future Knife user - should I focus on Bleed or Traps?

[nightshift]

Despite my initial bad experience with knives and melee in general, I decided to restart and try again. Please don't respond with how knives suck and better go SMG or PsyMonk or whatever. Knives are inferior compared to those in the current state of the game, that I am well aware. Planned out most of my character, only 1 question that remains.

Since the knife will be my weapon of choice, should I take up Vile Weaponry, Taste for Blood and Eviscerate - feats that are very knife related and use traps just because I'll invest the skill points, or take Oppurtunist, Quick Tinkering and Traps Expert INSTEAD of those? I plan to choose one 3 over the other 3.

Traps I'm still going to use either way, it's just a matter of how much I can get out of the two group of feats compared to the other. Will the 60% reduced trap planting time make a difference (for example when dealing with patrolling enemies), is the instant trap drop during combat of Quick Tinkering is such a big deal and does the damage benefit of Oppurtunist gets me more advantage (for example against a bear-trapped enemy), than what Vile Weaponry provides?

I know these questions are very situational, so we have to take our weapon-type into account as well.
Will serrated knives and the Bone Handle Knife unique weapon are superior than other blades without the bleeding benefit in general? I know they only work against organic targets, but as I mentioned, traps will still be useable to some extent. As opposed to going with the Kukri, still Cut-Throat and Expose Weakness but instead of getting enemies bled, I'll be a Trap specialist.

Also, I'm not planning to mount spikes onto my armor or boot, will plan to use leather, so please don't recomment any of that. All opinions are welcome, I would especially appreciate the ones from players that have experience of knives, who tried out the bleed feats, familiar with their benefits and how well they can be utilized in the game.



In short, Traps I'm still going to use anyway, perhaps the only question is if those Bleed-feats are worth to take or not.
Thank you in advance.

[cypherusuh]

Why not both except Trap Expert?
Imo, knife is good enough to clear the game, since they received indirect buff from Energy Edge. I'd take opportunist whenever I could, and Quick Tinkering is still good outside of combat, and for emergency blockade in combat.
Tbh its better that you post rough build first, then asks about potentially better feat, since idk what's your other feat limitation that makes you unable to take opportunist and QT

[Voroff]

Hello, same as cypher : Trap Expert is a convenience feat, very good to not die of boredom during 2 or 3 phases of the game and otherwise helps to keep the pacing of the exploration. But its not required, so if you want a convenience feat, why not look at pack rathound ? Yep, traps are heavy and youre gonna carry a flipton of them when leaving your hub - evertime.

More on the topic : now that energy edge is a thing, robots are less of headbanging problem, even if you still gonna spend a lot of repair kits on them at the end of the day : so, nope, knives are good in my book now :)

I'd recommend quick tinkering AND vile weaponry, and if you can : opportunist => gonna help a lot in the early game to finish people while you dont have the full knive'n'feats endgame arsenal. Vile weaponry, because of the reduced healing if you didnt manage to stab everyone to death at first,

Taste for blood is nifty and good but secondary as i see it, and eviscerate is just too much - if you want an overkill its the way to go, otherwise its an overshot and overinvestment - maybe cutthroat insteat if you want a finisher move very very badly ? As both are usable against living things. (Just ... the exception is Tchort : susceptible to eviscerate, but not cutthroat, yes ?)





Evolution is Tchort as Tchort is Exception, brother, go and cull some more things :)

[cypherusuh]

Imo eviscerate and vile weaponry shows its strength on DC, especially on things that has native regeneration.
Ironically, you should use Ripper's Glove if you wanna abuse eviscerate. It could deal SO MUCH bleed stack, and in 2 turn, you should have enough stack to completely disintegrate your enemies at cellular level.
But yeah, that skill is overkill ability with proper gear abuse

I'd pick both Evis and Cutthroat tbh, CT works great to delete 1 enemies before combat, and it even works by abusing flashbang and vanishing bomb (CT works on incapacitated enemies, which also get Opportunist damage bonus, or simply retreat, restealth, and CT them again)

[nightshift]

Thank you for all your answers, tbh I never expercted replies like yours with proper sentences and lengh:)
As a knife user, my strength is 3, so pack rat might sound useful, but I have to make do without it. It's just too much of a luxury and I never find it realistic to carry too much items even as much as I could with the carrying limit of 130.
Taste for Blood seems a little underpowered compared to Vile Veaponry which can give +30% extra damage within 3 hits, while the former needs 6 hits to reach that amount. The two combined sounds nice though. And Eviscerate is Knife exclusive, meaning that I should take it, right? Cutthroat is a feat that made me choose this weapon, so it is a must for me.
I just don't know how I could stack bleed without a serrated blade. That is what keeps me hesitate. Anyway, my build is like

THIS[underrail.info.tm]

As you can see, the 3 feats before the last one can be switched to either the Trap-; or the Bleed focused ones, Still, there are a few points which I would like to highlight and explain, as there are some choices here that might seem a little unconventional.

I know, I'm pretty much overinsuranced on the defense. With this much dex, Parry seemed so alluring (58% chance) and the trinity of Uncanny Dodge (10 guaranteed dodges), Fancy Footwork (with so many normal attacks) and Evasive Maneuvers (with so many movement points from Fancy Footwork) too. I think Uncanny Dodge and Parry can keep you avoiding hits even on high difficulties, since they are useful regardless of the enemy's chance to hit.
Also, I took Interloper as I found sneaking to be painfully slow - which might be okay for a ranged character, but for someone who needs to prowl close within arms lengh to his enemies, it's not very efficent. Some are also moving, often faster than how I move while sneaking (packs of creatures) and I loose visibility while being near them. I have to close distance fast.
And for better or worse, while it reduces my Stealth, I'm planning to wear Death's Grin and took Brutality as a form of cc in order to keep the enemy from attacking too much and surrounding, eventually overwhelming me. In some scenarios, it might do me more bad than good if they run away so I have to close distance again, but since the feat only works with melee attacks, it has to be usable right? I think that it fits a ghost like creep that attacks from the shadows, never to be seen, but when it does make an appearance, it's scary and possibly already too late forthe unlucky witness. Also Intimidation checks during dialogues seemed quite common on my previous attempt of play.
Regarding my skills of technology, I only plan to have 50 mech, 25 tailoring for trapmaking and repair kits. Chemisty for stun grenades and bio for poisons to stun and block psionic abilities.

Feel free to post anything that comes to mind upon checking it. Especially if you think it sucks, as who knows, you might save me from making a huge mistake. And once again, thanks for the insight!

[cypherusuh]

I actually thinking about making similar build such as yours, but I ended up gonna trying more reliable knife build[underrail.info.tm] (vile weaponry before Increased Dexterity)
Honestly, just give up and take blue pill to remove physical body limitation. It'll make the game much more enjoyable.
Taste for Blood is just there, since you'll deal bleed and eviscerate anyway. Nothing to lose when you could also boost your damage while doing that.
You'll wield 2 knife, serrated knife and Energy Edge combat knife, and occasionally switch to Jackknife for lockpick / trap disarm boost.

Parry, same as dodge, is kinda dodgy, because usually, you could just kill or disable melee enemies before they could hit you, and the only exception is stalker. And I would rather use riot gear for better melee "immunities" from them, which is why I usually only take 40 Dodge max for Uncanny Dodge, although max evasion is still good, since it also stacks with range and lighting, making your enemies chance to hit to plummet on understandable level, AND it also significantly reduced AoE damage. Although Evasive Maneuver might be overkill.
Interloper is not as good as you might think. It changes stealth speed penalty from 45% to 30%. Once you get good enough Tabi boots, you'll have no problem to getting close to enemies, and with decent stealth, it won't be a problem anyway.

And the whole Intimidation. The only reason I dropped this is because Brutality is bad. It's 15% chance per person, that can be resisted by their Resolve. It sounds very unreliable, not to mention Fear is a double-edged status. You might waste so much MP and AP to chase them away, or you might waste a turn doing nothing. It's even worse if your enemies are Psi user. Yell is actually pretty good, but to make it more useful, you need Protectorate helmet, which has 30% armor penalty. Although reducing 55-ish skill points is pretty good for dodge build, but it's still a massive investment.

Your lockpicking and hacking skill is too much, there's plenty of gear which boost those 2 skills, and 130 skill checks are so few and on end game, that it's honestly not worth it (unless you want to skip robot-fest battle near end-game with 130 computer hack). Imo 110 would be a good enough target to open certain doors. Also, your crafting is not good at all. It's kinda doable with kukri and Ripper's Glove, but their damage might not be enough to finish the game, especially compared with Energy Edge weapon mod capability. If you're confident with "no crafting" run, go ahead

[nightshift]

Allright, so I dropped Brutality - went for a little more crafting and let go of the trapper feats too.
Now it looks like THIS[underrail.info.tm]
Now the only question is should I take Oppurtunist instead of Interloper or Parry. Can Oppurtunist be beneficial for a knife user and if so, does it provide a bigger advantage than those two?

[cypherusuh]

Opportunist works great on all weapon build. You could utilize bear trap / tazer for ez 25% damage bonus, also incap proc from Cheap Shots. Swap interloper with it.
Everything seems good. If you dare to run 3 CON, you could go 10 Agi and get Blitz, swap. Weaponsmith with it.
Or get psi haste (55 TM), divert all your chemistry and some pickpocket skills to it. Imo chemistry is all-or-nothing build, since you could stock MK3 and potentially MK4 around DC, so it's kinda defeat its purpose if you can't craft mk5
Extra AP is huge for knife and fist build. With psi haste feat + Blitz+1 spec, you could attack 28 times! Now imagine that with potential bleed from Ripper's claw