Underrail Character Building Tier List

The goal of this guide is to offer insights into character building for a new player to get into Underrail and to help with choice paralysis when trying to make a character.

Preface

So You Wanna Be An Cave Wizard?

Tier list grading explantion

For this tier list, I value things that you can get earlier in the playthrough as more valuable. And its mostly just my opinion. I would recommend reading a number of guides in the steam guides section and just trying to figure out what kind of character you want to play and not base it on have the most hardcore unstoppable character. Still thinking what to put here, so for now, It is what it is.

S-Tier aka Stygian Tier

This tier is the cream of the crop, dominate the entire game with use of these skills. These skills have early stopgaps where they gain a majority of their values also plays into why these skills are so good.

Stealth
Base Attribute: Agility
Skill Synergies: None

Stealth gives you the ability to scout enemies and locations without throwing you right into the fire. Your stealth skill will be affected by your armor penalty which if high enough will basically make sneaking impossible for you. If your stealth rating is lower than 40% the enemy detection rating they will instantly detect you which will put you into combat.

Stealth Feats

Interloper

Quality of life feat, take it if you want stealth movement to be faster or for roleplay value. The 15 movement points in combat is actually useful as you will be starting combat from stealth quite oven.

Ambush

This feat lives on a scale to useless to broken depending if you can be standing in enough darkness to activate it while your target is out of darkness.

Ambush Breakpoints(effective skill)
Stealth 40: Ambush gives you 32% more critical chance.
Stealth 100: Ambush gives you 50% more critical chance.
Stealth 160: Ambush gives you 68% more critical chance.
Stealth 185: Ambush gives you 75.5% more critical chance.

Cut-Throat

The damage seems quite huge but getting this to work on a target might be a little too much work most of the time. Would let you stealthily take out targets slowly if you can find them alone in some room.

Blindsiding

15%(25% with specialization) more attack damage as long as you keep going into stealth during combat, which can be quite easy with some traps blocking movement towards your location.

Stealth Breakpoints(effective skill)
Stealth 0: Completely viable, I recommend you have high initiative.
Stealth 100: Will be able to walk around most of the game without being instantly detected.
Stealth 160: Will not be instantly detected by grey army snipers(very limited area they are present) and death stalkers(more present enemy).
Stealth 180: Will not be instantly detected by the Black Crawler boss.

Throwing
Base Attribute: Dexterity
Skill Synergies: None


Throwing is the iconic skill of Underrail. I cant even imagine playing it without it as it is so amazing. Just look at the art for this game and try to not use throwing.

There's molotov's cocktail(amazing for early game), frag grenades(best grenade), HE grenades(always sell grenades), EMP grenades, Gas grenades(completely broken), Plasma grenades(Expedition), throwing knifes, and almost all of them just kick ass. Throwing is the problem solver as there is nothing that will be a problem after its blown to bits. Grenades only get accuracy from throwing(without a feat) so it makes breakpoints for the skill very easy to get early.

Throwing Feats

Grenadier

Amazing feat that allows you to throw damaging bombs every other turn. Hard to think about playing the game without this but it is possible.

Three-Pointer

This may seem like not that much crit chance but when using frag grenades that have multiple hits per enemy this starts to really add up.

Throwing Breakpoints
Throwing 0: You can play the game with 0 throwing just expect to reload alot when you throw the grenade at your feet and die.
Throwing 30(base skill): Grenadier feat requirement
Throwing 50(base skill): Three-Pointer feat requirement
Throwing 80(effective skill): 90% accuracy for throwing a grenade 4 tiles away.
Throwing 127(effective skill): 90% accuracy for throwing a grenade 10 tiles away.

Traps
Base Attribute: Dexterity
Skill Synergies: Lockpicking 10%, Mechanics 10%

Traps are also amazing and they can be seen as a alternative to throwing as they can take the same materials to craft as grenades but require you to set them up ahead of time but also allow you to have them activate all at the same time. You can also not put a single point into trapping and still put down bear traps everywhere to stop enemies from ever getting closer to you.

What also makes traps so good? Well its the Tactical Nuke!
Lured to the Tactical Nuke


Tactical Nuke Explosion


The Explosion Wave


The Aftermath


This was made up from all the left over recovered mines from Junktown and the Rathound King's lair to take out most of the remaining Ironheads by Balor on dominating.

While on difficulties below dominating this can seem like a lot of overkill and it is really, a few well placed frag mines will do just as good.

Warning some enemies will be able to detect and disable your traps!!! Start combat and attack them as they should be running into your traps and not stealing them!

The Bear Trap
This trap requires 0 traps skill. It is a common item that a good number of vendors carry and they even also sell bear traps with poison which is great for killing patrolling guards(burrower poisoned bear traps require 20 traps skill)! For the cost of a single sheet of metal you can craft 10 bear traps or 5 bear traps if you include poison. The value of these traps is just insane, any enemy that walks into it is rooted for 2 turns and bleeds. At choke points the enemies will group up and then become targets for grenades or other AOE abilities.

Trap Feats

Trap Expert

Pure quality of life feat, don't think I could play without it when using traps as the setup and the tear down of a mine field is so much faster.

Quick Tinkering

This feat used to cost 0 ap and was completely broken in combat for placing bear traps at your feet. With 5 points of specialization you can reduce the ap cost to 0. Amazing feat.

Traps Breakpoints(effective skill)
Traps 0: Bear traps require no skill and are hands down the most affordable, low crafting skill required, and best trap in the entire game.
Traps 95: Will allow you to place every trap in the game. Enough trapping to recover every trap in the Rathound King's hideout not only for a huge amount of explosive traps but also exp.
Traps 165: Will allow you to disarm every trap in the game.
Traps 185: Will allow you to disarm and recover every trap in the game.

A-Tier aka Always Welcome Tier

These following skills are just great, they have low breakpoints, and you can play the entire game without any of them because they just give you more options. Lockpicking is slightly more useful than hacking but that's about it.

Lockpicking
Base Attribute: Dexterity
Skill Synergies: Mechanics 10%, Traps 10%

Lockpicking skill is used to open mechanical locks on doors and containers using lockpicks and also to open and close ventilation shafts with Omni-Tool. Lockpicking requires lock picks that come in a few different qualities that give 0-15+ lockpicking skill.

Lockpicking Breakpoints(effective skill)
Lockpicking 0: You don't have to unlock everything!
Lockpicking 100: Enough skill to open almost everything in the game before the final area.
Lockpicking 130: Should be enough skill to open almost every thing in the game.
Lockpicking 135: Final endgame areas may have check this high for random loot which is almost pointless because the game is basically over.

Hacking
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: Electronics 10%

Hacking skill is used to hack into computer terminals and open electronic locks with haxxor devices. Hacking requires a hacking device that come in a few different qualities that give 0-15+ Hacking skill. Hacking computer terminals does not allow you to use your hacking device requiring hacking to be higher to use.

Hacking Breakpoints(effective skill)
Hacking 0: You don't have to hack everything!
Hacking 100: Enough skill to open almost everything in the game before the final area.
Hacking 110: Highest hacking skill check in the Expedition Expansion without using a hacking device.
Hacking 130: Highest hacking skill check in the base game without using a hacking device.
Hacking 135: Final endgame areas may have check this high for random loot which is almost pointless because the game is basically over.

Lockpicking and Hacking Feats

Burgler

This is just a quality of life feat, if you can't stand waiting then it could be a good choice.

PIckpocketing
Base Attribute: Dexterity
Skill Synergies: None

Pickpocketing is a simple skill, walk up to npcs completely in the open and rob them blind. Can't fail unless you take items that would make their pickpocketing bar red. And you can slowly return over time to completely empty their pockets.

Pickpocketing Feats

Quality of life feat, want to pickpocket but don't want to wait so much? Then get this.

PIckpocketing Breakpoints(effective skill)
PIckpocketing 0: You don't have to steal from people!
PIckpocketing 50: Enough skill to steal around one item from every npc around the start of the game, 20 ammo/Medicine.
PIckpocketing 59: HIghest pickpocketing skill check in Expedition of plot relevance.
PIckpocketing 91: Highest pickpocketing skill check in the base game.
PIckpocketing 122: Steal one special additional item from an npc in Expedition expansion.

B-Tier aka Better Be Crafting Tier

The crafting skills and system of Underrail is just amazing. You can go kill rathounds and beetles and craft armor for you and its just perfect for your build. You can craft all kinds of grenades, mines, and medicine to help your build out.

You can also play the game just fine without crafting. Vendors will have decent items but never amazing, and you may never see a item you want with certain mods on them. You will never see a vendor selling a taser as they are crafting only and there are several weapons that are crafting only. There are also a good number of unique weapons and armor with unique effects you will not be able to recreate with crafting.

On a playthrough of the game you may have no problem finding crafting components up to 160 quality rating but you can find up to quality 180 but they are extremely rare. I don't want to over state the "getting 160 quality crafting components" part because even that will take alot of vendor shop updates. So rare there is a good chance you will never find it or you will. The different from an random weapon from a vendor to a 160 quality weapon isn't that extreme that it will make or break your playthrough.

I favor just using crafting to cover all the combat items as I'm a big fan of the unique items in the game. This section wont cover tricks with Hypercerebrix or house crafting.

Just decide how deep you want to go with crafting and roll with it.

Mechanics
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: None

Represents your knowledge of mechanics. This skill is primarily used in crafting various items, such as weapons, armors and traps.

Mechanics Breakpoints(effective skill)
Mechanics 0: You don't have to craft.
Mechanics 5: Required to craft EMP grenades, flashbang grenades, and gas grenades.
Mechanics 10: Required to craft hand grenades(frag grenades), and plasma grenades.
Mechanics 50: For crafting bear traps around Junkyard.
Mechanics 100: For crafting bear traps after Junkyard.
Mechanics 128: Able to craft up to 160 quality mechanics items.

Electronics
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: None

Represents your knowledge of electronics. This skill is primarily used in crafting various items, such as various electronic utilies and energy weapons. I would just buy EMP grenades and mines from the vendors. Their crafting components are sold in extremely small quantities and plasma grenade parts aren't sold until you are past the halfway point in the story. You can save these up over time and just craft MK3 versions of the EMP and plasma grenades.

Electronics Feats

Power Management

This is most likely the strongest crafting feat and is the one that most people even raise intelligence for outside of playing a psi build. Having a stronger battery in crafts improves the amount shield emitters can have for capacity. If you never allow the enemies to hit you, shield emitters really don't do anything! Except eat batteries.

Electronics Breakpoints(effective skill)
Electronics 0: You don't have to craft.
Electronics 20-30: Required to craft low level taser.
Electronics 35: Required to craft EMP MK1 grenades.
Electronics 105: Required to craft EMP MK3 grenades.
Electronics 128: Able to craft up to 160 quality Electronics items.
Electronics 135: Required to craft plasma MK3 grenades.

Chemistry
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: Biology 10%

Represents your knowledge of chemistry. This skill is primarily used in crafting various items, such as explosives.

Chemistry Breakpoints(effective skill)
Chemistry 0: You don't have to craft.
Chemistry 10: Required to craft Psi Inhalant(cave wizard items).
Chemistry 15: Required to craft frag MK1 grenades.
Chemistry 20: Required to craft gas grenades, and molotov cocktails.
Chemistry 34: Required to craft frag MK2 grenades.
Chemistry 40: Required to craft flash grenades.
Chemistry 50: Required to craft frag MK3 grenades.
Chemistry 69: Required to craft frag MK4 grenades.
Chemistry 112: Required to craft frag MK5 grenades.
Chemistry 128: Able to craft up to 160 quality Chemistry items(mainly for chemical pistols).

Biology
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: Chemistry 15%

Represents your knowledge of biology. This skill is primarily used in crafting various items, such as healing and psi restoring concoctions. It also enables you to extract useful substances from plants and animals.

Biology Breakpoints(effective skill)
Biology 0: You don't have to craft.
Biology 15: Required to craft Psi Booster and Psi Inhalant(cave wizard items).
Biology 20: Required to craft gas grenades.
Biology 70: Required to craft Hypercerebrix.
Biology 130: Required to craft supersoldier drug(not worth it).
Biology 150: Required to craft heartbreak poison(not worth it).

Tailoring
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: None

Represents your skill in tailoring leather and cloth materials into pieces of armor.

Tailoring Breakpoints(effective skill)
Tailoring 0: You don't have to craft.
Tailoring 10: Required to craft molotov cocktails.
Tailoring 128: Able to craft up to 160 quality Tailoring items.

C-Tier aka Combat Tier

I have no intention to fluff this section out or even attempt to put all the weapons and damage abilities into some kind of tier list. The entire game has been beaten on dominating with a crowbar and every single damage skill pails to the power of preparation and anything in the S-Tier.

I advise you to only pick a single weapon type or to pick 2 cave wizard psi schools(unless you know what your doing) and have that form the back bone of your character.

IE: some examples
1. You pick guns and you go with assault rifles.
2. You pick cave wizard and you go with Thought Control, and Metathermics.

I advise you to raise the base attribute that governs your primary weapon to 10 at character creation and with every base attribute increase to raise that all the way to 16.(unless you know what your doing)

I also advise you to pick your primary weapon type in some kind of roleplay for your character. While it may seem hardcore to make the most awesome and dominating type of character, Underrail at the end of the day is just a single player story driven game. With enough time and effort you will dominate it.

Underrail does have combat, at times you will feel that the game changes from a story game into a non stop combat isometric game. You can avoid some combat but you can not avoid all combat. Combat in this game is not about being a jack of all trades(unless your a psi wizard(dont try this unless you know what your doing) or a versatility build) so if you don't specialize you will die and you will spread yourself thin while your enemies get stronger.

Another reason all combat skills are placed so low is that these require constant skill increases, you will always raise your combat skill up every time you level. I can't imagine a build that doesn't always max their combat ability. It will be a tax on your skill points the entire game, maybe you can get away without maxing it on some difficulties but I would not try it.

Martial Combat Skills

Guns
Base Attribute: Perception
Skill Synergies: 75% Heavy Guns

Increases your precision and damage with any type of pistol, SMG or rifle. This includes both firearms and energy weapons. Also, the higher your skill level, the more advanced weapons you can wield effectively.

Guns Base Attributes Breakpoints
Pistols: Counts as a light weapon where dexterity decreases ap cost.
SMGs: Counts as a light weapon where dexterity decreases ap cost.
Shotguns(Expedition Expansion): Requires 5-6 strength to use.
Sniper Rifles: Require 5-6 strength to use.
Assault Rifles: Requires 6-7 strength to use.

Heavy Guns
Base Attribute: Perception
Skill Synergies: 65% Guns

Increases your precision and damage with machine guns and handheld miniguns. Also, the higher your skill level, the more advanced weapons you can wield effectively.

Heavy Guns Base Attributes Breakpoints
LMGs: Require 7-10 strength to use.
Miniguns: Require 9-13 strength to use.

Crossbows
Base Attribute: Perception
Skill Synergies: None

Increases your precision and damage with crossbows.

Melee
Base Attribute: Strength or Dexterity (which ever is highest)
Skill Synergies: None

Increases damage with melee weapons and unarmed attacks and helps you overcome your target's dodge rating.

Melee Base Attributes Breakpoints
Unarmed: Counts as a light weapon where dexterity decreases ap cost.
Fist Weapons: Counts as a light weapon where dexterity decreases ap cost.
Knives: Counts as a light weapon where dexterity decreases ap cost.
Swords(Expedition Expansion): Require 4-8 strength to use.
Spears(Expedition Expansion): Require 6-7 strength to use.
Sledgehammer: Require 8-9 strength to use.

School of the Big Pill That Turns You Into a Cave Wizard

Thought Control
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: Psychokinesis 10%, Metathermics 10%, Temporal Manipulation 10%

Ability to influence the minds of other living creatures through mental suggestion and domination. Also the ability to focus and enhance your own mental processes and to take greater control of your body.

Psychokinesis
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: Thought Control 10%, Metathermics 10%, Temporal Manipulation 10%

Ability of the mind to exert mechanical force, as well as to emit electric currents and project electromagnetic fields.

Metathermics
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: Thought Control 10%, Psychokinesis 10%, Temporal Manipulation 10%

Ability of mind to initiate and control rapid temperature changes and harness exothermic and endothermic energies.

Temporal Manipulation(Expedition Expansion)
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: Thought Control 10%, Psychokinesis 10%, Metathermics 10%

Ability of mind to manipulate time or time perception on very local level, including partial time suspension, reversal and recurrence.

D-Tier aka Dialogue Tier

These skills actually have very easy and early skill requirements to hit in your playthough allowing you after reaching them to stack putting points in other skills. A majority of these skills are pretty much for roleplay value and don't come up as often as other things in the game.

"Hang on, if these dialogue skills have easy to hit skill requirements why aren't they above combat skills?"
These are just not used that much over the game. Persuasion is completely limited to conversations, and Mercantile is only for talking to vendors. While intimidation with some feats and a semi-small stat requirement could be used everywhere in the game due to it being a combat debuff skill that is completely free. It's still pretty much roleplay because the game just isn't that hard to require you to debuff every enemies stats, which you can if you want.

Also it starts with the letter D and that's just sweet.

Persuasion
Base Attribute: Will
Skill Synergies: Mercantile 20%

Persuasion is a social skill mainly used for persuasion dialogue options.

Persuasion Breakpoints(effective skill)
Persuasion 0: Not required at all for to play the game and only opens options.
Persuasion 110: All skill checks for base game
Persuasion 125: All skill checks for Expedition

Intimidation
Base Attribute: Strength or Will (which ever is highest)
Skill Synergies: Persuasion 10%

Intimidation is a social skill mainly used for intimidation dialogue options.

Intimidation Feats

Yell

The ability of this feat to lower enemy combat stats is quite amazing. A lowered combat stat means they will do less damage and have less accuracy due to their combat stat being low enough for your dodge and evasion to handle it.

Brutality

This is sometimes a blessing and a curse as you will fear enemies stopping them from acting and you will fear the last enemy making them run away from you when the combat is about to be completed.

Intimidation Breakpoints(effective skill)
Intimidation 0: Not required at all for to play the game and only opens options.
Intimidation 75: All skill checks for base game
Intimidation 100: All skill checks for Expedition

Mercantile
Base Attribute: Intelligence
Skill Synergies: Persuasion 20%

Mercantile is a social skill mainly used to lower prices when trading, also used to unlock special merchandise tiers on some merchants, and dialogue options for mercantile are also fairly common.

It is highly recommended to play with at least 105 effective mercantile skill just to unlock all special vendor inventories. These special inventories will have high quality items and crafting materials which are also higher quality and in higher quantities.

Mercantile Feats

Salesman

This feat along with around 105 mercantile will double the amount vendors will buy from you but on difficulties below hard and dominating you will deplete their stock of money, ammo, and batteries rather quickly. Converting loot into the common items that most vendors always buy also has its own bonuses.

Major Supplier

This is a veteran feat that increases the amount of money vendors have in stock to trade with. Taking this feat would require it taking one of your last 3 feats and what could be another veteran feat. Most likely by the time in the game where you would have access to this you will already be rich even on dominating making it not that useful.

Mercantile Breakpoints(effective skill)
Mercantile 0: Not required at all for to play the game, only opens special vendor inventories and quest "ask for more money" options.
Mercantile 105: All skill checks for base game and all merchant special merchandise for the base game and expedition.
Mercantile 140: The only bonus for higher than 105 mercantile in expedition is a higher cash payout from a few quest turn ins after the the game is over and selling one special jet ski. Most likely overkill due to how late it pays off and you will already be super rich by that point.

E-Tier aka Effort Tier

Although these are at the bottom they are perfectly viable for all difficulties with diminishing effects on dominating due to the bonuses enemies get to their combat stats. On dominating, all NPCs have 130% skill modifier and while bosses have 200% skill modifier. Basically these would be skills that would require point investment for every level to stay at max effectiveness(unless you really know what your doing!!).

Maintaining high values for these skills will require effort from crafting jumping bean medicine(25% dodge and evasion), not using headwear that reduces dodge/evasion, Tabi boots, and leather armor. There will be decent Tabi boots and leather armor on vendors but they may not always have some made from Siphoner leather and they will never have them made from infused Siphoner leather.

It may seem like it takes alot but on difficulties below dominating these are alright skills, so if your fantasy is to be a dodgy person and you don't mind the investment these may interest you.

There is also one more point to make in this section that careful movement and character placement can give you 100% avoidance of damage due to the enemies having no ability to attack you. If you don't want to play the reload game that these can also be good as you can save yourself from mistakes.

Dodge
Base Attribute: Agility
Skill Synergies: Evasion 10%

Dodge determines your chance to avoid melee attacks. Dodge can lower chance to hit down to 10% if dodge rating is thrice the attacker's effective attack skill.

Dodge Feats

Escape Artist

Removes Immobilizations which can be fight losing conditions or completely avoided by careful movement, and outranging enemies.

Fancy Footwork

If you are using a low ap cost melee weapon or flurry with a sword, this feat will allow you to fly around your combat turns and make it very hard for the computer to catch you. Making the AI spend all its points just to get near you means that they have less to attack you with if they even get in line of sight.

Uncanny Dodge

Feat will allow you to dodge a number of melee attacks but you can also always avoid all melee attacks that you outrange. Good if you want to have a safety net or a dodgy fantasy adventure.

Uncanny Dodge

This is a veteran feat that just gives you flat 5% more chance to dodge melee attacks.

Evasion
Base Attribute: Agility
Skill Synergies: Dodge 10%

Evasion determines your chance to evade ranged attacks and it also reduces damage from area of effect attacks.

Evasion can lower chance to hit down to 40% if evasion rating is twice the attacker's effective attack skill.

The percentage of damage evaded from area of effect attacks is evasion/400. For example, a character with 200 evasion will evade 50% of damage from AoE attacks. This reduction is capped at 85% of the full damage or 340 evasion.

Evasion Feats

Evasive Maneuvers

I have no idea when this would be useful.

Expert Evasion

This is a veteran feat that just gives you flat 5% more chance to evade ranged attacks.

Evasion Breakpoints(effective skill)
Evasion 100: 25% aoe damage avoided
Evasion 200: 50% aoe damage avoided
Evasion 349: 85% aoe damage avoided

Additional Topics

These are additional topics to build your character, or information about the game, or slightly more advanced building techniques.

Action Points

Actions in game costs points, action points! All characters have base 50 action points, they can be used for any action and for movement. At the end of your turn while not stunned, you can save up to 10 action points for the next turn. Wearing armor without meating its strength requirement will reduce your action points.

Here are some of most common ways to get more action points in combat.

Adrenaline Shot

Consumable item easily crafted or bought from vendors. Gives a boost to action points and movement points(not affected by your armor penalty). When the effect ends you will get a fatigue debuff that lowers your action points!

Fatigue for reference

Psycho-Temporal Contraction

Temporal Manipulation Psi Ability that much like a adrenaline shot gives you a boost to and action points and movement points(not affected by your armor penalty). The difference from adrenaline shot is that the negative fatigue(named Reversion Probability) from this psi spell is chanced based on your temporal manipulation effective skill.

Temporal Manipulation Breakpoints(effective skill)
Temporal Manipulation 55: Reversion Probability 60%
Temporal Manipulation 146: Reversion Probability 31%
Temporal Manipulation 149: Reversion Probability 30%

Armor Penalty

Armor penalty is an important stat on all armors which includes helmet, body armor, and boots. Generally the heavier the armor is, the more armor penalty it has. Your stealth, movement points, dodge, and evasion are lowered by the total armor penalty you have equipped.

Armor penalty is capped at 95% but total armor penalty is also tracked.

Armor penalty does not reduce movement points provided by temporary bonuses, such as Sprint, Adrenaline Shot, Jumping Bean, and Psycho-temporal Contraction.

Nimble

This feat will reduce your total armor penalty by 15%. If you have a total armor penalty of 110% then nimble will basically do nothing because you would already be capped at 95%. It is mainly used by dodge and evasion characters since with specialization it can give a good boost to those stats. It can also be quite useful to lower the armor penalty leather armors, tactical vests, and maybe end riot armor. Really depends on if you want to build a fantasy of being a nimble like character or power game in either way.

Armor Sloping

An interesting feat but requires you to be using metal armor, plan to craft your own metal armor, and having enough intelligence to get the feat itself. It can lower your metal armor-armor penalty down from 45-75% to 49-29%(dependant on the plate type and does not include multiple plates) giving you some of your movement points back for combat.

This only works for great for crafting metal armor with one plate, maybe 2 to help you hit armor penalty for juggernaut. If you plan to always craft armor with 4 plates this feat will do basically nothing!

Juggernaut

This feat gives you a decent(25%) to a pretty large(45% with 10 specialization points) amount of bounce hp but it requires your body armor have over 50% armor penalty. If you craft metal armor with armor sloping reducing its armor penalty to less than 50% then this perk will not be active.

Base Ability Scores

Also known as attributes in other games, these are the stats that directly influence your skills by a large degree. They affect your skill to hugely that you should max out the base ability score of your chosen damage type the entire game(unless you know what your doing).

The game starts all characters out with 5 in every base ability. Having 4 in a base ability is considered the baseline as you get not increase or decreases to your skills. By having a base ability below 4(with the lowest you can set in the character creator being 3) reduces the skills that the base ability by 10%. Base abilities with values greater than 4, are increased by 8.5% per level(being a 85% increase by 14 points!!!).

Every 4 levels until level 24, you will get an additional base ability point to put in at level up. Unless you know what your are doing these points should be used to raise the base ability score that directly influences your primary damage skill!

The lowest a base ability can be is 1 through the use of equipment and consumables, and the highest a base ability can be is 28 from base ability increases, feats, equipment, and consumables.

Brief section talking about the base ability scores, for those that don't want to read it in-game or from the wiki.

Strength
Strength measures your character's muscle power. It affects melee damage and carry capacity. It's also important for characters who intend to use heavier weapons (such as sniper and assault rifles and sledgehammers).

Dexterity
Dexterity measures character's reflexes, hand-eye coordination and finger nimbleness. It affects many things, such as operating locks, thievery, throwing and initiative. It increases critical strike chance of melee attacks. High dexterity also reduces action point cost of unarmed and light weapons (pistols, SMGs, knives, throwing knives and fist weapons).

Agility
Agility represents character's reflexes, fleet-footedness, jumping ability, as well as affinity towards other athletic and acrobatic activities. Among other things it affects dodge, evasion, initiative and movement points. It also allows the character to move more quietly, increasing the stealth performance.

Constitution
Constitution represents the health and general stamina of your character. It is important for all types of characters, but especially for those who plan on making the armor suit their main defense. It also helps prevent or lessen the effects of poisons and diseases.

Perception
Perception represents character's ability to discern objects from far away as well as to notice hidden things in their vicinity. It helps the character to use ranged weapons more effectively, as well as detect hidden objects, passages and creatures.

Will
Will measures character's mental determination to see to his actions regardless of various mental difficulties, such as pain, suggestion and overwhelming odds, as well as to force his will onto others and the environment. It heavily affects the potency of all psi disciplines, as well as psi point regeneration.

Intelligence
Intelligence determines how well the character learns and reasons. It is important for a character that focuses on science as all disciplines are dependent on it. It also determines the number of different psi abilities that can be invoked during combat and affects psi point regeneration.

Build I Would Never Do

Here we go, this is gonna most likely be the only build I will cover in this guide. So if you see people complaining about this guys build from his guide make sure you ask them "is that the build called "Build I Would Never Do"", and you can laugh at them.

The main goal of this section is to show off a weird build that you most likely shouldn't do because it skips like half of the skills in the game and it just focuses on damaging skills to a point that most likely is a waste of points and you would either completely ignore at one point or barely use.

Also a build like this would require some quite detailed meta quest gameplay logic to have access to some of the quests in the game, or even complete them. Information you would not be privy to on your first playthrough unless you play then entire game with the wiki open on each quest(that you had to search the wiki name of because there are no quest names in-game), by that point like just watch like a movie? or asmongold? at least don't eat crayons because although you may be brain dead you shouldn't also be eating crayons... you could play destiny 2 and eat crayons. I really don't know how you could have found this section by eating crayons it would have been a lot of mouse clicks at this point.

Build I Would Never Do Example 1:

We can see here I'm going to be a guns throwing psi cave wizard. With max perception and neutral will for my damage stats, we will see how these skill trees grow based on the value of their base abilities. This build has no supplemental skills to help in the world except for initiative(which is a good stat).

Build I Would Never Do Example 2:

The build is level 10 now and lets look at the effective skill of my damaging abilities. Throwing seems fine as its just there for accuracy and doesn't have any effect on the damage. Lets look at guns vs psi schools, and I'm not going to sugar coat this. Metathermics and Temporal Manipulation are already 40% behind my guns skill! Even If I just enjoy it for the RP which I would support but the gap in the skills is already huge. And if I really love being a fire ball flinging guns man the damage is going to so low that it's just not going to feel useful to rely on in battle.

Build I Would Never Do Example 3:

The build is now lvl 20 and we are starting to hit alot of skill caps and were gonna need to find some other things to put our points into. Pretty much the only option is pumping some crafting skills. Lets check out our damaging abilities! Throwing is pretty much done at this point. The psi schools are pretty much around 50% the effective skill as guns at this point. The damage of the psi abilities is going to be extremely low compared to any gun were using.

Build I Would Never Do Example 4:

Here we are at the end, level 30. Pretty much nothing has changed, the guns skills is mountains higher than the psi skills pretty much all based on base abilities. I really don't feel like typing it all over again. Even if you really love RPing being a metal armor guns man that also does psi, the damage of the psi abilities is going to be so much lower than your higher guns skill that you most likely will just stop using them in favor of your higher damaging abilities.

There are some things this build even did that I consider good based on the way I like to build my characters. I enjoy having merchantile to get special inventories, I love throwing grenades, and I enjoy the crafting system while not minding if I go alittle over the caps because I have so many extra skill points by the end of the game.

Difficulty

What difficulty???

Damage Resistance and Threshold

Damage Resistance(DR%) and Damage Threshold(DT)
All armor in underrail reduce damage by the percentage of Damage Resistance(DR%) or flat value of Damage Threshold(DT), which ever is the greater value. Shown on armor as DR% / DT per resistible damage type.

Damage resistance can only reduce mechanical damage by 95% while every other damage type can be reduced by 100%. Damage threshold can reduce all damage types to 0 if they do not overcome it.

Examples:

Leather Armor

5 damage hit would get reduced to 2 damage from DT.
25 damage hit would get reduced to 22 damage from both DR% and DT being equal.
50 damage hit would get reduced to 44 damage from DR%.
100 damage hit would get reduced to 87 damage from DR%.

Metal Armor

5 damage hit would get reduced to 0 damage from DT.
25 damage hit would get reduced to 12 damage from DT.
50 damage hit would get reduced to 33 damage from DR%.
100 damage hit would get reduced to 66 damage from DR%.

Faster attacks(knifes, pistols, smgs) usually deal less damage which are better counted by DT. While slower heavy attacks(sledgehammers, snipers) are generally better countered by DR%.

There are some armor types which have bonuses against some attacks that help them stand out. Here are two examples.

Tactical vests

This specializes in stopping bullets, mainly smaller firearm bullets and generally lacking when it comes to larger hits such as sniper shots.

Riot Gear

This is some where in the middle between tactical vests and metal armor at stopping bullets and melee attacks. With the expedition expansion riot gear can also come with a shield making it very heavy and only allowing you to use 1 handed weapons.

Damage Modifier

Damage taken will also be reduced (or increased) by the damage modifier percentage. It is counted after damage resistance and threshold of armor. Some people find that some damage modifier sources are devalued because it apples after DR%/DT but it's still a strong defensive layer although rarer. Does it match up with not getting hit? Not really but it helps when you do.

Damage modifier can only reduce mechanical damage by 90% while every other damage type can be reduced by 100%.

Damage modifier can be found on many items, consumables, feats, and applied effects, which can reduce or increase damage taken. Following are a number of examples.

Evasion
Evasion has a bonus to reduce damage from explosions which makes it slightly cost-benefit than dodge as a defensive stat. Look in the section for evasion for more information.

Conditioning

An 'ok' feat, there are a lot of competitive level 1 feats.

Stoicism

A feat that requires some odd base abilities for a feat that can be very strong.

Tactical Vest crafted with Blast Cloth

Crafted item with an additional crafting material to give the tactical vest the added defense against explosions.

Morphine Shot

Consumable item that gives reduces all damage types by 50% but if you have less than 33%~ of your life left when it ends you die.

Mushroom Brew

A pretty common food item with slight negatives of reduces perception and dexterity by 2.

Toxic Gas Grenade

One of the strongest grenades in the game. This grenade is another craftable only item, you will never find one for sale from a vendor. Throw this down and force the targets to get stuck inside it with caltrops, doorways, bear traps, feared effects, and being on fire from other sources. It stacks up extremely fast and even before it hits max stacks your damage will just skyrocket.

Darkness

This is a cool little system in the game that really only affects chance to hit with ranged weapons. The darkness level you are standing in is also shown in your portrait of your character(I don't think it works in custom portraits). There are only a very little amount of areas in the game in complete darkness and you have plenty of tools to counter it.

Flares

A useful item that does not need to be on your belt. You can throw one every single turn. Some enemies(notably the first ones you fight rathounds) will enter a feared state when near the flare and when they exit the fear state they will be immune to entering it again for a few turns. These also reveal stealthed targets but they have to be in the radius when you throw it.

Molotov Cocktail

Not usually listed as a source of light but it is a strong one if you really need some light. With a bonus that it spreads out a decent amount of fire and can catch things on fire.

Goggles crafted with Image Intensifier Tube to make them Night Vision Goggles

These are fairly common from enemies and from vendors. Charge it will batteries and you have perfect night vision. The biggest downside is it takes your helmet slot and it turns the entire screen green.

Some examples of these items used.

Pure Darkness Example:


Flare Example:


Molotov Cocktail Example:


Night Vision Goggles Example:

Dungeons

Dungeons are a cool little thing in the game that is random in each playthrough that helps keep the game fresh. There's a decent number of them sprinkled throughout the game that you really wont know which ones you will get. They usually don't offer anything special in loot or anything extremely hard to fight, just something to be different if you play the game through a few times.

There also are some dungeons entrances that always spawn but can have a random layout.

Dungeon entrance example 1: Dungeon spawned.


Dungeon entrance example 1: Same location and no dungeon spawns.


Dungeon entrance example 2: Dungeon spawned.


Dungeon entrance example 2: Same location and no dungeon spawns.

Initiative

Initiative is one of the derived stats of Underrail. It is the governing stat for deciding who goes first in combat even though there is also a random portion to it. Helps you get to act first in combat and gain control of the situation.

You can play most of the game with starting all your combats from stealth and never really notice having low initiative but there are some combat situations where you will enter combat out of stealth and have to deal with having a low initiative. It is certainly more useful if you play a character without any stealth as your initiative will play a larger role. So at most this section is just some food for thought.

One huge negative with initiative is that it is only rolled once at the start of combat.

How your initiative is calculated
Your base initiative is 5 + agility + dexterity, which means the minimum you can have is 11.
At the start of combat all participants rolls between 1-15 to be added to their initiative.
Starting combat from stealth will add 100 to your initiative(this means you pressing enter on the keyboard).
Entering a zone where you had previously run away via zone change, will add -1000 to your initiative.

Initiative Feats

Trigger Happy

This is the only feat that is purely more initiative.

Gunslinger

This only gives you the extra initiative if you have a firearm pistol equipped and does not include energy or chemical pistols.

Paranoia

This feat is alittle jack of all trades feat but it is also one of the few that also gives you some initiative.

Initiative Ranges(not really quite breakpoints just opinion):
11-20 initiative: Most likely having average initiative, with lucky initiative rolls you may go first.
20-30 initiative: This amount of initiative would make you above average, notoriously the final arena fight has 29 initiative.

Ranges higher than this would most likely require you to plan around it.
30-40 initiative: A very high amount of initiative, you might if lucky enough go first in combat most of the time.
40-50+ initiative: This range of initiative is the extreme range, maybe even if you get bad rolls you might go first in combat most of the time.

Hypercerebrix House Crafting Aslyum For The Min-Maxer God

WHAT?!?!?!
Only go further if you want to know true madness and also sadness.

Oh I'll get to this eventually but know that this is just a neat little trick you can do and that the game is no way that hard you have to think about doing this unless you really want too!

Bonus points if your also the type of crazy if you also do this with the SGS tattoo. I'm not even joking saw someone talk about doing this. If you know, you know.

Movement Points

Movement points are one of the stats that dictate how much you can move in combat, you can also spend action points to move. Movement points are affected by agility(fairer than fallout 1/2), armor penalty, encumberance(being overweight from loot is bad for combat mmm'kay), and some feats that are usually cooldowns. Some creatures like dogs and other four legged animals get more movement points. It costs 10 movement points to move a tile and it costs 15 movement points to move diagonally.

How movement points are calculated:
30 + 3 for every point in agility above 5.

Here are an example how some ability, consumables, psi ability, or items increase your movement points.

Sprint

Agility feat that gives you a cooldown that gives you movement points in combat that are not affected by armor penalty.

Jumping Bean

This consumable can be rarely found as loot but it mainly a crafting only consumable. Gives a boost to out of stealth movement speed.

Psycho-Temporal Contraction

Temporal Manipulation Psi Ability that much like a adrenaline shot gives you a boost to movement points(not affected by your armor penalty) and action points. The difference from adrenaline shot is that the negative fatigue(named Reversion Probability) from this psi spell is chanced based on your temporal manipulation effective skill.

Temporal Manipulation Breakpoints(effective skill)
Temporal Manipulation 55: Reversion Probability 60%
Temporal Manipulation 146: Reversion Probability 31%
Temporal Manipulation 149: Reversion Probability 30%

Tabi Boots

Tabi boots that give you movement speed points, usually at the cost of low or no DR%/DT. Vendors will usually have them. These usually give AP cost reduction for melee skills and other bonuses are based on crafting materials used.

Boots crafted with a Boot Spring making them into Striders

Even regular boots can be installed with a mod to have them give more movement points and movement speed out of combat, like tabi boots it costs them DR%/DT.

Noise

Noise is a simple system in the game that has NPCs react to all noise around them in a map. They will walk across the map to find out what all the ruckus is. They will require to see you visually to start combat. The volume of noise caused by an action is not displayed anywhere in-game it is all down to common sense.

Some very loud noises include, mining with jackhammers, explosions, TNT charges, explosive grenades, mines, and gunfire, which the larger kinds make even more noise!

Quiet weapons include crossbows, silenced 5mm firearms and most melee weapons.

Physical psi abilities make some noise, but mental effects do not.

One huge benefit to noise is you can set up large traps and lure the NPCs to you where you have the advantage. Here is an example of using noise to your benefit.

Noise example 1: The door the south is locked, so NPCs inspecting noise will have to come from the north.


Noise example 2: Throwing a cheap grenade to make noise.


Noise example 3: Grenade exploiding.


Noise example 4: The prey has come.


Noise example 5: And they brought friends.

Psi-support Builds

You can use a number of psi skill lines as added supports but it's not as simple as having the base skill value for the psi skill because a number of them have their precision based on your effective skill with that psi school but also some do not. With these you should be able to get by with only 3 will as you will not be using these psi abilities for their damaging power but their supportive power.

I will start with the most well known psi support school.

Temporal Manipulation(Expedition Expansion)

Temporal Manipulation is a psi skill added in the Expedition expansion. As the name suggests, temporal manipulation abilities manipulate time to the invoker's favor, primarily featuring delayed damage and buffing/debuffing. It will, probably more than any other psi discipline, function well as a support skill that can be incorporated into other builds, rather than a primary skill around which a build is made.

I would recommend raising your TM skill to max to lower the chance of the Contraction from reversing but there are plenty of people who have gotten by using TM support with the bare minimum of 70 base skill.

Important support psi abilities for Temporal Manipulation

Limited Temporal Increment


Requires 35 Temporal Manipulation to learn.
Very straight forward skill with no downside, you cast it and it lowers all the cooldowns of your abilities by one turn. Allows you to throw grenades 2 turns in a row(with grenadier) and just become death.

Psycho-temporal Contraction


Requires 55 Temporal Manipulation to learn.
This acts like another adrenaline shot for you to use to get 15-20(with TM feats) additional ap for a number of turns. This is the only TM support skill with a downside depending on if it causes your to die and have to replay a battle or you raise your effect TM skill to lower the negative aftereffect chance of happening.

Its not a major downside by itself but if both Psycho-temporal Dilation and the fatigue from the adrenaline are both happening at the same time you may be down to just 30 ap for a few turns.

Temporal Manipulation Breakpoints(effective skill)
Temporal Manipulation 55: Reversion Probability 60%
Temporal Manipulation 146: Reversion Probability 31%
Temporal Manipulation 149: Reversion Probability 30%

Stasis


Requires 70 Temporal Manipulation to learn.
You can use this to stasis yourself to keep buffs active the turn you exit, you can bait enemies to come after you and use their cooldowns as your completely immune inside but if they hit you they will still deplete your energy shield. This ability has a hefty cost and is advised to save premediation to save you the ap and psi cost.

Metathermics

There is another odd/weird mechanic that would allow you to do such insane boss dps that the only difficulty where it would be useful but it is most likely even too much overkill for dominating.

There are a few targets in the game immune to freezing and also making them immune to this technique.

Cryostasis


Requires 35 Metathermics to learn.
This is kinda a expenisve ability to cast but the chance to resist the freezing effect is based on target's cold resistance. Metathermics skill does not affect it. What this means is that you can get by with an insanely low Metathermics base skill that you will need to get the feats and the ability.

Cryogenic Induction


This feat allows you to shatter your cryostasis by doing atleast 50% of the targets hp. Now what you may say that's alot but you can also specialize in it lowering that amount to 30% of the targets hp!

Hypothermia


This is the next part of the puzzle, with this feat when you freeze something they will lose 1 constitution meaning that they lose 8-10% of their map hp, making hitting the threshold to shatter the target easier.

The Unholy Gas Grenades


Yes the final piece of the puzzle is the dreaded gas grenades! Giving targets a debuff that makes them take 200% increased damage basically letting you hit that 30% hp threshold even easier. Combined with everything above you should have no problem deleting some boss enemies and is complete overkill even for dominating.

If you paid attention to the Cryogenic Induction feat you then have to attack the target with mechanical and cold damage to shatter the target.

Puzzles

There are two extremely hard puzzles to solve in this game. I will only talk about them briefly here. These puzzles are mostly in text and either resolves around finding items and reading them with a computer or just reading computer logs. The tools listed below are mainly an additional tool for you to use and to not completely solve the puzzle for you.

Mutagen Puzzle(Underrail final area)
Optional puzzle to make the final boss easier to kill.

This is a link to a website with a tool to make the puzzle easier, it wont completely solve it for you.
https://underrail.info/mutagens/

You can Ctrl+c in game to copy messages displayed to you in game and paste it in the website.

Note Cipher Puzzle(Underrail Expedition)
Optional puzzle that gives some lore and a unique sonic pistol.

This is a link to a website with a tool to make the puzzle easier, I believe this will completely solve the puzzle for you(it's been awhile since I used it).
https://shibatora.github.io/underrailmusicpuzzlesolver/

You can Ctrl+c in game to copy messages displayed to you in game and paste it in the website.

Warning
Now idea how long these sites will be up, if they ever go down and there is no replacement this section will prob be culled or something.

Stealth Detection

Section to talk about stealth detection and you.

Taser

The taser is a craftable only combat utility that deals a low amount of electricity damage and can stun living targets or short circuit robotic targets.

The chance to stun/short circuit scales with the amount of electricity damage inflicted. As such, tasers constructed from higher quality components will more consistently stun higher level targets. After looking at the wiki, using a taser the entire game, and keeping it updated with better components, I never saw the taser not stun unless the target had been stunned recently.

Speaking on the hit chance and stun, If the target is next to you, you will always hit the target with the taser and from my experience always stun them as long as they do not have second wind debuff making them immune to stuns.

Being a craftable only item, you will never see one on a vendor or ever used by an NPC against you. You can only get one by crafting it yourself. You can craft this item extremely early into a play through as soon as you finish the first quest. If you enjoy crafting or what to learn crafting this is a very simple recipe only existing of two parts to remember to keep an eye out for. After reading the wiki it looks like you would want to keep your taser remake your taser every so often in the game to keep the damage high enough to guarantee the stun.

One huge disadvantage of the taser is that you have to equip it on your belt. How big of a disadvantage this is pretty much based on how much you value extremely useful grenades or other combat items. Also when playing very carefully about not allowing enemies to get near you devalues giving the taser a belt slot.

Crafting a taser
I guess I should talk about how to craft an item. These are all electronics items which can appear as random loot in areas that look like they have computers or electronical type machinery. They can also appear for sale by any/most of the electronics vendors throughout the underrail.

Crafting Blueprint: Taser
Common item sold by electronic vendors, and since you only need to buy it once makes it very easy to get.

Electroshock Generator
Another common item sold by electronic vendors and as loot because it is used for a lot of crafting recipes.

Plasma Cores
Plasma cores are very common items to find as loot and sold by vendors.

Not going to quite explain the crafting system here, just know that the quality of the electroshock generator will affect the damage of the taser and the quality of the plasma core will affect the amount of energy that the taser can hold(aka ammo).

Unique Items

Section to talk about unique items, mainly ones i like. Might be a short section.

Rathhound Regalia

A favorite body armor of mine that you get from a side quest not too far into the game. Wild rathounds will be friendly towards you while you're wearing it allowing you to skip past all rathhound respawns.

Grey Spec Ops Armor

Another favorite armor of mine that you can get around halfway through the base game with the expedition expansion. Involves fighting alot of soldiers. Bre Bonus it has some Bio protection on it so you can enter toxin clouds.

Versatility

This is an advanced build strategy you can do, I advise you to play through at least part of the game before trying out a versatility build to get a good understanding about the requirements of base skill for feats and other things.

Versatility build requires to pick up the feat, max the feat's specialization, and wear the commando belt.

Versatility

With 10 points of specialization you can increase this amount up to 80%!

Commando Belt

With the commando belt and specialization of versatility you can have this amount be 90%! This item is available very early in the playthrough to allow you to play the build for most of the game. A bonus of this belt is that it gives you 15 throwing.

This is a heavy character investment but would allow you to max out either a strength based melee build or most likely a dexterity based melee build and be able to use guns or crossbows. Both have great value for different things.

Just for over-exemplification,
1. Take the Versatility.
2. Wear the commando belt.
3. From level 15-25 you put your specialization points into Versatility.

Veteran Base Attribute Feats


There are veteran feats to increase all base attributes by 2 points, this would be useful for a versatility build. It would allow you to bring up your secondary weapon skills to almost the same value of having a base attribute of 16 for those skills.

In Example, both having 90% versatility
16 dexterity would allow an effective melee skill of 323, versatility would provide a 291 guns and crossbows effective skill.
18 dexterity would allow an effective melee skill of 350, versatility would provide a 315 guns and crossbows effective skill.

One major downside to this build is that even though your getting 90% of your highest combat skill is that to get feat of those other combat skills you will have to raise your base skill value of that combat skill.

In Example,
To get aimed shot you would have to have your base guns skill or crossbow skill at least 10.

F.A.Q.

This isn't a tier list!
That isn't a question.

Who is this guide for?
I hope a new player looking through the steam guides and after reading pretty much all of the ones posted will take a look at this.

Is Underrail really a hardcore game only make for the most dominating players?
Nah, its pretty easy in it's own way.

Do you really need to read guides to play a game spoiling the whole endeavor?
Nah.

You listed frag grenades crafting breakpoints like 5 times, are they good or something?
Yes.

I picked a feat 5 levels ago and I'm no longer using that feat in my general gameplay, should I restart or use cheats to fix it?
Just play without it, the game isn't nearly that hard you have to power game every single feat purchase. I've played the game twice where I played the first half as a shield sword tank and swapped to just using the spear without the shield or played the first half as a shotgun user and then switched to being a general gun user.

Closing Thoughts

At first this was just supposed to be a silly tier list to put my thoughts in words in what I figured the skills stood to me. It has grown to be more a general guide with many topics I found interested in and also could reference all the information from the wiki.

I hope people will be able to use this guide to give them somewhere to start in the Underrail adventure if for some reason they are scared of just playing the game.

[Tenz]

Thank you for the engagement!

[Steppecist]

Shit guide

[Tenz]

Thank you.

[Rat]

thanks, great guide btw

[Tenz]

You are correct, removed that line to not cause confusion.

[Rat]

At several points in this guide you mention crossbows being a "light weapon" which has it's AP cost reduced by dex like knives and pistols, but nowhere on the wiki or in game is this mentioned. in the wiki especially crossbows are excluded from the light weapons list. Are you sure they're light weapons?

[Tenz]

Wtf that was like the most minor change some how did it one year after I posted the guide. Weird.

[Tenz]

I'll randomly update the guide, GL finding what I changed!

[Mittens the Maleficent]

thanks!

[Tenz]

I would note that buying mk1 EMPS from vendors is prob a better choice than spending Electromagnetic Dischargers on making your own since they are sold in such low quantities. You can slowly acquire a large amount from vendors over the course of the game as they cost almost nothing, and by the endgame you can have a huge stock of materials to make MK3 EMPs.

Or you can use the cheat engine vendor reset to skip that but if your playing purely its not a bad idea to stock up on the dischargers on vendor trips because their so cheap.