Stealth

[Rules Of Acquisition]

Hi. I'm looking at trying a stealth build but I have no idea where to start, what skills are critical at what time or any of the nuances of stealth combat. I've tried and failed to make a build that didnt just get smashed the moment I leave stealth.

I had a lot of success with my hammer build, my psi monk and was doing well with an energy weapon build, but I just can't figure out where I'm going wrong for stealth, doesn't matter if its knives, crossbows or sniper rifles.

Does anyone have an builds I can check for reference that aren't super old? Also, any suggestions, oddities, ways to play that I should be aware of? I've never had so much trouble with a game like this before, and after seeing so much praise for stealth I really want to give it a go, charging in like a bull is all fun and that, but I'd love to see how the other side lives. Thanks.

[Qiox]

Stealth is limited on how it gives you an advantage in a fight. Many people use it to avoid fights.

The primary way that you can use it to get a big advantage in a fight is to prep the battlefield with traps and mines before starting combat. Even with low trap skill, taking the time to place a full wall off, 3 deep, of bear traps between you and the enemies will make a huge difference (assuming your are not melee!)

Or you can set a single line of bear traps then behind that 2 or 3 mines. The bear traps will each lock down one enemy, and once the first of them steps forward out of their trap, they trigger all the mines blowing everyone up. Or you can toss a grenade to trigger the mines yourself once the enemies are bunched up in the bear traps.

Once the combat is underway, stealth has limited use. You can only re-enter stealth if all enemies are incapacitated or stunned. A flashbang is good for that.

[happybjorn]

Most of the builds in destroyer's guide should still work fine. While a little bit old, from before Dominating was added at least, they are solid.

I tend to look at stealth as mostly a tactical or fight avoidance advantage, pretty much as Qiox described, and an extra looting ability (it increases the number of places you can loot, even more so if combined with other stuff like lockpicking). A character still needs some form of defense. Traps, special grenades (or bolts), dodge and evasion are usually the best bets, but you can also craft some really impressive leather armors or tac vests eventually. Powerful alpha strikes help a lot too.

I always recommend playing Oddity!

Originally posted by Qiox:

Once the combat is underway, stealth has limited use. You can only re-enter stealth if all enemies are incapacitated or stunned. A flashbang is good for that.

Well, you can enter stealth mode in combat, but you won't be hidden unless the enemies are disabled. This can be useful for a character who wants to use Snipe more. I suspect you can become hidden if you break line of sight twice, once from the enemies, then again from where you broke line of sight, but am not certain of this. It may be that every time it looks like this happened for me I had also disable the enemies or broke out of combat mode as well.

[Tamiore]

Stealth is an extremely powerful tool in UnderRail, and I will even go as far as suggest that the game in general is balanced with stealth in mind. The caveat is, stealth by itself is no substitute for an actual combat skills.

First of, you have to keep in mind that stealth is kind of self-contained stat/skill wise:
as long as you have 6-7 points in agility (more is better, but hardly nessacery), keep the skill reasonably high and aren't using armor with heavy armor penalty, you should be able to use stealth irregardless of what your OTHER skills/stats are. (Basically, if you have a character build that works otherwise, you can add stealth to it and it usually still works.) 6 points in agility are great investment anyway because you can get "sprint" with that, and 7 allow you to take interloper.

Second, as far as combat is concerned, stealth:
- allows you to start from a favourable position
- if you initiate combat manually, you are given the highest initiative IRREGARDLESS of your initiative modifier for the duration of that combat

Now, as far as combat goes, I can tell you from extensive personal experience that a tri-school psion can handle everything in the game from stealth without ever raising non-psionic combat skills or using traps.

As for "packs", well, you need AOE of some kind. Realistically, you either train traps, or throwing, or (aforementioned) psionics.
A solid build usually has 3 DIFFERENT "attack" skills maxed out.
Tri-school psion has 3 schools, "sniper" might have firearms + throwing + traps, etc.
Don't expect to get too far with just one combat skill alone.

[Qiox]

Originally posted by Helix Mantis:

How do you deal with packs? I can't imagine calthrops would be THAT helpful, but I've never levelled throwing so I can't chuck them a foot in front of me without screwing up.

I always put enough points in throwing to take Grenadier. And often I will go a bit higher aiming for an effective skill of (50). That gives good enough accuracy. If you go as high as (90) throwing, you will have very good accuracy.

And with this, one of the more helpful crowd control items becomes reliable: Incendiary grenades. They have a dual use. Thrown into a pack of enemies, you can hopefully light a few on fire, taking them out of the fight for a bit.

But, it is also very useful to toss them on the ground, mainly in constricted spaces, between you and the enemies. If they are not already in the fire, they usually will not walk into it. Many of them will back off and wait it out. This allows you to divide up the pack. With the Grenadier feat you are ready to toss another one even before the 1st one stops burning.

In the lunatic mall, I usually clear the 1st floor right at the 1st doorway. The other grenade that is very powerful is the Gas grenade. Having a patch of ground burning, and covered with a poison gas cloud devastates any enemies who try to cross it. Prep that doorway with just a couple bear traps so that they bunch up and it is not so hard a fight. By that point in the game I usually have Mark 3 frag grenades that I am also using regularly. They can dump a lot of damage on a cluster of enemies.

[happybjorn]

Yes, there are many static spawns of toxic waste barrels, but depending on your gas grenade usage this may not be enough. Some merchants sell the needed ingredients. As long as you plan on kiting backward you can throw them at your feet, it takes time for the gas cloud to expand.

Mercantile is good for anyone, but how good it is depends on what difficulty you are playing on (it gets better the harder the difficulty, because profit margins are smaller) and if you can spare the points for it. You can check the wiki for various cut off points, but 50 or 105 effective skill are good targets. It's a more of a quality of life or luxury skill than anything and you can get by without it.

There isn't much reason to enter stealth mode once combat has started, except to be able to use Snipe the next round. It takes some planning to make work, and enemies will often shoot you out of it if they can. Even if you do manage to get hidden again the enemies will be aware you are somewhere and spend some time searching for you. You have very little tactical control while this is happening and it take a while for enemies to go back to standing around waiting for you to appear.

Anyone stuck behind a hazardous zone or someone trapped in a doorway will try to do something to attack you, but may not be able to and this effectively gives a reprieve from getting hit from melee attacks for a few rounds, but you'll still get shot at. Some enemies will run through hazards, but most will also take damage from them. if the only path is through a trap, then yes, enemies will run through them even if they spotted the trap, trapping doorways is very effective.

Having a close range weapon isn't strictly necessary, but is highly recommended. Smgs are great, and a single feat for them can be sufficient (spec ops), but other guns can work fine. They just work better with feats, so if you can spare a feat or three for your secondary gun then great.

Edit: Grenadier is a good feat. Quick Tinkering is game changing. You can have both if you want!

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by Helix Mantis:

I wasn't aware about the open turn mechanic with stealth, that's actually very helpful thank you. As far as psion goes, I've played around with the schools and it feels really overpowered. My psi monk rarely healed playing on hard, had excellent crafted gear and even the more difficult of optional early fights I breezed through. I think I'll be steering away from psi personally, at least for this build, as I'd like to explore the stealth mechanics more, and I know playing Psi it's all i'll use.

Well, you can try playing on DOMINATING and/or with limited deaths/reloads.
No need to pull your punches there.

Originally posted by Helix Mantis:

Sorry If this seems really basic, it honestly is. It's just never been a field I ever play in games like this, I'm always the "knock loudly on the door with a minigun in hand" type rather than the sneaky type, but I love this game and I really want to learn everything I can before the dlc. One last question too; is it worth taking a secondary firearm along with a sniper? Looking at some of the builds it seems the feats are all focused on sniping, I've never really tested non feat trained weapons before, so I don't know if the firearm skill alone is enough to merit it.

You sure can, and it need not be a secondary FIREarm. It can be a different-type-of-damage arm. Stungun, chemical pistol, energy weapon: you name it.
With versatility you can even use crossbows with decent efficiency.

[Qiox]

Take a look at this build to get an idea of what you can do:

http://underrail.info.tm/build/?GQgHBgMMAwfChzwAAAAAXGFTADliYlNfYgAAAAAAVCQoOTAWJjEBKRVLSQ


It is setup for a Stealthy trap user that can use either Sniper rifle + Assault rifle, or Sniper + SMG. There's still two feats to pick to tune to your preferences.

With this build you have:

- Maxed Guns, of course.
- Enough Throwing that you won't be dropping them at your feet.
- Enough Hacking for the hardest check in the game, which is at a terminal and you have to pass it without the tool bonus.
- Enough Lockpicking to open everything while using the Jacknife and Mark 3 tool.
- Enough Traps skill to use all traps and mines including the highest tiers. But there will be just a handful throughout the whole game you won't be able to disarm (3 or 4). But you will spot all of them.
- 107 effective Stealth without gear. Add to that in mid-game: 25 Armor, 15 Balaclava, 25 Tabi, that you swap on as needed to prep some traps and you will have enough to not get spotted. By end game you can go well over 200 with top quality gear and a cloaking device.
- Enough Mercantile to pass every check in the game.
- Enough Biology to craft everything, without needing the 15% crafting bench bonus, so you can craft Super Soldier Drug in DC if you want.
- Enough Chemistry to craft the highest tier traps, mines and grenades.
- And effective 140 in Mechanics, Electronics and Tailoring, with the crafting bench bonus. That is high enough for the most common quality ingredients you find. If you get lucky with some very high quality, you bump one up while dropping something else a bit. Basically save putting these at your final values until your last two levels or so and decide based on what you have for ingredients. Biology is a good place to take out points if you want to go higher in something else. Just look at all the craftable items in Biology and plan accordingly.


I would start with 8-7-6-3-8-3-5 and put first 4 points in Perception, then last 2 in Int.


Hopefully you can use this as a template for something that suits you.

[Tamiore]

Full disclosure: I haven't played non-psions since forever.
But that's what I came up with for a stealth crossbow guy: http://underrail.info.tm/build/?GQMHBwMQAwcAwofChwAAAMKHAAAAwofCh8KHwofChwAAAAAAAAA5AR0wNTgWwoBMM0s
(All crafting skills are just place holders: you can spend those SP wherever you want, including on skill other than crafting. Maxed throwing and traps are also probably overkill, but whatever, I don't remember the exact thresholds.)

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by Helix Mantis:

I'm unsure about interloper, but again, no idea with stealth so It could be stronger than I'm expecting. Much appreciated friend.

It's actually surprisingly good.
With interloper and proper equipment you can move FASTER while in stealth than enemies on patrol do. That makes for a huge difference.
And 15 movement points in the first combat round often mean that you can use all of your AP and still hide behind a wall without popping any consumables or abilities.

[Serendipitous]

Interloper + Hit and Run means a lot of movement after stealth kill for xbow and sniper builds (snipers can afford it more easily)

[Tamiore]

Originally posted by carashi:

Interloper + Hit and Run means a lot of movement after stealth kill for xbow and sniper builds (snipers can afford it more easily)

"Interloper" and "Hit and Run" don't stack.
If Hit and Run procs, your MP are set to 25 with or without interloper.

[Serendipitous]

Did that work in the past or am i remembering stuff wrong?

[dergefata]

Specialty ammo is nice but really all you need is a bucketful of W2C. Of course, if you can make the ammo, then you should use the ammo. I never get tired of lighting people on fire in UnderRail, and for high-health enemies, contaminated bullets can be helpful, too. A 5mm Jackrabbit with electroshock ammo would have helped you in your GMS spelunking.

You're mostly using the build Qiox linked to you? I'd suggest just a small change - take 35 points out of Chemistry (69 effective will make you MkIV grenades, which is all you'll need, and all the custom ammos in the game) and put 10 more each into Mechanics and Electronics. You'll need the extra points to make max-quality shields and metal armor, and I have to assume that's what you're building towards. Put four more points into Bio if you want to be able to craft Super Soldier without any crafting bonuses. The eleven remaining points probably would be best in either Stealth or Traps, unless you get really high-quality Super Steel or emitter pieces, in which case you might slip them into crafting. If you're really lucky with component quality, you need over 160 effective skill in Mechanics and Electronics to make the best stuff you can.

[dergefata]

On Hard, assuming you've got a good crit scope and proper feats, your aimed shots will mostly pop heads like balloons. You'd only rarely have to worry about what ammo you're using; normal/JHP on low-armor target, W2C on high-armor targets. Pull trigger, watch bad guy explode.

It's different on Dominating with the substantial HP increase. You need more debuffs (contaminated 12.7) and CC (incendiary 8.6) because you can't reliably one-shot everything. 7.62 gets a real boost as a sniper round because a good Aimed Shot crit with a micro-shrapnel round puts a *big* DoT on living targets.

I don't recall the specialty ammo damage getting boosted on crits, but don't wager your house on my memory. This brain is old, and it lies to me =)

[happybjorn]

For guns the best options are probably:

8.6 hornet with rapid reloader and scope attached. There are other good options instead of the scope, it depends on how you play (once you get Full-Auto these choices will matter more).

7.62 spearhead with rapid reloader and smart module. 24 ap means 2 shots per round, once you get Snipe that will usually mean 2 enemies gone in the first round, instead of 1.

I don't have an answer for the critical damage question, but strongly suspect it doesn't matter much. Everything should be based off of base damage, so if W2C is better then it will stay better for a crit. The real problem is what are you shooting at. The official forum probably has a math included explanation (somewhere).

For armor all your options are worth considering, since you can wear them all. Tac vests are great for dealing with bullets (and can be great at dealing with bullets while still having fairly low armor penalties).

I'm hesitant to say more, since you seem to be doing well and it would be spoilery, but if you want suggestions on where to look for things like W2C blueprints or weapon components just say the word.