Critical lore/SPOILERS question

[RodriguesCIA]

Where the hell the lighting comes from?

I get in tunnels and stations, from lightbulbs, duh. But I am talking about caves, natural tunnels, and the black sea. There are parts that are arbitrarily darker, but everywhere is underground, and these are an exception rather than the rule. Why?

[Jean-Luc]

More than anything it probably simply comes down to the practicality of the player needing to be able to see to play the game. Realistic lighting would kill that.

Other than that it mostly comes down to the proximity of human habitation or the presence of bioluminiscent flora like Mindshrooms. So even the more isolated and low traffic areas of lower underrail will have some ambient light from all the train tracks, stations and settlements while the lower caves or completely isolated areas like the Black Crawler's habitat are completely in the dark barring the presence of shrooms or camp fires.

The Black Sea is somewhat unique because it's a wide open area with a dizzyingly high cealing (by Underrail standards) and there's light coming from the pirate bases, the expedition camp, native villages, the mutie settlement and even the glowing fang. Don't know how strong these light sources would realistically be but they at least keep the Sea from being pitch black unless, again, you crawl into some hole or cave.

I think the game does a decent job of taking these factors into account and having diverse lighting levels but it can't be completley realistic or it'd be a pain to play.

[Exodus Of Sound]

Originally posted by Jean-Luc:

I think the game does a decent job of taking these factors into account and having diverse lighting levels but it can't be completley realistic or it'd be a pain to play.

I'd hate to have to light flares all the time, man. Stealth characters'd pretty much need night-vision if the darkness were realistic.

[Doomsayer Kab]

tbh I find the game's overall "brightness" kind of double-edged sword in terms of accessibility, as new players often don't realize how much they're being penalized in darkness, because the game doesn't seem so dark.
It'd really suck if the whole game looked like you couldn't see 5 meters in front of you, but I think the game could use more ways of conveying the relative darkness, compared to what people in Underrail are used to.
I have to assume that after so many generations of living underground, people are generally more cave-adapted than we are, but most tunnels seem dark enough to penalize ranged attacks at least

[The_Finish]

Originally posted by RodriguesCIA:

Where the hell the lighting comes from?

I get in tunnels and stations, from lightbulbs, duh. But I am talking about caves, natural tunnels, and the black sea. There are parts that are arbitrarily darker, but everywhere is underground, and these are an exception rather than the rule. Why?

Bioluminiscent fungi hidden in the invisible ceiling, of course!

In all seriousness it's never explained, but the above could be true, if Mindshrooms are anything to go by. Like others have said it's just a gameplay thing.

[Tamiore]

To be fair, there is also an all-encompassing (seemingly, at least) psi energy field. That field can act as a power source for a substantial fraction of light sources where conventional power grid is unlikely to be operational.

[ṣ̷h̵ệ̵p̷.̷ ̸😈]

After living so long underground in hostile environments it's more likely you've just got suitable eyesight I guess.

[Watereaters]

Easy, underground light pollution