Whats wrong with my build? (guns/traps/stealth/temporal)

[Vochysia]

Basically as title.

Everything was fine until after turning in the drill parts (although the full mutants at depot A were really difficult), and then the difficulty completely skyrocketed, with most of the stuff at foundry and rail crossing requiring 10+ reloads to beat or not being possible to do, the dudes quest and kill balor were the quests I tried, and even 1 ironhead can be an insurmountable task due to high armor or dying in one turn when they pop adrenaline. Dunno if maybe I'm supposed to hang around SGS and junkyard longer before going to the other places, but I'm playing on oddity and have grabbed most of the oddities that show up in those area's to exhaustion I think.

Anyways, heres my character:

level 10

str 5
dex 7
agi 8
con 5
per 7
will 5
int 5


60 guns
20 throwing
0 xbow
15 melee

20 dodge
20 eva

55 stealth
24 hacking
59 lockpicking
0 pickpocket
52 traps

50 temporal manip

40 effective level in mech, chem, and bio and nothing in everything else.

My feats are

aimed shot
Psi empathy
suppressive fire
trigger happy
interloper
kneecap shot
quick tinkering
spec ops


I am mostly using a 12.7 harbinger xm sniper and the K&H MP6 paired with using my stealth to set up an array of bear traps mostly and occasional mines and caltrops before opening with aimed shot with my sniper rifle and then killing stuff with burst from smg or the basic temporal damage ability for stuff with high resists. I have not really been able to use my crafting skills much because I never really come across important materials enough, but I really wanted some chemical traps and grenades in my build too if thats possible. My gear is balaclava, insulated overcoat, ninja tabi, and a trappers belt. I have not come across a shield yet but I figure that would help a lot, but I think theres a bigger problem other than that.

[TheAverageGortsby]

In a word: everything.

I know, that sucks to hear. You've got a generalist character, and as a consequence you're not good at anything.  UnderRail really, really rewards specialization.  Your Perception is so low that your Guns skill is poor; your Will is so low that your psi abilities aren't doing any damage; your Inttelligence is so low you can't get good crafting feats; your Dexterity is so low that your AP cost is too high for your SMGs.

If you can bear to do it, you should reroll a new character.  Stats are important in UnderRail, becuase they're the modifier for the skills you use.  You should almost never have an ability score of 5 - that's low, and you're not gonna succeed at anything with a 5 that you wouldn't succeed at with a 3 (your min req. for sniper rifles is one of the few, obvious, exceptions).  So if you're gonna have a low stat, dump it completely and pull those extra stat points back to put into stats that matter.  Your investment in Dodge and Evasion is so low that it's really just a waste of points you could be using elsewhere.  Your 15 points in melee is baffling unless you're working your way toward Dirty Kick, in which case ignore this sentence.  20 points in throwing doesn't make much of a difference.

Your feats are fine, though.  If you did a better job with your stats and skills, you'd be much much better off.

EDIT: Incidentally, if you *do* reroll, you may find that ARs work better as a backup weapon for snipers. You've already got some Strength for your sniper rifle; one more point and you're good with the ARs as well.   Plus,. ARs don't require an additional stat (Dex) like SMGs do, which means you have a whole lot more flexibility in your stat build to get a high Perception - and thus high damage per bullet for both types of gun - and still have enough points to pick up a useful feat or two.  I know it may not feel as good, the idea of toting a sniper rifle and a battle rifle compared to a rifle and a machine pistol at your hip, but to some extent, especially if the game is kicking you in the face, you need to be flexible with your build concept in favor of getting through the game without too much annoyance.

[Vochysia]

I mostly took the psi abilities for slight utility rather than damage, since I like the dilation and wanted contraction eventually, and the CD spell too sometimes gets me out of a pinch, and with kneecap shot I did have a lot of ways to keep people distant.


What kinds of things do you think I should do for stats? I actually really like my sniper a lot more than the SMG but its a very unreliable weapon. I also really want crafting stuff to be good because I really wanted more widespread gas and chemical weapons, and did like being able to sneak around. I just wanted some kind of agent type build and less of a brawler, but with some grenades or traps for when it did come to brawling. And my favorite part of my current build was always the immense utility I had, lots of different consumables or actions I could take for certain situations but a lot of the time there was just insurmountable numbers against me.





The melee and throwing points were a result of me making a character before I had ever played the game, definitely a bad choice after I played for a while but I just decided to stick with my first char till it felt like I could not anymore. I do not mind rerolling.


As of right now I'm thinking of dropping my will down and my dex too most likely, and drop psi stuff. I want to have a bit more Int and perception, but I still don't know if thats enough condensing.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Well, if you're OK with Sniper + AR, then I'd say

6 Str, 7 Dex, 6 Agi, 3 Con, 9 Per, 3 Wil, 6 Int for starting stats. You're gonna want Sprint if you're not using psi, so you need 6 Agi; you're gonna want Grenadier and maybe Quick Tinkering (those of us who've been here a while cry about the QT nerf but it's still very useful even though it's much less god-tier than it once was) so you need 6 or 7 Dex. Eventually you may want Full Auto which would mean you'd have to put one more point into Str, but otherwise you can put your points into Perception and really get that effective Guns skill way up there.  Gun Nut as a perk is a little underwhelming so I'm not suggesting 7 Int, but if you really want it, you can just slip one point from Per (or Dex if you didn't want QT) into Int.  6 Int, though, lets you get Armor Sloping - if you think you might want to wear metal armor - and/or Ballistics.  You're still going to have to sink a lot of points into crafting, but with housing bonus, Hypercerebrix, and Under Pie, you can make just about everything you could possibly want with 90 Mech, 100 Elec, 38 Chem, 80 Bio, and 85 Tailor (that's real points invested - it'll yield effective scores of 141 Mech which'll make you plated super steel armor, 157 Elec in case you find really really high quality shield generator parts, 69 Chem for mk.IV genades and mines, 131 Bio for Super Soldier, and 132 Tailor for 160+ quality vests).  That'll still leave you enough points for Hacking, Lockpicking, Guns, Evasion, Stealth, Mercantile, Traps, Throwing, and still have a few points left over.  That, to me, seems like a pretty viable build - and I've played builds close to that before, so it's not a total wild guess.

[Vochysia]

Thank you very much, I will try this.
 

[TheAverageGortsby]

Thank you very much, I will try this.

Whoops, hol' up. I was half on autopilot.  I sort of implied that you should be looking to get your Perception up to like 14 or so - if you're playing Hard or lower, there's no real need to go quite that high. 12 should do you just fine.  10 would really technically be enough, though I hate missing sniper shots and generally go to 11 or 12 myself.  You can afford to put some points in other stats as you see fit, if you like.  The extra damage from the Guns skill bonus of a really high Perception won't be necessary on the lower three difficulty levels, and your hit chance will be just fine with 10-11 Perception.  So you've got a few stat points to spare.

Sorry about that. Hopefully you didn't play a new character to level 20 in the last hour

[Vochysia]

lol ty for clarifying. I'll make sure I keep it in mind.


Out of what you listed though I have to ask: you listed more skills than I have points to put 5 in at every level, so like what ones are the important ones? I ended up deciding the crafting skills, throwing, merc, stealth and traps don't need the +5 every level, but if it wasn't apparent already, I'm very new to this game, so I'm not really sure which ones are actually important beyond the opinions I've formed from my precursory playthrough with my noob build, so I figured I'd ask.

[TheAverageGortsby]

you listed more skills than I have points to put 5 in at every level, so like what ones are the important ones?

Usually you should max out your main combat skills every level; so in your case, Guns. Early on, you probably want to invest moderately heavily into Hacking, Lockpicking, Stealth, and Traps until you get to whatever maximum you plan to use.  That way, you can hack and unlock mostly everything you find - and Stealth & Traps are checked against enemy detection, so it's best to get those points in early.  If you intend to use Persuasion, you should get to 30 effective skill reasonably quickly if you want the easy quest resolution in Junkyard.  If you're going for Grenadier - and it's a very very powerful feat so if you've got the stats and like using grenades, absolutely go for it - you should put 30 points into Throwing fairly early on, too.

Then, you can pick up some light crafting - some Chemistry and  a touch of Tailoring so you can make grenades and incendiaries, maybe a little Bio so you can whip up your own Advanced Health Hypos/Adrenaline Shots and also reduce those heavy biological tissues like Intestines and Crawler Stingers into their valuable and much lighter refined products.

Finally, somewhere around level 14-16 or so, you should have your world manipulation skills - that is, your hacking, lockpicking, persuasion, intimidation, traps, stealth, and pickpocketing (the skills that let you interact with the world to get more options) - near the max values you intend to have them at.  Now it's time to start going heavily into crafting, and Mercantile if you intend to use that skill.  There's still a lot of game left by the time you get to level 14-16, so you're going to have a lot of merchant inventory restocks to look at to find really good high quality items.  Once you get through Core City and get your very own house and start to really get the basement area set up nicely, you're going to want to be able to craft some good late-game gear.  For your character, pick up Mechanics first so you can make yourself some good guns ASAP once you get through Depot A and start encountering merchants with high-quality parts for sale.

[Ravager]

That reminds me. Who sells Under Pie?