I was bored and decided to put up a list of tips for other new players, since this sub-forum seems pretty dead.

I hope these tips help someone out!

Character Creation

1. When creating your character, click the "Show All" button on the Feats tab and read what's available. There are a lot of feats, many of them awesome. They'll give you a good idea of the types of characters you can make and allow you to get a general idea of how to allocate your stats and skills.

2. I don't like to push a particular stat in any RPG and every stat in Underrail is useful. But Perception is very important for most characters, it affects trap detection, stealth detection, secret detection, and all ranged weaponry. Unless you have a very specific build in mind, you'll probably want to have it at 5 as a minimum.

3. You get a stat point every 4 levels and a feat every 2 levels.

4. I recommend staying away from too many crafting and social skills on your first character. If you want to dive into some crafting, read about it on the wiki first and choose the crafting skills appropriate to your character build.

5. Psionic characters are powerful and fun, but be aware that you have to sacrifice 25% of your HP permanently to unlock your psi casting potential. This can be nice to know before character creation.

6. Lock-picking and hacking can greatly benefit any character build, but they don't seem to be a necessity.

7. Stats and skills have "synergy", you can check this out in the skill descriptions. You'll also see a bonus in brackets beside skills that are benefiting from synergy. You don't need to plan around this but it's important to know about.

8. I can't really comment on the difference between Oddity and Classic XP systems. I use the Oddity system, it really rewards exploration and doesn't make you feel like you need to kill everything you see just to gain XP.

9. Stealth doesn't inherently give any bonus to combat, it's mainly to allow you to start combat on your own terms, avoid combat all together, or rob someone blind. However, there are ranged and melee feats available that allow some awesome attacks that only work from stealth.

10. If you're planning to wear any medium or heavy armor, you should probably ignore the dodge and evasion skills completely. There's a modifier called Armor Penalty that stems from the weight of your armor pieces, and if you wear anything medium or heavy you'll pretty much negate any dodge or evasion bonus you have. A high armor penalty also lowers Stealth and Movement Points. Powerful headgear devices, like fully modded goggles and psi headbands also give huge penalties to the dodge skill.

General Tips

1. This game can be punishing. But it does give you a lot of tools and ways through situations, you just gotta learn how to take advantage of what you're given. Stick with it, it's extremely rewarding.

2. Choke points and traps can be your best friend, especially at the start the game regardless of your build.

3. If you run into an area that seems unreasonably hard, you probably shouldn't be there. Leave and go somewhere else until you're ready for it.

4. Always repair high value gear before selling it.

5. Human enemies stay dead, animals and mutants seem to respawn after a period of real-time.

6. Try to explore areas in full while you're there, since animals and mutants respawn it can be a nightmare coming back to finish exploring an area you've previously cleared.

7. Dump items you can't currently sell in your apartment, and when exploring just dump them in a convenient container and come back later. There's no reason to ever walk around encumbered.

8. Vendors only buy items they want, the items they want randomly changes when they restock but each vendor has a general theme (weapons, electronics, medical supplies). They seem to restock after 1 - 2 hours of real time. Vendors also use different currencies depending on where you are.

9. Some crafting components and items can be quite rare, even things you'd think would be common. If a vendor is carrying a component or item you think you might need, buy it if you can, it'll probably be gone when he/she restocks.

10. Vent crawling can be a really nice benefit in Underrail, it's not always perfectly safe, but usually a helluva lot safer than wandering blind down hallways with possible patrols, bots and cameras. You can look through vents before you open them, which makes it an amazing way to scout areas you've never been before. To be an adept vent crawler you need to have a decent amount of strength to open the covers with a crowbar (this causes noise) or have a decent lockpicking skill to open them with an omni-tool.

Combat Tips - Rat Hound

1. Lure them into choke points, then use any AoE or kill them one at a time.
2. Fire attacks are great and cause nearby hounds to run in fear.

Combat Tips - Azuridae (Psi Beetle)

1. Always engage them in close quarters, regardless of your build. This causes them to run and waste action points they could use to attack you.
2. They have a high damage threshold, and it seems to be higher when their "brain" isn't exposed.
3. They use more powerful abilities when in a group, engaging 3 or more is very dangerous because they'll start using Telekinetic Punch.

Combat Tips - Sentry Bots

1. Early in the game just avoid them if you can. They have multiple stuns, tasers and flash bangs.
2. Security cameras that spot you will direct ALL sentry bots in the area to the last location you were seen. Sometimes you can use that to your advantage.
3. Get yourself any tactical vest. Even the ones available early in the game can completely negate a lot of their damage.
4. Electrical damage works well and stuns them. They're immune to fire and resist other elements.
5. Even if you have no throwing skill you can still use EMP grenades at point blank range, since they won't hurt you.

Combat Tips - Burrowers

1. If possible, avoid all encounters with Burrowers until you get a shield emitter.
2. A shield emitter will deflect their poisoned spine attack, negating their entire offense, leaving you free to clean up their spawn.
3. You can smash the eggs they lay in combat before they hatch into a spawn.
4. Always carry a few vials of antidote just in case, most medical vendors sell it.

Combat Tips - Humans

1. You can lure humans into traps and AoE effectively by using line of sight.
2. Crossbow wielding enemies are especially deadly early in the game, in most cases they should be focused on.

Changes

[12/30/15] Added tips about vents, perception and armor penalty. Cleaned up some old tips.
[1/3/2016] Added Combat Tips about various early encounters.

Thanks, Mike.

I bought the game a few days ago, so I'll put this list to good use.

The forum's probably dead because people are playing the game and because of the holiday.

Some more potentially helpful/useful notes:

Starting stats range 3-10.

Starting skills max @ 15. This allows 8 skills to be maxed, or numerous other variations over numerous skills that all seem to have their uses and so it just depends on how you want to go. It definitely doesn't seem like you want to spread yourself too thin, but that you can get any number of good build and balances that are all viable ways to play.

Get into the mind of how you want to be, and just play that way. It's greatly rewarding!

Perception is a very important stat as you pointed out. It affects a lot of mechanics.

Traps/Mines and stealth enemies in Underrail are deadly, usually resulting in your death if your character doesn't detect them. Not to mention the game has a lot of hidden shortcuts that can be extremely handy.

However you can get by without it by using the Paranoia feat, traps skill, and even detection goggles. Or perhaps a high CON melee build with blast armor to just soak up everything you run into. You can make such a wide variety of characters.

I was actually going to edit my tips and discuss how important Perception is. But we got that covered now. :)

I haven't started playing yet but from what the OP said if you plan on using medium or heavy armor it basically negates dodge. So if you're going to use light armor then go with dodge, if you're going to use medium or heavy armor then go with stealth. Just my suggestion.

OP some good pointers there, even for a loooong time rpg player like me.

I've made a stealthy, martial arts and traps kind of character. I can say that Pickpocket is extremely powerful if you're good at it.

5mm firearms seem to be extremely weak so far, but you can get them with silencers.

I think any character should have some hacking and lockpicking. It will be very frustrating to go without those skills.

There are quite a few traps in this game, and your own traps can be very effective as well. It's a good skill.

Heavy armor also destroys your stealth. If you want to be good at stealth then go with light armor, dodge, evasion, and at least a bit of agility.

I've decided stealth is a definite for me in this game. Which is pretty damn excellent, actually, and says a lot for the game in my view.

Stealth has always been cool to me conceptually, but in RPGs it is usually something I do not do because because of either 1.) how it limits my ability to do other things that I prefer doing, and 2.) the implementation and functionality of it within the game is unrewarding, weak, boring, poorly done, or simply not as good as that really cool mage-like class or a kick-ass barbarian-esque brute-dwarf or somesuch type character that lets you use all the cool armor and weapons in the game, etc. etc. etc, reason to not pick stealthy types, and also, 3.) if I really want a rewarding stealthy experience, there are numerous other games that do it better to scratch that itch.

SO. YES! Stealth! This mode of playing much more suits this underground world than armoring-up and such. The "taste" of armor in the game doesn't really appeal. Plus with the other ways I'm playing too, it definitely works, not as "synergized" as doing all the stealthy things together, but still good with the Psi and other abilities I'm going with. and there are a lot of ways/situations to utilize stealth in the game. It's very rewarding and well done for an RPG. Plus, with my snooping and paranoia, dodge+evasion going together, and just the general idea of sneaking around underground around passages ways and hidden things aplenty and the world already being "stealthy" in nature to begin with... Yepyep, it works very well!

So, now the question becomes, how do I want to make the rest of the build with it. It boils down to me having 30 Skill Points to spend. Some on stealth, some on dodge, some on evasion, and possibly some on a 4th? Depending how I build it. Should I just do 10Stealth 10Dodge, 10Evasion? Is 15 Stealth more useful, interesting, and strategic, then do 8Dodge 7Evasion? Should I consider a 4th skill like traps or lockpicking? Of course those would be nice and useful skills in this game, but, yeah, it's just a matter of weighing them now at this point.

Also, I haven't really seen anything about followers anywhere, is there going to be anyone that can help me along the way in that regard, of course I know I'll be able to convince people into letting me pass, telling me locations, and giving me keys/access abilities to things and all that, but, I mean temporary, hireable, or standard RPG "devoted follower" type.

This all brings in to question the "technology" skills and if I should do "crafting" at all. I know they aren't used for just crafting, especially electronics sounds like it could be useful quite a bit outside of crafting, but, how much, how necessary/interesting, and how are the items that can be made compare to items that can be found/bought/rewarded. I could do zero technology skills and put all of those points into subterfuge/defense.

traps looks more offensive (planting them around to kill things/people) vs. defensive (finding boobytraps of all sorts/disarming, though there are those of course) and so I'm thinking I will not do that, and if I do anything wtih a 3rd subterfuge skill it will be lockpicking, but I'm still uncertain, messing with it all for a bit to get the feels.

I could always do something like 15stealth, 15hacking, 8lockpick, 8traps, 7evade, 7dodge, but I just don't know how that will work in the long run at this point and, again, that would have me doing 0electronics and I'm not sure if skipping that is a good idea either. hhmmmmhmmmm! funfun!!!!

You can't really go wrong with Traps + Stealth + Lockpicking. If your stealth is good enough, you can setup some very nice ambushes with traps while close to your target. You also need lockpicking to open vent covers quietly, vent skulking is pretty important.

You can get away with no crafting at all, but in general you can make much higher quality and specialized items with crafting than what you can buy off the vendors. If you're going with traps, mechanical + biology might be a nice crafting combo. You can make traps with the poisons you extract from the organs of various animals. You can buy some types of poisoned traps from vendors too.

The issue with crafting is that there is a lot of cross-over, you need points in multiple disciplines to be able to build a lot of items.

And as far as I know Underrail has no hirelings.

Thanks for the info on the crafting and hirelings, but by hirelings do you also mean people who are like "hey I like what you're doing I'm going to join you for a while" types too?

I will probably just skip crafting all together and hope there are cool and good energy weapons to find that suit well enough. If I play for a while and am not liking how the weapons are doing because I'm not doing crafting, I might just switch to using melee.

Another question: how important is INT outside of the crafting skills? It says "ability to reason." Does it affect conversations or interactions at all?

No followers of any kind. I don't really miss that to be honest, feels nice to just be solo.

You won't run across energy weapons on vendors or mobs during the first part of the game. You will find some very decent ones on dead enemies and vendors after a while though.

I've had intellegence checks in some convos, but they seem to be for flavour only.

I'd say it's a suitable dump stat if you're not going to craft, but some feats have an intellegence requirement and it also has a slight effect on psi regen.

The more I play the more I like how the various mechanics work in this game, like stealth, crafting, bartering, traps. It's all very well thought out.

If you want to craft your own items, keep an eye on the "quality" of various components you find. A hopper hide with a quality value of 68 is much better than a hopper hide with a quality value of 15 (even though they look identical in inventory). The item you create will be much better if you use the 68 instead of the 15.

First time poster here. Hello.

Great tips there, enjoyed reading through the topic. Wish I knew them before (re-)starting my character. Now I'll just try to make do. This game is seriously awesome though. I don't know what a shield emitter is yet but persistently tried and eventually did kill a bunch of burrowers. During all those reloads of my save I so wished I had more than one molotov cocktail.

Does anyone know if any secret areas require perception above 10? I'm thinking about getting Snooping but my per is already at 10.

I'm at lvl7 with 3 in INT and WIL, and zero points in all Technology and Psi skills, including Electronics, and I can't recall any moment when I could have needed it so far. Playing stealthy, lockpicking, hacking, etc. My Hacking skill suffers from low INT but still no use for Electronics as far as I know.