? Like anyone, ever? I bet not. So the only way to beat them is basically "save scumming" after you know they're coming for you.

how do you beat 3 death stalkers+1crawler at level 13 without reloading till you meet them 1 by 1? Is this the "hard" you were aiming for? Hard to load into the right situation? And this is just one of the over the top enemies. How about those machinegun auto-turrets at level 8-9? Unless you hack them, I'd like to see you dispatching them with a melee character. 5 bullet bursts with 60% armor penetration and each bullet hits twice. Not to mention the increased mechanical threshold.

I did die the first time I got ambushed by Crawlers, but every group after that I was able to handle, without prior knowledge.  There are lots of environmental clues.  Part of UnderRail is being good at combat, but part of it is being good at reading what's around you and making good decisions based on that.  So, yeah, on Hard and even on Dominating, Crawlers/Death Stalkers aren't too much trouble.

Use traps and grenades.  Simple bear traps, which require 0 skill, are super useful against crawler-types.  Molotovs are amazing.  And if you're playing on a high difficulty setting, then when you come to an area where there are skeletons laying around, maybe pay a little extra attention.  You don't need optimal placement, you just need to use all the tools at your disposal.

Turrets are pretty easy - the only real threat is that they can often see you and ruin your sneaky surprise plans.  But every single turret that you could possibly encounter by level 9 (unless you're holding on to levels like SubterminalOptimization in his challenge games) is placed where there's an easy LOS break.  So while it's slow, if you've planned badly enough that you're staring down two auto-turrets and you have no EMPs, no ranged weapons, no psi, and no taser, then you can just dance in and out of LOS and land hits one at a time.  That would suck, but if you come to a fight unprepared you may occasionally need to either run away and come back with what you need, or else accept that you've got limited choices at the moment.  Also, you don't actually need to fight any turrets in the early game, even without stealth.  The one in the Junkyard Mutie map can be run past once you've killed the muties and dogs.  The two in the Depot map with all the dogs can be hacked or you can find a secret passage to bypass them or you can take another route into the back part of that map.  The two in the junkyard map with the robots can be skipped entirely - there's no need for you to ever go in or through that room unless you just want to.  And if you want to, then you're volunteering for whatever trouble they cause.

We could give you more specific feedback if we knew what build you were playing.  Melee, you've hinted?  Is that knives? Sledge? Gloves?

[Twiglard]

Can you detect Death Stalkers on Hard and below? On DOMINATING it's pretty much impossible regardless of goggles used.

[Bruno]

For those early turrets, even a melee character can pick up a ranged weapon and shoot at them, they are not very good at dodging.
So in a pinch, use any sniper rifle that you can find, they outrange the turrets. Better, use an energy weapon, and duck in and out of cover to fire it.

[Fenix]

Can you detect Death Stalkers on Hard and below? On DOMINATING it's pretty much impossible regardless of goggles used.

You definitely can, you just need high Perception,better if Paranoia and high level.
On Impossible I can see their silhouette quickly, so I can threw molotov, flare or Coocked Shot e.g. at them.

There is a trick - to see them first you need to detect them from as far as possible range, if your stealth is bad, and for Death Stalkers any stealth is bad.

[Ronin]

How about those machinegun auto-turrets at level 8-9?

You can avoid most of the Depot A turrets if you can't hack or kill them. The ones you really need to get rid of are close enough to cover to deal with them in pure melee fashion.

The ones that are hard to avoid are the 2 on the acid dogs map and the one in the corner of a corridor right beneath that area. I'm not sure what you mean by "pure melee fashion" but the hit-and-run strategy doesn't seem feasible with a 3 AGI character. If you came from the south side of the map like I did you'll need to deal with the dogs behind the turrets first too.

Someone suggested shooting a gun but that would take forever. Sniper rifles aren't exactly common, especially this early.
As for sneaking, don't see how that helps but that's not an option for my character either.

But where on hard difficulty do you need to beat 3 death stalkers + 1 crawler simultaneously at level 13? It's probably a side area or higher level quest you should return to later if you can't handle it yet. Or maybe it's easier to deal with them one by one than you think. The way I imagine your situation, it sounds like you were killing them with a silent weapon and relying on blind luck that nearby roaming crawlers don't come near enough to see what's happening. Were there any doors you could have closed? Other points of entry? Chokepoints for laying traps?

  It was near Rail Crossing and might have been an area for higher levels but how does one even tell that? That's one of the issues I have - I like the freedom but at the same time players have no way of telling they're in over their heads. At least a visible enemy level would be nice, if not their stats. After all there's a map near SGS that's teeming with death stalkers and crawlers too, and that's the starting area so people don't expect to be ripped to shreads the minute they start destroying rocks in that vicinity. There's also no gradation from one map to the next. One moment you're fighting fodder, the next you're facing 10 ironheads in a long tunnel. So what happens is, you see one enemy, attack from afar and you have no idea that you'll be swarmed. So you're forced to F9 all the time just because you have no way of telling what's around the corner and how strong it is. You open a random door, they get the initiative, stun and make a quick work of you. How do you counter that? We need some tools at our disposal.

The way their sting-and-climb-away move works is that they just retreat to a random nearby spot outside your line of sight to restealth.

I'm not sure that's how it works. They seem to disappear right after they hit you, not when you lose sight of them. In any case it's not that easy to find them, especially in big cave maps. I usally just try to bump into them when I don't want to waste resources. If you anticipate they might be lurking around, just show yourself for a second, then run back and forth again. That usually beats their plan to attack you by a millisecond and you get to start the fight. They're rarely alone, so you might as well try to reveal all of them on your first turn.