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Chapter 38 - Boring Company So we can't just come to Quinton with some vague descriptions of the issue, we'll need to give him something to work with for the best results. So we'll explore the mine a little further.    We pick up the very last Obsidian Shard oddity.  And the last Old Lamp oddity too.  A few screens deeper in and we start to find the worms that Marcos was talking about.  We use our last dog crate to catch one.  We will actually want to catch a second one for a future quest too, so we will need to see about obtaining one more dog crate in future.  Before we leave for Quinton, we'll kill a few Borers first, they drop their own oddities after all.  We don't get lucky, but borers also drop Metaworm Gizzards, which can be refined into Gizzard Enzymes, which can be used to make a number of advanced drugs.        A few screens deeper and the borers get more and more frequent, eventually we manage to find our first Borer Jaw oddity. We can collect four of them, and they're easy pickings so we will keep going deeper. We're looking for something else in here too.     Eventually we come across our first chunks of Chromium rock. We have to use our jackhammer to mine these.  Mining the rock with tend to have one of three effects. We will get pieces of Impure Chromium blades and or spawn more borers. Or...  The rock will turn out to be a sleeping Bladeling. The younger form of the unkillable Rock beast that plagues this mine.  So Bladelings are tough. They have 75%/20 mechanical, 75%/20 heat, 50%/15 cold and 35%/10 electricity damage resistance. So we aren't able to do poo poo to them.  Because the mines are so dark, it's also really hard to hit them with throwing items too, so even our vial of acid are pretty ineffective.  Despite their toughness and the fact they can hit us for 20-30 damage in one strike, the key weakness of the bladeling is that they are extremely slow. We can easily outrun a bladeling using our movement points alone. So even though we can't hit them, they also can't hit us.  This is still a problem however, we need to be able to kill these things and we want their oddities after all. This will require some thought... For the time being we'll avoid fighting any bladelings and reload to before we woke it up.   The other thing we came in here for was the impure chromium blade. These things weigh a ton, and we're going to need exactly 30 of them at some point, but for now we just need the one. We can leave any remaining blades in the nearby mine cart, which is exactly why those carts are there in the first place.      That's all the borer jaws. So it's time to leave the mines for the time being. We've got some science to do    We make a quick stop at a dead end in the south part of the mines to check out this storage room.  Inside a locker we can find some Firecracker Caps. You can apply these to a blunt weapon to temporarily boost mechanical and heat damage and reduce resistance threshold to these damage types, which is really nice. This doesn't count for combat gloves though, understandable, but a shame.    We drop by Kevin again and see if he's more forthcoming with his black market operations this time.   "You know... I'm interested in obtaining some weapons and ammo. Could you by any chance... help with any of that, hmm?" "I... don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps you should see one of the local merchants regarding... that." (Mercantile) "Shame, I suppose I'll have to spend my money elsewhere. That will be difficult. 'Cause I havelots of it. Yeah." Our mercantile is apparently just high enough to work. "Alright, alright. You heard correctly, I can get you military grade weapons and ammunition, but just so we're clear: Not a single word about this to anyone. Understand? Yes?" "Show me what you've got." So now we have access to a decent firearms merchant in Foundry. At the very least its another person we can sell off weapons and ammo too.   Anyways back to SGS to consult some scientists.  Home Sweet Home.   "I wanted to ask you about some odd creatures that are plaguing Foundry at the moment. Thought you might know something." "Foundry? Hm, sure, sure. Can you describe these creatures to me?" "There are these highly aggressive quadrupedal creatures, most easily recognized by shells made of rock with metallic blades protruding from their backs. Ever seen anything like that?" "Hm. Never, but it sounds really intriguing. I'd remember it, that's for sure. If you could bring me some part of the creature, or a live specimen, then I'd be more than happy to share anything I learn with you." "There are these worm-like things, with weird heads shaped like small drills." "Drills? I've seen a fair share of odd beings, but one with a drill for head? Never in my lifetime! Could you catch one, if that's possible? I'd love to take a look at the creature, and you too need some answers, or else you wouldn't be talking to me in the first place, hm?" "I've captured one of these worms." Quinton inspects the creature as it squirms inside the crate. As soon as it spots him, the creature begins thrashing about, occasionally stopping to aim its head at him and screech in an act of desperate intimidation. "Now this is what I'm talking about! I'd like to take a look at it. Anything I should know before opening the crate? How dangerous is it?" "You've got nothing to worry about. I handled it withmy bare hands." He carefully grabs the creature, holding it firmly as it wriggles in his hands. He takes a good look at it, charmed by its oddity and alien form, before he turns to you. "Please wait while I examine it. This won't take long." The creature suddenly makes a few powerful motions, wailing its unheld ends and shakes Quinton's upper body and prompting him to even spread his legs a bit in order to maintain proper balance; he is able to control it, however. "This one's a fighter!" Wait. Moments later.  It pays to have a few ex Biocorp scientists as friends. Soon he returns to you with a genuine smile on his face, overflowing with excitement. He wastes no time. "I'm back, Henrietta. Hope you didn't fall asleep waiting for me."Strap yourselves if for some in depth scientific analysis. "You seem happy. I hope you've got something good for me." "You'll see. First, without dissecting the creature - which I would never do without consulting you - I can tell you a couple of things I've learned so far: Their heads do appear to be used for actual drilling: Even though I haven't been able to see it in action yet, obviously, the combination of the unique shape of the head and the surprisingly powerful musculature makes me feel that it engages its whole body during the process. Maybe it, say, rotates itself in short bursts, or maybe it coils up and releases the energy in that manner; I'm just speculating. What is a fact, though, is that the head is very, very tough, so I have no doubt that it can bore through hard material without much of an issue. As for the rest of the creature's body, it is segmented and has a decently thick skin covered in what appear to be very soft, delicate scales, or at least something similar to it; as in snakes, it probably helps them move, possibly to retain moisture too. The skin is also highly sensitive, which makes sense for a creature limited in ways it can acquire information about its environment, hm. There are a few other details about it, but those are quite minor and uninteresting. Now, what I did was a quick superficial examination; I'd need to dissect the creature to really tell you more about its anatomy. However, I saved the good stuff for last! I decided to do sonne psi readings - that's why I left the room earlier - and the readings were off the charts! Hm. In fact, the creature exhibits a psi signature so strong that I'm surprised it does not have some defensive psi abilities at its disposal. However, the signature is also incredibly complex, and I am not ashamed of telling you even I am having problems interpreting it. He shrugs. I'm afraid that analyzing it is well above my skill level. But I am absolutely, one-hundred-percent positive that understanding this psi signature will not only help you on your - for lack of a better word - quest, but also pave way to engrossing scientific discoveries. For those of us who care, if nothing else. So there, that is all I have for you."We will probably need to consult a psi expert. If only we knew one nearby. "That is all very interesting. Regarding this psi signature, do you know anyone I can take this larva to?" "Well, as far as psi in general is concerned, Ezra is the top expert in SGS, so he is the right person to bring this critter to, hm. If he can't help you... then you're stuck. Yeah, well..." He hands you the crate back. "Here. Captivating little thing this is. And feisty." "I'll bring this to him then. Thanks."If our Biology skill was really high we could have a grand old time with Quinton, hypothesizing on the nature and physiology of these borers, as a scientist myself I think that's neat.  Hey Ezra! You're obviously a former higher up member of Biocorp's science team, what the gently caress is this worm thing you guy concocted?  "Could you take a look at this for me?" Ezra looks at the restless creature, now at the apex of its aggravation. He focuses on it in silence, and as moments pass the creature becomes more and more calm; slowly but surely it reaches a point of complete tranquility and motionlessness, on account of which one could easily mistake it for being dead.I'm sure Ezra didn't just use his very potent thought control powers just now or anything. "Ezra?" He turns to you. "Where did you find this creature?" "In a mine in Foundry." "Interesting. And are there any other creatures living among or in close proximity to these?" "Yes, creatures with shells made of rock that have metallic blades on their backs. Those are the only ones, as far as I know." He speaks, but more to himself than you. "I see; another adaptation; it makes sense. And you, why are you so interested in this subject?" "Foundry is having difficulties with those creatures, as they are infesting their mine. But the real problem is the Beast, a creature identical to what I described, but larger, tougher and much meaner. As yet, there doesn't seem to be an apparent way to kill it. The creature, because of its heavy armor, is practically invulnerable, and nearly all who faced it lost their lives." "So you want to find a way to kill it. Very well. I understand everything now. I'll tell you what you need to know. The creature you brought me is actually the larval form of the rock creature you described. As strange as that may seem, yes - these are their larvae. I've encountered them in the past - in different forms, though. Regardless, I can help you find this adaptation's weakness, but for that you will have to bring me some part of the creature to analyze. Try to bring me a piece of its shell or back blades if you can; if not, then bring whatever you are able to acquire."Yes Ezra, I'm sure you just 'encountered' these things in the past. Well we've brought him the chromite blade for this reason. "I have a piece of one right here." "Let me see it. I will be right back." He takes the sample from you and leaves the room. Wait for him to return.  "Yes?" "I've managed to analyze the composition of this impure chromium blade, and I emphasize this because over ninety percent of it is indeed chromium. But that you knew already. However, what you didn't know is that it is the other ten percent that which differentiates vermin from a walking apocalypse: Foundry is very unfortunate in having their surrounding rock made up of some of the hardest minerals in nature, for it is these materials which together form the living armor of these creatures. And I am not just talking about their shell, no - it is their whole bodies which are composed of these metals and minerals, albeit in varying quantities depending on the section, of course. Chromium is in itself a resistant metal, but its strength lies in its high heat resistance. The rest of the materials serve to counteract mechanical forces acting upon the organism. It appears that in small creatures, this robustness can be overcome by conventional means, if barely; in the Beast, I'd suggest you return to Foundry and tell them to collapse the cave where it lives and abandon them altogether. But that isn't an option, or else you wouldn't be here. Luckily, there is a way. By my calculations, and I've taken all the approximate constituent elements found inside the sample into consideration, the temperature necessary to melt these creatures' shell should be at least two thousand five hundred degrees centigrade. Ironically, considering chromium is practically the essence of these creatures, this seems to be the most realistic way to defeat it, as Foundry is likely to have some means - be it a furnace or something else - which can melt chromium, hence producing temperatures this high."Why I do believe Foundry may just have a blast furnace capable of doing exactly this. "So, it seems that I'm going to need a way to lure the Beast into Foundry and kill it there. Anything you can do to help me with the luring part?" "And what will you do once it's in Foundry? Do you have a plan?" "Foundry has this old, large smelting furnace near the mine entrance. I could use that to pour molten metal onto the Beast and kill it." "That seems plausible. I happen to know from previous research how these creatures communicate. With the larval form you brought me, I think I will be able to create a device which you will be able to use to summon the creature. At least it should."That's a very convenient coincidence Ezra. "What do you mean 'it should'?" "This is an improvised device that I'm making out of components I have at hand. Things can go awry; maybe it'll summon the creature you want, maybe it'll summon something else. You won't know until you press the button. Making the device shouldn't take long, though. I believe I already have all the necessary components right here. Wait some more, would you."Well that will have to do then. Wait. Even more moments later.  Well hang on a minute, we've got some questions. "About the rock creatures..." He nods. "What about plasma weapons? How come these are ineffective against the Beast when plasma can reach insane temperatures?" "When all molecules are ionized, yes, plasma can reach - theoretically - temperatures in the range of billions of degrees. However, most conventional plasma weapons we have today use plasma where only a fraction of gas molecules are ionized. There are three primary reasons for this: First one is the technological limitation, the second is power consumption, and the third is the fact that the shooter does not want to be evaporated together with everything else around him when firing his weapon."A likely story. But why does Ezra know so much about these things? "How come you know so much about these creatures? Knowledge like this does not arrive with merely 'encountering' something." "I've learned quite a few things throughout the years. There are bits and pieces of knowledge and history everywhere you look, and over time things simply accumulate."Uhuh. "You are awfully mysterious, Ezra. First you tell me you don't know anything about Wyatt Pear, and now this. And yet, you seem like you have an answer for everything else I ask you." "No one has an answer to everything. And no one should have an answer to everything. Life would be dull otherwise. I'd like to return to the topic at hand now."And this is straight of an answer as we'll ever get out of Ezra. This game doesn't ever provide us with all the answers to everything. Much will forever be left to our imagination. But that being said there's more to learned about Ezra yet, although no directly from him. The day will come. "You mentioned something about adaptation. What did you mean, precisely?" "You see, the larva uses its psi energy to 'cocoon' itself inside living or non-living entities and tailor its genetic make-up to support the organism's further development in accordance with what it's merging with. Inside, the larva develops into its adult form, and the resulting creature is fully integrated with the entity of choice. So, if the creature wants a rock shell, it will dig itself into a rock and fuse with it."This suggests that there may well be other variants of these things out there somewhere... "Do you know what these creatures are called?" "Psi-enhanced polymorphic organisms, or psimorphs, for short." "I'll get going." He nods and returns to his work. Delivering the chromite blade to Ezra caused us to level up.  We are now Level 17, just 8 more levels and we'll be ready for the main DLC content just about.  We take our next specialization point in Combo:Stun chance. More stuns the better.  Otherwise we bring out hacking skill high enough to unlock the final entries in Oculus. This is either the hardest or second hardest hacking skill check in the game.  Besides this, we keep boosting our various tech skills, to keep us in the crafting game.  Anyway it's back to Oculus for us to do some hacking.   Hack to increase access to level 3 (110)Like last time, I'll save some of the new entries for when we encounter the people it is referring us to, to avoid information overload. But there are a few new characters I'll show off now. Kirill 'Vovin' GavrilyukFull name: Kirill Gavrilyuk Aliases: Vovin Position: Apex Technocrat Alignment: Old Biocorp Involved in: Project Ascendance, various projects related to transgenics, psimorphism, and transhumanism - Kirill was known as "Vovin" (dragon) in the inner circles of Old Biocorp, possibly due to his psionic abilities. - According to some records, of all Apex Technocrats, Kirill held the most power and many projects that took place in years leading to the Biocorp fallout were undertaken on his command. - Along with number of other high ranking technocrats, Kirill was removed from power sometime during the chaos that ensued after the Hollow Earth incident, but was never apprehended. - Several high-profile customers have offered considerable amounts of money in exchange for learning Kirill's location. 'Vovin' is a character that we cannot meet easily, and is definitely one of the most difficult people to find in this game by far. It requires a very, verrry, special kind of playthrough. I may show it off if I can, I'm not sure I'll be capable of doing so even if I want to. But with this build we have here, we may have a better shot of it than most, we'll see. I will note that Vovin is the guy who worked alongside Ezra to cause the mutagen incident in Depot A that made all of those mutants and Wyatt Peare's immortality. Like Ezra, he is an extremely dangerous individual. Anyway the next entry is even more mysterious. Hank WardellUnavailable It's completely blank. Hank Wardell is someone who seems to be fairly important recurring character in this game. Although much like his Oculus entry, he himself is nowhere to be found, and is presumably long dead. His name will come up from time to time though, so we'll keep an eye out. From his Oculus entry we can only presume that he was either a member of Oculus or otherwise he infiltrated them in some manner and had his own entry erased. At least that's what I conclude from all this. The next entry belongs to an old friend of ours. Yevgeni 'Gorsky' ZolnerowichFull name: Yevgeni Zolnerowich Aliases: Gorsky Position: Chief of Security Current residence: South Gate Station Alignment: South Gate Station - Yevgeni is almost exclusively known by his alias Gorsky. The origin or the meaning of this alias is unknown. - He was a member of a number of gangs in times before the revolution in Core City. Shortly after the revolution he left Core City and eventually ended up in South Gate Station. - Gorsky is well known on the streets of Core City and in other Lower Underrail communities of the South as an audacious fighter who rarely backs down. - It is suspected that Gorsky was trained as a professional soldier in his youth, but it is uncertain where he would have gotten this training since all attempts to link him to Biocorp Security Forces returned negative results. - Gorsky still maintains contact with a number of minor factions of Core City, most notably the Zone Rats. So that's Gorsky's background, and his name's Yevgeni, that brings me joy for reasons not relevant to this let's play. His supposed professional soldier training is left as another mystery. Some people suspect that he might be from the same place as the Grey Army, given his name. But who knows. Next up on the list is main reason we wanted high level access to Oculus' files. Mit DraperFull name: Mit Draper Aliases: Scalp, Gridfix(er), Transfixer, Phreak Place of birth: Unknown Age: Exact age unknown, but purported to be in his sixties Current residence: South Underrail, exact location unknown (although several of his hideouts in Upper Underrail were discovered, they are currently vacant) - Little is known of his origins other than he is suspected to have been working at the Biocorp Cybernetics Center in Dis until its take-over, exact position unknown but suspected to be software security-related; one incomplete record suggests that he had been a wanted delinquent, and that his skills are what managed to earn him such respected employment. - In recent years he's been involved in numerous and often illegal activities across South Underrail. These include software and hardware hacking, forgery; manufacture, modification and trading of various security-breaching and -manipulating devices, and similar. Reliable reports indicate that these activities have caused him problems with numerous organizations, groups and individuals, some of them being his former clients. - Confirmed to have managed to exploit various functionalities of the out-of-commission metro emergency system, which he's accessing through numerous emergency phones by means currently unknown. It is not yet clear to what extent the emergency system can be used, but what is known so far is that it can at least provide access to certain utility sites, and by extension equipment and systems. So now we know Phreak's actual name, Mit Draper. Very likely to be a combination of the hacker Kevin Mitnick, and phone phreaker, John Draper, AKA "Captain Crunch". This won't be the only similarities to Captain Crunch he'll have. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.  Lots of work to be done. Next time.
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Chapter 39 - Drowned in Steel With that last bit of intel out of the way, today we're going to source some new weapons to showcase and to be more effective at killing bladelings, hopefully.  We have one part of the solution we need to deal with the beast. We just need a large body of high temperature molten metal to deal with the rest.   Home Sweet Home.  So our new plan for fighting bladelings is going to involve us making a few toxic gas grenades. In order to do this we're going to need to buy some starter mixture from Quinton. This is a ingredient you need to produce gas grenades of any sort.  Gas grenades are also made with thin grenade cases, so we'll need a bunch of those. Each batch of gas grenades needs at least three.  Lastly, the main ingredient for producing toxic gas grenades is toxic waste. This, unsurprisingly, is not something commonly sold by most vendors, so we will need to source our own supplies. The closest one I could think of was in the noxious waste barrel in the lower passages very close to the entrance of SGS.  We equipped our gas mask before walking into the toxic gas ourselves. We'll need to be wearing this if we ever have to deal with toxic gas at all. It will completely mitigate any damage we receive unless we get really unlucky, in which case we will only take minimal damage.  Our first piece of toxic waste. This will get us 3 whole toxic gas grenades. But we're going to need a lot more than that.  So gas grenades are fairly different from explosive grenades that we've seen so far. They won't instantaneously flood a room with gas, they instead slowly propagate an area over the course of 10 turns. Each tile already propagated in one turn will have a deadlier concentration of gas in the next, so long as the gas grenade is still pumping out gas and assuming the max concentration for a given tile hasn't been reached, which is probably like 4 stacks or something. Anything standing in the gas cloud will take 10-45 Bio damage, as well as be inflicted with the contaminated debuff which boosts damage from all sources and also stacks. So having someone hang about in a gas cloud means they will end up taking heavier damage the longer they remain in the cloud. The main drawback of gas grenades, all comes down to them the speed at which the gas propagates. If this is the main way you intend to inflict damage than combat encounters are going to take a lot longer. There are entire builds that feature gas grenades heavily though, so there are ways to utilize them effectively. Making use of lockable doors, confined spaces, and a lot of stealth probably plays some role in this.  Anyway, we need more toxic waste and the best place I could think of that may have some is the sewers in Core City.  Oh boy a sewer level. At least it's missing much of the tedium of most sewer levels in games.  The sewers hold many a rathound.  They also contain numerous pathways that are blocked off until certain quests become active. Many of these quests however are faction specific, so won't be needing to backtrack here too often at least.   The canals of sewage contain the occasional lurker as well.  Close to the entrance of the sewers is an open pit we can look down.    This pit likely contains a lot of toxic waste, but getting down without dying there is somewhat of a problem. We can absolutely get down there eventually though, but not just yet. Down there lies DLC goodies.    All of the gates in this area of a unpickably locked, except for the western most gate.  Which is where we will head next.  And in there is exactly what we were looking for.  This one has two more barrels of toxic waste inside. All up we can make nine toxic gas grenades. That should be just enough for our purposes.  Before we head out of here, let's do a little exploring, there's something else in here we want to get.  Heading along this bridge gets us caught in a bear trap. There's no real way for us to avoid this happening with our build.  The commotion causes a unique mutie called Rick the Rat to show up.  He isn't fast enough to reach us and act in the same round.  So despite the fact that we're rooted to the spot, we can still kick his rear end.  Rick's got a couple of nice items on his person, another Rat head amulet for our collection and a free bottle of mushroom brew, useful for making Juice.  But most importantly, rick has a unique pair of combat gloves, The Claw. These synergize extremely well with our build. On top of adding some bio damage to our hits, we get a 35% chance to inflict bleed which, granted, is less than our current gloves, but also an additional 35% chance to cause contaminate too. Adding this to our additional feats that stack onto bleeds, these are very good gloves indeed. We will equip them at some point down the track and begin our metamorphosis into the filthy rathound that we know we always knew we were deep down.   In the cauldron we find a Barrel Soup Ladle oddity. Barrel soup is apparently the cuisine that the drop zone is reknowned for so that's probably where we will find the other one of these oddities.  We shall carry on heading west of here.  There's a number of broken walkways in the sewers, it's far quicker to navigate this place with high agility.   Towards the western end of the sewers is a small camp of muties.  We'll just end their long suffering existence, but only because they don't give us much of a choice.    Their encampment contains the last Empty Mutagen Container oddity we need.  After dealing with these last two mutants, that's about all we'll check out down here for the time being. There's still a fair bit to be done in the sewers, so we will be back.     Okay it's back to the mines with us, which are apparently called Crystal Caves in game. I did not know that.   While we're here we slowly start collecting chromite blades and placing them in the mine cart.    We manage to clear out all of the ore in this screen without waking any bladlings, until the very last ore.  So, let's try out a few bladeling tactics. I will say upfront that we really suck and fighting these guys even with our new equipment.  So we start by dropping a gas grenade at the foot of the bladeling.  The gas is excruciatingly slow to propagate.  More annoyingly the bladelings aren't stupid and won't simply wander into the toxic gas cloud if they can avoid it.  So instead we just run through the cloud and have the bladeling wander around the outside of the cloud, slowing letting it poison itself.  We end up throwing a second gas grenade because the first just doesn't do a good enough job. We also whip out our laser cat to help with the damage. The problem with the laser cat, is that it only has about a 30% chance to hit the bladeling. I think that its because we're in low light conditions and it technically counts as a throwing weapon, it's either that or it counts as a pistol and we just suck with it. In hindsight, I really should have just thrown down a flare or something but, assuming we can hit anything, the laser cat provides us with slow but steady plasma damage.   The fight eventually ends, and we're not off to a great start with these toxic gas grenades but we need to be a bit smarter with how we're using them. At any rate we get our first bladeling oddity, the Serrated Bladeling Blade. It's going to be a pain in the rear end to collect all four of these I can tell you that much.  Heading deeper into the mines we pull this lever next to the cart tracks.  Which summons the mine cart to us, this makes it a lot easier to collect all of the necessary chromite.  This deep in the mines, we start finding bladelings just wandering about. My next tactic for fighting bladelings involves trying to use throwing nets.  Having an immobilised bladeling means our laser cat accuracy is boosted to 90% so we actually stand a decent chance of damaging one for a few short turns.  The downside to this is that it's going to cost us a lot of nets, which are costly to produce materials wise and they're heavy so we didn't bring that many.   We can generally kill a bladeling using nothing but the laser can with about two nets. It's pretty rubbish, but it'll have to do for the time being.  Bladelings can also drop a shielded bladeling eye organ. With a petri dish, you can extract the only possible source of something called black vitreous, which is used in some advanced recipes, like the psi critical boosting drug Trance or a more powerful variant of morphine called Nervosomnifer.  At the slow rate we're going, we'll run out of nets fighting bladelings.  So we try another toxic gas grenade. Getting a bladling cornered by gas is a good idea as they tend to just freeze in the corner until the gas envelops them.  The best tactic I could come up with, using the materials at our disposal, was to pin a bladeling in place and hit them with a gas grenade, all the while hitting them periodically with lasers.   The only real downside to these tactics, is that our gas mask occasionally fails to fully protect us and we get contaminated, which makes the bladelings hit us harder.  We didn't receive a single new serrated bladling blade oddity from all the new bladelings that we just killed. So I decide to just finish up collecting the rest of the chromite blades we need and come back at a later date.  We now have a reasonably decent plan to deal with the beast, so we propose it to the mayor of Foundry.  "About the mine creatures..." "Yes? Got any useful information?" "I've learned more about the Beast and how to defeat it." "Oh? I'm all ears." "The creature is highly resistant to both mechanical forces as well as high temperatures. From what I've learned, our best way to defeat it is to use extreme heat. Temperature of over two and a half thousand degrees centigrade should be enough to melt its shell and kill the creature." "Heat? Oh, I know what you're trying to say! You want to lure the creature inside the metalworks and try to kill itwith molten metal. Is that correct?" "I was thinking of perhaps using that large smelting furnace near the mine to kill the Beast. I even have away to lure it there." "That piece of junk? Please, that thing's been causing us more harm than good lately. It's been drawing power like a train-load of coil spiders, and even caused a blackout in half of Foundry. Just recently it completely broke down, and we won't bother fixing it for now, if ever. Forget about that piece of junk and do not listen to Bernard. Don't. Luring the Beast into Foundry would be a high-risk operation. The creature could go on a rampage if let into Foundry, not to mention that the smaller creatures will most likely follow it. Yes. Yes. That is what I was about to say. And, even if you can somehow lure it in, none of the working furnaces can produce temperatures of that magnitude, besides the smaller ones we use for melting chromium, but those are simply too small." The mayor takes a deep breath and regains his calm. "Look, I'm, we are really thankful for your help. Really. But the plan you're proposing is just too risky; we need another way."So the Mayor continues to be utterly useless in his desire to do nothing in the face of adversity. "Nothing at the moment. Goodbye." At this point I remembered that we probably have enough info to confront the faceless that the Chief wanted us to deal with. So we'll go quickly do that.  They're just in a small cave to the west of Foundry.   The Faceless that we end up conversing with strangely has legs like a plasma walker. They are incredibly mysterious being.  Give him time to see what his intentions are.The next chunk of dialog is verbatim what the Centaur just said for some reason, so we'll just skip that.  He then reaches for something on the inside of the chin of his mask, and soon after that you can hear a crude synthesized voice. "Identify yourself." "I am Henrietta from South Gate Station." "What is your business here?"Naturally, the Faceless aren't terribly interested in letting their intentions be known to anyone but themselves so we'll just get straight to the point with them. "I wanted to talk to you about the item you're looking for." After a short pause, he responds. "How do you know about this?"We got this information from that bloody mobile computer we took not too far from here. "A traveling merchant you recently interrogated the one with the two bodyguards you killed - he wrote about what happened on his mobile computer. He too is not among the living anymore, but his logs offered enough information for me to seek you out." "What you say did occur." He pauses briefly, as if unsure how to proceed. "Something of value has been stolen from us. We believe it might have found its way to the community nearby. If you can help us locate the missing item, we will be on our way." "The item you seek is in possession of a man called Cornell. He's the leader of the Acid Hunters gang which usually hangs out in Core City. At this point, it's highly unlikely that the item is anywhere near Foundry." He answers after an uncomfortably long pause. "Providing you're telling the truth, we have no reason to remain here. Take this as a sign of our appreciation for your assistance in this matter." He hands what looks to be a high quality power core. "Is this item the reason your people have blockaded the Core City?" "While we appreciate your assistance, we must advise you not to investigate this matter further or interfere with our operations near Core City or elsewhere. Our business here is done."And of course the Faceless aren't about to become any more forthcoming with us than in the past. But this interaction is slowly improving our relations with them. The more positive interactions we can have with the faceless, the better things will be for us in the long run. The main thing will be to avoid causing direct violence to them at all costs.  So it's back to the Chief with the good news.  "I talked to the Faceless." "You talked to them? What did you find out?"We can lie to them about the Faceless intentions, but we don't really have any reason to not give him gist of why they came here. "They are looking for some kind of item something that means a lot to them, but it turned out that this item wasn't in Foundry. After talking to them about it, they got into their tunneler and left." "Interesting. We will still need to stay alert, as it could be some kind of ruse, but the fact that they weren't hostile to you is not a bad indicator by all means. You did well." Here's your reward. He hands you 100 stygian coins.Easy, albeit very little, money. "I need to go. See you later." Now that that's taken care of, screw the mayor, we're going to restart Gloria. We'll want to do this for other reasons besides killing the beast anyway.  "May I ask you how high can this furnace go temperature-wise?" "Oh, Gloria's very hot. I think she can go up to three thousand, even three and a half thousand degrees centigrade. Yeah, that's a lot, trust me. She could melt anythin'. I even told the mayor that same thing, but he doesn't believe me. He told me to shut my tick hole 'cause he thinks I'm makin' it up to convince 'im to fix 'er. drat 'im!"That's high enough than we need, perfect. "He explicitly told me to "forget about that piece of junk" when I asked him about it, so I don't think he has changed his mind." "drat 'im!" "How about I help you repair the furnace?" "Ya mean Gloria? Yeah, that'd be awesome. But, hold on, why would ya wanna do that? Why's it important to ya?" "I need it to kill the large beast from the mine." "Wow, that's gonna be quite a challenge. But, look, if ya can help me fix my Gloria, she'll show ya what she's capable of." He laughs. "Now, I'll explain what Gloria suffers from, at least what I think is the problem: Ya see, there's somethin' wrong with the electrode power regulation system that's being controlled through this console. Before Gloria broke down, she started drawin' so much power from the system it caused a blackout in nearly half of Foundry. I don't think it's the problem with the console, but the unit itself. But nothin' I try seems to work. Muck."We should be good enough at electronics at this point that we can just fix Gloria without needing any further assistance. (Electronics) "Can I take a look?" "Um, okay. Just... be gentle." Attempt to fix the furnace.  After a short moment of tinkering.  Turns out she just needed a new oil filter, a replacement spark plug and an air freshener.  "We did it together; I couldn't have done it all alone." "Nah, ya did all the hard work. If it wasn't for ya, I'd still be sweatin' here tryin' to fix 'er. My dear Gloria..." "Is the furnace ready to be used?" "Ya can't wait to see Gloria in action? I wanna see 'er too, to tell ya the truth. But the thing is, ya need to load 'er with some ore and start the meltin' process. We went through most of our supplies after the mine was closed, so chances are yer gonna have to go into the mine. Any ore rich in metal should do the trick. Ya can use the cart system to help ya carry all that around."Well good thing we got that taken care of already. "I know what to do." "Go for it." "Goodbye." So all we gotta do now is recall the minecart to this spot.     Dump the ore into the hopper thing and switch on the conveyor belt.  It takes a short while for the ore to be loaded into Gloria, so let's get some extra help whilst we wait.  What we want is a bored guard.   "Would you like to help me kill the Beast?" Despite the fact that his face is covered by a metal helmet, you are sure that both his eyes are as intensely focused you as if they were a pair of spotlights. "Do you really think I'd leave my boring post just to kill a giant monster and save Foundry from its terror? Hell yeah! Damned if I miss the chance to have some fun in this boring place. I reckon you've got some cunning plan, right?" "We're gonna use the large smelting furnace to turn the Beast to liquid." "That is so drat beautiful. I'm actually gonna start crying now. Manly tears, of course. Real men cry mercury! And, well, I haven't seen Gloria in a while. That iron lady can sometimes turn quite HOT... er. When she's working, that's what I mean." He bursts out laughing. "Oh, Bernard, you crazy idiot. Anyway, I'll be there as soon as possible, friend. I gotta... do a couple of things first." "Gotta move, see ya." Excellent, everything is nice and set up for the coming fight.  Dan is in position, and he even brought a pet plasma walker with him! That will most definitely come in handy.  We start the melting process and talk to Bernard.  "When yer ready to pour the molten metal onto the Beast, just pull the lever to the right and watch it burn. I just have one more question for ya. How are ya gonna get the Beast to come 'ere? I don't think ya can simply go and ask it." He laughs. "I have a device that will attract the Beast to the furnace." "Good, so I see ya got everythin' worked out. Well, Gloria's ready, but since I'm pretty darn sure there's gonna be some heavy fightin' when the Beast comes, I'm just gonna... stay at a safe distance." He laughs nervously. "Ain't much of a fightin' man anyway. I'd do more harm than good. After all, I'm sure the Foundry Guard's gonna be 'ere to help ya. Yer not doin' this on yer own for sure! Anyway, good luck and... don't die." Okay then, let's get this party started.  We put the psi emitter down inside the catchment chamber thing.  And switch it on.  Now all we have to do is wait.  A short moment later a few bladelings show up. Now is an excellent time to get some gas grenades going.  Meanwhile Dan and his plasma sentry open up on the bladlings, they make this fight a lot more tolerable for those who struggle with heavy armor like we do.  The plasma sentry occasionally enters its turret mode.  A single shot from its plasma gun is more than enough to kill a single bladling in one hit. Especially with the toxic gas doing its thing.  Our combined efforts are making this fight go nice and smoothly.   With the last bladeling dead, three more show up.  We keep them busy with stuns and gas, whilst the heavy hitters up top take care of the damage.  We let off a second gas grenade to keep the gas clouds nice and thick. Thankfully the low elevation of the pit prevents our wide throw from causing the gas to reach Dan at all. He'd probably kill us if it did.     So far so good.   After a brief respite, allowing us to recharge and heal, four more bladelings show up. The number of times and the amount of bladelings that ultimately show up to this fight is dependent on what difficulty you play on.    We're running out of room to maneuver down here, but we can handle the pain for the time being.      That was the last of the bladelings.  A brief moment later and the Beast itself shows up. If you decide to wander about the Crystal Caves enough, you can just find it off in the back somewhere but as everyone else says it's completely indestructible.  The beast doesn't fight us at all, it instead just heads straight for the emitter.  The rest is all cutscene of us locking it inside.  And pouring molten metal all over it.  Which kills it instantly.  And fills the pool for good measure. We're are then immediately launched into a speech from the Mayor.  "We couldn't let it continue! We couldn't let you suffer any longer! We couldn't let those monsters tear down what you've made with your own hands! So the Foundry Guard took action and protected you! Let's hear one big round of applause for our beloved Chief Banner!" The crowd cheers. "Thank you, sir. Before we begin, I'd just like to take a moment to mention those who died fighting to protect Foundry. Men and women who stared in the eyes of these creatures and bravely fought to allow you, their friends and family, to live another day. Let us never forget them." The crowd cheers. "However, the dead are not the only ones worthy of your praise. This young woman played an important role in helping the Foundry Guard slay the largest of these beasts, and the one that was responsible for most deaths." He turns to you. "HENRIETTA!" The crowd cheers. "Would you like to say something, Henrietta?"At this point we can say a number of things, some of which are insulting to the mayor for being completely useless or just telling everyone in Foundry to burn in hell. But saying these things will piss off the mayor and we won't get paid, so let's just play nice and leave with our purse a little heavier. "It was an honor working with the Foundry Guard. We crushed those monsters." "True words indeed. Thank you, Henrietta, and thank you all for coming here today! Goodbye!" The crowd cheers.   And with that, Foundry is saved, Underail is once again flooded with TiChrome and TiChrome accessories hurrah! Let's say hi to the Chief. "Yes?" "How do you feel now that the mine has been reopened?" "I never broke my pick; I knew we were going to overcome this problem one way or the other. With the mine operational and Foundry safe once again, we will maintain our position as the dominant force in the region. We cannot be touched." "I need to go. See you later." The mayor is as usual quick to have us leave.  Now that Gloria is operational again, let's say hi to Bernard.  "Ya should drain the metal and see if anythin' remained of that devil. He laughs. So we do just that.   Draining the catchment pool, we find the freshly glowing corpse of the beast.  The Unscathed Scale of the Beast is the unique oddity we get for beating it. It gives us a whopping 6 xp.  We can also claim its head as a trophy. It's extremely heavy. But we can either have this mounted on a wall or we can sell this to somebody at a later date. I don't think I managed to capture it, but the beasts corpse actually has its head removed when you take this too. It's a neat touch.  We manage to collect another two serrated bladeling blades off of the bladelings that we fought during that battle too. We only need one more to complete the set, but I'll hold off of trying to get it as they are just such a nuisance to fight.  Now let's go see what Bernard has to say.  "How do you feel now that mine has been reopened?" "Yeah, that's nice, but what's more important is that my Gloria is alive and well. Did ya see 'er melt that creature? Only the shell remained. Makes me so proud. Gloria..."There's a man who really loves his furnace. "You mentioned melting super steel earlier." "What? Ah, yeah, absolutely. My Gloria could do it. It's all up to you if ya wanna melt yer charons."So this is the other reason we helped out with the beast. We can now turn our cash into super steel, the best crafting material in the game. Charons? "Yeah, lemme explain what's up: Ya see, them charons were created from a very special metal alloy - the super steel. Some techno-nuts back in Old Biocorp made them to function as commodity money. Ya see, super steel is a valuable industrial metal, not to mention super expensive to create. It's light, ductile, conductive and also has other good properties. It ain't real commodity money though, because there's a catch, ya see: Because the Old Biocorp technocrats wanted to keep themselves still relevant, they introduced impurities into the alloy as they produced the coins. These impurities serve two purposes: One, they take away from the good stuff of the alloy - its high conductivity and malleability. And secondly, they significantly raise its melting temperature. So ya see, not everyone was able to actually cash in on the metal, unless they had somethin' like my dear Gloria." He looks at Gloria. "Ah... Gloria." "Is there a way to remove these impurities and get higher quality super steel?" "Sure. We get rid of 'em as much as we can durin' the refinin' process, but we can't get rid of 'em all. At least,ya know, not with the techniques our metallurgists use." "Is there anything I can do to help?" "I dunno." He shrugs. "Unless yer a metallurgist yerself, I don't think so. Or unless ya know a good one. Or unless... Ey, yer a resourceful kinda girl. Perhaps there's some useful data on these impurities - or super steel in general - out there that can do us good. If ya manage to find anythin' interestin', bring it to me and I'll pass it on to Andy, our chief metallurgist."So now if we want super steel plates that come out as much higher quality, and we absolutely do want this, we'll need to track down some data that will allow us to do this. There's I think four of them in the game and each one will improve the overall quality of any super steel we make by a significant amount. "What kind of goodies can I make out of super steel?" "Well, weapons and armor for starters. The stuff ya can make from ordinary steel right now if yer a metal worker. If ya ain't, then there's no point explainin' it. Also, Leonie might be able to make sheets and fiber if ya bring 'er some super steel. Them things might also be of use to ya."This is a main reason we want access to super steel. Super steel plates are all well and good, but not really all that useful for our build. Super steel fibers on the other hand, we can infuse these into leather armor. And, this provides us with an entirely new class of leather armor. Infused leather armor not only tends to be of better quality than regular leather armors, but each individual piece of infused leather comes with its own unique bonuses, depending on the kind of leather you use AND that includes different pieces of leather armor. So infused rathound leather armor gives you a unique bonus to something and say infused siphoner leather will give you a different unique bonus property. But also Infused rathound leather boots, with give you a completely different unique property from infused rathound leather armor, and indeed infused rathound leather tabi boots, will have a completely unique bonus too. There are many different unique bonuses and so we will want specific pieces of infused leather and naturally we will want them to be of highest quality. So we'll hold off on all this till we have as much super steel data as well can gather. "Alright, let's make some super steel." "That's what I like to hear. I can create up to three sets of plates per meltin', and it'll take a while. Oh, and make sure ya take everythin' ya need from the chamber before the purification process starts or it'll be goners. So how many sets of plates do ya want?"The other reason we want to hold off is that a single plate of super steel costs 3000 charons to produce, we can make them in batches of 3, and 9000 charons is absolutely a non-trivial amount of cash in this game. We currently have just over 10,000 at present. But it is not easy to make that kind of dough, and we've some other expensive things to afford in future as well. As such we will hold off on making super steel until we can ensure we'll get the most bang for our buck. "I'll have to think about it some more first actually." "Eh? Okay. I'll be 'ere anyway." "Goodbye."   Once we do make some super steel plates, we can bring them to the merchant at the front of Foundry where Leonie can make them into fiber for us. Now that mines are back up, Leonie will also now just sell TiChrome plates and accessories if we were so interested in making things out of them.  With that out of the way, we will say farewell to Foundry and onto to other things.  We're making our way back to Core City, but we'll take a detour through some unexplored passages.  There's a small encampment of Lunatics back here.  The lunatic freezer is pretty tough. She can surround herself with an ice shield and freeze us solid if she gets the chance too.  These lunatics have the very last pieces of their poetry on their person.   We also find our first Bubblegum oddity here too.  And the last Old World Booze Bottle oddity, which brings us to our next level.  Another even level means more feats!  We're now hitting the apex of our character build. With Taste for Blood, our bleeding wounds can now boost our damage by 5% per stack, and itself can be stacked 10 times. This is usually a feat you'd want to take if you made a knife build, as knives tend to geared towards bleed damage, but since we're focusing on bladed combat gloves, we can reap the benefits this feat offers too. Now all we need is more ways to inflict as much bleed as possible during a fight and we're golden. Well, robots will forever suck to fight, but apart from that.  Business as usual in the skills department, we're slowly ramping up our mercantile now that we've freed up a lot more skill points to spend on whatever.  We give ourselves a greater stun chance.  And that's that.  I think I walked into every bear trap in this corner area, there were a lot.  The path eventually turns into a familiar area.  And we're back in Core City again.     We drop off that very heavy trophy we just obtained and any loose junk.  We pick up one last dog crate, as we'll want to grab another borer at some point.  And that will do for now. Next time, we'll go on a nice fishing vacation.
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Feb 19, 2023 03:40
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The Great Southern Fishing Tour Today we're going to tackle Geezer Ford's fishing task.  We'll grab the Ghostface squid from our Core City stash. That's going to save us an enormous headache. Ghostface's can only be caught in a very specific part of the Core City sewers and even then they're an absolute rarity. You can technically catch them in other places but those places are currently inaccessible and are very late game areas. As mentioned previously you can refine them into Kynurenic Acid needed to make an extremely rare and powerful drug that I'll save talking about for later.  As well as fishing, we're also going to start setting up our teleport rift network, since this is indeed an excellent means of fast travel.  Home Sweet Home.  We head down to all of our major stashes and collect any and all ingredients we can use to make Psionic Catalyists, Gyromitrin and Morphine. Which are mindshrooms, dream mushrooms and cave poppies respectively.  The more of this stuff we have, the more Juice we can make on the fly.    We had a lot of Mindshrooms stashed in junkyard so we won't be hard up for catalyst for a while.  Juice does require 2 gyrometrin, so we're stuck with a single bottle for the time being. That's okay, we can use it to help us get more Juice.  Kimi, the plant seller in Junkyard only sells a single red dream mushroom. We will likely have to go cave picking. All cave systems in underrail are abundant in ingredients needed to make Juice.  Kareem also supplies us with all the Mushroom Brew we'll need too.  Our first new rift is located in the alleyway in Junkyard near Elwood's old place, the guy who we killed for the Scrappers and took his mysterious disk. I'm sure I'll get round to killing the Scrappers for the Black Eel's any day now. Anyway, the rifts are marked by faintly blue glowing glyphs on the ground. They're pretty hard to spot on most terrains really, this one is near the boxes north of our position.  We chug some Juice and the rift appears.  And now we've got a means to easily go back to Dude, so let's do that.    "Can you make me some Juice?" "Sure, man. I'll need two brews, one measure of unsaturated psionic catalyst, one of morphine and one of gyromitrin. Remember, the extra brew's for me." "This is far too time-consuming. There has to be a better way to get these ingredients." "I'm not gonna go pick them, man. I'm far too busy to be doing something as dull and mundane as going about and, like, picking mushrooms." "How about I find someone who could supply you with the necessary ingredients?" "And then you just buy it off me? That could work, man. Got anyone in mind?"Good thing we know a good mushroom grower. [Intelligence] "South Gate Station. The agronomy level has a dedicated room for growing mushrooms." "Great, man. I'll take care of picking up the supplies, man, don't you worry. And you know what? I'll even take care of the brew while I'm at it. You just let me know once you've struck a deal and I'll do the rest. cool?" "Cool." "Cool, man." He takes a sip of his brew. "Talk to you, later, Dude." We head back through the rift to Junkyard.  We'll make our way to the next rift, but we shall also take a detour through some unexplored cavern systems. That way we can harvest some more Juice ingredients on the way and keep exploring new locations.   We make our way by way of mushroom cove.  Mordre is long gone since we found out his whole murder thing. I don't think we'll ever see him again, but I've been surprised before.   Swinging all the way to the far west of mushroom cove, we take out the psi beetles in the area.  And blast open some rubble.     Not much in here but some mindshrooms so far.   We come across a small water way that's got more siphoners than the siphoner pools I swear.          At least there were some more mindshrooms and lake poppies at least.  The next area is a unique place called the hoppers graveyard. It's where old hoppers come to die. There's not much more to be said about it.  The next area is a crawler nest.  Crawlers aren't too much of an issue for us at this point, we're just stealthy enough that we can usually spot a crawler before it spots us.  Save scumming also helps too. At least crawler nests tend to have red dream mushrooms in abundance.  That ends that small detour, we break into another familiar part of the caves.      A short ways east we enter another unexplored cave system.    Which quickly leads to a pigs nest we've found at an earlier venture.   At this point I decide to give The Claw a test run, at the very least it'll save on our battery consumption going forward.  It kills a lone pig in one hit. These are pretty drat good.  South of the pigs nest we arrive at the lone elevator that goes to the deep caverns. There's a rift close by to it for some reason.  We ignore teleport and hike back to SGS. Home Sweet Home.  With 2 seconds left before out Juice wears off, we manage to attune the SGS rift which is located in the Agronomy and Pens store room.  Let's chat to Quinton and get Dude set up with what he needs.  "I need someone to supply a friend of mine with certain plants and fungi. His name is Dude and he'll even collect it himself so you won't have to ship it out anywhere." "Hm. What mushrooms and plants?" "Mindshrooms, red dreams and lake poppies. We need lots of it. The more you have, the better." "We have plenty to spare, fortunately. We can make a deal. What is it for, if I may ask?"If we had a high enough persuade or mercantile we could get Quinton to supply Dude with significantly more of these ingredients and he'd have twice the inventory for us. So we'll just lie. "It's for his... medicine. Yes." "Payment?" "Upon pickup. You iron out the details with him." Acceptable. Tell your friend we have a deal.At least Quinton is very agreeable. "Alright. You'll hear from him soon." "I'll be waiting for him." "Bye" We'll use our freshly harvested ingredients to make a few more bottles of Juice.  Then we'll take the train to Rail Crossing to find more rifts.  The rift in Rail Crossing is south of the station, near Buzzers Shop.  You can generally expect rifts to be somewhere out of the way, away from the eyes of non-believers.  The next rift is in a seemingly random location, but it's got a point to it as we'll eventually understand. We get there by heading east of Rail Crossing.  And take the stairs to the lower passages.  Then head one screen south.  And there's just a rift near a Free Drones graffito.  We teleport back to Rail crossing and quickly make a stop in at the Rail Crossing bar.  Uh oh. "Is this something about Dude and my drinking session?" "You betcha it is! You owe me money." He pulls out a notebook, flips a page and starts reading. "You and Dude had twenty bottles of brew plus six bags of hardcore chips - and paid for none of it!" Your eyes veer toward the stained menu on the counter: mushroom brew - ten charons; core chips - seven charons; hardcore chips - ten charons. "That's two hundred sixty charons you owe me. You two snuck out when I wasn't looking, but now... now's the time to pay up." He closes the notebook and leans on the counter.Ugh I don't wanna have to deal with this, money is quickly becoming precious again, but oh well we'll just pay him and be done with it since we can't talk our way out of this one and he's likely a future source of mushroom brew. "Here you go." Give him 260 stygian coins. He counts the money and looks back at you after confirming that the amount is correct. "It's good. We're good, you and I. But tell Dude I'll pour him some rat poison the next time he does something like this. Dig? Well..." He half-smiles. "Is there anything you want? You're paying for everything on the spot though!" "See you later." We take the train to Foundry to grab the next rift.   It's up in the tower where we found Toodle Sallymally's sniper rifle.    We jump back to Dude and see what he's got for us now.  "Quinton - not Quentin. And... how, what - what?" "Didn't you figure out how the Universe works by now, man? I had a vision. Saw you, like, making a deal with Quentin and knew what I had to do. I got everything ready, man. We got a good supply of Juice, man!" "It's Quinton, drat it. But I'm glad. Visions can be quite convenient, I have to admit." "Yeah, man. But never while you're on the toilet. It's like... no, man, no." "Yeah... Anyway, show me some of that Juice." So dude will now sell 4 bottles of Juice periodically, he will also happily trade mushroom brew as well. He would have sold us 8 bottles if we'd made a better deal with Quinton. Annoyingly, the game will default to offering mushroom brew over money, so paying for Juice can be a little annoying. When it comes to trading and splitting stacks of items and other bits of inventory management this game can be a little finicky. Hopefully it's something they overhaul in their upcoming sequel, Underail:Infusion, which was originally going to be DLC but it now a stand alone campaign. Stygian Software seem to be overhauling drat near everything from the ground up by the looks of it so there's a good chance of that. It's not likely coming out any time soon though.  Anyway, we make our way to Core City, the next rift is in the shed next to the train station.   There are actually several different rifts in Core City. We'll have to wait to access two of them however. The second one is up next the merchant district down the ladder next to the Hardcore city bar.  It's in the tiny hole next to the motioner guy who rambles about us being his father. He'll thank us for giving him rift as a present once we attune it. Oh motioners...   Next rift is in Oculus.   It's just right behind the nexus crystal out in the open. Presumably the Oculites are already familiar with this technology, since no one bats an eye. Dude's probably a member of Oculus too no doubt.  Alrighty, that's enough rift walking for now, let's start our fishing vacation. We've got a number of fish we need to catch and this will take a while, but we'll skip through every reload I end up doing.  So we'll start by setting up a rod on the docks of Junk Yard.  Our dexterity is extremely high, so we've probably got the maxmium chance of catching fish that you can naturally have, which is 85%. And our first catch is a Black Dragon!  Many fish in this game can be used for more than just completing the southern fishing tour, you can also extract various things from them. In the case of Black Dragons, you can extract Black Dragon poison, which you can use to cause psionic inhibition on enemies. There are several encounters in this game where something like would be incredibly useful. I will put a pin this thought, making a few black dragon poisoned throwing knives isn't a bad idea at all. Although we will need more Biology to achieve this first.  Next up we catch a blue eel. Basically the most common thing you can catch, and not needed to finish the fishing quest. You can refine them with petri dishes to make blue gel electrolyte. This is needed to craft advanced health hypos, a movement and dodge boosting drug called Jumping Bean, and a drug that cures bleed debuffs, the coagulation shot.  Fishing for a short while at the docks we also picked up a minihead needed for the quest and we also grabbed a yellow puckerfish at some point too which is not needed. Both can be refined into blood if we ever were short on animal hearts.  I find that fishing spots tend to dry up after about three or so fishes, this tends to lead to me save scumming a lot. At any rate we need to look elsewhere for better locations to catch certain fish. A good spot for catching some rare fish is actually silent isle. But I forgot to bring my rod when we went there initially and Captain Broderick won't go back there unless we pay him an extortionate fee. That's okay we'll have a cheaper means of reaching there again if we ever needed to in the future.  For now we'll just make our way back to the Omega outposts that we reactivated all those updates ago, back when we we're a vulnerable little slugger.  SGS has set up a few sentries outside the outposts now.  We clear some of the rubble near this outpost, taking extra care not to accidentally blow up the sentry in the process.     This new part of the caverns is yet another nest of crawlers. We were literally one screen away from them right at the very start. How horrifying.      Not much else in this area besides the occasional mushroom worth picking.  The next area is a pleasant little waterway we can collect some lake poppys.  We've run out of explosives so we opt to use our jackhammer to break our way back into the GMS omega caverns from here.  And we're back near that bandit outpost again. This is an ideal place to set up our rod.   We quickly catch our first Pentapus, which we need. These can be refined into Statolith, that you use to make psi reinvigorator drugs.  We don't have much luck finding anything else down there so we exit the lower caves for now.  And make our way to the upper caves instead.  We never did fully explore all of the early game caves, so we opt to do that whilst we're looking for good fishing spots.        In doing so we collect the last two Enormous Tusk oddities.   We find a nice place to set our rod down. The main thing we're looking for in the upper caves is a Phantom Jelly. They can only be caught in the upper caves and they're actually pretty rare. Easily the hardest thing to catch outside of a Ghostface.  I spent an awful long time and various fishing spots in the upper caves trying to catch one. Probably close to half an hour trying to catch this one fish alone. At some point we manage to catch a Slackjaw, which we need, and can also be turned into blood.  I got it into my head that maybe I need to reach the non-early game parts of the upper caves to find a phantom jelly perhaps. But maybe I was just really unlucky in finding one this time round.    Whilst wandering about we stumble on some guy just camping out in the caves.  "Whoa, don't shoot, man! My name is Henrietta, and I mean no harm." "Henrietta. Henrietta, as you may have already noticed, we are in the middle of a cave and you just happen to have... 'stumbled' upon this little camp here. I'll be keeping my eyes on you and you better make sure I don't spot you doing anything funky, or else... just think of my introductory statement again and you'll know what'll happen. Now tell me, what do you want?" "What are you doing here all alone?" "Well, first of all, what I'm doing here is none of your business. But, alone I am... at least for the moment. Yet, you are here too, somehow." He makes a brief pause before continuing. "By the way, did you happen to notice anyone else in these caves?" "Nope. Sorry, I'm just passing by." "Curses. Listen, I'm looking for two men in these caves - don't ask why. I need something from them, a small footlocker key. So, if you meet them, find their bodies or whatever... just get me that key. I'm even willing to pay for it; fifty charons, as a matter of fact." "Okay, I'll search for the key." "Great, I'll be here.." waiting.I'm not quite sure what this is about, but the key is to the footlocker behind Milton. We could just kill him and take whatever is in there for ourselves, but I seem to recall it's not terribly exciting, so we may as well just help him out. It's probably just some early game reward anyway. "I'll be going now." We don't end up finding the key we need right this second so we'll be back in the next update to solve this incredibly minor task.    We eventually find our way back to the river just outside of the Hanging Rat.  Having spent an ridiculous amount of time off screen fishing for this damned Jelly we put our rod down here.  And catch it first try! Finally! Phantom Jelly's are also a source of blue gel electrolyte, which given that the most common fish in the game can be turned into that, catching phantom jelly's for crafting purposes is pretty pointless. They don't even sell for very much either, nothing worse than rare garbage.  We're down to the last few fish we need now, so we head back to the Junkyard docks and start fishing again. I believe we end up catching an Anglerfish and a Demon Squid here. Anglerfish are a good source of fusing enzyme, which you need to make more advanced healing items we've yet to see. Demon Squid's can be turned into Nidamental gel, that is needed to make a drug called Bullhead. This can make you immune to stun or incapacitation effects and there are a good number of situations where that would be extremely useful to have, so we'll make note of this for later.  Only two more fish left to catch, we'll ferry over to Camp Hathor.  Since we're in the neighborhood, we attune to the Camp Hathor rift, just hidden near the mayors house.  And we set our rod down by the outhouse, past a few other fishing rods.  We quickly catch a walking fish. Walking fish are the only source of something called macrophage fluid. You can use this to make a regenerative mixture that can be used to regenerate a large amount of health during combat or what have you.  Our final fishing spot is in Mushroom cove, where we quickly catch our last fish, a shrimp. Shrimp do absolutely nothing, although they do pair well with white wine.  That's all the fish we need, and a few more to boot.  So it's back to Geezer Ford to brag about our fishing exploits. He doesn't need to know that we never actually fished the Ghostface ourselves. Catching the Phantom Jelly was hell enough.  "About that fishing challenge..." "Yeah? I still need to see you catch an anglerfish, a black dragon, a demon squid, a ghostface, a minihead, a pentapus, a phantom jelly, a shrimp, a slackjaw, a walking fish." "I caught an anglerfish." He takes a look at it. "That's an anglerfish alright. Look at them teeth." "I caught a black dragon." "Black as coal. I know of a guy who caught an albino one in one of them wet caves far south of here. Bastard." "I caught a demon squid." He touches the squid's tentacles a few times before nodding. "Good. Good. Fine specimen." "I caught a ghostface." "Very good, woman. I remember when I caught my first ghostface. It was in the cold caves of... khm. Very good." "I caught a minihead." He leans forward, mouth open. "Huh?" Then he looks at the minihead. "Oh, oh. Good. Got that one, I see." "I caught a pentapus." "One, two, three, four... Yeah. It is all there. Nice." "I caught a phantom jelly." "This is indeed a real phantom jelly. Some folks can't tell the difference between these and spectre jellies, but it be obvious to anyone who's not a drat rookie. Good work." "I caught a shrimp." He takes a careful look at it. "Yup. You got it. Well done, woman." "I caught a slackjaw." He smells the fish, frowning as he does so. "That's the smell! When you buy these, they mostly don't smell this bad. I don't know what they do to 'em. Still, you caught this one. Good work." "I caught a walking fish." He nods in approval. "Not bad. Just don't let it walk away." He laughs. "That's a joke. Old but gold." "Well... it appears you've caught them all." "Well?" He stares at you. "I'm waiting." He maintains his gaze, but eventually it shifts toward the fishing rod. His hand beckons you to follow him."Come 'ere." Let him show you the trick. And so we gain our 1 whole xp for doing this extremely long and tedious quest.  Our main reward is we now have the fisherman feat. This gives us a 100% chance of catching fish every time we attempt to reel one in. Could be handy if we're fishing for some rare ingredients. It's not the most useful of feats but that's that over and done with at least.   We dump all of our caught fish into our junk yard stash for whenever we'll need them. There's still a few more fish that we can catch which we haven't seen yet, but they are all inhabitants of the Black Sea, so we will have to wait till we arrive there to check them out.  And so ends our relaxing fishing holiday. Next time we'll clear out some more out of the way places and finally rendezvous with Gorsky in Core City.
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Feb 20, 2023 02:56
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Chapter 41 - Gorsky's 17 So on top of the growing amount of work and study that looms stressfully upon the horizon, my own cave hopper Little Miss Moxie, decided to have another flare up of Floppy Rabbit Syndrome (Not as cute as that may sounds if you're not familiar). But she's doing a lot better this time around and didn't need quite so much round the clock care and has already fully recovered. Anyway, onto the game.  Last time we had just finished throwing a pile of fish into a dumpster.  We're heading back into the upper caves briefly to sort out the find the missing key quest and get on with more exciting tasks.       After a short rathound encounter, we find the bloody remains of some dead people nearby.  And sure enough the footlocker key was on their person. This quest is clearly supposed to be done very early on in the game. I almost never go into the upper caves in the early game. Although I've since mapped out the limits of them and they're pretty manageable actually, no crawlers or terribly large packs of bandits or what have you.   Now that we've proven ourselves to Diego and Thorus, we can finally enter the keep of the Old Camp and can now show the letter from King Rhobar II we've been carrying since the start of the game to the Fire Mage, Milton.  "Hey, I found that key you were looking for." "Really? Give it to me; I promised charons and I have them right here. Just give me the key."Our mercantile is good enough that we can ask for a better reward. [Mercantile] "What? I had to risk my head for that key and that is all you can offer me? I want double." "Fine, I'll give you a hundred charons. Usually you would get a bullet between your eyes, but today... I feel a bit more merciful."100 Charons is 100 Charons. "Here you go. It was nice doing business with ya." He hands you the money and takes the key fronn you. "Great, that's it." He pockets the key and looks at with a satisfied smirk on his face. "As for you, girl, you better be on your way now. See you later... or not." And with that we leave the Old Camp to spy on the Sect camp, for Gomez!  We're headed back to Core City again, but we'll take another detour to get there. We've pretty much explored most of Lower Underrail in its entirety so we'll poke around the last few remaining holes in our map. We're just a few screens east and south of SGS here.  We're still looking for more information on Phreak, so checking on all the Emergency phones we find is a good idea for new leads.  Most of them are non-functional at this point.  But they usually have at least a few goodies in their metal compartments.  This one in particular has some very rare Barbed Throwing Nets. Like regular throwing nets but they inflict damage and bleeding wounds on whoever is caught in one. I kind of wish there was a way to make these, as they'd be a fantastic upgrade to our regular nets. As it stands they're a very rare item that you can usually find on highly dangerous Lurkers, called Lurker Tormentors and Lurker Dissolvers. I've never seen any of them before, so they may only appear on higher difficulties or maybe we were just unlucky and none spawned.  Speaking of Lurkers, if you play the game around Halloween, there are special bands of Halloween Lurkers you can find as a random event. There's usually a knife wielding Lurker in the group called a Lurker Devourer, who will have a slaughter-or-laughter bag on his person. It's generally full of organs and bubblegum oddities, healing items and what have you. But they also contain a rare consumable called Mystery Candy, which is clearly made of people and if you eat it will boost your crits by 5% at the expense of your will and resolve.  There's actually several random events that only appear on certain holidays. I've only ever seen the Halloween Lurkers though.  For instance, in the upper caves you can find a small hole you can climb into around St. Patrick's day.  The hole contains the workshop of a leprechaun who can make you a very nice pair of shoes if you can convince him to. They boost your persuasion by a whole bunch.  Alternatively you can kill him and take his own shoes, but they're much to small to wear. I think they sell as a luxury item though at least.  On April 1st you can randomly meet a woman named April, who will appear in a city location who wants you to find some Scope Fluid for her. An item which does not exist.   Anyhoo, we find the blueprints to make some 5mm shock bullets on a corpse surrounded by mines. These just add a small amount of electricity damage to your 5mm bullets. They don't inflict stun or short circuit enemies which would make them really broken but given how you tend to fire a lot of 5mm rounds in one turn, the electricity damage would like add up.  Nearby we stumble on an encampment of lunatics.        One of them has a key to a footlocker in their camp.  There isn't really anything of interest in the footlocker though.     The southest, westest most area, we get ambushed by a few lurkers.   But they aren't very good at the whole killing people thing at this point.   North of the lurkers we start finding burrower eggs and a few spawn about the place.  There's another entrance to the upper caves in there.    Unsurprisingly there's a small nest of burrowers inside. Not much else besides, although there is a wall of rubble you can break through to access the rest of the upper caves.  Heading further east in the lower underrail.  We have the worst ambush ever, the guy didn't even manage to move very far before his turn was up. Pathetic.   We find an out of commission phone.  Then we find our way back to the area south of the Ironheads base, where the Lunatics were hanging out in a parking lot nearby.  The phone here is actually fixable.   If we hit the yellow wrench icon...  We call for backup, we'll get to what this did shortly.  Then we hit the red cross button. And call again.  And we just intercepted a call Phreak was making. There's one last piece of information we can gather on Phreak before we should try and find him and that's from Jon the Beautiful.  Anyway, hitting the wrench icon summons an industrial bot. This guys are really beefy and have access to a flame thrower. I'm not really sure how we're going fight them, if and when, the time comes. At any rate this one will help you fight the lunatics in the area, who are pretty helpless against its flame thrower and lack of brains to psi at.  With that out of the way, we make our way back to Core City, making our first stop at Moe's to save us a later trip.  "Can I get some more Jon's specials?" "Of course! But I can only make so many at a time. It's the spices, you know - they're really hard to come by, especially now. But as long as you got the charons..." Shake your coin pouch. "Them I got, Moe." Jon's specials aren't getting any cheaper, but at least we can buy them in bulk now.  We stop by the Hardcore city bar to ask around about Gorsky.  "I need to talk to Gorsky." He leans forward and speaks in a whisper. "Absolutely. Take this key here and use the back entrance. It's just around the corner. Out and around the corner to the north." He winks, then laughs and continues talking loudly. "That's a good joke! Very funny!"Hmm I wonder what Gorsky is up to? "Bye."  Let's find out what Jon the Beautiful knows about Phreak.  "I need some specific information." "That's what I'm saying! Prepare some food and let's get started!" "Do the names Mit Draper or Phreak ring a bell toyou?" "Sure, pal - but this calls for a special. No, no, wait - my special. That's right - my special. It's gonna take me some time to dig something out, so come back later. ...with my special."As usual, all of Jon's super important info costs us the good stuff. "Tell me about Phreak." Give him Jon's Special. "My food! Gimme, gimme, gimme!" He smells it, then takes his first bite. "Mmmmmmmm, that'sh sho havdcove..." Swallows. "Better listen carefully, 'cause I will be eating and talking at the same time. So, Mit Draper, also known as Phreak, also known as Scalp, Gridfix and Transfix." Second bite. "But Phveak..." Swallows. "Mmm, nowadays he's best known as Phreak." "Tell me everything you know about him." Third bite. "He came fvom... Swallows. ...North Underrail years ago and started doing some shady, crafty stuff. Stuff like hacking, forging Underrail Express tickets, selling makeshift devices and sensitive information... He uses the metro emegency system as a proxy for his business, and apparently he's dominated it to such a degree he's pretty much made it his own." "Where can I find him?" Fourth and final bite. "C'mon! Eaten? Already? But tummy still complains... Anyway... he's hard to track down. Trust me - 'cause of all the stuff he's been doing a fair amount of incensed folks and, ehem, organizations wanna zone him out - or at least beat him into a pulp. Sucks hardcore either way. That's really all I could find out. The guy's as sly as a... ...very sly guy." His stomach growls. "The never-ending story."And that's all of the information that we can track down about Phreak, as far as I am aware. You'll notice that none of this info actually helps us find him really. I think the best intel we get is that he's somewhere in Core City. As to where exactly in Core City, well that's something you're just going to have to fall rear end backwards into. "I'd like to ask you something else before I leave." "Mmm?"Since we're also looking for Wit Nosek for Oculus, let's see what info Jon knows. "Do you know anything about a man called Wit Nosek?" "Hey, pal, listen to me, I... actually don't know who that is. Never heard the name before."Literally nothing. Makes sense I guess, if Oculus doesn't know anything, why would Jon? "Thanks anyway." "No problem, glad to be of service. I'm disappointed. And hungry..." "See you around." We now have the key to the rear entrance of Core City bar.  Inside is pretty shabby and contains some people called the Zone Rats.   Up top we find Gorsky and someone named Sneaky.  There's also another Rat Head Amulet for our collection in the shelves up here.  And a blueprint for Bullhead, the drug that makes you immune to stuns and incapacitations, very useful. Although we're not quite good enough at Biology to make them just yet.  Let's go say hi to our old pal Gorksy.  "I..." "Forget it, don't have time to listen to your stories. We've got work to do here."Oh I'm sure we've got time for at least one story. "Dan Forte says hi." "Dan? I haven't heard that name in a long, long time." He laughs. "I'll be damned, that slob is still alive after all these years? Where did you meet him?" "He's a guard in Foundry now." "A guard?" He laughs. "I'm sure he's leaning against some wall and does nothing but rant about how he's bored. Believe me, that's the laziest man I have ever met, but when I needed his help, he was always there."Yup that's Dan alright. "He told me you were in a gang together. Got some cool stories to share?" "What the hell!? You think I've got nothing better to do than tell you bedtime stories? On top of that, all that happened like twelve or thirteen years ago. A man forgets some things after a while." "Oh come on! You know you want to tell me some cool stuff." "Fine, I'll tell you a drat story. I see you really want to hear one. Listen now... Back in the old days, Dan and I were inseparable. We did almost everything together: We robbed together, killed together, split loot - we did everything together. And, oh boy, were we a deadly team. You can tell just by how many times the two of us came out of combat as the only survivors. So, there were these bandits that called themselves The Black Crawlers. Bunch of weaklings if you ask me, but they had a severe advantage in numbers. They were our main rivals in Core City. One time, during one of the skirmishes, we killed their leader's son. Actually, I killed him; it was one of those situations where me and that lazy bum were the only survivors. But, what followed next surprised us more that it should have: In a few days, the Crawlers found our camp in Core City and tried to take us out. I don't know how they managed to find us, but it seemed like the whole gang was there, and they were thirsty for blood. You see, our camp was located here in Core City, at the northern cliffside. It was in an abandoned section, built in the cliff itself, and there was a single bridge connecting it and Core City. The Crawlers piled up at one side of the bridge, waiting to attack. We had a well fortified position, but were basically in a dead end. We exchanged fire with them for a while, and then they stormed our position. They were shot at, burned, electrocuted, even bloody blown to pieces, with limbs flying all over the place, but they just kept coming and eventually overran our defensive positions. Again, Dan and I were somehow alive and together, killing those punks. And then, suddenly, a bullet went through Dan's head, killing him!"RIP Dan. "Yeah, right. I'm not falling for that one." "Good, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. I'll continue now." "Please do." "So, Dan and me got holed up in the back of the camp, in a small building. Small, but sturdy. The lazy bum was manning a machine gun while I was gunning them down with my assault rifle, yelling. Funny enough, we had fun - until a grenade flew in through the window and we had to split. I jumped out one window, Dan jumped out the other one. I moved behind some cover and, bam, there he was." "Who was there?" "The leader of The Black Crawlers - Helaku. He was a boulder - bastard with a huge scar on his nose who, unlike his weak minions, could really mess a man up. I was staring down his bloody crossbow, and he knew I killed his son and wanted to send a bolt through my eye. But Dan came to the rescue: One well placed shot from his gun shattered Helaku's wrist and made him drop the crossbow. I don't know why Dan didn't go for the head, that derailed bugger, but I reacted fast and grabbed the falling crossbow mid-air, turned it around and sent one bolt right in his forehead. His eyes rolled backwards, his jaw dropped, and he fell dead. With their leader gone, the Crawlers soon scrambled. We lost nearly everyone in the gang, and the survivors split. Even Dan and I. He got tired I suppose, and he went somewhere to the west, if I remembered correctly, while I stayed here for a while and formed another gang. As for the Black Crawlers, eventually they settled in our old camp, and are still there. Bastards! I guess someone took over for Helaku back then. I also believe they are a bit more organized and tougher than before, but just by a little. And there you go. Hm. I usually don't talk to people this much, but I suppose I got carried away. Good memories work the job, don't they." "That was a pretty cool story."And relevant to the current situation too actually. "Yes, it was. Are you going to leave me alone now?" "So what's going on? Why are you holed up in here?" "Those pompous gits, the Oligarchs, think they can cut me off from what's happening. I came here to stand against the Faceless and yet they told me, in no uncertain terms, to pack up and leave. 'None of your business,' they said. Since when is Core City of my business? I dominated these streets back when they were still nothing but Biocorp henchmen. I bet Protectorate has something to do with this. They are trying to get established here, I can smell it! Well, if they think I'm just going to sit on my hands and let the Protectorate pigs and Faceless freaks run around the Underrail, they have another thing coming. We're gonna get a foothold in this city no matter what. That's why I rounded up these boys and girls here. Henrietta. Meet the Zone Rats and their leader Sneaky." "'Ey." "Sneaky, this is Henrietta, the girl I've been telling you about. She makes things happen." "Ey? Good to hear." "Sneaky and her fine street fighters have decided to throw their lot with us in this endeavor." "What do Tanner and Vera think of your operations here?" "Tanner has enough troubles holding the fort and making sure the trading is flowing safely. Not to mention all the repairs and stuff, so we don't need to bother him with this. And you seriously think I give a rat's rear end what Vera thinks about anything? Her place is in the office crunching numbers for trade agreements, not deciding what happens on the streets." "How bad is the Faceless situation?" "As you already know they blockaded the tunnel that connects the south to the rest of Underrail. They've also made a couple of incursions into the city's outskirts. We don't know what the purpose of these incursions is, as they are clearly not trying to flood their troops into the city. At least not yet."We aren't able to inform Gorsky of our own intel into the Faceless situation. "You mentioned something about the Protectorate trying to get established here. Do you think they are making their moves right now?" "They've been trying to get a foothold here for years. It's no secret. The Oligarchs don't trust them but in the wake of the Faceless invasion they might be persuaded to accept assistance from the Protectorate's base in the Junkyard. Also, recently they managed to negotiate a lease for one of the biggest warehouses at the docks and if my sources are correct, they started hoarding weapons and other equipment there." "So what's the plan?" "There are two things that we could use your help with. With the Zone Rats on our side we have enough manpower to make our presence known when the time comes. However, they are not that well-equipped, and if it comes to direct conflict with the Protectorate or the Faceless I'm afraid we would be easily outgunned. I have an idea how we can get hold of some energy shields that will help us stay alive on the streets. And then there's the matter of that misplaced tunneler that we could make use of if we manage to recover it before anyone else." "So you want to steal a tunneler from the Faceless?" "Not the Faceless directly, fill her in Sneaky." "Eh, yeah... So the Faceless sent couple of their machines to bore through the cliff face, in Drop Zone. Not sure what they wanted to accomplish with that. They backed them up immediately. In one place though, they messed up. I don't know if they miscalculated or what, but they bored right out of the cliff and plunged down, landing on some poor zoner's shack. The fall killed the crew and the tunneler is stuck there now." "We don't know what state the machine is in and whether we can even fix it, but it's worth a shot. There's another problem, though. A bunch of zoners gathered in the shack the tunneler fell into to throw a party in celebration. You'll have to persuade them to leave or remove them forcefully. After you clear the location, you must find a way to get the tunneler operational again. Look around the city and see if anyone's got the expertise, but be discreet about it. You up for this?" "Alright, I'll do it." "Very good. Talk to Sneaky if you need any further details."Next time we will enact a few capers.
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Feb 24, 2023 12:47
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Hope your cave hopper recovers!
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Feb 24, 2023 18:47
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Enrico la Spaniard posted:Hope your cave hopper recovers! She's already doing a lot better. The way she was grinding her teeth happily from all the head pats throughout all of it, I'd have assumed she was faking it for the attention. She's a little less energetic than usual but still happily roaming around on her own and hanging out in all her usual places but still enough energy to avoid her grooming sessions.
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Feb 25, 2023 00:24
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Chapter 42 - Gorsky Park('s his new Tunneler) When we last left off Gorsky wanted us to ask his colleague Sneaky about the upcoming skulduggeries we were going to get up to, but we can also just ask him about these as well. "Let's discuss Core City matters." "Yeah?" "So how do we get those energy shields?" "Remember that Protectorate warehouse that I mentioned? As I said, we have reason to believe they've been hoarding weapons, ammunition, and all sorts of other goodies there. We found out from a fairly reliable source - that they recently received a package of high-end energy shields. If you could infiltrate the warehouse and nab those shield emitters that would both strengthen our position and weaken the Protectorate's! Sneaky has more details on how you might be able to pull this off." "Eh... there's this oaf Bob. He's a Protectorate soldier... em, security guard, or whatever they call themselves since they are not officially allowed to have 'soldiers' in Core City. He's also a regular here in the bar. Last night he was drinking himself silly with that Gauntlet girl and, per usual, blabbering about this and that. I don't usually pay much attention to him but this time he actually said something interesting. He mentioned that shipment of shield emitters and how they are, supposedly, top quality stuff that they are not allowed to use yet. Which is good though, as it probably means they are still stored together somewhere in the warehouse. The fool got so drunk that he couldn't turn up for his shift today. He rented a room here at the bar to sober up in. This has happened before, so it won't be unusual to his compatriots that he is missing. You can use this to your advantage. Strike the useless oaf down and procure his armor and security pass. While I don't know if this will allow you to enter freely into the warehouse, especially considering that, unlike Bob, you're a woman, it might still help once you're inside. As long as you don't attract too much attention to yourself. No simple task, eh?"This isn't the best plan even if we were a man in trying to get in, since we'd still need to be able to talk our way in. "But very much worth doing. So you up for it?" "Yeah, sure." "That's the spirit! Talk to Sneaky, she'll have more info."We'll iron out the details of these plans with Sneaky before we try to pull them off. "Eh?"Well okay let's delve in Sneaky's personal life first. "Do you know a man called Jon the Beautiful?" She crosses her arms, and responds after a pause. "Why would you ask me that?" "I don't know, he told me he hangs around Hardcore City Bar, so I guess you might've met before." "Erm, we used to... spend time together." "Yes...?" She sighs. "He's a nice man; we had some fun. He liked doing certain things... the complicated way, though. And he's obsessed with eating. I mean, really, he used to drive me mad. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night to the sounds of munching. He would just look at me and keep munching on. That's when I said to myself, enough is enough. But he was sweet otherwise, I suppose. We had some fun."Sounds like Jon has hyperphagia. "I have some questions about that tunneler." "Shoot." "Where was it?" "It's on the far northeast side of the mid level, just the Pipeworks." "Pipeworks?" "It's Drop Zone's public toilet. Zoners claim it, with great pride, to be the most digusting toilet in Lower Underrail. I don't think they're far off." "Do you know anything of its condition?" "It crashed, so it's not really in top condition. I can't tell you exactly how damaged it is, though. You'll have to find that out for yourself." "I have some questions about that warehouse mission." "Shoot." "Where do I find that Bob guy?" "He's still in one of the rooms here in the bar. You could try stealing his armor and security pass, but I'd suggest zoning him out entirely. If he wakes up and notices they're gone he might raise an alarm. We don't want that." "How do I get into that warehouse?" "I don't think posing as Bob will work, but there might be another way. I took a peek at some of the old city plans. There seems to be a direct uninterrupted ventilation connection from the dock's main utility room to the warehouse's lower level. Getting inside this room, now that will probably be a problem in itself. Try finding the docks superintendent; see if he can be bribed to give you access to it. And lastly, you could always try entering through the port itself if you got a jet ski or some other kind of vessel available. The port's behind the warehouse, west of it, and is a completely separate section, unconnected with the main docks. Now, going through there should be your last option, though, as security's pretty tight and all traffic's highly regulated. They know exactly which vessels should be moving in and out of there and at what time, and no one's yet managed to fool them or their pipeworking scanners."We'll be taking the utility room way into the warehouse. Any other way would be close to suicide, or just plain not possible. "Later" "Later, Southgater."  First things first, we shall deal with the tunneler, since it's relatively simple to do.  Huh, we must have missed this mugger that last time we came to the drop zone.    There's a man named Ditch in a shack in the Drop Zone that he shares with his pig Oinko. He doesn't have all that much to say, but he sure loves Oinko.   The tunneler lies to the north of this screen.   Not much we could find robbing this place, but well it is the poor district of Core City after all.  Due north is the Tunneler hanging over a precipice. Not sure what's inside that blast door, we shall never learn.  The tunneler seems to have been appropriated by some local gangsters.  "I'm interested in that tunneler over there, and you'rein the way."  "Be interested all you want, this here tunna belong to us. Drop off now, pipeworker. You still here?"We could talk them into leaving either because realistically the faceless will be back for their drill machine, or because we're more scary than they are. But we'll just opt to kill them all instead. "I'm going." We'll just duck around this corner to enter stealth.  Suck punch the front man to gangster heaven...  And slowly lure the remaining gangsters to us. Looks like one of them is a psionic so we should try to be careful.    We just slowly lure them down, hiding from their attacks around the corner and they all end up bunching up.  A grenade would have been sufficient, but whatever we can just punch them all slowly to death.    With that out of the way, let's explore their hidout. It's not very big.  They do happen to have an injured faceless in a nearby cage for some reason though.  We should probably help them get out of there. Attempt to open the cage and let him out.  As soon as the Faceless exits the cage, a sound of something breaking jars the ear. It's the chain holding ffe cage: It snaps, sending the cage pli-mneting into the chasm below, the event ending with a reverberatim of it colliding with the hard bottom. The Faceless, after gathering himself, tharüs with a small nod but still says nothing. The only sound he produces is the sound of heavy, difficult breathing. Up close, you notice countless gashing wounds his body, which are slowing down all his motions with what must be horrible pain. Small droplets of blood drip from beneath his heavily scratched, dented - completely twisted mask md further redden the scene. One little detail also catches your eye, or better yet three of them: Small metal cylinders protrude from his right arm, but not the other, with me of them being crooked and bleeding fronn the place where it meets the pale skin; the purpose of these cylinders you cannot figure a-it from observation alone. After a minute or two of rest he rises as if he were twice as heavy, seemingly wanting to leave. It is obvious to he could barely stand, let alone escape the hostile territory he is currently in.That was a close one, I doubt the Faceless is in much of a mood to say anything, even if he wasn't grievously injured. So we'll just patch him up as best as we can to once again improve our relations with the weird underground robot people. Offer him an advanced health hypo. The Faceless gladly accepts your help. After treating his wounds as much as he is able to, he gives you another, livelier nod; his chances of a successful retreat now sean much better. Still, he remains silent.That's all the interactions we're going to be having with the faceless for a while, but always being nice to them is going to pay off big time in the long run. Whereas being mean to them and killing a single faceless will make things much more difficult one day. Let him leave.  Apparently they just walk straight out of Core City and nobody bats and eyelid. Fair enough. Now let's inspect the tunneler.  It just needs a simple oil change. We can do this no pro-   God drat it. I usually have my mechanics higher at this point so it looks like we're going to have to hire a mechanics to get it fixed. This is going to set us back a few grand no doubt.  East of the tunneler is a rambling drunk guy, if you enter from this side of the drop zone he'll block your way across the girder and you opt to shove him over the edge.  Before we carry on, let's poke around the upper side of drop zone some more.  There's a few interesting things inside this particular shack.  There's a unique pistol in the desk drawer, the ZC 99. No idea which gun it's supposed to be alluding to. But who cares. If our perception were high enough, we could also find a vent on the back wall that would lead to a new area, full of trapped girder crossings that ultimately lead to a house with some named npc we could fight. I think he's got money or something.  Anyway, there's another pack of gangsters just south of here. So let's go say hello.       We grab the last Rat Head Amulet oddity out of a barrel near them.  There's a few refugee's we can speak to down here. Like Ljubostanka.   "But I ended that affair with a swift blow to 'is head! Now, out of here, you man-stealer, before I crack open yours get too, bre! Find yourself another man! Out! Leave her alone." Leave her alone.Charming.  Well there's also Guzomir across the way from her too.   "Welcome to my shack. Ignore the smell if you can and, um - don't fall off the ledge, bre. Seen enough of that for today." "So, how's life?" "Well, not that bad, to tell you the truth. Not dominating - but not too bad. We got a, you know, you dig, a small community here. Community of us 'foreigners,' bre! Hah. Sticking together is the best way to not get dominated around these parts. Hey, I'm telling it like it is. Also, listen... we got a couple of good barrels. For the soup, I mean, barrel soup. Each of these barrels has its own unique, dominating flavor, bre, so if you wanna rent one, lemme know. Only, listen, bre, you can't take them away; you can only use them here. Dig, bre? I recommend the Biocorp Oil barrel. The bright red one. It adds a... punchy sour note to everything you put in it. Yeah, man, it's so, bre, mmmm..." He drools off.Ah the fine cuisine of drop zone. "Have any of those been approved by the Core City health organization, if there is one?" Muffled laughter fills his gas mask. "You've got a fine sense of humor, bre, sister, you do."What is this Bre? "Bre?" "'Bre' what, bre?" "What does 'bre' mean?" "Eh... It's can't be translated. No, no, it can't. On it's own it means nothing, it just, you know, gives more emotion to what you say... draws more attention to it. He pauses. Example: When you say 'No.' that means an ordinary no. But 'No, bre!' means don't even think about it, bre. "Hello." means hello. 'Hello, bre!' happy to see you, sister. it means I'm real. You can also use bre as a standalone word, you dig, but the meaning, again, depends on the context. Like in, let's see... One person is being stupid and doing something over and over. Another person can just say 'Bre!' to draw attention to his stupidity. You dig any of this?"All this information is highly important. I hope you're taking notes. "Yes, bre!" "Alright. bre!" Where are you people from? "West. Southwest, actually. It's a long story. There was this... war... and, you know, some of us had to move away and... It's a long story, bre. We're here now." He nods. "We're here." "Goodbye and take care." "Yeah." Anyway with that out of the way we accidentally walk into another gangster, seems we killed his friends out of sight of him. Oh well, easily corrected mistake.   There's also some guy called Radusinan by a barrel fire too.  No clue what this is referring too.   Alrighty that's that.  Let's go find a mechanic.  Mykola who we talked to the first time we came to Core City mentioned being a good repair man. He'll probably help.  "You mentioned you used to do a lot of repairs. How good are you?" "I can repair pretty much anything." Coughs. "Unless this cough kills me. Drats!" "How about a Faceless tunneler?" He gives you a puzzled look. "Why are you asking me all this?" "The group I'm working for is in need of such a machine. One of those recently crashed in Drop Zone, and it's an opportunity we don't want to miss." Coughs. "Fine, whatever, but it'll cost you. First I need to see the machine." Coughs. "You said, you said it's in the zone. Is it safe to go there?" "I can guarantee your safety." "Lovely, we can get there righ--" Coughs. "right now. I'm ready if you're ready." Take him to the tunneler.  "This thing shouldn't be difficult to repair at all. Which is--" Coughs. "Drats! Which is quite interesting, I expected something far more sophisticated than this. Still, I'm gonna need some expensive, high-end parts to make this thing work." Coughs. "Yeah, I'll probably even need to modify them; I don't think I'll find stock parts for this beast anywhere 'round here." Coughs. "And I'm gonna need some money." "How much do you need?" He coughs and raises his index finger. "One thousand charons!?" "Yup. One thousand charons. It's not exactly a small amount, but I need those parts if I'm gonna make this beast roar again." Coughs. "Otherwise, you might as well let it rust till it's no more."Fine we'll pay the, didn't put enough points into mechanics tax, but only as a reminder to do so later. "I got enough on me. Here you go." Give him 1000 stygian coins. "Lovely. I'll take care of the rest." Coughs. "I know this guy that can get me the parts. And yeah, I also hope no one will bother me while I'm working here. I'll get this thing up and running soon. You can go and tell your... group leader or whatever that it's being repaired. See you la--" Coughs. "Ugh, see you later. I hope..." Interestingly I believe Mykola actually chooses to help out the Zone Rats and Gorsky in the upcoming battle, for some reason.    Anyway, we head back to Gorsky with the good news.  "About that tunneler..." "What about it?" "It's currently being repaired. I got a man named Mykola to fix it." "Excellent! That tunneler will prove useful indeed. We will go test it out when the time is right. Ah, a birthday gift from the Faceless." "How did you meet the Zone Rats?" "I spent quite a number of years in Core City before I came to SGS, so I know where to look and who to ask when I need something. And I needed a local, capable, low profile group for our operations. Thus, Zone Rats." "See ya." Anyway, onto our next task.   We don't really need to do this, but we'll go to the top of the hardcore city bar and find Bob.   Not this room.  The next room has a thug in it. All the occupants will turn hostile if we ever try to enter any of their rooms.  They each have a key to their respective rooms, not that it does us any good.    The punks in the lower room had a Psi Reinvigorator blueprint on them. Useful for if we end up in a situation where our psi abilities get disabeld at an inopportune time.  This room comes with an extra punk, free of charge.   We decide to kill the scavenger too, because why not?  We make more adrenaline to keep our supplies good and healthy.  Now it's Bob's turn.   If we were going to sneak in the front door, we need to clip this pass to our utility belt.  Then we could just equip his gun and armor to complete the disguise. The only issue with this mode of stealth is that I think you require a persuasion check to make it work, and once you're inside the facility, the disguise only works if you maintain your distance from people and it has to be a pretty generous distance too. It's a good way to pull this off if you have a character with no stealth skill though.    This small maintenence shed is what we need to get into to infiltrate the warehouse. But we're not stealthy enough to pick the door without getting caught, so we'll have to deal with the superintendent.  "Could you let me in the utility room? I dropped my key into the vents and I need to get it back." "What? Absolutely not. I can't just let anyone crawl throughthe vents willy-nilly." We'll have to use another bribe. "How about if I make it worth your while?" "Are you trying to bribe me, girl?" "Yes." "Well, get on with it then." [Mercantile] "I'll give you two hundred charons." He looks around cautiously before accepting the coins. "Come with me." And in we go.  Interestingly, the developers at a later date added in an alternative way of completing this mission, where you can just acquire or otherwise make the shields and just give them to Gorsky.    The vents drop us into an abadoned basement level of the warehouse, it is riddled with crawlers.  We will just beeline our way out of this place, there isn't much to see down here, and there's nothing we particularly want or need.  There is a single guard posted down here, poor guy.  Next to him are the stairs up to the rest of the facility.  For us as long as we remain in stealth we should be golden.  If we get caught.  The place goes hostile. It's a little annoying to work around everyones patrols, but we'll make it work.  Our goal lies inside one of these storage rooms.   Three is full of uninteractable boxes.    Two contains what we came in here for. There's also a good pile of ammuniation we grab to sell too.  Exploring the rest of this place is a total pain so we'll skip it. There's a docking bay to the west of here, but nothing much to see there besides. I guess we could come back and just kill everyone in this location and check it out. But I'm not so keen on that.  I'm feeling murderous so we kill this lone Protectorate down stairs. We're just saving him from being killed by crawlers later on.   His metal armor makes damaging him a slog, but our criticals are decent enough combined with the extra damage from consectuive bleeds means he goes down hard.  We grab his dog tags and cash and high tail it out of here.     And it's back to Gorsky with us.  "About those energy shields..." "What's on your mind?" "Got them right here." Hand him the package. "Excellent. I hope you got a chance to take some of those bastards out on the way. I'll have a technician open the package and prep the shield emitters. You'll get one when it's ready, don't worry." "Okay, what happens now that we have the shields and the tunneler?" "Now we get down to real bloody business. We got what we need at the moment. The shields are ready which reminds me..." Hands you an energy shield. "Henrietta, you remember that story I told you about? With me and Dan? Well, we're going to retake my old camp. If those Oligarch bastards won't help us, we'll help ourselves." "Retake? From who?" "The Black Crawlers, were you even listening to me back then? So, the plan goes like this... We have the shields, we have the firepower, we have the manpower--" Looks at Sneaky. "and womanpower, whatever. But the best thing of all - we have that tunneler. See, my camp was basically in an old service station, built right into the bloody cave. It's a well fortified position, so a frontal assault is not an option, more so because of all the cursed mutants in the way." "Mutants?" "Yes, not that those things can cause problems on their own, but they'll slow us down, and the enemy will know we're coming." "So, we use the tunneler to surprise them from behind?" "Of course! We blast through the wall and mop the floorwith those bastards! Then we turn my old camp into my new camp! And personally, I'm tired of talking. I want action! Meet us at the tunneler when you're ready." "Meet you there."  We'll make our way over to the tunneler.   Well the crews all set to go, it even looks like Mykola will be tagging along for some reason. Next time, we fight.
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Feb 25, 2023 00:29
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Looks like you've run into some Yugo diaspora. (the 'bre' is a telling sign  )Ljubostanka and Stjepanicije sound like... sort of stereotypical fake 'ye olde' names of someone's great-grandpartents, with Ljubostanka having vaguely southern Serbian vibes, and Stjepanicije having vaguely Croatian vibes. Radusinan is... just weird. Not sure what his deal is supposed to be. Some injoke I guess. Svetlana is a completely normal name. Guzomir is basically Buttkins. Yeah, the writer was having some fun here. I'm pretty sure that the ZC 99 is a standin for a Zastava CZ99 (9mm handgun, as in the game) I'm now genuinely curious about the named NPC past the vent that you mentioned. my dad fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Feb 25, 2023 |
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Feb 25, 2023 01:30
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my dad posted:I'm now genuinely curious about the named NPC past the vent that you mentioned. I looked into it to refresh my memory, it's a knife wielding guy called Bogdan Stravohodnik in there. Apparently he's actually apart of a questline if we end up joining JKK when it comes time to join up with one of the Oligarchs. I've only ever just wandered into the area with a high perception character and gotten into a fight with him. There are occasionally named NPC's and in some cases, really important named NPC's that you can find living in hidey holes all over this game.
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Feb 25, 2023 01:43
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Zeniel posted:Bogdan Stravohodnik ahahahahahahahaha gimme a second, i need to stop laughing hahahahahaha
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Feb 25, 2023 01:46
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It's the perfect edgy "OC do not steal" name Bogdan is a stereotypical name for some badass, not so much because of something over here - it's not anything special itself - but because it got picked up abroad as the go-to name to give your Balkans tough guy, alongside Zoran and a few others for whatever loving reason. Means "Given by God" Stravohodnik is a clumsy literal translation of DREADWALKER, except it fucks up the end so it sounds like 'hallway' instead of 'walker' (in a way that stereotypical "reads a lot of english fanfiction and starts trying to replicate it in serbian without any actual writing skills" nerds tend to do). Also, remember what I said before about Serbian generally trying to avoid compound words when possible? This makes it sound extra silly. Given that DREADWALKER has a knife, I imagine the over the top tryhard edginess is very, very much intentional. I love it so much.  note: edited slightly after a reply post my dad fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Feb 25, 2023 |
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Feb 25, 2023 01:55
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As a bit of historical trivia that Guzomir reminded me of: you genuinely have names and surnames here that translate to stuff like Bigbutt, rear end in a top hat, Shitter, etc. Most of them are just regular weird names/surnames that arise everywhere for a billion different reasons - but a number of them trace to Habsburg bureaucrats taking revenge on people by changing their names and enforcing it (usually large families that used shared names and surnames to dodge draft). The practice stopped when they realized that the people they were taking revenge on found it loving hilarious and used every opportunity possible to force those names to be uttered as much as possible in serious public settings.
my dad fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Feb 25, 2023 |
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Feb 25, 2023 02:03
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my dad posted:
Wait, seriously? Here in Poland "Bogdan" is kinda corny name and about as badass as, I don't know, "Matthew" or "Bob" and thought of ultimate OC badass who teleports behind you named Bogdan is hilarious. I love all that Slavic stuff in Underrail, it actually sounds like language that could actually evolve from merge of different Slavic languages after god knows how many years after descent.
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Feb 25, 2023 02:36
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Szarrukin posted:Wait, seriously? Here in Poland "Bogdan" is kinda corny name and about as badass as, I don't know, "Matthew" or "Bob" and thought of ultimate OC badass who teleports behind you named Bogdan is hilarious. I might not have phrased it correctly, it's not the name itself that is seen as badass (it's slightly corny and otherwise fairly normal, yes), but for some reason is (stereotypically) resorted to for 'BADASS' dudes.
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Feb 25, 2023 02:43
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my dad posted:As a bit of historical trivia that Guzomir reminded me of: you genuinely have names and surnames here that translate to stuff like Bigbutt, rear end in a top hat, Shitter, etc. Most of them are just regular weird names/surnames that arise everywhere for a billion different reasons - but a number of them trace to Habsburg bureaucrats taking revenge on people by changing their names and enforcing it (usually large families that used shared names and surnames to dodge draft). The practice stopped when they realized that the people they were taking revenge on found it loving hilarious and used every opportunity possible to force those names to be uttered as much as possible in serious public settings. Amazing, over here the best we got was the bureaucrats crying as they tried to enter names written in latin script into latin script that were intelligible to French speakers, so when you go back a hundred or so years and find that three brothers have three family names that don't share a single consonant, you just nod.
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Feb 25, 2023 03:39
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my dad posted:More interesting slavic language facts These are fascinating and hilarious thank you! I'm guilty of using my own version of badass serbian name to use with a different character I'm using, Lazendic, but I've chosen that one specifically because I'm naming them after an Astrophysicist I used to know who happened to be Serbian. She was an awesome teacher and was the face of the department until they poo poo canned her for bullshit university reasons. The fact that there's some joke names like that in this game doesn't surprise me, there's a character we can meet later on whose name I'll put in spoilers Yerslovekzdinianschnik Slavorad Kokoschka. Which I heard that the last word in that name accroding to some Hey Arnold! trivia I came across many a year ago, means Shithead. And that this character uses that name as his shorthand. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Feb 25, 2023 |
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Feb 25, 2023 08:23
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quote:Which I heard that the last word in that name accroding to some Hey Arnold! trivia I came across many a year ago, means Shithead Not really, it's basically "chicken" (as in bird, not coward).
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Feb 25, 2023 18:46
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Szarrukin posted:Not really, it's basically "chicken" (as in bird, not coward). Well there you go
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Feb 25, 2023 23:25
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My Slavic OC is Sukán Yódadsdíc
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Feb 25, 2023 23:55
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Chapter 43 - The Rise of Specs Bomb Today we're going to do a bit of team based combat.  Before we start though, we reload all of our utilities and restock on some explosives.  We also make some more Juice too, because why not?  Interestingly, because we hired Mykola to repair the tunneler, he actually joins up with the Zone Rats and will be joining us on this assault. Given that he hates the Oligarchs as much as they do, that's no real surprise I suppose.  "Yes, I am. Let's move." "Excellent! Let's board this thing and kill some Crawlers!" Start the attack. Everyone equips their energy shields and piles into the tunneler.   Meanwhile the gang known as the Black Crawlers discusses starting some community outreach programs and food drives to feed vulnerable Drop Zoners.   When a faceless tunneler punches through their club house wall.  The Zone Rats pile out, ready to put an end to their dastardly altruism.   "Gorsky!? I know that name! That's the pipeworker who killed Helaku! He killed Helaku!" "What are you doing, idiots! They're just standing over there, kill them! Kill them all!" "Pfft, what a bunch of feeble bastards. You gits haven't changed one bit." Big fight time. This fight isn't too difficult to win. But winning it with everyone alive can be a bit of gamble.   Sledgehammers McGee opens with a yell, crippling our offense.  He starts wailing on Gorsky, that doesn't do too much damage. Do note that Gorsky can die in this fight and this will ultimately change the way the game ends.   Next up is Frosty the Dopeman, who flings some cryokinesis at Sneaky.  Sneaky is, in my opinion, the most vulnerable NPC in this fight. She tends to get targeted more than anyone else and so she can lose her shield fairly quickly.  Next up, a psi crawler wanders down from the kitchen.  Then it's our turn. Like in Shadowrun, the we want to geek the mages first.  So we'll open with a frag grenade.  This also reveals the sniper who was hanging out in stealth nearby too.    We end up killing Sledgehammers McGee first just to ensure the Gorsky isn't hit too often.  Then we knock down the guy closest to him.  We stun the psionic with a taser to keep him from introducing whatever psi skills he intends to inflict, and then punch the sniper as much as we can.  Gorsky shoots the crawler going after Sneaky.  Sneaky goes after the crawler also going after Sneaky.   Mykola turns out to be pretty handy with a crossbow and puts down the closest crawler.  Sledge Rat goes for the Black Crawler Leader, so unimportant he doesn't even get his own name.  Slippery Snipes hits us all with a frag grenade that hits hard enough to disable Sneaky's shield. She's on borrowed time now.    Frosty keeps barraging sneaky, but she's tough enough to hold out for now, plus she's got a healing hypo so she can last longer than this yet.  Our turn again, we pummel Psi Guy to death.  Slippery Snipes is the next to go.  We then use a flash grenade to keep Frosty and Unblindable Jim busy.   Gorsky hits the Leader hard.   Mykola finishes him off with some very well placed crossbow bolts.  Sledge Rat rushes Unblindable Jim.  We put down Frosty the Dope Man.    And Unblindable Jim soon follows. That was flawless. Sometimes this fight goes pretty messily for me. Having Mykola about definitely helps makes things easier. It's honestly worth just paying him to fix the tunneler. Anyway, let's go debrief with Gorsky.  "So what happens now that the Black Crawlers have been dealt with?" "First thing is to clean this place up a bit; remove the stench of the Crawlers, set up our gear and make ourselves comfortable." He laughs. "Also we need to get a merchant here - and I know just the man. Come back later and you'll see. We crushed the bloody Crawlers, but now it's best for us to lay low for a while. But, once we start rolling again - there's no stopping us!"And that ends our story with Gorsky and well, this questline does seem to end rather abruptly. Gorsky will indeed bring in another merchant eventually although not a very interesting one. But that's about it, what happens next is told to us at the very end of the game. "Later." We'll go get the lowdown about Core City from Sneaky before we leave.  "What can you tell me about the Zone Rats?" "We are just a group of capable people who wanna survive in this ruin of a city. The Oligarchs are incompetent idiots who care only about their own well-being, and if the Faceless breach the city defenses, I'm sure they'll just run into the arms of their Protectorate friends, seeing the deals they make with them. As for Gorsky, we tagged along with him mostly because we hate the same things." She laughs. "And he's hardcore, and that's what the Zone Rats like."I feel like the Zone Rats don't get enough room to be properly fleshed out either. Like they seem to oppose the Oligarchs and Protectorate and seem to have the common peoples best interests in mind kind of, but we never learn much beyond that. "What can you tell me about Core City?" "Okay, what you really need to know about Core City is not at what time gladiator A is gonna butcher gladiator B in the Arena tonight, or what's the best cocktail to try at the Hardcore City Bar, but that things here are rarely as they seem on the surface and that you should choose allies carefully. Take the Oligarchs, for example... They - through their enterprises: Coretech, JKK, Praetorian Security - are endlessly plotting against one another, sabotaging one another, even though - on the surface - it seems as if these fine gentlemen are cooperating - doing everything they can to improve the lives of the common folk. They are cooperating, yeah, sure - when lotsa coins are involved, like in the case of the Arena. Noble cause, eh? These people are filthier than the filthiest toilet bowl in the Pipeworks. It's hard for me to tell you who can be trusted in this pipeworking city, but it's piss-easy to tell you who can't. Stay away from their enterprises, no matter how enticing their offers might sound. Got that?"We will not be taking Sneakys advice. Although we will agree with her in spirit. "What can you tell me about the Oligarchy?" "Oligarchy, eh? It's typical stuff. You got a bunch of wealthy, powerful fat rats ruling a decadent city. To pacify the commoners and divert their attention from everything that's wrong, they offer brutal family entertainment - the Arena. The poor sods are preoccupied with it as the city's slowly but surely falling apart. That's how our everyday life here in Core City feels, friend. Like... like the world around you is slowly sinking into the black abyss of the Drop Zone - and you're sinking with it. Faster than the fat rats, that's for sure. Well, I ain't gonna sit around twiddling my thumbs. I ain't. We ain't, Henrietta, right? Right?"This world view sounds very similar to another we'll come across and talk about in great detail much later. "So what happens now that the Black Crawlers have been dealt with?" "We just got here, so the first thing we need to do is get some men and gear to this place. Then, we'll lay low for a while; the Zone Rats need some rest. With Gorksy's help, the Zone Rats can only grow stronger."A whole lot of standing around to do at this point. "What do you think about the Free Drones?" "I support their battle against the Protectorate, as those rats should be driven out of South Underrail, but I feel they've gotten more and more fanatical over the years. If they accuse you of being a collaborator, you are done for. Not much evidence is needed, suspicion is enough to get you tied to the tracks and have your guts stretched from one station to the other while your family watches it. No different than the vilest of gangs, don't you think?"Based on the threads votes and thinking about improving this build slightly more, we will definitely be joining the Free Drones when we get around to do that. "Later." "Later, Southgater." The hideout is fairly small in size. One of the urinals in the toilets can be interacted with, but it's really hard to find where to do that exactly.  It has a rat in it. Okay then.  In the back is a smalll office/kitchen area? This is where the merchant will eventually set up shop.  We find more bubblegum in the fridge.  The main door out of the base appears unopenable and we can't leave the way we came in so we'll open this roller door via the electronic lock.  Doing so reveals a Hunchback Mutant. These are fairly rare, and the toughest of all the standard mutants you can find.  But we aren't too concerned for our own safety, plus we're still wearing siphoner leather so our acid resistance is still decent.     The only problem with this fight, is that it draws all of the Zone Rats to come help out and they end up walking straight over the pools of acid.      And annoyingly this kills Mykola. So we reload and try again.  I end up trying to take the fight as far away from the Crawlers base as much as possible.   We can see why the main door was blocked off now.  The rest of this area is a small settlement for Core City muties. We'll have to clear them out.        Apart from this, there is a small tunnel that swings around most of the mutants in this area.   After successfully exploring the area, we chug a Juice and find another rift that will let us reach Gorsky's new pad whenever we need to. There's one more rift left to get in Core City now but we still can't reach it just yet.  And that's that.    It's high time we tackled that Arena I reckon.  We can't ever watch matches here, so we're just heading straight into the offices.  "What can you tell me about the Arena?" "The answer is simple: The Arena is a place where only the most daring men and women come to meet each other - and terrifying, vicious beasts - in brutal combat. All matches are fought to the death, and many do not survive even their first one. But if you are able to live and dominate the opposition, then good coin awaits you. And who knows - maybe one day you will get to become a famous gladiator. Interested in applying, ma'am?" "Sounds tempting. Where do I apply?" "Excellent. There is courage within you after all, ma'am." He points to the door next to him. "Take this door, go all the way down and speak to a man called Lanista. Big guy wearing metal armor. He'll tell you everything you need toknow." "Will do."  This would be a good time to make some bullhead drugs, getting stunned or incapacitated in the Arena is a great way to end up dead. Unfortunately, I don't think we quite have the biology skill to make any. Oh well we'll have to make do without.  Lanista is the guy we need to see to sign up.  "I came here to fight." He nods. "Good, good, good. I'm Syntar Lanista, and I'm in charge of recruiting fighters and organizing matches. Your name is...?" "Henrietta." "Good. Now, I dunno..." He scratches his head. "unless you've been living in Deep Caverns or something like that, you should be familiar with how the Arena works? Right?" "Some explaining wouldn't hurt." He sighs. "It's simple: Once you apply to become a challenger, you go in and fight either until you drop deador dominate your opponent. Crowd might decide your fate if you surrender or somehow can't finish the fight, but most of the time they'll want you dead. Yup. At first you'll be fighting various beasts, and then - if you survive through that you get to fight other challengers. Next: Once a fight is over, you come to me and receive your reward. Now, if the crowd likes you and you manage to survive a couple of matches, you could earn some pretty good money out of this. But, most folks who come here don't. Is that it, or do you want to know more?" "I want to know more." He sighs even harder than before. "Please try to survive for at least a few matches, so that this doesn't feel like a complete waste of my time. Anyway, if you can make it to prime time, you get to fight gladiators. If you kill a gladiator you become one. Now that's no easy task: You gotta be good - gotta be hardcore - and the crowd has to be entertained by your fighting skills. Still, if you manage it, I dunno - more coin for you, but also more difficult matches await you. The highest title you can attain is the Invictus... but that's really, really far off. And that covers the basics. If you understood all that, just sign here." He hands you a piece of paper. "If you don't know how to write you whole name, just put 'X' instead." "What am I signing?" He sighs. "It reads here you applied to fight in the Arena of your own accord, and that we - the Core City Arena - are not responsible for any injuries or death. And some other, um, unimportant stuff." Sign with 'Henrietta.'What could possibly go wrong? "So you know how to write your name after all! Congratulations - you are now a challenger. Ready for your first fight?" "I'd like to ask you some questions about the Arena." He sighs. "Sure, go ahead. I dunno, what do you want to know?" "Can you tell me the basics about fighting in the Arena?" "It's simple: you go in there and engage in a fight till death. Some challengers and gladiators fight beasts, some fight between themselves. If a challenger defeats a gladiator, he or she earns the title of a gladiator. Nearly all gladiators come up with cool names, because, I dunno, people love seeing Mad Butchers and Deathhammers crushing each other's skulls. If one is really good, he or she can confront the current Invictus which is the highest title one can achieve in the Arena - and take the title after Invictus' dead corpse hits the ground. There can be only one Invictus, after all." He grins. "Whoever becomes the Invictus - he or she wins at life. Literally! You know what I'm talking about : fame, money - whatever you may desire!"In summary, you get put in, sometimes with allies, sometimes not and you fight whatever it is you're in there to fight until you or they are dead. If you live you get paid. Bing bang boom. "How did the Arena come to be?" "Well, I dunno, the story begins some ten or so years ago when this place was in hell; you know - after the demise of Biocorp. People were fighting, dominating each other all over the city. Gangs went rampant. Hardcore carnage was the name of the game. But, after things started to settle down in the years after the demise and security forces began to regain control over the streets, on this very spot - where we're standing right now - people started having skirmishes and slew each other for... I dunno, various reasons. Again, all this began happening some ten or so years ago. There was no Arena building back then - just hardcore ruins. People gathered to watch those, and even cheered for their favorites! So - you guessed it - someone had an idea to make it commercial and earn some good coin off it! The idea was this: Everyone can settle their differences in battle, and if you want to watch it - pay up! And people wanted to see blood so much that it was an instant hit! The man responsible for that was Archibald Knight, the majority owner of Arena, chief of Praetorian Security and one of the Oligarchs. Yeah... in the years after its conception, and with the assistance of Coretech and JKK, the Arena has been modernized, broadcasted throughout Underrail and currently brings so much charons into this city it'd make your head spin and drop off." He chuckles. "And just recently, less than a year ago, the Gauntlet was built. And the people fell in love with it instantly! That's it - short history of our Arena." He laughs. "Hardcore, isn't it?" "What happens if I defeat everyone?" "Well, you can't defeat 'everyone'! There will always be new beasts, challengers and gladiators dominating each other in the Arena. That's just the way it is - and no one is complaining." He laughs. "When do I get to become a gladiator?" "You have to kill a gladiator to become one. Simple." "What can you tell me about the Gauntlet?" "The Gauntlet was built, I dunno, less than a year ago... ten months maybe. The Oligarchy needed something fresh - something exciting. And oh, did they come up with something: with the help of Coretech they devised a huge and complex elevator system which transports Gauntlet runners to randomly chosen rooms, each of which contains various challenges for them to complete. Just like in Arena, it's all till death. Only the runner that completes the Gauntlet first gets to live. I mean, who would wanna have it any other way? Eh?"We'll tackle the Gauntlet after we're done with the arena. That place can be way more dangerous than the arena if you're not careful or just plain unlucky. "See you later." Before we start fighting, let's take a look around the place. There's a mad doctor called Filbert. They don't actually patch us up or anything, although we can learn about what happened to the guy who he replaced.  There's a Broadcasting Schedule in a barrel down here. Alrighty that's enough stalling... Let's rock.  "I'm ready for my first match." "Good. You'll be fighting some rathounds with two other poor ha-- Challengers. Two other challengers. Let's get you going." "Start the match."      Okay so first match is just a pile of rathounds. We even get two friends to help out. You can totally just turn on them if you want and take their stuff, but we won't bother with that.  A good thing to note is that if you have a shield equipped it will automatically activate when you start an Arena match.   This fight won't be a problem for us.  Indeed most fights in the Arena won't be.   That's our first fight over and done with.     "Only fifty?"Geez you pay almost as badly as Tanner. "What more do you want? This was your first match. The more matches you survive, the better the payment. Ready for more?" "See you later." The locker behind Lanista contains all the items that will be dropped in the arena by anyone who was killed.  And that's how we get our second and final Ancient Rathound Tooth oddity.  Anyway, back to it.  "What can you tell me about that doctor over there?" "Filibert? Well, I dunno, let's see... He's our mortician physician, which means he takes care of the living, as well as the dead. We had some halfwit called... what was it... Fixer, yeah. Junkyarder, I believe. Had a wild stare. He used to work here a couple of years ago; the idiot used to throw folks who were still alive down the chute while laughing maniacally! So we kicked that pipeworker out and got Doc Filibert, who does a very good job. And does it with such passion!"Fixers the medical merchant over in Junkyard, the guy who sold us the oh so useful Adrenaline Shot blueprint. We can ask him about his career at the arena if we ever get the chance to. "I'm ready for the next match." "Do you like psi beetles? Actually - I don't care, you're fighting them anyway." Start the match.      So psibeetles, nothing we can't handle, although this can be one of the more riskier fights if you aren't careful.        I believe this was the moment when I realised I'd made myself too much of a target to some amped up psionics.  So we reload and try again.  This grenade will be a defining moment in our Arena career. As I will explain in a few matches time.   Easy peasy, and our buddies even helped a little.     "I would like to apply for the Gauntlet." "Hold on halfwit, you can't just apply to the Gauntlet. It's not like the Arena where anyone can just, I dunno, go in there and fight... and probably die. The Gauntlet is highly challenging; only those who have already proven themselves to be hardcore enough can become runners. And you haven't. Yet..."I guess we have to fight some more in the arena first. "I'm ready for the next match." "Guess what's next in line for you? No guess?" He grins. Siphoners! Start the match. Apparently the fabled Siphoner man can be found as a member of the arena's spectators. It's hard to see but I believe in the rightmost stand if you look five steps down from the top he's the first spectator standing on that step from the left. Alternatively, just follow this image I googled This      Siphoners are no biggy for the likes of us.    I'm conserving my grenades in these fights for a reason, but only because I realised something too late. A thing I will talk about in a fight or three.           We didn't even finish off the last one.     We're slowly gaining respect, just not from anyone who matters yet. Let's keep the fight train going. "I'm ready for the next match." "This is gonna be a tough one: you're about to fight some nasty burrowers. I mean, you and two other challengers, as usual. Good luck, hal-- Henrietta." Start the match.      Burrowers... Psh.  We'll just let them feed on our comrades.  They managed to kill at least one of them, before we felt confident enough to go after the big ones.  We use a flashbang to make this fight much less tedious.       With the big boys thoroughly punched, we've just got to mop up the little critters.    No challenge at all.      As you can see, this time the dead contestant who came in with us has had his stuff generously donated to us. I'm surprised it didn't become property of JKK.  "I'm ready for the next match." "Good news! Or bad, I dunno, depends on the perspective. No more beasts for you. You're gonna fight Pulverizer."So now we're up to the point where we fight gladiators. "Who's that?" "He used to be a pretty good gladiator back in the day, but then he really started to badmouth Carnifex one of the greatest and most beloved gladiators in the Arena history! And before you know it, everyone hates the guy to the point of some zoner from the crowd trying to shoot him in the face! He's not a prime time fighter anymore... He has dropped down to fighting halfwits lik-- khm, challengers like you. If you dominate him, you might just put yourself under the spotlight." Start the match.          So this is the Pulverizer. He is... Well... Look, I have no idea.  You see, as long we get to act first, which we will 9 times out of 10 since we've got good initiative, then these gladiatorial fights are over before they begin.  First turn, we get right next to them and stun them with out taser.  Then turn two, we kill them. Rinse repeat.       It won't always be that easy but mostly, it will.  He makes a dramatic pause. "You're gonna be a prime time challenger! Not a gladiator yet, you gotta defeat one to earn that title. But this is big anyway! And to think I almost threw away that application form you signed! Now, I'm gonna schedule your first prime time match." You come back later and get ready for some real domination! He looks at you for several seconds with a confused look on his face, as if he is wondering why you aren't leaving. Then he raises his eyebrows in a moment of realization. "Oh, I forgot your reward! Why didn't you say something?" Hands you 200 stygian coins. "There, now get some rest and see you later." At this point we have to leave the arena and come back in a very short while.  Because we have a new friend to make first.  Our mysterious friend, Garry! "Thank you, I try my best." "I can see that. My name's Garry. I'm an enthusiast - a bloodthirsty maniac if you will." He smiles. "I hope I'm not bothering you too nuch, but, wow, you are making remarkable progress. You caught the eye of the crowd extremely fast, I can tell you that. That's pretty amazing. And pretty rare. Are you by any chance, how do I put this, backed up by any of the families?" "You mean, like one of the Oligarchs?" "Bingo. So...? Are you?" "Nope, I've got nothing to do with any of them." "No? Then you most definitely should. It will help you a lot with your career. Trust me." "What exactly do you want from me?" "From you? I'm just an enthusiast. Been one for years. And you are new to the Arena and have great potential. I know a lot about the gladiators you'll be battling, and judging by your skills, you'll battle many more. I simply want to be helpful."Garry will be our advice coach and closest advisor. Without Garry we're plenty good. With Garry, we're unstoppable. "What do you get out of this? Do you want me to pay you for this information?" "No, no. I'm an enthusiast, as I said already. I simply enjoy everything Arena-related and... things have become a bit stale lately. And I feel you can stir things up, and that is why I don't want you to die too soon, to be honest. I happen to know who your next opponent is, and I can offer a bit of advice on fighting him. I've seen many of his battles, so I've picked up a few things."And I'm sure nothing untoward will come of this fine, perfectly natural forming friendship. "How did you become such an enthusiast?" "It's been a passion of mine for years. I enjoy the fighting, the brutal deaths, the skill involved, the theatrics - everything. I rarely miss a match, and I've sunk enough charons into it to restore South Underrail's entire railroad. He laughs. It's pipes and barrels to me. The Arena is pipes and barrels to me. I never get tired of it." "What can you tell me about my next opponent?" "You will be fighting Bull's Eye. He's mean, he's fast, and he's drat accurate with his crossbow. One of the most dominating marksmen currently. The important thing to note here is that his success does not only come from his ability to send a bolt through a fly's wing without killing the thing, but also from the fact that he dips his bolts into various poisons. If you're not careful, your blood will quickly be filled with lethal concoctions. Make sure you're ready for it. On the other hand, he is lightly armored. Hit him fast and hit him hard, and he'll be no match for you. Good luck."So this is Garry's main feature, he will tell us who we will be fighting next round that will give us some useful hints for fighting them. For most fights this will be pointless, because they'll be dead before they have a chance to act, but there's a few gimmick fights that are worth having this meta knowledge for. "I'll be seeing you later. Goodbye." We'll be stocking up on nets. Attacks of opportunity make these matches end even quicker.   "I'm ready for my next match." "You're up against Bull's Eye. You take him out, and you get to become a real gladiator! Oh, and you're on prime time now. Make sure to, I dunno, entertain the crowd."This is the match that will make our name. Start the match.        So we get unlucky this time and Bullseye wins the initiative check.  True to his name, he completely misses his first shot.  And his second and last shot. Bullseye my rear end!  Well it's all over from here folks.    At least he had the decency to degrade our weapon enough that it needs repairs.    And here it is folks.  Specs Bomb?    Next time, we meet Specs Bomb properly.
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Chapter 44 - The Rise of the Invictus We rip up our opponents clothes to fix our Claw.  So yeah, Specs Bomb is referring to us. That's our gladiatorial name. This isn't random either. You see, one of the neat things about the Arena is that when you kill Bullseye, depending upon your conduct up until that point, the audience will chose an appropriate nickname. The name is also gender specific too. There is an overriding hierarchy of nicknames too I shall list them all now because why not? going Male/Female below from lowest to highest we have: The lowest tier default nickname you can get is Slayer/Blackwidow, this is hard to get because you have to kill everything in a very varied sort of way that doesn't hit any of the other nickname requirements. Next tier has 15 equal ranks depending on what weapon you use to kill enemies with the most. Traps: Leg Breaker/Shank Buster Temporal Manipulation offensive: Timelord/Hourglass Psychokinesis: Electromagnito/Electromagneta Thought Control: Psycho/Temptress Metathermics: Weatherman/Weatherwoman Crossbow: Bolt Thrower/Balista Grenades: Mister Bombasic/Bombalina Acid: Liquidator/Liquidatrix Energy Weapons: Disintegrator/Disintegratrix Firearms: Lead Storm/Lead Fury Sledgehammer: Cranium Basher/Shatterette Spear: Impaler/Spearanha Sword: Chop/Blaiden Knife: Savage Mangler/Ferocious Blade Fists: Spine Splitter/Miss Thrasher Next up requires you to kill 2 humans with the execute feat, a feat that does mass damage to an incapacitated target but requires a pistol. Executioner/Death Penalty Then it's igniting 7 enemies: Firestart/Hellfire Incapacitate 12 enemies: Sandman/Goddess of Sleep Stun 8 enemies: Paralyzer/Cripplina Freeze 6 enemies: Mister Freeze/Ice Queen Use 11 Morphine Shots: Painkiller/Narcotica Use 11 Adrenaline Shots: Thriller/Rush Kill 5 enemies with 1 grenade: Super Bomberman/Specs Bomb (what we got and what I normally end up getting because opening with a well placed grenade is a good move) Deal over 500 damage with a single attack: Brutalizer/Brutalette Kill an enemy with the dirty kick feat, i.e. (kill them by kicking them in the groin): Infinite Misery/Agonia Kill 3 enemies with 1 burst attack: Dakka Dakka/Lady Dakka Snipe an enemy to death from full health: Crosshair/Angel of Death Restealth in the middle of combat: Phantom/Apparition And the nickname that gets number 1 priority goes to the character who survives an attack with 1 health to spare: Immortal/Undying. There's a high constitution feat that can potentially help with this. So yeah, because we killed those psi beetles with a grenade, that's why we ended up with Specs Bomb as our Nick name. It's a real weird one, and not very fitting but oh well, we'll get a better one later. Anywho Lanista just asked us how rare it was to be given a nickname. "I'm guessing very rare?" "Very rare. Listen to me carefully: you gotta keep this thing going. You're a gladiator now, the crowd loves you, and don't you dare pull out now when you've got the heads rolling. Do you hear me, halfwit? Some people would kill to get to the place where... um... yeah..." Laughs. "Here's your money. And it's gonna get better and better from now on." Hands you 300 stygian coins. "See you later."Every match we'll go ask Garry for his opinion.  "What can you tell me about my next opponent?" "Your next opponent is going to be Master Exploder, a mute grenadier. Little is known about him... well, other than the fact that he revels in blowing his opponents to bits. He himself wears an explosion-proof suit, naturally, so keep that in mind. Use cover and take him out fast, or else you're going to end up splattered all over the arena. Good luck."So it's Bomb Vs Bomb. "I'll be seeing you later. Goodbye." "I'm ready for my next match." "Next opponent is... Master Exploder! Now, this is your first fight as a gladiator so keep calm and, I dunno, dominatehim! Ready to go Specs Bomb?" Start the match.         And it's not even a contest who goes first. And thus not even a contest.           NEXT!  "See you later." "What can you tell me about my next opponent?" "Chemical Agent. Name says it all. I don't know where that guy came from, but he is one repulsive creature. Not much of a challenge on his own, but he got this far thanks to a pair of mutated dogs. Those critters ripped numerous challengers and gladiators apart like nothing. So, get your self some anti-corrosive protection. That's the best advice I can give you. And watch out for his pets. Good luck."So this time we finally have a gimmick fight. As there'll be more than just one guy to fight. "I'll be seeing you later. Goodbye." "I'm ready for my next match." "This guy is no halfwit, believe me! Chemical Agent is his name, and if you've seen any of his fights you know only a pile of melted goo remains of his opponents once he's done with them. But, don't let that scare you! You can do this." Start the match.       Of course we move first, so dog or no dogs, this match is going be simple.  Now that we've already gotten our nickname we can liberally toss our grenade again. I was hesitating because I wanted a different nick name, but thought the grenade one was from using grenades too often. Oh well.  The arena does make a quicksave for you before each match starts so you can easily retry if you fail and you don't have to sit through the announcers spiel every time which is nice.  Anyway so we stunned Chemical agent so we can take out his dogs first.     And it's over in two rounds, we even got a little bit damaged, although our shield protected us from being stuck in place by the dogs.      "See you later." "Do you also watch the Gauntlet?" "Yes, but, to be honest, I'm not nearly as delighted by it like I'm with the Arena. It's fun, it's violent - it's death. But... watching gladiators face each other with only one thing in mind and executing it in the most violently entertaining way possible is much more appealing to me than pulling a lever at the end. The Gauntlet also lacks the live crowd, which to me detracts from the experience. After all, hearing so many mouths screaming 'KILL, KILL' is something I can never get tired of. In the end, I suppose it is an entertaining gimmick to most, but it will never, ever match the Arena."At this point, Garry will be a little more open with us about things, a little. "So, who is your favourite gladiator?" "Let me think... Disembowelina is simply fantastic: The looks, the skill, the brutality - she's got it all. But I'll put her in second place. My top gladiator is, unsurprisingly, Dread Lord. He is the current Invictus. Yet I somehow have a feeling he won't be one for much longer..."Disembowelina is only ever mentioned, and never actually seen in the game proper. There is also the group of gladiators called the Arena Masters with whom you can find in the wild if you play on DOMINATING difficulty, or at least you can fight one of them which is randomly chosen when you start the game. The game sends you an email telling you which one it'll be at the start of the game if you want to roll for a different one. "What can you tell me about my next opponent?" "The guy's name is Surgeon. A savage, likes to end his opponents by cutting their jugular and drinking their blood as it sprays from their neck. The crowd loves it, yet many - especially less experienced - gladiators despise him, and it is not for his brutal showmanship... Of course, he didn't get this far thanks to that gimmick, so be aware that you are facing a hardcore opponent. His range is short, as his weapon of choice is a knife, so try to stay out of this range, or at least make sure your neck is protected. Good luck."Sounds scary. "I'll be seeing you later. Goodbye." "I'm ready for my next match." "I have some news for you: The death of Chemical Agent caused some serious ruckus up there - in a positive sense. Everyone keeps talking about you and your dominating matches. You're becoming a big player now - don't forget that! Anyhow, you're up against the Surgeon. Now this guy can be described as, I dunno - a freakin' psychopath! You think the fans are the only bloodthirsty maniacs around here? Think again, Specs Bomb..." "Start the match."       Oh look, we move first!  Speaking of fun stealth shenanigans you can get up to in the Arena. If you manage to break line of sight of an opponent while in the area and stay hidden enough in stealth for combat to end, you automatically win the match. I don't think you're supposed to be able to do that, but it happened to me once in a knife build i made once.   Anyway, the surgeon died of medical malpractice forfeiting the match in the process.      "See you later." "What can you tell me about my next opponent?" "You'll be facing Zap. Now, this guy is one of the most entertaining gladiators in the Arena history, if I may say so. A tech savvy zoner who uses energy weapons and bots to make sure his opponents do not get to fight another match. He relies on energy shields, so have something in handy to neutralize it and simply unleash the fury. Good luck."This is the best advice Garry could ever give. Knowing we're going to be fighting a robot gives us an opportunity to adequately prepare. "I'll be seeing you later. Goodbye." We're not quite up to snuff with our electronics yet, but we're good enough to make EMP MkII grenades, so we do just that. They stun robots for longer than tasers do which is nice, and just do more electricity damage.  We also reequip our homemade combat gloves, since they do elecricity damage.  "I'm ready for my next match." "Hey, you're up against Zap. Now that guy is one nasty zoner, let me tell you that! He just dominated his way through anything with a pulse! If that wasn't enough - he brought a plasma sentry with him and, I dunno - dominated some more! But he's not better than you, so go in there and waste the pipeworker and send his junkbots to the scrapyard." Start the match.         And they all have shields, how cute. Oh and look! We go first!  We open with an EMP short circuiting the plasma walker and disabling their shields.    We Tase Zap but he manages to resist the stun.  So we stun him with our fists instead.  We then just punch him dead, our electrical hits transferring to the robot as well.   And we hit reliably and well enough that we can kill a plasma walker with our bare hands in one turn now. That's very good, we could really stand to kill more than one in one round though. The day we can stand up to any robot encounter is the day we can stand up to anything this game can throw at us.      "See you later." "What can you tell me about my next opponent?" "I'm afraid I can't give you much advice on your next opponent. You'll be up against Stygian Exorcist. He recently became a gladiator, and just annihilated his way through to where he is now. So fast even, by the time I realized he was even a gladiator, he became one of the best. He is a psi master that uses bilocation to make short work of his opponents. I have nothing else to say to you but good luck."Ominous. "I'll be seeing you later. Goodbye." "I'm ready for my next match."This is our second last match. "You're running low on opponents; not many gladiators are willing to stand before you as of late. As a matter of fact, only one gladiator is still willing to fight you, and he's a tough opponent... The Stygian Exorcist - at the moment second only to Dread Lord, the Invictus. And I'm not gonna lie to you, he's one tough bastard. Good luck!" Start the match.        So the Stygian exorcist is tough. If he got to move himself he'd likely stun with thought control and then summon four dopplegangers on top of us in single turn. Then the next turn the dopplegangers would beat us to death. If you have no way to dispel multiple dopplegangers and you have no way to out manoeuvre them, then you will lose. Thats true for any thought control specialist including the player. Unfortunately for him, he didn't move first.  He's trickier than most due to him having pseudospatial projection on.  Stun still works through that though.     We basically waste our entire turn removing all of his false images and barely hitting him.  Sadly for him, we trapped him in a net and we have enough MP from our adrenaline and haste that we can hide around the corner.  He healed himself a little bit. But it won't be enough.  And he's dead. He was the toughest opponent thus far, but he wasn't much of one.        "What happens next is this: You go get some rest while I organize a match between you and Dread Lord. And make sure you rest well. Come see me later."Before our last match begins, the game forces you to have one final rest. I guess Garry probably has something important to say.  "Can you tell me something about my opponent?" "Well, I can't say much, other that you're up against a difficult opponent. Not everyone can become the Invictus, you know. I just wanted to wish you luck. I have no advice to offer to you when it comes to Dread Lord, but I don't think you need any." "Thank you." "You're welcome. Listen here, my dear friend: Being the enthusiast I am, I'm going to make sure I get as close as I can to the bloodbath. I wouldn't want to miss this match, even if it kills me." He laughs. "See you later, Specs Bomb."Oh goody, our best friend Garry will be watching us fight Dread Lord up and close. I hope he should useful words of encouragement from whever it is he will be standing! "See you later, Garry." Garry disappears, and it's on to fight Dread Lord.   "I'm ready to battle Dread Lord." "This is it, Henrietta: The time has come for you to become the Invictus! I'm not gonna give you some cliche speech before the match, I'm just gonna say this: Get in there - and dominate!" Start the match. This match starts off a little differently.        What?! Garry was Dread Lord all along?!!  Oh... Apparently not. So who is Garry?      Yes that's right, Garry was the retired and greatest gladiator, Carnifex, all along. Technically he's an opponent even more dangerous than Dread Lord not that we'll ever know for sure. People occasionally talk about him in random dialogue sometimes, but he's likely obscure enough from the player that this does come across as a little confusing.          Hokay Carnifext time. So... Carnifex is the first Arena match that is actually challenging. And uh, Carnifex moves first this time... Uh oh.  You see, Carnifex is built not too dissimilar from Henriettta. That isn't true for all builds, we just coincidentally happen to fight a lot like Carnifex.  Except that means, Carnifex fights a lot like Herietta. And Henrietta fights good.  This is still round one. He's hit us exactly twice.  His third hit kills us.  Welp.  Okay, rematch, we get to move first. That's good. Every turn counts against carnifex, so we're going to hide from him first.  Well he's a lot faster than us. Stronger too.  He pins us with a net, and unlike us, he knows yell which will cripple us further.   He doesn't manage to kill us in one turn this time. But there's one small problem.  Okay so we can stun him and wail on him.    But Carnifex is tough, we didn't kill him and our turn is up.  He's out of his stun this round so we get to move first again. But Carnifex has really high dodge and evade, so we have a 10% chance to hit him and we whiff drat near every single hit.  And we're out of moves. We cast slow on him to hopefully make him ease up.  He shoots up some morphine making him even tougher.  And then he beats us to death.  Okay, new plan.  We move into the corner.  We use the rest of our turn to peak out, cast slow, and then hide again.  This time Carnifex isn't fast enough to do anything by move into range. Okay now, if we want to be able to hit him reliably, we need to net him, to give us those opportunist hit chances. But he's hard to hit with a net.  So we stun him first, this puts our net throw accuracy to max.  We then net him.  Haste up.  Then Adrenaline. We've now got two full turns to go nuts on him.  And this time.  It works! He dies to several high crits in the third turn and all those combo/rib breaker/contaminated/infected wounds/taste for blood/bleed stacks really add up.           And so we are now the Invictus and with that comes fame and fortune. Our new reputation will open doors for us. The fortune... well we've got a good pile of cash now.  Lanista seems pretty impressed. "drat it, Carnifex, you got dominated..." He hands you 1000 stygian coins. "Congratulations... This is your reward, um... Invictus." "Thank you, Lanista. I appreciate it. What happens now?" "Well, I can try to arrange some fights for you. But, there is nothing available at the moment. Few are willing to fight the Invictus, and considering you dominated a fair number of the top gladiators in such a short time... You get some rest and enjoy your success for a while. Time for new matches will come, don't worry."I don't think there actually are any more fights we can do here. So this ends our adventures in arena combat. Now's a good time to apply for the Gauntlet though. "I would like to apply for the Gauntlet." "Sure, you need to go to a different building though. To get there, go past Hardcore City Bar, then take a turn to the north, then west over a small bridge. I dunno, it's very hard to miss. Just don't expect a flashy building; unlike the Arena, the Gauntlet has no live audience so there is no need for anything *grandiose.* The personnel there should recognize you easily, so just find miss Andrea and she'll explain everything to you." "See you later." RIP Garry. You really were the only one worthy of being the best besides Henrietta of course.  Next time, we take on the Gauntlet. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Mar 3, 2023 |
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Feb 28, 2023 10:52
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Every time there's an arena with fights to the death between willing contestants, I wonder what the demographics look like going in and out. Also how the named and known gladiators can't be fighting each other because if not there's not gonna be a pool of named and known gladiators for long.
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Feb 28, 2023 14:54
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Carnifex is a tough fight. I gave the crowd as little entertainment as possible by shooting him in the head from stealth, chucking a flashbang to re-establish stealth, then shooting him in the head again.
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Mar 1, 2023 10:16
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Just finished my first playthrough on Monday, I really enjoyed playing Underrail. It is an uneven game, could loose about a third of tiles and be better for it, the backtracking for some of the quest is bad and the logic puzzles are bullshit to the point of the community programing tools for players solve them (looking at you mutagen puzzle); but its really outweighed by the good, Underrail does horizontal development better than any other game I have played, quest design is over solid, dialogue is often great and mechanically the combat is very good. Its a game made for me. Edit: also atmosphere and music are top notch, exploration is great even if the rewards are all over the loving place. The area where you find Mind Cracker is a good example it is just hidden path in some corner of the map and depending on your build it has a top tier weapon but the game is perfectly happy to let you fight through a dozen cave crawlers for an assault rifle frame and some supplies for making boots and depending on the character those are way better than mage slaying sledge hammer hammer. side_burned fucked around with this message at 04:54 on Mar 3, 2023 |
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Mar 2, 2023 20:38
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Just caught up on this LP while traveling and just wanted to say it is fantastic.
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Mar 2, 2023 23:32
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Zeniel posted:Next time, we take on the Gauntlet. The Gauntlet is microcosm of Underrail as a game a Running man pastiche is fun idea that perfectly fits the setting brought down by bullshit. If the RNG gods are kind and do not make you go through 'Brains or Brawn' or 'Electric Funeral' its really fun but if either come up you may want to load a save since both can cost you enough time to loose a whole run and you may not know that until you get to the last section. Brains or Brawn is actually a fun puzzle but just sucks to do on Timmer, but Electric Funereal may be worse than the Mutagen Puzzle it is that bad. side_burned fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Mar 3, 2023 |
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Mar 3, 2023 04:30
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side_burned posted:The Gauntlet is microcosm of Underrail as a game a Running man pastiche is fun idea that perfectly fits the setting brought down by bullshit. If the RNG gods are kind and do not make you go through 'Brains or Brawn' or 'Electric Funeral' its really fun but if either come up you may want to load a save since both can cost you enough time to loose a whole run and you may not know that until you get to the last section. Brains or Brawn is actually a fun puzzle but just sucks to do on Timmer, but Electric Funereal may be worse than the Mutagen Puzzle it is that bad. Sorry could you not keep mentioning things that haven't appeared in the LP yet? I'll happily talk about them once we get there. Some of which we nearly are. But one of those puzzles is ages off. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 09:35 on Mar 3, 2023 |
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Mar 3, 2023 09:32
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Zeniel posted:Sorry could you not keep mentioning things that haven't appeared in the LP yet? Fair. On a general note Underrail is a really impressive when you take into consideration that was made by four guys. You really do feel the passion and commitment for the project especially with those post Expedition updates, if you played this game when it came there are places in the base game that where not there before.
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Mar 3, 2023 21:55
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Chapter 45 - The Running Lass Time to run the gauntlet. This is always a little nerve wracking as you'll have to test your build in ways that you not have considered, and it's much harder to prepare for the challenges.  On our way over to the sign up place, we listen to some rumors as spoken by the common man.    We're famous now, some people will recognize us as Invictus or Specs Bomb and it will open a few doors for us, eventually.     And we've arrived at the gauntlet.  Andrea is the lady we need to talk to to sign up.  "What is this place?" "What does it look like?" She sighs. "Sorry, what I wanted to say was, this is the entrance to the Gauntlet. All runners apply here... and stuff like that. Um, I'm sorry, I haven't slept in... in Never mind. Are you here to, um, apply?" "Why don't you get some rest?"Andrea seems to be suffering from sleep deprivation. "Do you think I don't want to? Um, what I meant was, I wish, oh, how I wish. I long I yearn for a warm bed. One that will embrace me tightly, love me, caress me and let me sleep for seven days straight - and make the fatigue, the blurred vision and all of that go away..." She sighs. "But, I can't. Not now. It's a long story."I don't think we can learn why she's not able to sleep or leave her post. It might have something to do with JKK in some way. I only assume that because she works for them, given that they are the entertainment monoliths around Core City. And all of the oligarchs are up to no good. "I have some questions about the Gauntlet." "Um, why not. It's not like I'll get some rest soon. 1 mean, what do you want to know?" "What is the Gauntlet?" "Um, the Gauntlet... the Gauntlet is a very recent and increasingly popular, um, event in which contestants called runners compete in overcoming multiple challenging and dangerous rooms. The goal is to, well, survive the rooms and get to the end before the other runners do. Its growing popularity is, um, largely due to JKK making sure it's being broadcasted throughout the whole Underrail. Oh, and since the majority of runners don't survive..." She pauses. "What I really meant was, it's held once a week."So yeah, we will have competition in the gauntlet. "Let's discuss something else." She gives you a tired nod. "I would like to apply for the Gauntlet." Her fatigued eyes have trouble inspecting the person in front of her - you. Eventually she does manage to process who you actually are. "Invictus! I'm... I'm sorry, um, I didn't recognize you there. Yes, yes, you can apply! It's very rare for an Invictus to actually come here to apply personally. Let me just, um, one second." She goes through several papers. "drat it, um, oh, here it is. I'm sure the Invictus, um - you - knows how a run through the Gauntlet works, but let's go through that again. Okay." She looks at the paper in her hand. "Why did I take this? I don't need this!" Throws the paper away. "Um, yeah, the run. Um, it all goes like this: The Gauntlet itself is composed of multiple rooms connected by elevators, with each room containing a different challenge. Some have deadly creatures, some have traps... some both, and stuff like that. The elevator system brings runners to randomly selected rooms, so neither the runners nor the viewers know which room comes next. That's the fun part. Right? Um, anyway, the objective is to go through all those rooms and get to the end before other runners do, and stuff like that. Also, you can't use your own gear; you get to pick from the lockers at the start what you want to use. You can use what you find during your run, though. Oh, yeah, the more time you spend in one room, the more difficult next ones will become. But, in some rooms you can find keys which you can use during the final stretch, um, the final room, to unlock doors which enable you to use shortcuts to the end. So it's up to you to choose the way you run the Gauntlet. And that's it. You get to the end, pull the lever, other runners die, you live. If someone else gets there first, that someone lives and you die. Um, so do you have more questions or are you ready to start? We need only one more runner."So the main challenge of the Gauntlet is going to be that we have a time limit. If you dawdle too long in this place you will die. To avoid that as much as possible, I recommend playing the game at the lowest speed setting, which I think is just the default speed. It will save you in the long run in this place. The other thing worth doing is saving often in there too. If you end up at a crossroads, save, and if the path you take takes you nowhere good, reload. Every second may well make the difference in the Gauntlet. There is also a possible way to give yourself more time in there too, but we'd have to advance the plot to do that. I will point it out when we get to the relevant section. As it stands, we won't need the extra time. "I'm ready to start the Gauntlet.""Um, good." She yawns. "The other two runners are ready... and stuff like that." She stares at a spot in the wall for several seconds. "Um, yeah, sorry, please wait for the broadcast to be set up, and then we'll start the show. You also need to turn in all your gear and put on a runner suit. Then once you're past the gate you can choose from a selection of, um, weapons and equipment before stepping into the elevator. After you're, um, done, come see me about the reward and your stuff. Yeah." Start the Gauntlet.  We are stripped of all of our equipment and put in a yellow jumpsuit. The jumpsuit provides us with no protection whatsoever.    Now I'm not certain if the timer starts as soon as you're locked in this room, or if we first have to take the elevator so I tend to panic grab equipment.  Thank Tchort for item type filters or this would be more stressful.  We pick up the two leather combat gloves in here and equip them, we only really need the one though, we'll be using the spiked rathound gloves for the duration of the gauntlet.  We grab all of the grenades, as they can come in handy, especially against heavily armored enemies we'll come across.  We grab a utility belt.  Some pigskin leather tabi boots and a balaclava.  Lastly we grab everything in the medicine locker, we'll need it. Annoyingly I picked up the haxxor, but I didn't grab any batteries from the weapons locker. Oh well, we'll end up not needing it anyway.  We equip everything to our person, and we're now a slightly more mediocre version of ourselves.  Time to gauntlet.  And we enter room 1. I don't know why but I'm reminded of the game Flashback mostly the gauntlet in general not this room specifically. There are ten rooms total in the gauntlet. Although apart from the last room, the rest are randomized, and you only ever see four of them. You need to replay the game to have a chance of seeing the others.  Our first room is Electric Funeral.  We have to cross these metal walkways, some of which are laden with bear traps and there are automatically opening and closing roller doors scattered throughout the walkways.  We make it to the end of one of the platforms where we walk into a blob trap and open a chest. It has nothing worthwhile for us inside. So we reload to save time.  The trick to this one is that a periodic electric charge is ran through the walkway part of the room.  You're likely not fast enough to outrun the charge, as it slowly migrates from the start and branches off at every intersection. If it touches you...  You die.  I somehow didn't manage to notice the small platform right in front of me. As long as you aren't standing on the walkway itself, you're safe from the electricity.  The slow timing of the doors opening and closing is quite lethal in this place. You only have a few seconds to move between each new pulse.    Here we nearly make it to the exit.  But like I said we cannot outrun the electricity. It we had the sprint feat, we might be able to. Sprint gives you a whole pile of MP during combat and makes it handy for hit and run tactics. Outside of combat you just move a lot faster. A lot of builds utilize sprint to good effect, its great for getting to cover. Oh and in case you thought you could use turn based combat to maneuver more easily, they've disabled combat for this room.  Dying there was fortuitous however, as it meant we tried for the three lockers nearby instead. One of the lockers contained the red key, this will make the final room a lot easier.  We also find a battery and a poisoned throwing knife which we also take. Do note that you can't keep anything you find in the gauntlet, so only take what you think you might need.   This time we make it to the elevator.   Ooh this room will be interesting, it's called Web Browsing and we've got a new enemy to introduce.  This floor is full of giant webs everywhere.  This is a sure sign that you've entered a coil spider nest.  Coil spiders are annoying. They're psionic creatures that rely on ambush tactics. Thankfully they aren't as sneaky as crawlers and aren't typically in stealth anyway, but they've got their own tactics to make you pull your hair out instead. You generally find them making their nests in power supply areas of locations.  They're mercifully quite squishy though.  They're also pretty perceptive, and deprived of our nice stealthy overcoat, we're not going to have much luck hiding from them.   The main way coil spiders attack is with the psychokinesis ability Electrokinesis.  If you or anything else gets hit by electrokinesis, there's a very good chance you'll get stunned as well as electrocuted. The jolt will then jump to adjacent targets, which it can do 4 times. Each new target it hits cannot be stunned, but it can jump between previously zapped targets. In this case the zap jumped to and destroyed a nearby camera. It's one of the few psionic abilities that is relatively effective at damaging robots too.  Another coil spider comes to investigate all the hubub whilst we're stunned.  The annoying thing about fighting multiple coil spiders is that as well as stunning you, their zaps can hit other coil spiders, who are immune to the attack and gain the Charged buff when they are hit.  This lets their attacks do even more damage.  And two coil spiders, combined with being stunned on their first attack is enough to kill us.  So we need to be subtle about this, we can't sneak up to them but we could run around the corner getting the element of surprise that way.  It will require us to make good use of our time powers though..  But this way we can kill the spider without alerting the other.   And we're able to just book it to the elevator before the other one notices. It might have been worth exploring this floor a little more and see if we could find another key. But there's more coil spiders afoot and I didn't feel like fighting them. The other annoying thing about coil spiders is that they always have traps set up in their nests. They aren't the hardest to spot, but a lot of areas will be blocked off by electric web traps. You can't make or disarm these, but when you walk into one, you get stunned, held in place and electrocuted. Nearby coil spiders will then come to investigate. In this place, with our armor its a likely death sentence. So we'll just take the extra time and leave as fast as possible. There will be more coil spiders to find later, and bigger, meaner versions of them too.  And now it's Drainage time, I swear I always get this level.  We start out by walking into an EMP trap, it probably didn't do anything to us at all, but we end up reloading anyway.  So this place is a lot more straight forward. It's a siphoner spawning ground.  We are not in any way threatened by ordinary siphoners.  There are plenty of annoying traps to be found though.  Like this acid blob traps. I always reload if I walk into one because it eats into our time. There's no fully blocked off path at least.  Trash, we reload.  We of course receive the occasional siphoner ambush.            We're still looking for keys, so we fight our way towards the open chests in the area.  There seems to be the occasional oddity in this place but nothing we haven't already come across. At any rate we also find the blue key, score.  The last siphoner we killed had the fairly rare dropping Heart-Shaped Siphoner Marking oddity on them.  Which was all we needed to hit the next level. But we won't be wasting our time dealing with that till we're done with the gauntlet.             After a few more rounds of fighting lurkers we make it to the elevator. We're almost there.  Oh great.  It's the Amazement floor.  It's a giant maze of slow opening red, green, and blue doors. There's occasionally bear traps found, I think they might randomly spawn in, possibly also disappear over time. Although maybe they just relocate between reloads. No idea.  It's a fairly long time wasting maze, but we still want to look for deadends with items in them.  Because they might just have a key in there. This is all the keys we'll be able to find, assuming there wasn't a yellow key on the coil spider floor.  We'll skip the rest of wandering around empty corridors and reloading at deadends. Eventually you can find this Brotherhood of Nod rear end looking room.  It leads right to the exit.  Although they cheese you out with one last landmine before the door.  And its now the final room. The final room always has two doors. One will open to a room full of monsters, the other is locked.  If you collected the keys you can open the door and skip the monster room.  It will lead to another two doors, with one being locked and the other having even tough monsters to deal with.  If you fight the monsters, you have to kill them and search their bodies for the key to continue on. It wastes a lot of time and it can mean the difference between life and death at this point. If you're keen eyed, you can sometimes spot the other gauntlet runners through the glass windows completing their own end run. Although not this time, and you wouldn't want to anyway, because that means you're running a little slow.   We get all the way to the very last door, and we don't have the key to circumvent it, so we're going to have to fight.  And oh fun it's a room full of loving robots.  We break them all with an EMP grenade.  Then we whip a HF grenade mk III at them. HF grenades ARE supposed to be more armor piercing after all.  That breaks the little ones so now its just the plasma walkers.  We don't hit so good against armor as you well know. But our crits will win us the day here.    We also use LTI to lower our grenade cool downs faster.  We get lucky and kill the first walker and then hide.  Enough time passes that we use another volley of grenades.   Now it's down to luck at this point.   And our high crit chance saves the day, barely.  After panic scrabbling for the last key, we finally find it.   And we're the first to make it to the levers. Thank goodness.  We pull it and send the completely unavoidable death wall of electricity down our opponents paths.  And we're outta here!  When we come out of the elevator we're stripped to our skivvy's and all our equipment is taken from us.  "I came to collect my reward." "Um, yeah, congratulations." She yawns. "That was a good run. Here is your money; two thousand as promised." She gives you 2000 stygian coins. "All your stuff is in the middle locker behind me. There." She points at the locker, but also doesn't at the same time. More like, she swings her arm in the general direction of the locker. "You are one of the rare ones who get to take their money." A short delay ensues. "Um, what I meant was - have a nice day." "So long. Get some rest." "I would if I could. She SWIS, yawns and waves at you. Bye." "Bye."   And so we are now 2000 charons richer. Hooray.  Now for the arduous process of recollecting all out stuff and assigning everything to its correct quick item slot and so forth.  And we're good as new.  And now we can address our level up into level 19. Just a few more levels and we'll be decent enough to attempt the black sea.  We take another point in Cheap Shots to keep those crits nice and high.  Then we just keep upping various stats.  Mostly we want our mechanical and electrical to be higher to save us a lot of headaches much later. We still want a lot of bio and tailoring too to make better drugs and better weapons and armor.   So that was the Gauntlet. Quite a pain in the rear end if you're not ready for it and even sometimes if you are. There are a few puzzle levels you can get which are not super easy and really eat into your time limit. There's also plenty of rathounds and burrowers and robots levels you end up with as well. We got mostly lucky, but even saying that, save often and play the same on the slowest speed will make a big difference. You will absolutely have a rough time of it if you're a pure psionic as you're not likely to have much beyond your starting psi meds to tie you over. I've recently made a very powerful thought control character, who in spite of this still didn't make it through the Gauntlet. He may of if I'd slowed the game down and didn't wander into so many traps, but he would definitely still be struggling for all kinds of meds throughout.  Next time we'll hunt for that missing train for Rail Crossing. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Mar 5, 2023 |
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Mar 4, 2023 10:57
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For a post-apocalypse society, the underrail sure seems glad to just throw away human capital (a lot of possibly decently developed hc at that) straight into the grinder for bloodsport
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Mar 4, 2023 12:07
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While I agree that the death rate makes it unlikely to keep finding candidates, I think at this point Underrail is rightly post-post-apocalypse, it has an industrial base and proper cities with presumably high and stable populations and sewage systems, how it stays fed and oxygenated is best not thought at too much.
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Mar 4, 2023 15:13
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Fair point. I'm not too invested in the minutiae of what makes an industrial society possible in the underground, I am satisfied to see that the writers thought about where people would crap and where they would eat and the like. The setting is interesting enough by itself to draw me in for the stories they might want to tell. All in all, the post-apocalypse industrial society is a cool deviation from the usual tropes of dystopian fiction. Although I do get the feeling from stuff like the arena or the gauntlet that the writing is straight up going for misery porn with no overarching theme. Bronze Age (possibly worse?) levels of violence thrown in for kicks. Maybe because the game is spread very wide, and we have yet to dive in deep (heh) within the plot mortons stork fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Mar 4, 2023 |
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Mar 4, 2023 17:09
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quote:Our first room is Electric Funeral. Me every time I start Electric Funeral. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8-dzxTsA0M Styg made great game but they are out sadistic at times. When I finally got the last room and I had spent so much time getting past Electric funeral that I did half way through the last section. Reload the save before I started the Gauntlet got lucky (and learned the rooms are randomized) beat the whole thing with out much trouble. side_burned fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Mar 4, 2023 |
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Mar 4, 2023 19:19
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Is there a quest or something you can do so that woman can take a nap?
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Mar 4, 2023 20:16
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SIGSEGV posted:While I agree that the death rate makes it unlikely to keep finding candidates, I think at this point Underrail is rightly post-post-apocalypse, it has an industrial base and proper cities with presumably high and stable populations and sewage systems, how it stays fed and oxygenated is best not thought at too much. I mean they do talk about the ventilation systems of Underrail every now and then, it's definitely a concern to those who handle the general infrastructure although they don't go into crazy amounts of detail. Foodwise seems to be a combination of fishing, hunting and hydroponics systems although god knows how realistically sustainable any of that really would be. Probably not very. They at least somewhat acknowledge the problems with the food system being unsustainable, since Core City had food riots that completely destabilized the governing body of the city at one point in its history. I'm kind of thinking that the Area/Gauntlet are kind of used as a means of population growth control. But we never get a really clear picture of the scope of underrail or the severity of its underlying problems. Which fair enough, this is a game about finding a magic box that was stolen from some inscrutable mole people, not solving societies problems. The rest is all window dressing. [quote="king doom"]Is there a quest or something you can do so that woman can take a nap? [/url] Not a quest no, but we do get some chances to rest and recuperate during the DLC. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Mar 5, 2023 |
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Mar 5, 2023 06:11
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Chapter 46 - Blacker than Midnight on a Moonless Night We've got business to attend to in Upper Underail that I'd like to get to, but first I thought we should join up with the Free Drones just to get that quest out of the way. As well as tying up a loose end or two.    And we quickly run into some new versions of problems. It seems now that we're higher level, possibly also because we're Invictus. There's much larger concentrations of bandits that have spawned in. I think this is random event encounter, since human groups don't typically respawn in this game but this will not be an easy fight.  We need a better form of crowd control than what we've been dishing out at this point. So let's give a Napalm grenade a try.  How bout a little FIRE, scarecrow!?  It burns them real good, except for the ones wearing aluminium overcoats of course who aren't mildly burnt and not set on fire.    At least this pack doesn't have any heavily armored iron heads in there or we'd be in real trouble.  At this point we just have to take advantage of the chaos and fear that the fire is causing and pick off the stragglers.  We also switch in some flashbangs, because holding these guys inside of the fire would really make things a lot easier.     One of the guys on fire burns to death, leaving a smouldering corpse.  The sledgehammer dude also runs down there to burn up too.  Ironhead shotgunners are rare and very dangerous. Shotguns, like Assault rifles can utilize the burst feat. An up close shotgun burst, even with a shield and with our lagging behind armor, will absolutely kill us.  We then just wander into the fire to get at this lone gunner who managed to find a safe perch from the napalm.  The sledgehammer dude from earlier survived his wounds and is heading back this way.  We take a full SMG burst up close and manage to survive.  The sledge guy can't reach us because he's not about to walk into the fire zone.  We kill the gunner, slow the sledge guy and try to get out of the fire before we end up burning to death.  This is a bad place to be with such little health with that sledge guy in close proximity.  But the slow did the trick and he didn't get a chance to strike.  So we punch him dead and that's that.   We make another napalm grenade, because we were saving the last one for a special occasion, and that wasn't the occasion I was referring too, since that was by all accounts a random encounter.  So now we can head south of Rail crossing in search of the missing train they wanted us to find for them all those updates ago.  Oh come on! So one screen over there is an even tougher pack of iron heads waiting for us. Geez, you'd think we killed their leader or something the way they're coming after us...  We'll come back for these idiots in a moment, but for now we'll sneak by.  A cool thing is if you make anyone with flares suspicious when you sneak past them they will throw flares in your general vicinity to try and flush you out of hiding. We got lucky this time, and made it out of the visual range of the flares.  In our search for the missing train, we can't rule out that someone pulled it up this ladder here. So let's go off the beaten track and up the ladder that is next to that crawler who got hit by a train.  It's extremely dark back here. And it will only get darker.  So you may not be surprised to learn that there are crawlers back here. But there's so much to more too. Something much deadlier.   I mean, okay there aren't that many crawlers back here, just death stalkers instead.  Best way to guarantee kills on them, is to tase them, net them and then hit them.    So navigating this place is a real pain with flares alone. We'd probably run out of them if we tried to go as deep as we can. So we'll equip the nightivison goggles we've been carrying around with us for a while now. These one's have a decent battery life on them which is good. Because even with the battery life, NVG's drain fast.  But it's going to make walking around here a lot easier.  There's still a multitude of death stalkers and the occasional crawler to deal with. So it's slow but steady going.   We even got double ambushed this time.  We killed one of them and went to hide in the small empty room whilst we wait for the death stalker poison to wear off, since treating it will damage us further.    Then the death stalker followed us over and we take the chance to kill it.   Now all that's left is to explore the cave jutting into this place.  We've been repeatedly recharging our NVG's this whole time. They are a big drain on precious resources.  These caves aren't all that special.  Just more death stalkers.  And more.  With our goggles off these caves are completely pitch black.The Dude might have mentioned something about crawlers and darkness that was probably referring to this area. Let me see: Something like "Dude claims that the Shadow Crawlers are living shadows that are interpreted by the brain as being very ugly bugs, he also mentions that worse and worse Crawler variants are found in darker places." according to the wiki anyway.   One last crawler to deal with.  And with them gone, we can climb down into this ominous looking opening.  Its to an open cave, this is about the size of the whole area.  We throw down a flare and reveal nothing but several piles of bone. This is worrying because I know there's something down here.  So we hide behind a pillar and wait to throw another flare. Nothing comes for us.  Our second flare reveals the biggest of all boys.  This is the Black Crawler, the toughest cave crawler in the game.  On top of have 500 health, it's got 40%/25 mechanical resistance. It does 40-70 damage per hit, and uniquely will regenerate 60 health every turn. Beyond that, it will act just like a Death Stalker, but its probably faster and stealthier.  We start by zapping it.  We hurt it somewhat, but not a lot.  We miss a net throw.  And then a whole lot of other hits as well.  So we hit it with a magnesium grenade. I'd been saving the napalm grenade for fighting this thing, since lighting up a shadowy creature seems like a good way to fight it. But I forgot to equip it to my belt before I did.  The burning makes it panic.  It scuttles off into a corner to hide, which doesn't work very well when you're on fire I imagine.  We LTI.  We use the burning reprieve to equip the napalm grenade we'd been saving.   And we hit it with the napalm grenade. That thing is not happy with the outcome.    We chuck a regular mkIV grenade at it and it nearly kills it, but this thing is very tough.   I try whipping a throwing knife at it to finish it off, but it just tinks off of its shell. It's at this point do I first notice that it's regenerating its health.  So I rush through the flames to put it down ASAP.   And the black crawler is dead. The dreaded-most king and or queen or whatever of the most annoying creatures in this game is now a smouldering wreck.  We give our NVG's a rest and marvel at how pretty the napalm lights up the black crawlers home.  The flames quickly start to die out revealing how totally dark this place is.  The skeletons are littered with various hunters tools.  Nothing too interesting.  The Black Crawler itself hold a single unique oddity, a Tranquilizer Bolt Syringe. This oddity didn't originally exist and you essentially got very little for killing the black crawler. Given that this place is entirely optional that made coming in here pretty pointless. So this addition is quite nice. There is also another reward we can get for killing it too, but we will have to wait to see what that could be.  With that all out of the way, let's find that missing train.  The intersection that was blocked off by roller doors down this way now is opened.   Inside is a group of bandit standing over the train, let's parlay with them first.  "I see you have a lovely train here. I wonder where it came from?" "Listen, friend, I don't know what you've heard, but pay attention to what I am about to say: We're all being manipulated by the Protectorate and their brainless puppets. You, me, our friends and family. Everyone. Please, stay out of this u- don't be a fool. We are not your true enemy!" "Are you the Free Drones? I've heard about you before." "Yes, and you've probably also heard that we're fighting against the Protectorate oppression. The same faction that destroyed Biocorp, that enslaved North Underrail, that has committed so many atrocities and fed itself this large with the corpses of those who would not conform and obey - is now here. Well, we don't want them here, or anywhere else but Hell! And we are standing up to them, 'cause we ain't a bunch of quakers."At this point we can either fight them, persuade them to leave or leave them to it. If you want to join the Free Drones, you need to just let them all carry on. So that's what we will do. "I'll pretend nothing happened here. Fight on, brothers." "I hear ya, sister. We won't let those dirty rats win. We will defeat them, and we'll even do it with their own weapons. Stay free." "So long." I we had removed them we could then go back to the junkyard embassy area in lower underrail and report what happened to the train. If we ratted out the Free Drones, we could then talk to the ambassador inside of the junkyard embassy again to get permission to meet up with the leader of the protectorate in South Underrail and become a special agent for them. We'd even get a rank, salary, and everything. I'll talk more about that path as we progress through the free drones. It has some cool missions in it. From a mechanics perspective the Protectorate are a good choice for a lot of builds as they give you access to their supplies. Granted, you have to pay in United Stations dollars, but they are some of if not the highest quality materials you can find. They also sell a unique item called Protectorate Firearm Omnilube, which grants you an extra 10% damage from any firearm for its next 50 firings. That's a really good item if you're a gun user.  Anyway, we are on our way back to report our findings to the Marshal of Rail crossing. Let's sort these dickheads out.  The heavily armored dudes are going to be a serious problem. Especially the shotgunners. If they get a chance to move against us in close range, we're dead.  Incendiary grenades are fantastic at large scale crowd control.   They also have doberman guard dogs. I can't remember if we've run into them before or not. But sometimes there are tougher guard dogs that are either pit bulls or dobermans. Dobermans aren't as strong as pit bulls but they are a lot more agile and thus faster.  Individually they pose no more challenge for us at this stage.  But in this gaggle of bastards they take away from our precious action economy.   We take out as many ironheads as we realistically can in short order and then retreat to the safety of the screen over. We need a breather to recharge.  Because we just can't take this level of punishment in a single encounter.  After some recuperation.  We also remember to turn on our shield to give us a slightly higher survivability rate.  And now to put down some shotgunners.  There's only there left at this point.  Fire will keep those two busy.  And we're relying on luck to keep this guy stunned. It's not the best strategy, we need a way to dish out more damage.  Oh I guess there was also a heavy gunner too. He's less dangerous but not by much.  We manage to put down one of the shotgunners.  We remember that we have some focus stims, which boost our crits chances even higher.  And that was just the bleeding edge we needed to fight heavy armor.   Utter carnage, but the fight is over.  We limp back to Rail Crossing to tell them our findings.  (Lie) "I tried everything, but the train is impossible to find. I am stopping the search." "Hold on, hold on. I think we still have a chance, maybe there are some clues that can point us in the right direct... ion." Herve stops speaking and simply stares at you with disappointment.. "I see... You've already made up your mind." He sighs. "I can't force you to do this if you don't want to. I'm... I'm sorry it turned out this way. See you around... Henrietta. Take care." This will likely not end well for Rail Crossing, but we have to make the sacrifice for the cause. Civil wars are always ugly.  Now we'll just make our way to Core City and head up to Upper Underrail.  Or maybe not quite... "Yes, that's me. Who are you?" "How about you take a guess, huh? Let me give you a hint: You were looking for a missing Protectorate train that we had captured. You found us yet you never reported us, and because of that we managed to escape safely with the supplies. Who are we?" "The Free Drones?" "Bingo! I knew you'd know the answer. Now, Henrietta, I havea simple question for you I'd like answered: What do you think of the Underrail Protectorate? Hmm?" "I think they are, in essence, an aggressive expansionist force that is hiding its true agenda by creating illusions that unification will bring order, peace and security to those who need it the most. Propaganda is the seed of tyranny." She lets her lips turn into a satisfied smile. "Then we think alike, Henrietta. We, the Free Drones, feel the Protectorate's metal boot on our backs, trying to push us into the mud and suffocate us. We won't allow those pigs to conquer us. Now, the final question: Do you, Henrietta, want to help us fight the invading Protectorate bastards and drive them back whence they came? The Free Drones only want what's best for the people, you have my word on that."So once we fail the train finding quest, we'll be contacted by this person at a random train station at a random time. I guess we got lucky. We're all in at this point, so we'll take their job. "Count me in." She smiles. "Trust me - you've made the right choice. And so, I will give you your first mission so that you may prove you are ready and willing to fight with us. I want you to assassinate a Protectorate envoy. He and a couple of Cans escorting him are visiting Rail Crossing for some... 'diplomatic' business. There shouldn't be many of them, and your best bet is to catch them at the train station while they wait for the Protectorate to pick them up. That is one of the most dangerous stations in South Underrail due to no security, making it ideal for an ambush. In essence, it's simple - kill the envoy and you're in. Any questions, huh?" "You mentioned some cans?" "Yeah. That's how we call Protectorate troops, or Protectorate in general: Tin Cans, or just Cans. It's their metal armor, in case you haven't figured it out. You'll be hearing that term pretty often from now on, so get used to it." "What is a Protectorate envoy doing in Rail Crossing?" "Our best guess is that it has something to do with that train we had captured. We don't have any concrete evidence of this, no, but it makes the most sense. The Protectorate uses the metro to get around, just like everyone else. Well, they have their own train, but they have to use the same tracks. The point is, they have to be at the train station at some point in time. That is probably the best place to ambush them." "I'm ready to do it." "Excellent! Now, listen carefully, I shall say this only once. Once I catch news that the envoy is dead, I'll meet you just outside of Junkyard's south entrance. Got it? I'll tell you then what to do next." She pats you on the shoulder. "Gotta run now. You - don't be a wimp and quake out. Go and take care of those bastards. Bye." "I will, goodbye." So I don't THINK there's a time limit on this quest, but just to be sure we'll quickly finish it up, it shouldn't take too long.   And our target is just waiting by the train with his body guards. Welp time to pull a Gavrilo Princip I guess.  Sic Semper Tyrannis!  Our opening grenade kills the envoy outright.  His body guards aren't so tough.   We stun the dude in riot gear with the riot shield.  Kill the heavy gunner.  And then the riot gear dude. Probably should have killed him first. Riot gear has good protection against melee but he's easier to hit for us than a guy in metal armor.  We frame the deed as a simple mugging gone horribly wrong.  It looks like the shock trooper had tabi boots as good as our own, but with with max durability.  And with that out of the way we'll find that mysterious lady in Junk yard another day.  For the moment we'll deal with our business in upper underrail.  Until then then.
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Mar 5, 2023 06:53
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Catching up with the LP, good job so far and greetings from page 4! Regarding the old world booze item, the "deer beer", I think that's a reference to Jelen which is a popular beer in Serbia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelen_(beer) It's one of the two that you can find served everywhere in the country.
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Mar 5, 2023 13:53
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Zeniel posted:
Wait is that oddity a directly reply to Sseth Tzeentach's Underrail review where he said that there was no reward to exploration? side_burned fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Mar 6, 2023 |
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Mar 6, 2023 00:59
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side_burned posted:Wait is that oddity a directly reply to Sseth Tzeentach's Underrail review where he said that there was on reward to exploration? Well looking into it somewhat, the black crawler oddity was added ~ 1.5 years after that review came out so possibly, although I doubt it was a direct response to it. The update it was apart of was pretty substantial and included a lot of additional changes, items, and new work arounds to various in game problems. So, I would more likely believe it was based around community feedback, since anyone who made it to the black crawler would probably notice that there wasn't much of a reward from going there. Or maybe it's just something the developers eventually got around to adding in. I'd say more about it, but I try to avoid watching Sseth's videos if at all possible. I get the feeling either he really wants to say a few quiet things out loud about certain peoples or at the very least a large percentage of his audience certainly does. His underrail review is one of his less problematic videos and that's not saying much.
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Mar 6, 2023 04:49
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Zeniel posted:The update it was apart of was pretty substantial and included a lot of additional changes, items, and new work arounds to various in game problems. So, I would more likely believe it was based around community feedback, since anyone who made it to the black crawler would probably notice that there wasn't much of a reward from going there. Or maybe it's just something the developers eventually got around to adding in. Zeniel posted:
The man has 4chan mind poisoning. side_burned fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Mar 6, 2023 |
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Mar 6, 2023 07:12
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