Underrail uses various skill checks for flavor dialog and quests "shortcuts", such as determining a cause of death in a murder with Biology, repairing something yourself with Mechanics, or disarming a bomb with Traps. So it's possible you'll get some extra use out of it, all quests I've encountered can be solved without a skill check though.

Electronics does have a slight synergy with hacking so you will get a benefit for having both.

Okay, here's my tip for beginning players: if you're playing at a high resolution like 1920x1200 (which is what I use) go into the options and change the font and conversation portrait sizes from "Auto" to "Large."

For me, that made a huge difference, both in terms of comfort level and in terms of interacting with NPCs. I can see what they look like now.

Nice tips! I just have a few comments.

Character 8: Oddity system supposedly levels faster, though from what I've seen it's close. Oddity is better if you want to explore a lot and avoid fights (you only get XP for oddity items and quests). Classic gives XP for fights, lockpicking/hacking, and quests. In Classic, combat XP is determined by your level in relation to the enemies - you continue to get XP, it's just significantly reduced if you're higher level.

General 8: Vendors restock every 90 minutes, real time.

General 9: Also look at the quality of the components. High quality items are rare and valuable, but require high crafting skills to use. I always grab 70-80+ quality items, because it might be difficult to find them when you need them. At 10th-ish level, don't even bother with low quality items if you're putting points into crafting.

IMO, burrowers are easy by around level 10 (after Depot A). I've never bothered with shields when fighting them. It might depend on the build, though. They're resistant to mechanical damage.

I don't think any secrets require perception above 10, but i'm not positive. I wouldn't waste a feat on Snooping if you already have 10.

That's a great tip. I set everything to large myself, even on 1366x768.

Thanks for the info about Classic XP. I'm not sure if i'll ever use it though, Oddity XP just feels right for this game.

I've got another tidbit of advice for new players:

Not too far along into the game you'll find a settlement called Rail Crossing. Some of the folks you talk to there will give you directions to other places, such as, "The old building is south of Rail Crossing."

When they give you directions like that, you should assume you need to start from the place you get off the train, not the town center.

Brings to mind a tip - look at the save file description for the 'name' of a place - if you aren't sure of it.


To give an example (spoiler free) - in Rail Crossing, you are given a quest to locate something gone missing. And also the last place it was.

Well, due to the way I explored a lot before ever going to Rail Crossing, I had already been to the "last known location", not knowing it was later given as the place to start looking.

Because of how I found it initially, I thought it was just an "upstairs" of some other place, and thus shared that other place's name - and never considered it was the place to look (or that the upstairs would have a different name than the downstairs). So I explored all over looking for the place when I had already (unknowingly) been to it.

Finally, I noticed the name of the place on a save description. It was quite the "Aha!" moment. :)

Turning on the compass can also be helpful.