Underrail
 

What a phenomenal RPG! I played for about 9 hours and then restarted on Hard, heeeeere we goooo! :)

Really great game, though. It sat in my backlog for years and it was finally time to give it a try. Completely enthralled by it, it just hits the right notes. No spoilers, please.

If anyone wants to watch the LP, here it is -

I hope you read a good guide for your build or you might regret choosing Hard for your first playthrough. I hear there are some brutal difficulty spikes later on.

I don't really use guides but here's hoping I can use some RPG Senses to make a decent build! We'll see. Keeping my 8 hours of Normal difficulty save games as backup just in case. :)

Yeah, Underrail can have a monstrous difficulty spike about mid-game or a little before. I have tons of hours in that one.

I've been through this game twice so far, and likely to book a third visit perhaps later this year. It's a seriously great game.

The accepted rule is if your build can overcome Depot A (an early-ish "dungeon") then you can probably handle 95% of the rest of the game. Depot A is where bad builds go to die. It's the first real difficulty spike you hear about.

The game opens up a bit after Depot A as well. You're free to go to areas that you shouldn't be in yet. It can make it feel more difficult than it actually is the first time through.

There are of course builds that bloom later in the game and as you get more experienced you'll know which ones to keep pushing on and which ones to give up. The character building math is pretty tight and nobody can do everything on one build by design. Part of the fun is thinking up a concept and seeing how it'll play out. A metal hulk with an assault rifle plays very differently from a stealthy sniper. Or a psionic monk. Or a mad scientist. Hardest part about the game for me is resisting the urge to start over.

Edit to add: https://underrail.info/build/

Well, so far Hard is actually hard! I'm really enjoying it. Due to my scavenging abilities I'm able to get quite a few items to help me, and my gunplay is decent enough. I've managed to get to the building Newton is in but on Hard there are *3* psi beetles right as u walk in the door! However, there are double doors u can close to trap a single beetle in the room with u, so I'm off to try that next. :) So far it's been very challenging but very rewarding. Really enjoying it!

Crafting is very, very useful in this game I found, so I suggest looking at that too.

It's tempting but this game looks quite long, I should probably stay away from it ;) There's a nice opportunity on GOG though.

It's very long, maybe not Lords of Xulima long but long.

Well, I did boost my Chemistry to 20 in hopes of crafting, but I'm not sure if there's anything I can actually craft yet, is there? I was thinking possibly gas grenades, but I haven't bought the blueprint on the account I don't know if I can do it. I will do a test and buy it and see, since as far as I can tell it doesn't show u before hand what the blueprint actually entails.

You can see the items in vendors' inventories before buying the blueprints.
Also, you will find many blueprints, so if you aren't struggling too much yet, then I'd keep the money until you think it'll be more useful.

As much coverage as this excellent game has received on this site, I'm still astonished by how few seem to have actually played it. Really, stow away the crappy games and pick this one up, you'll not regret it!

20 Chemistry and 10 Tailoring is enough to craft an Incendiary Grenade, aka the Molotov Cocktail. Another great bit of advice for this game I see often, "If in doubt of what to do, toss a Molotov at it."

Interesting, thanks! I didn't expect to take tailoring, though. What about gas grenades? I figure if Chemistry is all that's needed I could toss some of those together.

Gas Grenades are 20 Chemistry, 20 Biology and 5 Mechanics. The harder part is finding the material to put in the grenade tho. Gasoline for molotovs is fairly plentiful.

I see. So, are u saying that crafting generally involves multiple disciplines rather than one? Do I have enough wiggle room to add say, tailoring? Or biology? My build so far is pretty spaced out because I'm also learning thought control disciplines. Plus I just realized throwing is a skill that i need to level up, too. I guess I'm going to have to skip melee although I only wanted a little bit there to raise my knifing chance when i'm up close. Guns from distance, knives possibly at close range. Idk, just some thoughts.

There's usually a smaller base of skill required and one skill that increases upwards. You never need more than 10 Tailoring for that incendiary for example, but 40 Chemistry will allow you to make a stronger version.

Next level you can drop 10 points directly into Tailoring, you're not capped at 5 per level, only +5 to the total cap on each level.

A lot of people take Throwing to about 50 so they have a decent enough % on tossing a grenade. Not every skill needs to be maxed out to cap. Also, a character with a higher Intelligence will naturally gain more effect skill points in Crafting skills. There's a lot of hidden nuance to mine…or read the wiki for.

Don't try to spread yourself thin, that'll lead to disaster. Like I said in an earlier post, the game is by *design* not allowing one character to do everything. This is especially true on combat. Pick a method of murder and go full in on it. If you're pursuing a gun/melee thing, there's an interesting Gun Fu build floating out there that does that. It's pretty new (just got patched in) so I don't know how far it goes.

To be honest, I gotta ditch melee 'cuz i'm already going in on traps. and sprint. so ideally, i can sprint away in a pinch, place a trap or two, let 'em walk into it or something. throwing i'm going to take a bit of (now that i know it's a skill, oops) but focus on guns. i'm also lockpicking and hacking which is getting me a lot of loot early on, and persuasion and mercantile. maybe i'm spread too thin? i'll grab 10 tailoring at least, molotovs are a big help for me. i think i should be alright if i focus on the right things…

Unless you get the Quick Tinkering feat, traps can only be placed while out of combat. But flashbangs will allow you to break line of sight and you can run away and get out of combat that way. There's also a feat that greatly diminishes the time to place traps while out of combat, allowing you to stealth around creating a killing field.

Lockpicking and hacking are great, yeah. I'm not that big on persuasion but some people like it. Mercantile is useful if you're going into crafting.

Melee with lots of traps are my bread and butter. Trap em, wrap em, then slice open yer Christmas gifts!

Well, I killed the 5 or 6 (!) psi beetles that ganged up on me when rescuing Newton. There were double the amount of beetles than on Normal difficulty. It was tough but I had to get smart - killed the first one with an aimed shot and neural overload. Closed the double doors, planted a frag mine at the door and then a bear trap a bit farther back. Opened the door, moved back and threw a molotov, which also triggered the frag mine and killed a couple of them. One then burned to death, and when the fire cleared I shot the last one to death with my .44 hammerer. Recovered my bear trap and went on my way. :)

So fun! On Normal it was a breeze. On Hard I had to actually utilize my resources and some wits, and also the environment. Big difference. Really loving it.

Sounds like you're having a good time, but note that as others have said the big spike is Depot A. So you may really struggle there…
Although crafting is very useful there too, but I won't spoil more.

Thanks, Pladio. :party:

The nice thing about what happened there is now I have a bunch of credits. I grabbed a couple frag mines, a couple HE grenades, a couple frag grenads, an EMP grenade, i have some caltrops, a poisoned bear trap, and more. I'm pretty set for the upcoming challenges. Also gotta grab Scare psionics next level. We'll see how it goes!