Should there be more "cleverness" options in Expedition? [SPOILERS]

[Ravager]

I'm only partway through Expedition, but I think that there might have been some opportunities to improve or diversify quest design for characters who explore and are paying attention. I'm finding that in certain Expedition quests, there's too much of a brute-force approach or lengthy sneaking that is encouraged, instead of razor-like simplicity for intuitive players.


Professor Oldfield Quest (infiltration)


For example, in the quest to rescue Professor Oldfield, a smart character not strong enough to take on the pirates may wish to look for backdoors into the hideout. Of course, you can land on the shore and sneak your way into the prison and escape through the manhole.

You can find the manhole exit by exploring the island it exits onto, and using high perception. But you can't climb up the manhole until it is opened from above. What if the hidden doorway on the manhole island was harder to discover, and you had to use all the perception aid that you could? But if you found it, you could just enter that way? Or is that too easy?

If you are being clever, you will explore areas near the pirates in order to find a landing site, and that island is on the way from the expedition base. So it's pretty clever as it is now: you can find the manhole exit point, and from there deduce where the pirate base (and maybe prison) is.

But what if finding the island manhole exit was even trickier, and the reward is you just get to quickly snatch the professor and get out? Since there are so many perception helpers in Expedition (the colony jelly stuff), I feel that the game encourages such an approach. Anyway, this is only a minor point.*


The Horticultural Centre

It seems to me that you have to sneak or blast your way through many insects in order to get into the centre itself [if you lack agility], from where you have to sneak or blast your way through many insects in order to discover a grown-over console that needs to be herbicided in order to use. So you have to go to the storage level and get the herbicide and then use it in that area.

Then, if you didn't kill all the above-ground insect nests, you might want to do that in order to make water navigation easier.

But shouldn't there be a more clever solution for people willing to use the deduction / skill investment? Right now, the pesticide system in the base is non-functioning. But what if you could sneak around, get a part for the system, install and activate it using electronics / hack / mechanical skills? Then, you pesticide everything in the base, getting rid of the insects and the overgrowth, allowing you to complete the mission, and remove all navigation hazards above the base?

Sure, that would reduce the need for stealthing or fighting, but it would reward players who are mentally alert and paying attention. They still would have had to put skill investment into the relevant repair skills, and would still have to find the part, so it wouldn't be an easy thing that just any player could do. But it would be a more "elegant" resolution, and I think that Underrail is built around such elegance.


Nexus of Technology

Right now, you apparently have to blast / sneak your way through all sorts of crabs and stuff, and then go into an unmarked, convoluted spider cave system in order to finally make it to the Nexus of Technology.

But the map indicates multiple entrances, possibly, to the NoT. It's surrounded by the fetid marsh on several sides. Couldn't one of those sides have a hidden entrance that is revealed with the help of the perception jelly and/or accessed through an agility jump? [Maybe it does, but I don't have the agility to test it.]

It looks from the map as if the NoT might have multiple entrances, so the game should reward a curious player by allowing them in from an alternate location.


I know I may be off-base here, but it just seems as if Expedition lacks some of the 'elegance' that was possible in the vanilla game, such as sneaking to the console in GMS compound and getting the raiders killed with turrets, or the possibility of getting so much done in Depot A just by sneaking around and getting certain components and switches.

*
(Alternately, you could find a different island doorway / route that takes you through some nasty obstacles and monsters, or obstacles that have to be repaired / blasted through), but if you do it, it takes you into a ventilation shaft or ceiling from which you can drop down into the prison, and complete that section as normal. Including escaping via the manhole. Imagine a bigger island section where there's a one-way "ingress" into the prison, as well as the manhole "egress.") So there's no sneaking, and maybe even no combat, but some environmental obstacles that you have to deal with.)

[Faeren]

Yeah, I was pretty disappointed that there was no way to use the pesticide to clear the place, I searched exhaustively for the pesticide/fertilizer tanks hoping I could load either up to wipe out the locusts, but as we know they don't exist. Another thing I take issue with is Ray's shop being closed until you join Aegis to go to the Black Sea, I'd like to be able to explore the lower caves on a cheap jetski before going, and I'd also like to be able to join the Grim Jetters without joining Aegis first, switching allegiances out of the blue is a bit of a dick move.

[Ravager]

Yeah, having the jetski earlier would make things more organic. But I don't know how well that meshes for players who haven't bought the expansion. [Since new waterways were added even in the vanilla game]. If they have Expedition, and can get a jetski early, it could throw off game balance, depending on how much extra stuff is available outside of the Black Sea. The expansion assumes that things are basically the same as in vanilla until you reach the Core City questline.

But yeah, overall, it feels as if there's more "brute force" than "finesse" in this campaign. The vanilla game was more rewarding to players who sneaked around, paid attention to lore or surroundings, and found optimal paths through quests that involved a minimum amount of friction.

In Expedition, this would mean:

1. An alternate entrance to the Nexus of Technology from the Fetid Marsh (I've seen other people exploring this area in the hope of getting in). [Getting in should require exploration and high perception, and possibly obstacle-clearing.]

2. Allowing the player to reactivate the pesticide system in the Horticulture centre. [There could be a few clues about this on computers, signs, or notes. Maybe a sub questline involving someone who was trying to repair the system, and you can find the part on his body.].

3. Maybe being able to exploit the manhole exit from the pirate's jail. A one-way entrance to above the jail from that island. You'd need really high perception, but you could find a route in as long as you cleared the way with some TNT / jackhammering and maybe repaired a gate or something. There could be environmental hazards, too.]

I'm not the only one saying that the Expedition campaign seems to be preferring brute force over razor-like elegant solutions. There's now a thread on Steam:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/250520/discussions/0/1644295532471361294/

Sombrelune  has Underrail 24 Jul @ 11:26am     
I'm agi 10 but i'm stuck with the puzzle in.
I can go back and find a way if u help me after to solve the puzzle in, i realy need a real english speaker it seem and i start to be deseperate :x

So we have a deal ?

Its not through fetid marsh. Go east from the entrance to the facility, navigate through the caves.
Bring enough supplies, kinda long trip lol.

Thank you. I managed to get through the skillcheck by combining some items and consumables. Just for the sake of it I did go through the backway and, yeah, I have to say that feels like a really weird change since usually the side paths aren't that horrifically long but that was just over the top.

you didnt use that agility 10 skillcheck did you? I been searching thru the caves and I see no way thru outside of that skillcheck, and there is no way I can reach the required amount with items

tried to go thru basalt caves thinking it would loop around at some point but I just get a dead end with a ♥♥♥♥ ton of crabs

EDIT: seem to have found it.... had to go just a tiny bit further thru lots of spiders. Leaving this note here for anyone else having the same confusion.

That wrap around seems completely awkward. Long and resource consuming. Especially that it leads you away from nexus. By the way, a lot of agility checks around that nexus. DLC feels strange, a lot of grind through encounters like hives, crabs and respawning serpents/wyrms for which u cant even be prepared and if your initiative is low ur screwed.

Hilariously, I used well over 400 rounds of 8.6mm, at least 50 rounds of 5mm, and a few magazines worth of 8.6mm AP, as well as some grenades and napalm, in order to clear out the Crabs > Spiders > Nexus quest. Plus about 10-12 advanced repair kits. And about 30 small batteries. And that was after I had visited the crab area already, blasting all the wildlife.

[Ravager]

I finished the campaign. I stand by most of my earlier statements.

-It would be neat to have a high-perception-only entrance to the "escape island" from the Rescue Oldfield quest, in which you can take a one-way route into the prison cell where the manhole is. It would reward players who search around for alternate entrances into the pirate prison, and require use of perception items such as the nest jelly or Third Eye.

-There really are too many nests and bugs. I don't remember having to blast through this many enemies in the vanilla campaign. Sneaking is a pain, although it can mostly be done. You'd have to bring a lot of TNT to sneak / clear the nests in the horticultural centre and the Fetid Marsh.

It just feels like a time-sink, which is clumsy.

-More important, there really should be a quest to reactivate the pesticide system. It feels like the bones of the quest were already there, and it's something that would have been included in the vanilla campaign.

-It would be nice to have an entrance to the Nexus of Technology from the Fetid Marsh. It would be a hidden entrance that would require high perception. You might have to dynamite it, too.

Overall, the expansion was basically what I expected. Many new monsters and weapons, many new maps, new skill trees, a fast travel system, and new lore. But I felt that the design of the main quests in the campaign was a bit too streamlined, and could have used some more care and attention to detail.

I also felt that the Expedition campaign felt superfluous to the main campaign (which is to be expected in an optional expansion). The whole Lemurian situation was almost more comical than tragic, since they were so woefully unprepared for Biocorp. We don't learn a lot about Biocorp's motivations, such as why they didn't bother to stick around and loot, why they didn't try to capture Lemurian scientists and tech, why they didn't seem to know or care much about underwater facilities.

The main players in vanilla Underrail, such as Azif and Six and some others seem pretty blase about the whole affair, too. You'd think Azif could offer more than 2K for the AcoNR. At least he tells you what it is. Oldfield basically says, "see you in North Underrail!" and that's it.

So there's a large quantity of bonus content. But it has little bearing on the main quest. And this is an issue, because I think the lore associated with the main quest (Godmen, Leviathans, Six, Tanner, and stealing an unknown device from the mysterious Faceless) is more compelling than the tragedy of the lost civilization of Lemuria. You do learn about a whole other corporation, and how and why people were establishing themselves after the surface was becoming uninhabitable. In fact, it establishes that the game is seeming taking place on Terra, which was not really established in the vanilla game.

But the vanilla campaign is based on the clash of these powerful forces, and you and Underrail at the nexus of that clash, with the Faceless as an actor bringing that forward. It's not resolved by the end either, which is the setup for Underrail 2. So, even though Expedition talks about monoliths and the Godmen and such, it just wasn't lively and foregrounded in the way that it was in the vanilla quest. The intrigues of old / new Biocorp and its successors, and the secret entities of Underrail is more compelling. Not that an archeological dig can't be fun. But it felt a little more railroaded and enemy-crowd-focused. [You could play as a full stealth character, hardly even seeing your enemies, more easily in the vanilla campaign.]

[Faeren]

Kinda hoping it gets smoothed out/gradually expanded in future updates, I loved the map artwork of Lemurian structures, Dude's new quests, rifts, and the new feats/weapons/etc. But as you've stated the main quest in the Black Sea feel pretty lackluster and have pretty limited encounter variety, both in enemy compositions and general options given to the player. To top it off there's not much to explore, the vanilla game has Lower/Upper Caves/Underrail and a few other small areas such as Drop Zone that the player can explore, Fetid Marsh, Native areas and Ceto (if the player doesn't join the pirates) are huge slogs of constant combat with poor pacing, so the only thing worth doing in the Black Sea is the main questline, and maybe grabbing materials from snakes and bison if you want the new poisons/armors/etc. The waterways have a few things you can find but are mostly empty.

[Ravager]

Yeah, Expedition seems to be a good candidate for "gradual smoothing / expanding."

The encounter design is a major weakness, as 2 types of crabs or 2 types of spider or 1 type of robot is not as diverse as the random lunatics you'd run into in Underrail. And a number of crowd encounters are forced, since the robots pop up when certain triggers are met, even if you stealthed the area.

The devs had a lot to do to put out the expansion, including retrofitting stuff to the base game. I liked the new map icons for Lemuria too, but you can see that the devs had to build that whole map system in preparation for Expedition, and fit it to the vanilla game. And they had to add jetskis and jetski mechanics, figure out new water pathways in the base game, add new weapon classes, a new psi class, a whole new bestiary and design aesthetic for Expedition, and so on.

So I think quest and encounter design took a hit in that giant and ambitious process.