IntroductionWhat skill are humans better at than any other animal? If your answer was fishing, you’d be wrong. You will never be as good at fishing as an otter or a puffin. The skill humans can claim superiority in is throwing. Though creatures such as chimpanzees can fling shit and other objects, no other creature can come close to matching the speed and precision of a baseball pitch, or the elegant lob of a basketball, or the arc of a javelin. To throw, in essence, is what separates us from the beasts. Though we’ll never be the best fishers of the animal kingdom, we can use our throwing skills (and our superior intelligence) to catch fish that other animals could only dream of. Humans fish by casting lines from fishing poles, and the definition of casting is to forcefully throw something, so humans effectively fish by throwing things. Because of that revelation, and because of the upcoming DLC, I’ve decided to create the ultimate fishing build to overcome any and all challenges you may face on your journey through Underrail.
https://underrail.info/build/?HgMQBAoDAwcAwqAAAB7CoEZgMgAAUGxUR1AAAAAAAABIJCYvFlhRw5M-XmNORV0fwrMOJ8KdbeKhhwTip4IC4qi6BeKouwPivY4B374This build is a high damage high mobility tank build focused on throwing knives and grenades, capable of overcoming any challenge you may face on your playthrough. It’s also good at fishing because it has high dex. The advice in this build is made with Dominating difficulty in mind, but you should have no trouble at all tearing apart lower difficulties with it. This build is one of the strongest builds I’ve ever created and contends with AR builds and Firearm Pistol builds as one of the strongest builds in the game.
Gear: The following is the gear recommended for this build. If you know what you’re doing it’ll take about 4 hours to get all the proper gear after finishing Depot A, and you’ll be about level 18-20 on Classic Dominating.
Weapons: Knife Throwers Glove- The most important piece of gear on this build, it’s a massive benefit to the offensive capabilities of throwing knives. You can consistently get one from Blaine or from the Camp Hawthor leather merchant.
Leper poison knives- Against unarmored enemies these work like the concentrated fire feat, but the damage increase is only applied to damage that penetrates, so it’s not as useful against armored enemies like Psi Crabs. By far the best throwing knife option you have available.
Crawler knives- Crawler poison is excellent, but usually you’ll kill enemies before the stun has a chance to activate. Very powerful against arena combatants and bosses.
Black dragon knives- Basically neuters any psionic enemy if you can hit them before they use PSP. Unfortunately most psi enemies die in 1-2 knives anyways, so it’s best to save these for bosses.
Rusting Acid/Corrosive Acid Vials- Rusting Acid vials will be your go option for dealing with robots for most of the game, since most robots lack acid resistance, and you can get a fair amount of rusting acid glands from native villages. Corrosive acid vials are extremely powerful but a bit too rare to chuck around willy-nilly, so save them for special occasions like the quad nagas fight.
Equipment:Master Demolitionist Belt (Dominating Only)- This item is highly underrated in my opinion; it basically lets you ignore grenade cooldowns once every 6 turns and gives a massive ap discount on activating grenades. For a throwing build this item is terrific, as the three extra utility slots let you carry extra throwing items, and the fear immunity lets you ignore the effects of yell. With 340+ evasion we take 85% less damage from grenades, and since evasion reduces the damage before shields and armor, we generally won’t take damage from our detonations. The best setup with the belt is using 2-3 slots for grenades and leaving the rest for throwing knives, as any more grenades than that is generally overkill, especially with three-pointer. MK 3 Frag Grenades are usually the best option to detonate, since they’re frequently carried by enemies and merchants, deal enough damage to reliably 2-shot most enemies, and at 340+ evasion won’t deal enough damage to overcome our DT. You can get the belt fairly early if you use the tried-and-true combo of Bear Traps + Gas Grenades + T.N.T in the south-central room of their zone, just bring along some rusting acid if you do it at low level since your throwing knives may struggle to penetrate the Masters's Blast Suits. If you aren’t playing Dominating, I recommend using the Commando Belt instead due to the boost to throwing.
Helmet: Shaded Soft Padded Super Steel Helmet (8% armor penalty, at Q172 10%/5 mechanical resist, flashbang immunity, -4.5% chance to be crit)- There’s no headgear that benefits throwing weapons, so the only things that matter are defensive and utility headgear. This helmet is why we take armor sloping, it reaches 9% armor penalty without spec and 8% with spec, and provides some increased durability for the build in addition to the flashbang immunity. An early game alternative is a kevlar balaclava. It’s pretty quick and painless to get the 4 super steel refining data for max quality super steel, I recommend going to Lost Vault, Viridescent Quarry (you’ll go to expedition anyways for greater siphoner leather), Hecate Research Outpost, and then the Abandoned Waterway facility last.
Armor: Infused Greater Siphoner Leather/Black Cloth/Galvanic Foam (7% armor penalty, at Q 140 w/Skinner 33%/10 mechanical, 26%/11 Heat, 22%/8 Acid/Energy, 24%/8 Electric resistance, +70 Dodge/Evasion)- This armor is absolutely essential to our build as it’s where a large portion of our durability and survivability come from. The heat and energy resistance provided by greater siphoner are very welcome, and the electrical resistance helps against emp grenades/electrokinesis/naga blasts. The evasion/dodge boost is also essential for this build as it helps us reach the 340 evasion softcap. It’s inconsistent to get high quality greater siphoner leather from the native villages, so I recommend buying it from the Ferryman when he stops at the mutie refuge. Two pieces of 120+ quality are good enough for the build, especially when we boost the quality with skinner and infusing the leather.
Shoes-Infused Greater Siphoner Tabis (At Q140 w/Skinner 13% Heat, 12% Acid/Energy, +38 MP, +70 Dodge/Evasion, immunity to slows)- Tabis provide better elemental resistances than boots for whatever reason, and the immunity from slows is nice in addition to the bonus evasion.
Gameplay:This is an incredibly well-rounded build that will wipe the floor against any organic enemies while being able to withstand more punishment than most traditional tank builds. You’ve got the damage of a glass cannon build, the durability of a tin can juggernaut, and more AP than the average 70 TM enjoyer.
Offensively, throwing knives are the best weapon against unarmored organic targets by a wide margin, but still perform well against all but the most heavily armored foes. Pinning gives a +25% damage boost with opportunist and can shut down narrow choke points if the enemy in front gets immobilized. It is possible for enemies to evade immobilization, but you’ll only see this on extremely evasive enemies like Carnifex and Magnar. Fatal Throw basically instantly kills any enemy hit with a knife while under the HP threshold in addition to providing a huge AP boost every turn. Remote surgeon is straight up just extra damage, which is always appreciated. Split Spare is probably the second best feat on this build after Fatal Throw, the cone is about as wide as a plasma grenade explosion when throwing from max range and it makes it much more consistent that you’ll kill at least one enemy and proc fatal throw. At max level your throwing knives will deal 120-240 damage per knife to unarmored enemies at the cost of 7 ap per knife when at 19 dex, letting you throw 10-28 knives per turn depending on Fatal Throw activation and Split Spare. Grenadier + Three Pointer gives excellent crowd control and lets you bring enemies down to Fatal Throw range, and synergises well with Pinning since immobilization reduces evasion to 0 and lets your grenades do full damage. Against most armored humans you’ll do well with throwing knives, since most tin cans only have ~50% DR and 30 DT which you can reliably overcome at higher levels. Heavily armored Enemies such as Burrower Warriors and Psi Crabs almost require the use of HE Grenades/MK 3 Plasma Grenades, but you can reliably kill them with throwing knives once they enter Fatal Throw Range. Most robots aren’t too dangerous if you have EMP MK 3 grenades and HE/Plasma grenades to get them into fatal throw range, but Strongmen and Naga Protectors can get you into a bit of trouble. One solution is to use the Master Demo belt to activate 3-5 EMP Grenades at once, which will obliterate the former and leave the latter weak enough to finish off with corrosive acid.
Defensively, the only enemies that can threaten you are bosses on dominating. Even at 3 Agi due to the Demo belt agility debuff we will have ~310 evasion at max level, and while using adrenaline we’ll reach 372 evasion, which is more than enough to reach the softcap for explosive damage reduction and ranged attack hit chance for every enemy except Seahorse Plasma turrets and bosses. We’re effectively immune to enemy explosions, avoid the vast majority of ranged attacks, and have more than enough MP to stay far away from any melee enemies. Even if we do get hit, we’ve got resistances similar to q100 super steel armor, and can use Last Stand to reset our health to full and continue the fight a while longer. With Thick Skull and Escape Artist we can avoid having our Dodge/Evasion being set to 0 from stuns/immobilization, so the only attacks we need to worry about are unavoidable attacks like NO and Electrokinesis.
Comparison With AR BuildsIf you ask most veterans of the game what the best build is, they’ll likely say it's some variation of an AR build due to the powerful feats the weapon has access to. I’m here today to make the case that the fishing build is better than AR builds in most regards. For the sake of the comparison I’ll be using Harperfan7’s “Best Build”.
https://underrail.info/build/?HgcHCgMLAwXCoEkAAB7CoFBGMkQAU1MjMmUAAADCi04UACsoOSQmFU4CRDtJSsKHwoMWR8KFS2zDnMKewp_Cm8Ktw4vin6IF4qKNA-KnlwPip6oD4rCuAd-_ Fishing Build
- Better matchup vs Natives
- Worse matchup vs Crabs
- Worse matchup vs Strongmen
- Very Tanky
- 90+ AP per round
- Can detonate 2-6 grenades per round in addition to throwing 7-14 knives
- Can deal an average of 5835 damage against a single target or 11670 damage against 2 targets next to each other
- Has 219 Skill points to spare
- Is not a 3 will 3 con TM build
- Has a cool hat
"Best Build"
- Worse matchup vs Natives
- Better matchup vs Crabs
- Better matchup vs Strongmen
- Glass bones and paper skin
- ~137 AP Turn 1, ~111 AP on subsequent turns
- 6 bursts shooting 9 bullets each
- Average of ~16721 damage against a single target, ~8360 without concentrated fire
- Skill Starved
- Cringe TM User
- Does not have a cool hat
As you can see, my build is better than my strawman opponent based on the criteria that I selected, so clearly the fishing build is superior. All jokes aside, the main difference offensively between the two builds is their armor piercing capabilities, single target damage and crowd control. With W2C the AR build can ignore 30% of DR, compared to the throwing knife’s 130% DR modifier, so the AR is going to win out against armored enemies. Concentrated fire is a superb feat for single target damage, which makes AR’s king for bursting down the final boss, but in most encounters enemies will die in 3-4 shots, holding back your damage potential. It’s against hordes of enemies where throwing knives really shine over AR builds, since split spare and pinning can quickly eliminate threats from the crowd. Both weapon types excel in different areas, but I prefer throwing knives because they have a better matchup against the Native hordes in Expedition. Defensively there’s no contest between the builds, the fishing build has less evasion, significantly higher hp, and immunity to stun and flashbangs.
Conclusion:I hope this build guide has convinced you to try out the ultimate fishing build for your next playthrough. From the trailer for the upcoming DLC it looks like we’ll be fighting human enemies who will primarily be using explosives and ranged weapons, so I created this build to be the perfect counter to those foes. It may turn out that all the enemies shown were robots and that I’ve made a terrible mistake, but for now I choose to believe. Who knows, maybe the reward at the end of the DLC will be a small pond where you can catch new and exotic fish.
TL;DR: Women fear me, Fish fear me, Men turn their eyes away from me as I walk, No beast may dare make a sound in my presence, I am alone on this barren earth.
