finally starting! unusual build? (bow, stealth, thermics, persuasion+intimidat)

[drealmer7]

Well, I started and played through junkyard a couple times a while ago, but then have been waiting to play (and start over) - waiting for the expansion.  I had a thread before this 'builds' subsection, about the sort of build I have been planning to play with, but figured I'd come over here with it.

Now that the expansion is here!  and I can begin!  (I am going to wait until a couple more patches before I allow myself get to mid-game, but, will get the beginning going!)

this is the sort of build I'm going for, will tweak a bit as needed and I level beyond this.  I'm not sure what the max skillcheck reqs are with expansion, so I might be able to slip some points into chemistry or do higher mechanics (not sure how high I need to make good bows that remain effective to endgame either, so might have to tweak for that) if I can free up some points from persuasion/intimidation or elsewhere that I won't need, chemistry would be nice to have, but I don't want to miss even 1 INT or PERS skillcheck that I might come across in the game.

I'll be playing on normal and have a good amount of experience with this sort of game.

http://underrail.info.tm/build/?EAMGAwMHCwsAAFoAAABaP1YAViwdAAAAAABWAElJACs2ASIewoBrOCjChWrfvw

feedback welcome, though I prefer to avoid too much grief over the choice to go metathermics with the rest of what I have ( :

[TheAverageGortsby]

There just aren't words for how bad this build is.  I hope you're playing on Easy or maybe Normal because this build will set you on a path of failure that you won't even realize until you're so far along that there's no coming back short of rerolling.

Just play, drealmer.  You were on here last year asking for feedback on your builds, and they were always terrible.  You don't listen; you think you know best.  You might!  But we're not going to give you advice you listen to, because you don't want to hear it.  So just play this build.  And when you start getting your face beaten in by every random group of Lunatics and Ironheads you meet, go find a build guide and follow it.

[drealmer7]

Just because you can't articulate very well doesn't mean there aren't words.

Perhaps someone with better knowledge of the game could actually tell me why it is so awful?

it'd go something like

"your build is bad because there are enemies that will be nearly impervious to all crossbow bolt types and also traps and you have no other real damage dealing aside from metathermics which in itself isn't enough to take on those enemies"

or something

the feedback I got last time was also not telling me much of why it's SO bad - I got some decent feedback and tweaked a good bit.  I think part of what had you so upset in the previous thread was that you didn't realize that I was giving a general build - I'm not going to be spending 120 points in intimidation if all I need is 75, etc.  The levels I had my crafting at were without looking much at blueprints to know what levels I'd really need to do certain things, etc., it was just to show "I want a medium-low range for these, I'm not looking to be a crafting master" etc.

My gaming time is extremely limited, and I certainly don't want to get partway through and realize I'm fucked (that should be somewhat difficult to do on normal difficulty, shouldn't it?  1 main weapon type maxxed with some secondary damage dealing and some utility - seems pretty basic)

[drealmer7]

I just started and am wandering around the starting caves - with how horrible this build is, when should I start to notice things just aren't going well and get frustrated with it? 20hrs?

[bati]

Depends how fast you're progressing but yeah, at 20h it should be very clear what's working and what's not. And then remember that things will get 2-3x harder in some spots. And even harder in DC.

Simply put, your build won't work because you're trying to do everything at once. Pick one combat style and stick to it, otherwise you'll have poor main offensive skill scaling, poor base stats (your perception is so low that your ranged hit chance will be too low and will make crossbows frustrating to play), your metathermics will lag behind if you don't invest into at least one more psi school, your crafting skills are too low to be of any real use.

And that's before we even get to feats, of which there are barely enough picks for most builds to fully flesh them out - crossbows are particularly reliant on feats, so you could cut out all the psi related feats to help your ranged combat but then what's the point of picking metathermics in the first place?

UnderRail rewards specialization, there's just no getting around it. Pick one of the main skills:

- guns
- crossbows
- melee

- if psi pick at least two disciplines between meta, psycho and TC, temporal manipulation can stay at 75 as support

Support skills: you won't level these fully, just enough to be comfortable to use and meet feat requirements:

- throwing
- traps (usually an alternative to throwing, rarely taken together)
- temporal manipulation (75)

Regarding stealth, dodge and evasion:

- if full psi you can generally ignore them. Stealth is useful for some quests, but you can get by with crafted gear
- if using heavy armor it goes the same as for psi
- if you're playing with snipers or crossbows you'll want max stealth (for snipe), very good evasion and optionally dodge if you want to pick Uncanny Dodge, otherwise you can ignore it and rely on traps and other means to keep enemies at bay
- if playing light armored melee you'll want all 3

Crafting:

- if playing ranged weapon specialist you'll want good tailoring, mechanics and electronics (NVG goggles, vests, weapons)
- if playing psi you'll want to add biology
- if playing grenadier or trapper good chemistry is useful to have

But above else, you should listen to Gortsby.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Just because you can't articulate very well doesn't mean there aren't words.

Perhaps someone with better knowledge of the game could actually tell me why it is so awful?

Sure.  How about you go re-read the 3-page-long post you started January of last year with a build similar to this.  We gave you tons of feedback on it, and apparently your takeaway was "if I try really hard, I can somehow make this build even worse."

https://underrail.com/forums/index.php?topic=3364.0

I'd be far more patient and detailed if you hadn't chewed through a fair bit of time last year telling us why our advice wasn't what you wanted.  I mean, you even replied to decent feedback with such dismissive words as:

uhh, because it's how I want to try and play the game / what interests me to do / try - I don't want to do sniper rifles, or melee, or pyschokinesis, pyschokinesis is probably the skill tree that interests me the least in the whole game (less than mercantile!)

your suggestion doesn't interest me in the slightest, and if you'd read the thread, you'd know that I'm considering dropping metathermics for this build, if anything, but haven't felt the need to do it with the tweaks

Honestly, you're not giving us much reason to spend time on you once more.

[drealmer7]

The part you are quoting is a response to a guy who didn't have the slightest interest in trying to understand anything and just wanted to push his own build idea.  Like, I clearly want crossbow, and he's suggesting I take up guns and just, do a fundamentally completely different build.

I did go back and read the thread from before - main things I took away were that my metathermics was too weak and I needed more crafting - those are the things I changed

Why did you come into this thread just to be an ass?  you could have just ignored it altogether

[drealmer7]

Honestly, you're not giving us much reason to spend time on you once more.

What would you think about it if I dropped intimidation completely and put those points into higher mechanics+electronics and maybe some chemistry, maybe gave metathermics some more?

[drealmer7]

...

Thanks for your input - what "everything" am I trying to do at once?  I am picking 1 combat style and sticking to it.  My perception is too low you say?  you do notice in the link it's only a level 16 character, right?  What would you recommend it should be for bows at that level?

I understand this means you think I'm spread too thin skillwise.  I'm seriously not a game-idiot, but I really don't see how.  as you say

main skill (1) :

crossbow

support skills (3) :

traps
hack
lock

crafting:

you give your recommendations for crafting
I don't see how me going for crafting bows, special bolts+some extra utility stuff is a bad idea (picking 2 crafting, which seems reasonable) - you say I don't have enough invested to make them worthwhile, but I've looked at the crafting wiki stuff and it seems I should be good if I keep it scaled pretty much how I have it in the link - what am I missing?

most of my feats are stealth+crossbow combat oriented

[bati]

Metathermics is an offensive psi line, it has very little utility (cryo-stasis is nice I guess), so you're essentially duplicating the role of your other offensive skill line, crossbows. My question is, what do you hope to accomplish with this?

And yes I can see you linked a level 16 character (why, exactly?). That still gives you only 2 more stat points and 9 perception just won't cut it for endgame crossbows. You should be _starting_ with 10 and then put at least 4 more points into PER. This isn't like light melee that can attack 10 times per round where a miss barely registers on average dps. With crossbows you'll be shooting twice per round most of the time (assuming you don't go around spamming adrenaline and using cyclone crossbow), so each miss means a 50% lower damage on average.

Components in later stages of the game will require 110+ crafting to assemble. At the very least you should have that in mechanics and especially electronics because of how critical goggles are for crossbows, and high tailoring would be advisable to craft yourself high level stealth gear which will be very useful to you.

I strongly suggest you drop metathermics - you have 3 con, -25% hp penalty from psi empathy and 0 dodge and evasion. UnderRail is too damn good to be turned away from it in frustration because you build didn't work. You can keep Persuasion (110 at max lvl) if you really want (it's quite useful for solving some quests peacefully), but I'd drop intimidate and put the points into mercantile (up to 105 at max lvl) or even enhance some other stats.

And don't take build advice personally, it's just UnderRail is really really good, but also really really niche and also quite peculiar, so we try to help players new to the game with strong builds that will hopefully hook them and keep them coming back. Most of the people who post here regularly have hundreds of hours of playtime, they know what works and what doesn't so if they make a suggestion to adjust your build it's with a good reason, not to spite you.

Out of curiosity, how far did you manage to get into the game? I've seen in the other thread that you have about 30h invested.

[drealmer7]

I forget how far I got in the last time I played through - it was either done + past or mostly done with junkyard ?  I might play now and find it was quite a bit farther, I didn't play tons, I just wanted to play enough to get a feel for different abilities and how the skills worked in the game overall to see what I liked (I was pretty sure I was going to do stealth but until I actually used the system I couldn't be sure, I wanted to make sure I didn't absolutely hate crafting, etc.)

I hadn't run into any problems.  and this time through is even easier

I might take my INT + WILL down to 10 and up the PER for bow damage (I had gone back and forth several times in my initial starts playing through part of junkyard a few times with 10PER or 7PER and didn't care for the difference at all, feel much better using those stat points in dex+will+int boosting)

but then, you ask why another offensive in metathermics - it's because it gives me different damage type/attack options (along with some AoE) and effectively supplants that damage you are saying I'm missing out on from the lower PER xbow, doesn't it? (that's how it has seemed so far in playing, when I encounter an enemy that doesn't get hurt so well by bolts, I use more thermics.)  My will+int are high and thermics is pretty effective so far - add on traps and I barely take a scratch if I am smart when going into combat.

that much crafting?  really?  do I really need the uber-tier crafted goggles?  what exactly am I missing by not being able to?  You know how much I was considering doing zero crafting? hahah

At what level do you think I should start encountering issues?  or with what mobs or at what encounters?

I'm willing to dump 20-25 hours into this build and find it to be a bust and start over, but I am skeptical that it will be.  I have played other 'niche' games (geneforce, Age of Decadence, Arcanum, etc.), and I have been told before that my builds are trash but then either done okay, well, or excellent with them.

I don't take the feedback personally (I take being talked down to or negative karma-d a bit personally, but, it goes away easily enough, given this is the internet and all)

somewhat considering just ditching intimidation and putting those points into thermics+crafting though - as much as I want the 2-prong social skills in 1 build, mayyyybe UnderRail requires too much combat/craft spec for that? (it'd more be crafting, as if my combat is inefficient it's from PER not from lack of skill points/skill point distribution), but I would like to play it this way a while and at least find out before too long if it is (usually in a harder RPG you get indications before tooo long that the build has a problem for whatever reason)

[bati]

At what level do you think I should start encountering issues?  or with what mobs or at what encounters?

The game becomes very non-linear after Junkyard/Depot A, so it will depend on where you decide to go first. There are some sections around Rail Crossing and north towards Core City that will be fairly challenging, lower under passages, plus the better part of the northern lower caves, lunatic areas in upper metro, etc.

The game is huge.

[drealmer7]

At what level do you think I should start encountering issues?  or with what mobs or at what encounters?

The game becomes very non-linear after Junkyard/Depot A...

The game is huge.

yep, I know it ( : mega-huge now with Expeditions!  but I'm looking for specific things where you are thinking "man, you're going to have so much problems with/once you hit _____" so that when I do get to that/those points, I can tell if my build is actually doing okay when you think it is not going to, so I can gauge if it does actually suck (and come back and be like "no, in that encounter I did fine because _____.)

I've been pumped for this game for a long time - putting it off and putting it off waiting for the expansion because playtime is limited (I'll be able to finish it all, no problem, I just almost never replay a large RPG anymore, and if I do replay this, it won't be for many years that I actually finish it a 2nd time, even if a start a 2nd character before finishing with the 1st.)

[bati]

It's been a while since I played on normal but I remember early burrower encounters (levels 10-12) being somewhat annoying on my crossbow character on hard difficulty.

It's hard to point to a single encounter once you're familiar with the game because there are ways to cheese most of them if needed.

[drealmer7]

thanks

I'll check back when I hit level 14 if I'm able to without notable difficulty (well either way, I'll let it be known.)  No idea how long that will be, playing is intermittent, I hope to be able to get back to it tonight for a handful of hours though.