''Brains over brawn'' build

[sceaduwe]

Hello

I am looking for an almost completely non-mechanical build, seeing as how my current crossbow/traps playthrough is running into serious issues with almost every enemy having stupid amounts of mechanical damage thresholds and i keep running out of supplies such as shock bolts, emp and hypos to even survive strongmen, much less nagas, turrets or the sørmirbæren bosses. Had to get versatility to use the sound pistol you get from that god forsaken music puzzle that took me calling my musical friend to have him explain all the terms used and around an hour of work deciphering. This was before i knew i could get that spammable torch grenade from the shard with some kiting to bypass heavily resistant enemies. This bummed me out because i like the feeling of being optimised and not having to resort to emergency solutions like this.

I have this idea in my mind for a non-physical damage nerd character, using either a chem pistol or some kind of energy pistol with psi on the side.

I made this on the build creator to illustrate my idea. Int and will seem to go well together and the only glaring weakness of the build is that I will be extremely easy to kill.

https://underrail.info/build/?HgMKBQMFCgrCoAAAAABLAEZGAABkZGRkZHVQADdkADUrLCcmFCojZWYhWsK9wpoFwofCt3LCu9-_

I plan on using the force field to stop melee enemies from even getting close, evasion hopefully keeps me alive while i nuke the ranged enemies. Empowered thought control with locus of control seems very powerful too. Energy pistol on the side for filler and utility

I have only played one type of build before and never even toutched psi so i do not know which feats are good or bad. But it seems thematic and as if you are allowed to experience more of the game and understand more lore/story by going psi/science than if you were some big dumb brute with a slegde. I was locked out of many story/lore-important dialogue and quest solutions from being a stealthy trap/crossbow guy. The story and dialogue is definitively the best part of this game, the writing suprises me all the time, and the interconnectivity of characters and events is amazing.

Am i missing something here? Also I would appreciate gear reccomendations

I am leaning toward playing on hard difficulty, even though i found normal to be challenging enough.


Thank you

[TheAverageGortsby]

You don't have any feats which require Agility, nor Perception.  If you reclaim those 4 points, put them in Dexterity, and swap out Pack Rathound for Versatility, then you can put your 14 Dex to use pumping Melee skill, get the same effective skill from Versatility (drop Pack Rathound to free up the slot; you won't have much gear weight to worry about).  You can easily recover the 25 skill points you need to keep in Guns from your substantial overinvestment in crafting skills - you can take 30 points each out of Mechanics, Chemistry, and Biology, and 20 points out of Tailoring, and still make everything you'd possibly want to use in the entire game.  Plus, with 14 Dex instead of 10, you'd pick up an extra attack per round with your pistol.

edit: forgot to include the +2 Int from Hypercerebrix; you could actually go -35 to Mech, Bio, Chem, -25 to Tailor, -10 to Electronics, and a whopping -45 to Persuasion.  You've got a lot of wasted skill points in that build.

[sceaduwe]

Thank you

Something more like this?

https://underrail.info/build/?HgMOAwMDCgoZAADCoB_CoABGRgAAQlpBQUvCoFAANzcANSsswqMmFFplwr3CmiFmKiMFwofCt3LCu9-_

I maxed thought control. Put the rest into evasion and dogde. I am not even sure these are good skills but i feel as though i need some defensive skills to balance out this glass cannon.

[TheAverageGortsby]

You might prefer some investment in stealth.  You can craft up a heck of a good stealth set, so you don't need a lot of investment, but pistols are fairly short-range weapons, and Thought Control is a notoriously short-range psi discipline, so the ability to get good placement before starting a fight might come in handy.

By extension, some traps might be nice.  Since you've got so much Chemistry, you should assume you're going to be making and using very nice, high-tier traps.  And grenades.  Thus, a little bit of throwing might be nice, too.  Thanks to that high Dex, you only need about 50 real points in Traps to be able to use the highest tier traps in the game.  Also, you only need maybe 30 real points in Throwing to be fairly accurate with grenades at reasonable distances.  That leaves you either well over 100 real points for Stealth, or 50-70 real points and even more Throwing so you can rely on grenades a bit further out.

Personally, I prefer active defenses to passive ones (which is why I'm always happy to drop Dodge/Evasion for Stealth, and then try to lean to play "smarter" when I die), but if you like passive defense, ignore most of my advice in this post and stick with Evasion because it will help with those long-range threats that you may have a hard time reaching.

[Enchat]

With chem and energy pistols it's better to dump per to 6( for aimed and ambush) and go 18 dex melee with versatility. Especially it good with chem guns, because of new belts.

For your new build nagas still are a problem because of their immunity to Thought control and the absence of crucial perks for energy weapons. The main damage of the laser and plasma pistols comes from their crits with an insane multiplier, for that you have to take practical physics and critical power feats. Also, you need a way to raise your crit chance, besides feats like recklessness and ambush you'll have to wear special goggles instead of a psionic bandana, that's a reason why it's generally not a good idea to mix ranged weapons with psi dps schools(crowd control works fine though).

Here my scientific build, it is designed to use chem and energy pistols with psionic support, but I've decided to change energy weapons feats (high tech, practical physicist, recklessness)  with throwing knives feats (ripper, deadly throw, quick pockets) because it's much funnier to use (and significantly weaker to tell the truth). I also carry smg for long-range combat and for unarmored targets.
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMQAwMGBwgjWgDCoAAAUD4mADxVX1UsXwDCjEZGAABEK8KjAScwKlYCwpFLaBQvUVzCs8KHJuKouwPirKAF4rWuB9-_

The telekinetic proxy is a powerhouse here, coz it produces two tiles of light around it, negating darkness penalty and triggering ambush. It worked so well that I took a related feat for this(also it allows you to slow down coming melee).
The opportunist and quick tinkering is optional and can be replaced with anything else.

[cypherusuh]

You're few patch late for play 3-school psi, unless you're playing the legacy version, just so you know. And evasion with 3 agi doesn't sounds like a good thing to me. 8 agi is the bare minimum to make evasion works good on evading bullets, otherwise it only saves you like, once in a while.