Poor poor Pyrokinetic Stream. It sits abandoned in your Innervation screen, surrounded by the likes of Neurovisual Disruption and Disruptive Field, waiting patiently for you to free up a slot and use it in battle. Give Pyrokinetic Stream a well-deserved second chance. Go and craft yourself a headband with Magnifying Neuroscopic Filter: Pyrokinetic Stream, stack AP cost reductions, pile on psi cost reductions and enhance your psi point regeneration. Together, on Dominating, we will use Pyrokinetic Stream to scorch Underrail with jets of searing flames and set its tunnels ablaze.
Burnt-out
The in-game description of Pyrokinetic Stream states, that it will only stop when you run out of AP or Psi points, but that’s not exactly correct. There’s a hard-coded upper limit to how many additional ticks of damage you can get. A full cast of Pyrokinetic Stream is limited to 14 ticks per cast - 3 initial ones you get from casting the ability and up to 11 additional ones.
- The cost of the initial cast is 20 AP and each additional tick that comes after that costs 10 AP. Unfortunately, Tranquility and Premeditation only apply to the AP cost of the initial cast, not the ticks that come after. A full Pyrokinetic Stream costs 130 AP.
- Pyrokinetic Stream intial psi point cost is 25, plus 5 for each tick. But here’s the kicker – any reductions to Psi cost you get from feats, gear or consumables will not applied to the cost of additional damage ticks. So, 80 psi per full cast.
130 AP and 80 Psi per full cast. That’s not sustainable. At all.
Quick-fire
Okay, let’s work on AP cost first:
- Thermodynamicity reduces the initial cost down to 10 AP and the cost of any additional ticks down to 5 AP. Keep in mind that Thermodynamicity is the only thing which modifies the AP cost of the additional ticks.
- Specializing into Thermodynamicity further reduces the AP cost down to 7 AP for the initial cast and to 3 for additional tick.
- Tranquility is applied after Thermodynamicity and reduces the cost of the initial cast to 2 AP.
We are down to 35 AP per full cast. Not too bad, considering all other Metathermics psi abilities will also get to enjoy the AP cost reduction of Thermodynamicity and Tranquility. You’ll come to appreciate 7 AP Cryokinetic Orbs and 4 AP Cryokinesis.
Firebug
Thermodynamicity is currently bugged with Pyrokinetic Stream:Use premeditation and cast Cryokinesis or any other cold based Metathermics psi ability for 0 AP to get Thermodynamicity: Heat status effect (Heat version reduces the cost of heat-based psi abilities).Now cast Pyrokinetic Stream. Normally, after casting a heat-based psi ability Thermodynamicity: Heat would be replaced with Thermodynamicity: Cold. However, due to a bug (at least I think it’s a bug), this does not happen. Instead Thermodynamicity: Heat does not get removed unless you run out of psi points.Which allows for repeat casts of Pyrokinetic Stream until the duration of Thermodynamicity: Heat runs out. It lasts 2 turns and with Adrenaline, this amounts to 4 casts of Pyrokinetic Stream total over the 2 turns.
Even if the bug gets fixed, you’ll still be able to use Cryokinesis for 4 AP, to get Thermodynamicity: Heat back. That’ll only cost you 1-2 ticks of Pyrokinetic Stream.
Fire at competitive prices
Psi point cost comes next. The main point of stacking psi cost reductions is to allow this build to utilize Pyrokinetic Stream without having to forfeit other Metathermics psi abilities, as psi point reduction does not apply to the additional ticks of Pyrokinetic Stream:
- At endgame qualities, a Psionic Muffler on a single school headband can provide around 35% psi cost reduction.
- Specialized Psycho-neural Optimization adds another 15% reduction.
- Lastly, a tactical vest made with Psi Beetle Carapace is another 10%.
With all that, the psi cost is down to ~40%. Endgame Cryokinetic Orb costs 19 psi points, Pyrokinesis is 15 and Cryokinesis is 6. The psi cost of Pyrokinetic Stream is 10 for initial cast, plus 5 for each tick. ~65 psi points per full cast. Still pricy, but with other psi abilities cheap, the cost isn’t as prohibitive.
There’s also Advanced Psi Empathy and Beetle Brain Soup, but the former comes very late (and I didn’t pick it for this build) while the latter is somewhat rare.
Pools of fire
Without ways to reduce the psi cost any further, it’s time to increase the amount of psi points available. Remember, Pyrokinetic Stream will stop streaming if you run out of psi points so having a large pool of psi will prevent that:
- Base psi point pool is 100.
- Add another 25 from Meditation.
- And another 15 from Neurology.
- And another 15 from Philosophy III.
- And another 10 from Sørmirbæren Staff-spear.
And... and... and that’s it. Total 165 psi points and 825 psi reserves. 1072 reserves with Expanded Psi Capacitance.
Fuel to the fire
Lastly, to make good use of the large psi point pool and reserves, psi point recuperation could use some work:
- 18 Will and 9 Intelligence gives 18 psi point regeneration.
- The Staff-Spear adds another 1.
- At level 28 I got Mantra (although the game is pretty much done at that point).
- Psionic Accelerator increases the psi point regeneration AND increases the psi points gained from using psi boosters by 50%.
We end up with a sweet 36 psi point regeneration per turn. On top of all that, this build also has Fast Metabolism, which makes psi boosters replenish 100 (150 when Psionic Accelerator is active) psi points on use. All in all, it’s very rare to run out of psi points past mid game.
Although Advanced Psi Empathy might have been a better pick for level 28, I wanted to have higher regeneration instead. Also, if you really really wanna, you can also use Hypercerebrix for some extra psi regeneration, but I never bothered.
Flamethrower
Damage of Pyrokinetic Stream scales linearly throughout the game, with some minor jumps as better components become available. The build was smooth to play from the start. By endgame Pyrokinetic Stream deals somewhere around 1400 heat damage per cast to all targets in a straight line. This is without Empowered Metathermics. That’s quite good.
Pyrokinetic Stream isn’t exactly a boss killer but can melt groups exceptionally well. Not many enemies in Underrail can survive being blasted for 1,4k damage to the face, twice a turn. Even enemies which are resistant to heat eventually get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of damage this build can spit out in a turn.
Except big robots. Dreadnaughts are doable but require many many casts and Nagas are out of the question. Expedition bots in general are a pain in the ass.
Oh and Pyrokinetic Stream doesn't crit.
Third degree burns
To top it all off there’s also Pyromaniac. With so many ticks per cast, Pyrokinetic Stream has a near guaranteed proc of Burning. While damage of the DoT is nothing to write home about due to the low-ish damage of each individual tick, the Fear effect that comes along with it is worth a feat point.
Video
Faceless Commander. The only part of DC that I enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R_u8GeNO-4Screenshots
Fort Apogee. Killed the Dreads last. Good fight:
https://i.imgur.com/T0IqFnE.jpgBlack Crawler, just to see if I could do the whole dungeon without reloads. Turns out I couldn’t, because my own Cryokinetic Orb killed me. Smooth otherwise:
https://i.imgur.com/hWHDcsH.jpgThe build
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMDBgYDEAkAwosAAAAAwqAAAAAAM1wMKkwAAMKgAAAAQSs5UD89Ki7CvGRXHMK-JGYowrfCisK4wp3iorUC4qWyBeK5qAXfvwNo damage grenades, traps past Newton, except for the Beast fight.
