How to play in Dominating?

[Herald of Rivia]

I've played Underrail for hundreds of hours, but I only play in normal + oddity, because I think that's how the developer designed the game and I had fun with it. I actually like challenge, but any difficulties higher that normal kinda breaks the economy since you can't get money from crafting, which I hate because I always craft and hoard charons from it. I tried dominating just recently, and by the pipe how do you guys deal with literally a dozen of psi beetle when saving newton? Even I skip that, I still have to face a dozen of rathounds again when going to GMS. I tried grenades my way out but spent all the grenades and credits and it ran out before I can even finish those pests.

[frank_kretschmer]

It´s not named Underhell for nothing, there ARE ways to survive without cheating. But this are for experts and nail you to a certain build, in a early random cave I found 2 goliath psi beatles!

[King Fossil]

Intended difficulty is hard. Dominating is hard, hard is normal, normal is easy, easy is gamejourno. Styg just changed the names so you could feel better about yourself. But now I'm ruining the illusion because I am merciless. Also dominating is the only difficulty with a sensible economy because being able to buy components and then assemble them and sell them back for a profit is obviously broken.
Anyway, my strategy for dealing with the beetles is to sneak past them into the room with the windows, and then let them see me before shutting the door. Wait a few turns for them to stack up and then molotov the group. They don't like running through the fire so I can usually shut the door and then wait for grenades to recharge and do it again.
Rathounds at GMS don't matter since you can just sneak past them. If you don't want to do that you can get their attention and then hide behind the fence and let the SGS guy kill them. Unless you meant the ones inside, in which case lure them back and let Gorsky and friends kill them.

[Exodus Of Sound]

Bear traps and molotovs will carry you all the way past Depot A in DOMINATING. First thing I do is buy Quinton's stock of 5 molotovs at the start of the game, then buy as many bear traps from Big Bret/Old Jonas as possible with whatever credits I have left. From this point onward just conserve traps/molotovs where you can if there are any easy targets or choke points, but you will largely be relying on them because the quantity & level of enemies mandate that you cheese them.

After the outposts, I go to Junkyard and get Kohlmeier's Lucky Knife for some easy exp/charons, then I kill Elwood & take the plasma pistol/mysterious disk from his house for some more easy money (and this also sets you up for some fast exp and instant entry to Depot A once Tanner tasks you with finding the circuit board).

At this point, you should be able to afford enough bear traps to trap the entire first room of Newton's dungeon, which will be necessary to deal with that many azuridae this early, as they have high mechanical resistances for such early foes.

[Doomsayer Kab]

tbh with enough experience I'm playing Hard pretty casually.

The healing changes were the most harsh at first, but I just stopped making builds that required healing in combat, really. Either glass cannons with high mobility and high CC, or super tanky chars that take less damage per turn than a regenerative vest can sustain.

The economy hasn't been an issue for me - I can still get 3 super steel plates, all crafting stations, and a good jetski just by looting items, no crafting involved. In my experience, my economy is more limited by the amount of charrons vendors have, not the value of items. Cheaper items just means I can sell more of them rather than put them in my locker forever.

Gonna try my hand at DOMINATING next time, but I hear it's only harder until you're done with Depot A

[happybjorn]

Originally posted by Exodus Of Sound:

Bear traps and molotovs will carry you all the way past Depot A in DOMINATING.

This, part of playing on dominating is understanding what is efficient. You can use 2 bear traps and 2 molotovs to rescue Newton with ease, or you can break your weapon and use tons of ammo and healing items. Stealth is also very useful.

[Thrax]

Originally posted by happybjorn:

Originally posted by Exodus Of Sound:

Bear traps and molotovs will carry you all the way past Depot A in DOMINATING.

This, part of playing on dominating is understanding what is efficient. You can use 2 bear traps and 2 molotovs to rescue Newton with ease, or you can break your weapon and use tons of ammo and healing items. Stealth is also very useful.

I absolutely blaze through normal casually, the build doesn't have to be optimal because my experience can make it work. For hard I can still cobble together a build without looking at a sheet and not get stuck.

As you pointed out that efficiency is what you need to play on Dominating, because the margin for error is much smaller, and the obstacles are larger.

My goals for Hard/Dominating is to become good enough to play as casually as possible and still stomp. Some builds are certainly less viable, but some play styles carry over well.

[Herald of Rivia]

Damn thanks for the tips fellow pipeworkers, I managed to get past Silent Isle. Many mentioned that Silent Isle is the hardest part in the dominating run, so I hope I'll be able to manage this run. Most of the time I play casually but I have to play very differently this time.

[Serendipitous]

First play on hard at least several times, no need to completely finish the runs, just get to the point where you high enough level to not care about tactics anymore. https://www.stygiansoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=Character_creation You can see the differences between difficulties here. Hard has full AI, unlike Normal, you would need to get the gist of how enemies behave in combat before going to hp/skill bloat Dominating runs. And i don't think you can play casually on Dominating no matter how good your build is, encounters are often as unfair as they can be, so you need to go full munchkin on the enemies most of the times.