Hello! I've finally managed to reach the deep caverns and find out that my build sux dick so I'm probably gonna have to give it another go(oh no I'm gonna have to play through underrail yet again poor me its not like i totally wanted to or anything :p) but I figured I'd drop a post here with a couple thoughts I had playing through it. None of this pertains to expedition, I'm saving that for a separate playthrough after I finally beat the base game. This is just a random list of suggestions that'll probably get ignored since it looks like the devs are gearing up for Infusion, but I hope the base game will still get some love as I honestly think this is one of the best games I've ever played. Enough preamble, the list:
All of these pertain to normal, oddity difficulty and there are some spoilers so watch out if you're playing through the game for the first time
-The black crawler doesn't seem to drop anything special, I spent almost 3 hours fighting through tons of crawlers (I know, I know, I'm fucked in the brain) and after finally managing to kill the meanest motherfucker to crawl the underrail, i got one (1!) insectoid saliva gland. That just felt real wierd to me. It wasn't even super out of the way or anything, a few screens from rail crossing and bam, you're there. A 2-3 xp oddity would have been enough.
-During the quest to kill the beast in the foundry, ezra asks you to bring him a sample of the creatures plaguing the mines. What he should have said was bring me an impure chromium blade or bring me a piece of the metal they're made of, because bringing him one of their eyes didn't trigger his follow up and I had to backtrack back through like 7 screens because I brought him the "wrong" sample.
-In the oculus you can find out that Hadrian Tanner is actually a pretty suspicious individual. He has no known background, had a huge impacts on the SGS's prosperity, and actively downplays his hand in all of it. It's also apparently totally possible that tanner is an alias, but you can't confront him on this. Not even a casual, "Hey Tanner, what did you do before joining the SGS." I feel like this is kinda important because he's the guy leading you through the entire first half of the game and finding out he might be bad news gave me whiplash.
-I feel like there should be an easier way to get Mordre to attack you in the SGS murder quest, or at least let us just kill him without the SGS finding out. You know he's the killer and hes just standing in the middle of some cave. Are you telling me that I actually can't goad this guy into violence WITHOUT an intimidation check? Intimidating him should make him fuck off sooner and if I fail it he should try to ice me right there, hell the only way I could kill him was by sneaking up to him and two-turning him with a flashbang and perfect RNG. The second he gets to move I'm dead so why the heck is this man so hesitant to kill me.
-I wish the player could tell Old Jonas some stories later in the game, maybe with some options to embellish a little. He's such a cool character and seeing him go to the wayside kinda sucks
-Let me bully Newton even harder
-All of the above ones are pretty simple based off my (limited) knowledge of programming, this one less so. Why the heck isn't there a map of core city? Seriously I got lost so so so many times here and it just felt odd that every other area in the game has great mapping but one of the most important areas in the game doesnt. By now I know where everything is but the first couple times it was a godamn nightmare. I'd rather fight 100 crawlers than have to relearn core city's layout.
-Let me simp for Sneaky, I love her and when she says "later southgater" I feel things
And thats all of em. If you read all of this, thank you, and if you're a dev and you read all of this, I really hope some of it was useful feedback even if none of it ends up making it to the patch notes. I've put almost 150 hours in this game over the past couple weeks and I've never been so immersed in a world before. I've read that this is supposed to be a spiritual successor to the fallout games, but I think it outshines all of them by a ridiculous margin and stands on its own as a fantastic CRPG that'll stand the test of time.