Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[Spark Mandriller]

@ItsChon, what is the earliest you can get a jet ski? The earliest one I have seen is that used one sold by a guy at Camp Hathor after we are done with Camp Hathor's quests. Unfortunately for me, I find the Camp Hathor mine quest difficult (for non tanky builds), so I do it very late -it is the last major questline I do before entering the Institute.

As for the Rathound King, I take persuasion on every build as well, so I've never had an issue with him either

You don't actually have to persuade/fight him to make the jetski spawn. Just saying hi to him and going back home is enough. I haven't tested but there's a possibility that it'd spawn even if you talked to him without getting the quest from Hathor, in which case doing the mines would be unnecessary. But maybe you do need the quest first. Must check that at some point.

 

[jackofshadows]

do the office building if it loaded into my save

which one is that?

 

[ItsChon]

do the office building if it loaded into my save

which one is that?

The man in a transport cruiser who is floating outside of Core City assigns a quest where you need to get something of his in the residential district of Core City.

 

[Trashos]

Yeah, that's cool, ItsChon. I can see some value in an early Hopperdrome. Early DragNDrop is not important to me after the changes to All In. And then there are a couple of Oddity XP (very few for the invested time, the Waterways do have an issue of lacking oddities outside of the mutie Facility). Naturally, I too do the Abandoned Waterways Facility before the core of the expansion, I just do all that later (after getting my House etc).

Now that I think about it, once the game opens up my main priorities seem to be getting the easier XP, then getting the House and unlocking the important merchants.

(My usual quest route nowadays is
Foundry except for final fight,
Rail Crossing quest @lvl15,
Core City and I get the House @lvl18,
Foundry final fight,
Hidden quest,
get the Juice,
Camp Hathor quest,
Entering the Institute and doing the easier quests,
Balor
Protectorate quest
Expansion incl. the mutie Facility @lvl24 and finish it @lvl28,
rest of Institute,
DC @lvl29 and finish it @lvl30.)

 

[ItsChon]

It is always so interesting to see how other people play the game.

Now that I think about it, once the game opens up my main priorities seem to be getting the easier XP, then getting the House and unlocking the important merchants.

See I usually avoid going for easy XP even though I pretty much know where all the oddities are at this point. Unless I'm really close to an important level, I stick to this general path.

Camp Hathor to completion.
Early Waterways exploration.
Rail Crossing to completion.
Foundry to completion.
Core City - Black Crawler to completion
Hidden Quest
Core City - Gauntlet and Arena
Free Drone start
Abandoned Waterway Facility
Core City - Oligarch to completion
Expansion start
Balor
Expansion finish
Free Drone finish
University
Deep Cavern

I do not deviate from this route as I do think it has not only the most logical flow in regards to what is happening in setting but also the best progression in terms of difficulty. I feel like I would trivialize a lot of fights if I changed up my order to prioritize XP.

 

[lukaszek]

for me its camp hathor so I can stock up on traps
then foundry where I dump all those traps

any build with sneaking and functional traps&grenades can do those on dominating regardless of how shitty their main offense is. Even throwing knives.
And once you are done you are of high enough level to go in any direction and even my exotic larp abominations could start killing things properly.

 

[Trashos]

I used to do Camp Hathor first when I was on Hard. Now on DOM, the level that gives me problems is the 1st level of the mine (which I used to stealth through, but can't stealth through on DOM). Now don't get me wrong, I can still plant 30-40 traps and do it. But if I am to do all that, then I 'd rather go do the Foundry instead or get the House (assuming Coretech questline where I also use a lot of traps).

I feel like I would trivialize a lot of fights if I changed up my order to prioritize XP.

Indeed, my purpose is to trivialize the game as much as possible, because I play soft ironman. Not only do I play soft ironman, but I am nowhere close to turning it into real ironman, so I cannot afford to take the tough road (other than certain self imposed limitations, like using stealth as much as reasonably possible, which is very unwise on ironman due to how the system works). On my best playthroughs I am at ~10 reloads per playthrough, and I won't be happy until that number goes <5.

But I get your point, since I too try to do things the hard way in other games that I find easier. Not here though.

 

[agris]

soft ironman

aluminum-man

 

[lukaszek]

I used to do Camp Hathor first when I was on Hard. Now on DOM, the level that gives me problems is the 1st level of the mine (which I used to stealth through, but can't stealth through on DOM). Now don't get me wrong, I can still plant 30-40 traps and do it.

yeah its not trivial, but you can still do it without any tricks like traps. Just got to wait patiently for your window.

soft ironman.

not sneaking then

 

[Trashos]

not sneaking then

Exactly. Even if I manage to make it upstairs -which is not trivial at all-, they may surround me when I get back down.

aluminum-man

You may be right. But I have only tried that a couple of times (so I am not as experienced with it as I am with my usual squishy/SI/zero-room-for-mistakes builds), and it is going to take some effort. I was roflstomping most locations, and suddenly I would get someplace where I needed more skillpoints for crafting which I didn't have or I needed more mobility than I had and I would get destroyed.

At some point I will focus on designing tanks seriously, but it will take some work.

 

[ghostlife]

am I crazy, or is the Aegis Patroller one of the best all-around jet skis in the game? especially with how unimportant naval combat is

the only downside seems to be how fast it guzzles battery charge after you get the engines from abandoned waterway facility

 

[Trashos]

Aegis Patroller

It is a very good all around jet ski, yes.
But there are great benefits to other jet skis as well. The fast ones (Torpedo etc) are much more mobile. If you are a tank, the heavy jet skis (Devastator etc) provide better cover. The heavy ones can also use better suspensions.

the only downside seems to be how fast it guzzles battery charge after you get the engines from abandoned waterway facility

That goes for every jet ski, if you are using 140% consumption engines. So not a real downside. (Those are still the best engines for serious use of the jet ski. Not so much if you just want to go from point A to point B.)

especially with how unimportant naval combat is

I wouldn't call it unimportant. It depends on what you want to do. Eg, if you want to attack the Natives, certain villages are much easier to attack from the sea with the right jet ski.

 

[ghostlife]

^ the fact that it is 2x 140% engines is a big difference from the single-engine options, it seems. Or I've just been driving around a lot maybe.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[BING XI LAO]

Pure metathermics is quite fun, for example having to put on CAU armour and run around amongst gas grenades to kill bladelings in the room before the beast's room (to get oddities there)
And having to just barely sneak past Strongmen in first lemurian dungeon (no room in that one room to keep distance for Plasma Beam use)

 

[Trashos]

Is that pure metathermics or spear metathermics?

I am asking because I am interested in knowing what is the lowest Strength I can get away with on a Spear Metathermics build. I see builds online going 18 STR, but I don't want to go that high.

 

[lukaszek]

18 STR

3 STR since its enough for throwing?

 

[BING XI LAO]

Is that pure metathermics or spear metathermics?

I am asking because I am interested in knowing what is the lowest Strength I can get away with on a Spear Metathermics build. I see builds online going 18 STR, but I don't want to go that high.

Pure, but I happen to be 8 str anyway, so maybe I should've done that. I also went 3 INT 10 Con so I only have fireball iceball and plasma beam. With psychosis quite mana intensive and also has issues in that I built it to be tanky but it likes enemies to be at a distance.

 

[Trashos]

3 STR since its enough for throwing?

My point is that I still want to be one-shotting bosses on a spear throw crit! STR18 has an 88% damage advantage over STR3 (or STR7), but I am wondering whether I need all that.

EDIT: It has a bigger advantage than that, because STR also increases the effective skill. It turns out that STR 18 has 150% MORE damage (ie, 2.5 times the damage!) than STR7 for spears, if the saved ability points do not go to DEX.

I also went 3 INT

Well, the reason I haven't played spear metathermics YET is because I don't like how few skill points it has. I will be certainly going INT 6 for the skill points (and weaponsmith and premeditation).

 

[lukaszek]

My point is that I still want to be one-shotting bosses on a spear throw crit! STR18 has an 88% damage advantage over STR3 (or STR7), but I am wondering whether I need all that.

somewhere in those pages you can find my 3str spear throw dominating build. No mushroom magic, was still dropping most of the dominating bosses on 1 hit

 

[Trashos]

lukaszek, found it!
Interesting to see that spears need a lot of DEX to be accurate. I was wondering about that.

I see you tried both crit spear throw and expertise spear throw. Which one worked better for you?

 

[lukaszek]

I see you tried both crit spear throw and expertise spear throw. Which one worked better for you?

this expertise one was too memey honestly. It was more about using 3 types of weapons at once and in the end I didnt like it that much. Didnt even fool around long enough to see how non-crit spear throw would compare with that special googles on.

Interesting to see that spears need a lot of DEX to be accurate. I was wondering about that.

yeah on dominating it is a pain, night vision is hard requirement too. Late game however you can run mainly in baclava.

Most importantly you can pick versatility instead of expose weakness and switch to pew pew lazor with that max dex to dispose of nagas and other robots faster.

 

[Trashos]

I am in my... er.... "beloved" Arke with my knives build.

Total reloads in whole game up to Arke: 6
Reloads in Arke this far: 7

All these years after the game's release, and I have seen none of you bitches who claim that Arke is OK -which it isn't- write a guide about how to do it methodically and with no reloads.

Also, for the first time I have noticed that different things are happening in Arke after a reload. Eg, a toxic cloud appears, then after a reload maybe it doesn't. Same goes for the kamikaze bots. Random shit happening all over the place.

Anyway, like I said I am in Arke, and naturally I needed to rant.

 

[ItsChon]

Hm, all these posts are making me consider trying to go for an Ironman Playthrough of the game. I reload a metric fuck ton when I play Underrail to get through some fights, and now I'm wondering how the game would feel if I tried to keep it down to a minimum. Would probably require me to change up how I play through the game which would be tough, but could be fun to do with an overpowered build like Tin Can AR (have yet to ever play an AR build) or full Psi.

 

[Trashos]

Ironman/soft ironman forces you to think about a difficult encounter/location before you do it. In the case of Underrail, it also forces you to prepare heavily for the difficult fights (ie, I often go back to the house to get the right gear and consumables for each location). If you can find joy in such things, you will love it.