New, using a Psi Build. Having a hard time?

[AncientToaster]

I'm using the Tranquility Psi build from this forum and I'm paying on Normal. New player and using Oddity.

What am I doing wrong? I am getting slaughtered by the Rathounds in the early cave areas. If I'm in Stealth mode I will walk around a corner and get instantly spotted and three or four of them will rush me and if I'm out of flares I'm basically dead meat, since I only have around 70 HP due to 6 Con and taking Psi Empathy.

I couldn't find any armor to wear prior to leaving the base so I had nothng essentially and was getting hit for 8 or 9, often critted for over 10 three times and just having a bad time.

I was using a Temporal Manipulation spell that adds a debuff that does damage after it runs out, the Psi Punch and Neural Overload or something like that, but I was running out of Psi often during a fight with more than one Rathound. Just a lot of frustration and reloading.

Am I missing something with Stealth? I realize that I only have 3 Agility but I am instantly spotted and the entire zone hones in on me and attacks me.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Alright, here's a good starting sequence for a new psi character:

First, spend some SGSbucks on TK Punch and Temporal Distortion.  Buy a Vigorous Belt from Pascal and then ask Ezra about Thought Control (or don't do this yet, and come back at level 3 and do it without buying a belt, if you want to save money).  Talk to Quinton and persuade him to give you two free abilities in exchange for samples.  Take his crossbow.

Go into the caves.  In the first map after Jonas, skirt the northwest entryway and duck right in to that hide by the gate.  Hopefully the rats didn't see you.  If one did, just kill it.  Now there's a closed gate between you and the rathounds.  Take your time.  Use a TK Punch to stun the rathound, then use the Putrefying Bolt with a 95% chance to hit.  If the stun is resisted, you can try again in a couple turns.  Again, there's a closed gate between you and the rats.  You've got time on your side.  Once you've tagged a rathound, kill it with TD stacks.

Once you've killed those two rathounds, you can go into the gated area, close the gate behind you, and manage the remaining rathounds in the map.  Loot the buildings for oddities, ESPECIALLY if you're playing on Oddity XP mode.  Then go back to Quinton and pay for Cryokinesis.  Handing in the quest will level you up if you haven't already.  Get healed up for free while you're there if necessary.

Now go back out again.  Take the path south from Jonas' shack.  Kill the crickets in the next two maps.  Walk to Mushroom Cove.  Use Cryokinesis to kill Cave Hoppers until level 3 (or, if Oddity XP, until you get the tail oddity, then stop grinding.).  Hand in the hopper meat to Mordre.  Go back to SGS to drop stuff off.

Go back out again into the outposts area where you started.  If you've got stealth skill, stealth up right before going from the map you cleared earlier into the next map, using the west (up and left) exit.  Whether stealthed or not, keep close to the wall immediately on your right (north) and walk over to the gate.  The rathound there should see you.  Stand right at the gate and *wait*.  Should be three turns, maybe four, in combat.  Suddenly, rats will pour out of the opening south.  Open the gate, walk through, and close it.  While they run back around to try to get to you, run into the building ahead of you and close the door behind you.  The south door leads into a gated nook.  Go there, and safe from harm, kill the rathounds at your leisure.  Insert the flux controller, loot the shelf for the oddity, kill the two rathounds past the gate to the north and power up the outpost.  If you weren't level 3 before, you are now.  Go back to SGS.

Use one of your freebies to learn Pyrokinesis.  Go back into the outposts areas.  Go north from the screen you were at in that previous paragraph.  When you pop around the corner, ice spear the rats and back into that little corner nook.  When the rats come close, Pyrokinesis to make the run in fear.  Pick them off with Cryokinesis.  Do not blow the barrel.

Open the gate.  Walk to the door and open it.  Back off a touch.  When a rathound walks into your LOS, kill it and haul ass to the gate.  Close the gate behind you and get out of LOS so Whathisface McDeadface has to open the gate.  He'll walk right up to the giant Barrel of Death.  Cryokinesis to blow it up, killing Stupid McDead and his dumb stinky dogs.  Power on the outpost and loot stuff.  Take the elevator down.  Loot the lockers and leave to the east (down and right).

Take the first ladder.  Hack the box and loot the shelves.  Pick the door.  Manually engage turn based mode after you walk out the door and walk around the corner to get that one rathound by itself.  Kill it.  Make some noise to pull the two near the gate, or open the gate, walk out, pull with cryokinesis, and walk back in then close the gate.  Clear the map using the gate as your safety net.

Before doing Hopper Round-Up, talk to Jack Quicksilver and accept his quest.  Buy one frag grenade from Lucas if you don't already have one.  If you're level 4, pick up Electrokinesis from Bisson.  Go get the package and kill the three stooges.  Go down into the Underpassages.  Carefully clear out the four Lurkers in that map.  Leave to the east using the more northerly of the two exits.  Manually engage turn-based mode before walking around that big scary corner, then TK Punch the Lurker in the Aluminized Tac Vest.  Go deal with the stealthed guy and kill the rathounds behind the locked north gate.  Loot the riot gear.  If you feel like it, open the other locked gate and kill the Lurker with the AR.

Now you can take some hits because you've got DR.  Go kill three screens' worth of rathounds.  In the northern one, pick the gate and hack the boxes to get loot.  In the western one, kill rathounds either using the door or the gate as your safety net.  Turn in Jack's quest.

Go do Hopper Round-Up.

The game will be much, much easier from here on out, because you'll be level 6 and will have Premeditation.  You still can't just facetank the world, but you'll have tools available (four-turn Force Field, Premeditation, AoE psi abilities, stuns) to get you through the problems.

Have fun =)

[TheAverageGortsby]

Also, I meant DT not DR in that previous post, and should stipulate that this "walkthrough" of the first hour or two of the game is possibly only valid until Styg gets through nerfing full psi, whenever that happens 

[AncientToaster]

Also, I meant DT not DR in that previous post, and should stipulate that this "walkthrough" of the first hour or two of the game is possibly only valid until Styg gets through nerfing full psi, whenever that happens 

Thanks for the response. I'm following your guide! I'm glad you responded. Too bad a nerf may be coming, not sure why you'd need one in a single player RPG...

I managed to make it past the GS5 area with the sentry bots. When you talk about the lurker with the tac vest, do you mean the guy that I killed that had the Antithermic Insulated Antirifle Overcoat? This was in the area on the left, just before taking the street towards the GS5 area for Gorsky. I went down into some tunnels with some gang members, some were stealthed.

I wasn't able to find this alumunized tac vest you talked about but this coat is pretty awesome, even though it drops my stealth 65%, it has 17% mechanical, 24% heat and 14% cold DT and I'm immune to burning. 200% DT against bullets and shotgun shells, so people with guns basically aren't hurting me right now, but melee attackers still waste me (not regular Rathounds anymore)

[TheAverageGortsby]

When you talk about the lurker with the tac vest, do you mean the guy that I killed that had the Antithermic Insulated Antirifle Overcoat? This was in the area on the left, just before taking the street towards the GS5 area for Gorsky. I went down into some tunnels with some gang members, some were stealthed.

I wasn't able to find this alumunized tac vest you talked about but this coat is pretty awesome, even though it drops my stealth 65%, it has 17% mechanical, 24% heat and 14% cold DT and I'm immune to burning. 200% DT against bullets and shotgun shells, so people with guns basically aren't hurting me right now, but melee attackers still waste me (not regular Rathounds anymore)

Yep, that's the one.

You should have enough tricks up your sleeve by level 4 that melee attackers stop being a problem.  Certainly by level 6, with Premeditation.  You can TK Punch a stun, Electrokinesis another stun, and run out of LOS if there are any dangerous ranged characters.  Then you can use Cryokinesis to slow down melee attackers so you can kite them.  If they're particularly agile, you can stack a psi slow (Psycho-temporal Dilation) along with three Chill stacks.

Rathound Alphas should stop being a problem by level 3.  You can just fearbounce them.  Use Pyrokinesis, let them run away for two turns; they run back for two turns, running through most of the Aphobia.  Back off for one turn, then repeat the process.  With some psi cost reduction (Psi Beetle tac vest, and Psi Headband with mufflers) you probably won't even use your psi as quickly as you regen it, as long as you keep using your Premeditation for the expensive abilities like fireball.

There may be a special, extra-dangerous Rathound variety you find later in the game, though...

[AncientToaster]

Thanks for the replies.

I did start to notice a big jump in my ability to control fights at around level 4, so here's hoping to more improvement. I just hit level 6 and grabbed Premeditation earlier today.

[AncientToaster]

Ok so this Depot A place is straight up garbage.

These acid spitting dogs are some of the most cheap and frustrating enemies I've seen in a turn based RPG in a long time. I'm in an area that I just cannot seem to avoid them, and there are 5. No matter what I do I'm getting just ripped apart.

Any tips? This place sucks.

[TheAverageGortsby]

Ok so this Depot A place is straight up garbage.

These acid spitting dogs are some of the most cheap and frustrating enemies I've seen in a turn based RPG in a long time. I'm in an area that I just cannot seem to avoid them, and there are 5. No matter what I do I'm getting just ripped apart.

Any tips? This place sucks.

Are you in the screen just east of where you show up when you take the Scrappers entrance (dogs, turrents, one bot, nothing else) or have you passed throughthe locked gate and gone intop the Depot proper?  If you're in the easier screen, with just eh dogs and turrets and one bot, then you need to leverage your game-breakingly powerful Premeditation and rush to the door, hide inside it, and open the door, premeditatie a fireball, and close the door again.  Yeah, it takes a while, but it's safe.

If you're in the depot proper, well that's a little tougher.  First, you need to have some acid resist.  You can get that either by farming Siphoners at the Siphooner Pools just east and north of the Junkyartd entrance, or by using the Mutated Dog skins you got from the screen I described in the previous paragraph.  So now what you should really try to do is come with a few grenades and molotovs, and a few psi boosters and health hypos.  Welcome to the real UnderRail.  You need to start manually beginning combat so you bypass the initiative mechanic.  Manaully start combat, peek around that shipping container thing, and if nobody's there, step back, and resume real-time mode.  You want to start combat with enemies in sight so you can premeditatie a fireball (you ave Pyromaniac, right?  You shoudl have it.  There's no reason to do Depot A before level 8 ) and hopefully put fear on those stupid dogs.  Grenades, psi AoE, electrokinesis, psi boosters, TK Punch.  Do as much damage as you can, and when you're about to die, just zone out.  Let you cooldowns reset, heal up, and zone back in.  It's not perfect, but it'll work.  With some experience, you won't need to abuse the zone out/zone in mechanic, but for now, just get past this hurdle without giving up on the game.  Depot A is the winnowing ground and as long as you can get past it, you're good to go.

That shoud do ytou.  I'm very drunk and about to go to bed, so I apologize for my myriad trypos but I won't fix them.

[DerivativeZero]

That shoud do ytou. 

Adding to AverageGortsby's door trick, I'd like to point out if your build is stealth capable, you can avoid quite a bit of their nastiness in Depot A. For instance, all of Depot A can be sneaked through without having to fight AT ALL (there's a YouTube video of someone doing that in 5 or 15minutes or so ). More to the point: a full map of the inner Depot A with real Mutants and Acid Dogs can be completely avoided, by following the underground routes (it's not the Map with the Door trick, but the other one, if you enter via Eddy on the first map after a high lock pick fence north/east, this map you could ignore).

One thing that might be helpful to know: even with XP instead of oddity, you don't have to kill everything and will still easily reach max level. Depot A mutants are a prime candidate to ignore, since you usually are not yet powerful enough to obliterate them easily. If you hate the thought of this, just come back later and give them hell...

[Psycor]

A very powerful defensive psy is Force Field, it can easily save you and help reset your cooldowns and help to break the AI and keep enemies in straight path so you can stun one enemy, use AOE psy then hide behind field. Later you can get Thermodynamic Destabilization which with above tactic and a good single target focus is almost an instant AOE kill.
Of course Force User is mandatory for this build. Depot A is a joke if you don't speedrun to it, you should be level 7-8 on oddity at that time, also just wear an acid resist armor and you will not care about acid either.
With Premeditation and Tranquility you easily can chain 3 psy abilities and have MP to hide.