Psy Hybrid upgrade.

[Alenvire]

So right now I am a level 7 SMG build with mechanics maxed, chemistry maxed, and 10 tailoring so that I can make my own weapons, and grenades. Full points in Guns, Throwing, Mechanics, chemistry, mercantile and persuasion. 40 in hacking and lockpicking (stole 5 from each for the 10 tailor) My stats are 7str 7dex 6agi 3con 8per 3wil 7int. Feats are Trigger happy, suppresive fire, gun nut, grenadier, and full auto. I am now at the point where I can take hits and destroy groups of lunatics and dogs.

So, I want to dabble in Psionics from this point forward. Basically getting 60 in temporal manipulation as a utility psionic Hybrid. For Those more experienced in the game, is this do able or would it just fail hard?

My thought was for 2 levels put nothing else in anything except guns and temporal till I get 60 temporal (for the 2 feats for Future Orientation, and Psycho Temporal Acceleration) using a temporal psyband to up my effective level because of the low wil, Then focus on getting my Persuasion back up (gotta keep this near max due to low will) then throwing, mechanic and chemistry up probably in that order. Mercantile hacking and lockpicking would fall a little behind. I planned to only take mercantile to 50 anyways, and I could start taking hacking and lockpicking up shortly after.

At level 8 I plan to grab commando, then 10 psycho temporal acceleration, and 12 future orientation. My goal would be to use Psycho-temporal dilation and contraction along with increment to give me 3 bursts (or 2 for the heavier hitting SMG's) and lessen the AP of my enemies sometimes. Increment would be helpful for health hypo's and for grenades. I know the weakness would be my Psy point regen. But, its really just for first or second round buffing and the odd debuff. The major hurt here will be my Low health with the 3 con. I 'could' offset this by putting my stat points into Con from this point on. Won't be great but would help.

Any comments or suggestions on how to make this work with the level 7 I have? Your welcome to say it will be bad, but ways to make it work would be much appreciated.

If you think this would work, would you recommend waiting till level 9 to start pushing points onto temporal? so that I would get Psycho temporal acceleration and contraction both at level 10?



***EDIT I could also put a point in con to offset the hps lost a little and a point in will so that I would not need a temporal psy headband to offset the loss from willpower. What do you all think?

[TheAverageGortsby]

You don't need to worry about your effective score if all you're using TM for is buffing yourself. None of the buffs except Precognition scale, and you're not going to have enough TM to ever really want to use Precog, anyway.  To learn abilities, you need base score; effective skill only modifies the effect of abilities which scale by skill.

Don't bother with CON. Your stats are a mess as it is, and you need to put points into Dexterity (and maybe Perception, depending on your difficulty - if you're on Normal or Easy, 8 Per is actually fine) so you can make use of the real power of SMGs - a whole crazy lot of bullets every turn.  The difference between 3 CON and 6 CON isn't significant enough to really change your play style - you need to be careful and you need not to tank.

You can probably stop putting points in Throwing already. At level 7 that's 45 points, and if you get 10+ Dex for the AP reduction on your SMGs, your effective Throwing will be high enough to be very reliable.  That'll free you up a little bit as you branch into TM psi.

Try to find 25 points for Psychokinesis. You're gonna love Force Field.

[HulkOSaurus]

You're probably playing on a lower difficulty. If you find it easy already, why not try a higher one?

As for taking Temporal Manipulation... well, personally I don't like it, because you're sacrificing max hp to get something that is available to a highly dedicated SMG character, i.e., lot of SMG bursts per turn. There will be other spells that will benefit you, sure, but that 3 base Con speaks to me. A dedicated Psi character with 3 base Con would fare better, for example, because they'd have more tools available. But it seem the difficulty is low enough that it won't affect you that much, so you might as well go for it .

[Alenvire]

Thank you for your replies. I am playing on normal difficulty with .... non oddity exp. Whatever they called that. To be fair, the only reason I am finding it easy is because I used grenades to kill a guy that none of my guns could scratch even after multiple loads. The armor he had was mechanical 9 thermal 7 cold 3 with 200% vs guns. The real threat right now is what seems to be a standard bad guy group. 2 psy, 1 is a brawler type, 3 dogs and a gunner. The gunner is usually nothing with that armor. Small damage. The dogs are annoying but easy to put down. Its the 2 psy's that give me trouble. Usually its a grenade opener, find a safe place, grenade again and burst them down. I say easy, but, really I just meant Doable with the right tactics. Between high end HE, Frag, Incendiary, and flashbangs, I have a grenade for every situation. This last group I mentioned was a optional area for me to kill off. I cleared them right after I finished the GMS. I fought the burrowers? for awhile but realized it would take so many resources it was not worth staying (and I may have gotten overwhelmed quickly if I stayed). Loaded my earlier save and walked away.

I did consider doing force field but figured I would scrounge up the 25 at some point later. As for not bothering with con, I looked up Dexterity early on and realized that the sweet spots vary based on the SMG. I figured I would get my dex to 8 or 9 based on which SMG i'm using and find that I need for the bonus. And then using the veteran feat to up the dex more to hit the next tier from there. It felt more like a late game tactic due to needing the right mods. Namely the reloader. Right now I have the 7 due to a misreading of the SMG stats when I first started. My current plan is aiming for a steel cat with rapid re loader and muzzle break. If it works that way with full auto its 9 rounds per burst, at a base of 13 AP which at 8 Dex its 11 AP. With the Veteran level goal being a 11 Dex for 10 AP. And only 200% AP cost for a burst from commando.

However, knowing now that effective level does not matter for what I want it to do, then I can still ignore wil. I do feel like perception is great for damage, but, at some point my % to hit will be high enough (on normal) that I don't know if I really need more perception. I am still a bit iffy on whether or not to leave con at 3 even with adding psy. I am at comfortable HP's at the moment but it can go bad fast with a bit of bad RNG. Which is why I considered offsetting the HP loss a little with a point or 2 in con as I level.

Assuming that everything's synergies work, Temporal contraction would be 3 burst fires with a 8.6 steel cat at veteran levels, 9 rounds per burst, And a adrenaline shot would allow up to 4 bursts. Before then I could use the 1 less burst AP leftovers for my grenades.

I would need 1 dex soon for the 11 AP cost. Then the veteran feat plus 1 more Dex for 11 dex total. (I assume veteran levels are only obtainable after beating the game and exporting to start over) Though if there is consumables I can use to take a 8 dex to 11 that would work too.

*** EDIT If any of this is incorrect or you disagree with my reasoning I would love to know. Or if you think I am not focusing enough on some aspect or don't know something about underrail feel free to let me know. This is my first character and I am enjoying the game so far. I have stayed spoiler free other then reading info about how exactly some things work, what feats there are, and some of the builds here. For example I don't know if there is a huge difficulty spike coming, or if I just have a false sense of safety right now just because of that armor.

[Alenvire]

Also, I plan to have a second SMG that will use the jaguar 5mm with silencer and rapid reloader. Right now I have one with a silencer and front grip till my gun skill is higher.

On throw, it still increases damage as I add more points (or is that just throwing knives I don't use?), and periodically I still have wild throws. As a core feature of the build would you really stop it at 45?

[HulkOSaurus]

You should aim for 123 effective Throwing to reduce the offset in grenade throws as much as possible. You don't get extra damage on grenades with increasing the Throwing skill, unless you take Three-Pointer. Throwing Knives are a different beast.

If you want to go Psi, go for it, man .

Do check the Commando feat which will give you a free burst if you kill an enemy with a burst. In that case you could also craft the heaviest possible SMG and just use it on free bursts.

With SMGs in general you'd do well to have as much Dex as you can spare.

If you have difficulty with Psi enemies, why not fish for Black Dragons and extract their poison? You can make Inhibition Throwing Knives out of those, which will also benefit from your Dex, Throwing and Per stats.

For Accuracy, I think 8 Per will be enough, although Per always increases damage dealt, so it's up to you to decide. There are foods and effects which increase the stat, so you can make use of those.

[Alenvire]

Thanks again! This is a lot of good info. I will have to look up how much biology black dragon extracts cost. And yah, I agree with all of you. I increased my Dex when I hit level 8 last night. I have yet to pick up the psychic abilities, just slowly putting points into it. Waiting for level 10 where I will swallow the red pill, then level up taking a temporal feat, and by then I will have put 60 points into the temporal skill.

**EDIT What shields does everyone use? I was thinking of grabbing a high frequency. Two things tend to hurt the most, melee, and big rifles. Crossbows can be pretty bad but that's mostly the special bolts. And, from what I have read most things negate a lot of the energy shield at the melee level, so I figured focusing on rifles. Anyone agree or have another suggestion?

[HulkOSaurus]

Double Low Emitter will give you the highest absorption for melee and crossbows, while also negating pretty much all the HE/Frag grenades. To tank a Sniper round you'd need a proper anti-bullet Overcoat and a Morphine Shot, possibly Aegis chem because of your 3 Con. As an added bonus that will also stop all other bullets except for a Hammerer Pistol Aimed shot and Juggernaut Gatling even without shields on.   

[Alenvire]

Cool, I don't know enough to understand what you mean by the shields yet, but, I am sure I will figure it out as I level. Right now I found my first 'medium' in a shop.

Hopefully with only being normal difficulty I can actually take a sniper rifle round... If not I am scared. I suspect I will stick with the anti bullet overcoats for the rest of my playthrough. I considered riot armor but I like that most low damage pistols and smg's do virtually nothing to me. With flashbangs and later force fields and my other temporal effects I hope to limit how often people spend face time with me. I looked at my build, and tested it at mid and high levels. It looks like after awhile a lot of free points start to show up. Will be able to branch out into electronics and tailoring, and later biology. Here is to hoping your two's advice makes it possible to use my concept and succeed.

[HulkOSaurus]

When you craft Shield Emitters you have the option of putting in Low, Medium or High frequency modules. You can make any combination, or double Low Frequency Shield Emitter which will absorb more in the Low/Medium projectile speed which are all the melee attacks and crossbow bolts, ect.

[Alenvire]

Ok, so a low will still absorb some of the damage from other weapons like the AR? I ask because explosives, snipers, and AR are all considered high shields. Or am I missing something?

[HulkOSaurus]

Any shield will absorb across all frequencies. Low frequency modules will increase the absorption for melee/crossbows but will still give you a decent one for guns.