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Underrail [PRE-RELEASE THREAD, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Killzig

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Oct 28, 2002
Messages
997
Location
The Wastes
I am enjoying this game and that's a lot for me to admit given my undying hatred of durability in RPGs; three different repair kits for me to manage? Fuck you, Styg. Other gripes: game world feels huge, but not very dense; quests don't seem like they are varied/have much in the way of multiple solutions; dialog can feel a little perfunctory and uneven in terms of quality.
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
dialog can feel a little perfunctory and uneven in terms of quality.
I'll second that. Some bits sound like they were written by a 13-year-old, for example: "Now I just feel...angry!"
The word creepy is definitely overused when it comes to descriptions, it shouldn't be used at all in my opinion. The guy sees something disturbing or unnerving and the first word that goes through his head is "creepy"?

Another thing that seems shallow at times is the C&C. Granted I haven't done many missions but here are two big ones.
The ending of the "scout the Faceless near the foundry" quest blew my mind. You can tell the truth or tell 2 different lies. one of them is quite huge. 2 Options say that the faceless aren't trying to attack so nothing really happens. The third one says that the faceless are planning to attack to which the chief of security basically responds": Holy shit! We need to mobilize everyone and strengthen the defences" But none of that happens.

The second thing is the factions., I sided with Coretech. When the device gets stolen it seems like that decision becomes meaningless. I got in the institute and I go back to my boss to report and all he does is sigh. Does it work like that with other factions?
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
:lol:
I actually meant that when describing some bizarre fucked up thing whose mere appearance causes your mind to freeze a word with a bit more weight than the word "creepy" should be used.
 

Ellef

Deplorable
Joined
Dec 29, 2014
Messages
3,506
Location
Shitposter's Island
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Well natural dialogue can sometimes means less than ideal word usage. Flowery prose doesn't fit the theme, though I can't say I've seen much of the word creepy so far.
 

Sjukob

Arcane
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
2,052
Can anyone give me advice on some skills ?

I didn't put a single point into mecantile and I find prices monstrous , should I invest in mercantile when I have the opportunity or drop in this game rich enough to provide me enough cash ?

Chemistry and bilogy , are those skills useful ?

Also , what is wrong with firearms durability ? 17 shots worth 1/6 of item's durability , I hope it gets better as the game progresses if not , then it is just insane and unacceptable .
 

Ellef

Deplorable
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Dec 29, 2014
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Shitposter's Island
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
money shouldn't be a problem for long, all crafting skills are useful, i'd pick at least 2 in each build depending on style, never noticed a problem with durability.
 

Ellef

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Messages
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Thank you .

If you want an example of a well thought out build, here is a fine post from one of the regular posters here.

This is a great character concept already. I'm going to make some suggestions for workability.

You want a stealthy knifer with psi utility and crafting skills. For clarity, that's dependence on 4 attributes: Agility (stealth/dodge/evasion), Dexterity (knife damage, action point cost reduction), Will (psi abilities), and Intelligence (all crafting skills).

First you have to ask yourself what your primary attribute is. Are you a knifer at heart or a psi-slinger? For a few reasons, I'd probably choose Dexterity to be the primary attribute for this particular character and focus on slicing the hapless opposition. Dexterity is an efficient attribute, and a build using many attributes craves efficiency.

The following are all suggestions that you can take and modify to suit your intentions more exactly.

10 Dexterity
7 Agility
10 Will
4 Intelligence

Max Dexterity every level for increased skill efficiency and action point economy. Siphon points here and there away from Dexterity skills to make room for others (more of a medium-term plan than an immediate point of action). 7 Agility for strong stealth and defensive skills.

or

10 Dexterity
7 Agility
9 Will
5 Intelligence

This is a slight modification that is getting a bit more efficiency out of intelligence. I would personally choose this, but it depends on what you're looking to get out your psi abilities specifically.

AGI (defense)
Stealth 5/5
Dodge 5/5
Evasion 5/5

DEX
Melee 5/5*
Lockpicking 3/5
Throwing 5/5**
Traps 2/5

INT
[Crafting Skill #1] 4/5
[Crafting Skill #2] 3/5

WIL
[Preferred Psi Skill] 3/5

*Later in the game, when Dexterity gets very high, you can 4/5 or even 3/5 this skill to bump others.
**Get this skill to about 40-50 so you can accurately place grenades (and perhaps poisoned throwing knives). Afterwards, you can leave this skill alone entirely unless you want a bit more range. This frees up 5 points a level to bump crafting or psi.

This is one possible blueprint for your levels. I've chosen to skip hacking here as lockpicking is the more efficient of the two. The earlier oddities you'll get from Lockpicking will make this very worthwhile on this particular character. Throwing is just a versatile skill that will always be useful. After getting it up "high enough", you can leave it alone to max out crafting skills or bump psi a little higher.

Traps are great for this character. For relatively little skillpoint cost, traps can make otherwise deadly encounters quite trivial with the right planning and strategy.

There are a number of feats that will help this character in effectiveness and efficiency. These are not all the feats that would be helpful, just some ones of note.

Nimbleness: This feat is not flashy, but it's very efficient. Having 0 armor penalty on a character like this is essential. Armor penalty reduces Movement (direly needed for melee combat effectiveness) as well as Stealth-Dodge-Evasion which is the trinity of your entire defense. The additional Dodge and Evasion bonus is just a cherry.

Interloper (req 7 Agi): This feat simply makes stealth that much stronger. The less time you spend closer to enemies, the less time they have to sniff you out. Essential for any stealth character to get mileage out of the feature.

Fancy Footwork ( req 7 Agi, 40 Melee, 40 Dodge): Movement is everything for a melee combatant such as this. Action point efficiency and the increased capability of breaking LOS from dangerous gunmen make this feat one of the most efficient in the game.

Cut Throat (req 10 Dex, 55 Melee, 45 Stealth): It's not always useful, but it can be the strongest feat in the game when it comes into play. The quintessential stealth knifer's calling sign.

Taste for Blood (req 50 Melee): Though this feat has been scaled back from ye olde days of godlike knife-wielders, it is an incredibly strong feat against a group as well as against strong individual foes. For a melee character without strength, this damage boost is going to be essential.

Vile Weaponry (req 10 Biology, 25 Melee): Another great damage boost at the "cost" of only 10 Biology. This obviously works fantastically well with Taste for Blood and traps.

Vile Weaponry, Taste for Blood, and Fancy Footwork make each swing of the knife more and more effective. They work great in combination and are highly efficient for a character with such low strength. Be sure to use a serrated knife, of course.
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
Sjukob If you're going to be killing people then economy becomes a non-issue very quickly. You get every single item the NPC had on him and some of them carry some high-end gear.

Crafting helps both with cash, and more importantly, with gear. The best items in the game are crafted, not found. Having 50 in electronics, mechanics, and tailoring allows you to create the respective advance repair kit from the components received from recycling items. Those are quite expensive to buy and sell fro good prices too, but more importantly they allow you to do things like this:
Say you have a piece of rathound leather and a vest with 300/1000 durability which sells for 2500. You craft leather armor from the rathound hide, recycle it, make an advance repair kit, use it on the vest to bring it up to 800 durability and now it sells for about 6-8 grand. So you took that leather with a value of 100 and turned it into 3500k.

Biology is one of the more involved crafting skills IMO and for the most part it's not worth it. If you want to make psi enhancing items you need a modest biology investment to use certain components. If you want to make consumables that aren't sold in shops check the wiki for the necessary values and stop there. Biology is also required to use the powerful regenerative vests but they also require minimal investment. I am yet to see one that requires more than (60).

Chemistry is similar to biology that it's more about the consumables. It also has a respective vest but it's not very useful. Going past a (112) seems like a bad idea.

It should be probably noted that skills also serve as prerequisites for certain feats, in which case reaching the required unmodified value ( the one not in the parentheses ) is obviously a good idea.

The hardest builds to fuck up are probably pure psi and heavy assault.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
I put in a few hours toying around with a few builds, and took a melee/psi/stealth guy to the end of Junkyard. Probably start again soon. Looking forward to getting used to the various ingredients and debuffs, etc. to really make use of crafting, knives, etc.

Writing's humdrum, sadly, but feels to me like a gameplay-first dungeon-delving cousin of Fallout, and that's just great. It's a fantastic game and $10 is far too cheap.
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
What's wrong with the writing? Can you guys elaborate on that?

I found it adequate. Fitting, humerous at times, but very fitting.

It's not shakespeare, but what is?

It doesn't top fallout, but it's certaintly a breath of fresh air we've had for a long long long time.

I would like to read some more about pre-war/pre-apoc underrail, maybe a subplot or backstory to that.
 

TwinkieGorilla

does a good job.
Patron
Joined
Oct 19, 2007
Messages
5,480
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pathfinder: Wrath
In the same way I defended the writing in D:OS, I'll defend the writing in Underrail: It has a sort of benevolent and innocent-seeming European charm. It's obvious it was written by folks whose first language isn't English and there's some major clean-up needed in regards to typos and grammar fixes. But the actual dialogue and story I find to be not just charming, but original, humorous and more than adequate. Could it stand improvement and fine-tuning? Yes. Is there anything inherently wrong with it? No.

Also: Keep in mind it's come a long, long way since the early days.
 

Daedalos

Arcane
The Real Fanboy
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
5,559
Location
Denmark
The writing in D:OS is far far FAR worse than Underrail, in every sense of being objective about it.

And D:OS was touted as the second coming of the incline. Makes you wonder.

Yeah, Underrail needs tuning, it's still Early Access, but it far surpasses D:OS already, in combat, writing, style etc.

But that's just me :)
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Of course there's nothing wrong with the writing. It's adequate - because what the game really excels at is in building new characters and taking them for a spin against the enemies and levels. You wouldn't cite the story / writing as its strength (at least for the bits I've seen), but again, that's not the point for Underrail. Neither Underrail nor DOS stop being awesome because of their writing.
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
The humorous parts are better simply because you can get away with shoddy writing, it's easy to assume it's part of the joke. It's when the game wants to be serious that the cracks start to show much more. When the story obviously wants you to take something seriously but instead you chuckle at some goofy line the writing isn't doing its job.

Underrail is similar to STALKER in the fact that the setting is the best part of the story. And just like STALKER it does a fantastic job of presenting the setting despite the dialog. How bad or good the writing is might be debatable but it's definitely not even close to the level of polish other elements of the game are.
 

TwinkieGorilla

does a good job.
Patron
Joined
Oct 19, 2007
Messages
5,480
Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pathfinder: Wrath
How bad or good the writing is might be debatable but it's definitely not even close to the level of polish other elements of the game are.

Well, sure. But nobody's debating that. I highly doubt even Styg himself would debate that.
 

Alfons

Prophet
Joined
Jul 25, 2014
Messages
1,031
I mean to say that the poor writing sticks out like a sore thumb.

BTW nice sig.:lol:
 

Atchodas

Augur
Joined
Apr 23, 2015
Messages
1,047
Underrails writting is decent no encyclopedia npcs no wall of texts no useless dialogue , imo it allows dev's( and players ) to focus on the important stuff - combat and game systems
People who cant into Underrail cuz of story or writting are simply fags and should switch to reading books about faggotry
 

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