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I remember that Crawler/Death Stalker room. I never explored it fully, after about the third Death Stalker I just straight up said gently caress this and never went back. <- Update on previous page.
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Jan 3, 2024 15:27
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Chapter 59 - Codename: Redsnake And we're back finally. Poor Laser   Good one Casper!    "South Railroad Outpost has been conquered." Trenton raises his clenched fist. "Excellent work! Excellent work, Henrietta. Now our fighters can move in and fortify the outpost. We've finally managed to rid Lower Underrail of the Protectorate cans." "They were expecting us. They must've been tipped off. And for that, sadly, we've suffered some casualties."Yeah so in hindsight if we have tracked down Marcella and learned the identity of the traitor before we started that last mission, we wouldn't have gotten attacked at all on the screen before the station itself, and there would have been fewer guards posted at the station proper. Ah well, you live you learn.  "drat it! I knew it. If only we had discovered that bloody traitor, more lives would've been saved. Come on..."We find out very shortly exactly who the traitor is. "You are correct, Alvin. Despite our best efforts the information regarding the attack was leaked to the Protectorate. In spite of that, in the end - we are victorious. I have to say, I'm more than pleased by your fighting spirit and abilities, Henrietta; you have proven to be a ferocious fighter. Thank you for helping us trying to create a better world, one that will hopefully be free of tyrannical rule." "Now what?" "We reinforce and fortify our positions. We're in the open now and are stretched thin at the moment. We've suffered many casualties recently so we need to freshen up our ranks before we proceed. We are also getting short on equipment..." "We'll show the people of Junkyard the truth about Protectorate. Hopefully, more of them will decide to join our cause." "Correct. We'll be laying low for a while, Henrietta, but rest assured: We will drive the Cans out of South Underrail; it's only a matter of time. Mark my words. He nods. "Never a dull moment..." "So long and stay free." Anyway we'll claim our final "reward" from Becket and then go rescue Marcella.  "That's the first step. Next stop - Fort Apogee!" "Yeah, once we burn it down, the Protectorate is pretty much gone from South Underrail! I've been instructed by Trenton to prepare some fine equipment for you. Take a pick: You've armor, weapons and psi equipment to choose from. What'll it be?" "I'll take the combat glove" "Here you go." He gives you a combat glove. "Goodbye, Becket" Sigh, shouldn't have asked for another combat glove...  Becket is at least selling a pretty good quality Pneumatic Hammer, might be handy for a future combat glove at least.  I probably should have restocked on nail bombs too. Ah well.          Back to the Hanging Rat where we know Marcella was supposedly spotted last, at least according to the Oculites. Which is probably about as good an intel as you could get really.  Ah but look! It's our old Temporal Manipulation teacher hanging about. Some characters will occasionally hop around to different locations.   As if nothing happened, he addresses you. "Ah, good to see you. Do make yourself comfortable." "I've noticed you have this interesting-looking medallion. What can you tell me about it?" "Medallion? Oh, heh, yes. It belonged to my late mother, passed on to her by her mother. I carry it around to remind me of the two of them. I have inherited from my father his looks and this coat, and from my mother her eyes and... that medallion." "I bet it has a lot of history attached to it. It is of a very unusual design." "I'm sure it does. Grandma, however, never talked much about how she obtained it. At least as far as I know. It is quite beautiful, as you said." "Can I take a look at your medallion?" "I'm afraid not. It holds far too much value for me to risk... letting people I don't know well handle it. Besides, someone can see it." He looks around. "I don't want to have someone wait for me once I leave the bar. I'm sorry."We may have seen this before, but this dialogue is a hint that you can pickpocket this mysterious medallion off of Ethan if you have the skill too. Its a usable item that takes energy and lets you cast slow on enemies. This way we can cast slow twice in a single fight. The effect doesn't stack though, so it wouldn't be worth casting on the same creature more than once. "I'd like to learn some abilities."At this point we may as well pick up the last Temporal Manipulation skill he has on offer. "Certainly." He smiles. "I can teach you temporal distortion, limited temporal increment and psycho-temporal dilation." "Tell me about temporal distortion." "Temporal distortion is a powerful ability that allows a manipulator to cause damage by exploiting a phenomenon called temporal recoil: The natural tendency of time to revert to its most stable state upon being manipulated. While the time between distortion and the manifestation of the resulting recoil will always be a fixed interval, the more one applies temporal distortion within this period of time, the more energy the recoil will have and will thus cause more damage to the affected matter as spacetime is being rapidly untwisted into its original form. Fast-thinking and skilled manipulators can use temporal distortion to utterly devastating effect. I usually charge more, but for you I'll make it... twenty stygian coins to teach you this ability."So yeah Temporal Distortion is the only direct damage spell available to temporal manipulation psionics. It probably won't be super useful to us, since our willpower is pretty low. But if we invest in the right kind of psi headband and gather some different sorts of equipment it could be somewhat formidable. The main drawback to Temporal Distortion is that is had a delayed effect. You cast it and wait two turns and then the effect occurs. You can cast it multiple times on the same creature and this will increase the impact of the effect, and you can take the right feats to allow the effect to extend out to other creatures too, so in the right circumstances it can be pretty good. The other upshot to spell is that it deals bother mechanical and energy damage and since you get this right from the get go, it's one few sources of early game energy damage. Energy damage is one of the few damage types that is difficult to resist so most things are pretty vulnerable to it. So we may find use for it yet. And at 20 charons, it's a bargain. "Here you go." Give him 20 stygian coins. "Excellent, excellent." He pockets the money. "Time for us to go..." "We could go outside and find some unoccupied cave nearby." "It's not the best option, but I think it's our only one. Ladies first." Lead the way.   And there we go, we've filled out brain with all the time spells we can have at once. There are still three more powers of this discipline that we can find yet, so we'll keep our eyes peeled for them.  Now, onto Patron in the corner there.  If we hadn't learned enough about Marcella we'd likely need to pass a few speech checks to learn the truth. At any rate you need to have aligned yourself with the drones to see this through to completion. "Marcella?" She stops to think, but in the end, a blank stare precedes her answer. "Why would you say that?" "Because I think that's your name." She slowly lowers her eyes, but looks back at you after a short pause. "Why Tell me more... Um, if you know something... tell me." Tell her about the Free Drones. She carefully listens to you as you tell her about the Free Drones, the Protectorate, the people from the under-passages base. During the entire conversation, it seemed to you like she reacted to some of the things you mentioned, but most of the time, her gradually sadder and sadder look revealed disappointment. Like she wanted to instantly unlock the inaccessible memories in her brain. She expected a clear picture, yet received a hazy and confusing mess. "I don't know... I don't know if what you're telling is true. Some of the things you said... they sound familiar, but... but..." She starts crying. "I cant' remember anything! Anything!"This is where knowing Bate's pet name for her comes in useful. "If Marcella means nothing to you, how about Muffin?" Before you finished the word "Muffin," the windows to her soul, the ones you've been carefully observing since you met her, gave you the answer once more. Words would have been redundant, for her terrified stare into emptiness spoke for itself. "No! No! You bastard, get away from me!" "Take it easy, I meant no harm." But, she wasn't talking to you at all. Her eyes are not fixed on you, and their twitching remind you of a key that slowly pushes the pins into position, and unlocking a forgotten memory. "I trusted you, Bate! You betrayed everyone! You betrayed the Free Drones, you betrayed the people, and now you betrayed me! You betrayed me, you bastard!" As tears flow down her cheeks, the terrified look she once possessed now returns to normal. She remembers. "I am Marcella Green, leader of the Free Drones. We fight against Protector... Protectorate oppressors. I command the South Underrail cell with Corben Trenton and Alvin... Alvin Bate! Alvin Bate! He is the one!" She grabs the back of her head.Yeah so Bate is the traitor. "He is what?" "He betrayed us, he is a Protectorate spy! I don't know for how long, but... but I have to warn the rest." "Did he do this to you?" "Yes, we were, um, lovers... I had suspicions about him, I noticed things... but I was blinded by my feelings for him. I... thought it couldn't be, I hesitated. He didn't! The bastard lured me away to... to kill me. Like I meant nothing to him. Oh, son of a... We struggled and I fell down a cliff." She holds the back of her head again. "I lived in the caves like an animal, ate nothing but bugs and mushrooms because of him. Pig! I'll rip his throat out and shove it back in when I get back." "Then let's get back to base and expose that snake for what he truly is." "I'm sure he's dying to see me... Let's go." Follow her. Moments later...  "Marcella? I... I..."I thought you were a GEP gun. "Marcella? What is the meaning of this - where have you been?" "Where have I been? I have nearly been killed by this treacherous rat here! I--" "Corben, don't listen to her. She must have betrayed us! She disappeared without a trace for two months, for crying out loud! Two months! She's trying to turn you against me! She fooled kiddo, I see, but don't let her fool you!" "Listen to me, Corben, please: This man is a Protectorate spy, he's the one who revealed all our plans and is thus responsible for the deaths of many of our brothers and sisters! I don't know when he turned against us, but you have to believe me! He nearly killed me! If Henrietta hadn't found me, I wouldn't even be here now!" "Muffin... what is the matter with you? I love you, why would I want to kill you? You know that, don't you? You are breaking my heart by siding with those filthy Protectorate--" "Not a single word, Bate. You disgust me. A bloody traitor you are. Surrender all your weapons and come with the guards peacefully. I hope you still have some dignity left in you." Bate's stare slowly pans over each and every person in the room. His foreboding stare becomes desaturated, and he takes a deep breath before he unleashes his words in a trembling voice. "Go to hell, all of you! I... I did it because I had to... I had to... drat it! I'm sorry, but I'm not going anywhere..." Well this isn't going to end well for him.   And he's dead in a turn.  If we had pick-pocketed Bate we could have learned the pet name another way.  "We needed answers, yet the bastard played us one last time by dying." "You are right... The quaker chose the easy way out, he fought knowing he would die and evade capture. He died without telling us anything, how long he was working against us, how much the Protectorate knows and... he could have told us a lot. drat it... I need rest..."So there is perhaps another way to learn more about Bate and what he was up to, but you need to join the Proctectorate to gain access to the information I believe. You can learn that he is code named Redsnake and was essentially blackmailed by the protectorate into becoming an informant. The Free Drones typically cut ties with their family members to avoid such complications occurring and Bate decided to keep in contact with his daughter. Who happens to live in Dis, the capital city of the Protectorate. They caught wind and used his daughter as leverage for him to turn traitor. Kind of tragic really, but what's done is done now. "I've known Bate for years, I never, ever had a reason to suspect him... I'm speechless. He played us all." "Tell me about it... Ugh, I feel dizzy... and my head, it hurts so much." "Unbelievable; I still find it difficult to grasp. If Alvin was the spy, then the Cans must know some of the most sensitive information about us and our current affairs. We were lucky we even managed to capture South Railroad Outpost." "What happens to Marcella now?" "We'll talk about this later." He looks at Marcella. "Later." "Aren't you worried that the Protectorate might try to retake the South Railroad Outpost?" "Of course, but take this into consideration: Protectorate completely lost control in Lower Underrail; if they plan on attacking us, they will have to go through Core City, there is just no other way. This means that we will always know when they're coming and be prepared. And now, there is no indication that they will make any attempts at reconquering SRO. We won, for now. But don't think we're not keeping our eyes open, ever, Henrietta." "So long and stay free." And with that, we're essentially done with the Free Drones. We may stop in from time to time to restock on nail bombs and see if they have anything else worth buying, but that's our faction quest out of the way.   What to do now.     Restock on crafting implements.  Heidi also seemed to be selling a new Psi power for us temporary rewind.  It's basically the closest thing this game has to a heal spell, although I suppose it functions more closely to how morphine works. You take damage, you can temporarily reverse that damage. It may have some fairly hyper specific uses in the right context. It's probably not worth Innervating our brain over though.  We make some more inhalants.  Some stingball grenades, a nice upgrade over flashbangs.    And we'll go say hi to Phreak one last time.  We stock up on everything he has for sale as we're about to lose access to him for the rest of the game.   The key thing we'll miss the most is access to more CACS. Having a means of dishing extra energy and electrical damage would be nice if we could keep it up. But Phreak's gonna disappear till we finish the game completely.  Because, next time, we've decided to go corporate. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 17:35
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Chapter 60 - Business Ethics Today we join Coretech Security.  Out of the three Oligarch factions, Coretech Security is generally the best choice. They all pay pretty well and lead to some major rewards, and of course they are all supposed to allow you progress to the point where you have access to the precious plot cube too. They all lead to one very substantial reward that we are definitely aiming for but Coretech's got at least one item we want that we can't get anywhere else, so we're signing up.  "What can you tell me about Coretech?" "Coretech is the primary technology research, manufacturing and application company in Core City. Being a successor to the great Biocorp, Coretech employs some of the brightest minds in solving difficult problems of today. Coretech's desire to create a better future for everyone through technological advancement remains unmatched." "I'm looking for work. Do you have anything available?" "Most certainly, ma'am. Coretech is the top technology research and application company in Underrail. We have several open positions in the fields of geophysics, chemistry and ballistics. Could you please specify your qualifications so that we may proceed."At this point you get to sell yourself using a different skill, I don't think its possible to choose a wrong answer, our reputation will precede us regardless of the choice we make. (Tailoring) "How about a tailor? I can design and make you wonderful lab coats or security uniforms. Imagine: Henrietta's Coreware - clothing of the future, today." Her response comes with a slight delay. "Ehm... We don't have an open position for that. But, we might have something different available. Henrietta, that is your full name, right?" "Yes." "Allow me to do a quick check on you." She starts typing something on the keyboard. Hmm, I see. You seem to be in luck, ma'am. We do have a position available. Please, if you'd like, talk to Mister Joseph Harlan. He's in the office right next to this one, down the hallway, first door to the left. Oh, and before you go: I also need to inform you that the upper floor is off limits to all nonemployees. Thank you."We'll get access to those upper floors in very short order. "Thank you, I'll go see him." Like the other oligarch HQ's Coretech a lot cleaner and nicer looking than the rest of Core City, having the visual architecture of one of the old biocorp labs.   They've even got sleeping quarters for their staff. As a scientist myself, having to sleep at work sounds like a total nightmare.  We meet Joseph in the back offices.  I guess we'll tell him what he wants to hear. "Indeed. I personally think it's an honor and a privilege to work for a company of Coretech's magnitude."What we really wanted to say was that in the past, we've happily accepted work killing people for money, we've waded through several crawler nests just for an extra Charon or two, and we're probably high up on at least two major foreign powers hit lists. So selling out our services to a faceless corporation that specializes in weapons technology for the financial incentives and other material benefits seems kind of like a breezy Summer gig for us at this point.  "Well said, I already like you." He smiles. "You might find it surprising, but I'm positive you're the right person for the job I'm about to offer you. Or, as the numerous residents of Core City would say, you'd dominate it."Okay but if the CEO turns out to be some kind of dragon then all deals are off. "What exactly is this job you're talking about?" "I'll be honest with you, Henrietta. Coretech, because of its wealth, status and importance to this city has numerous enemies trying to bring it down. It's a sad state of affairs, I know, but that's the state of the world we live in. Of course, we have our own security forces; however, their effectiveness against more surreptitious threats is quite limited. We are in need of someone who can act as a low profile agent, is capable and willing and can accomplish given tasks effectively without ever being associated with Coretech, should she be compromised. Now, I must make one thing clear: We aren't talking about any illegal or immoral affairs here, or anything similar. We simply seek our safety and the prosperity of Core City, and for that it is sometimes necessary to act in the way I've described. Are you interested?"So we're being hired based on our abilities and our vehemence for societal law and our immaculate ethical track record. Oh and we're also Core City's beloved Invictus so it's good PR for Coretech to hire us too. "You can count me in." He smiles. "Excellent. Those words mark the beginning of a very important chapter in your life. You are now an employee of Coretech and are free to move around most of the building; some areas are off-limits, of course. You will be paid for each individual job accomplished. Generously, rest assured. And last, but not least, your safety is guaranteed within the Coretech building. I noticed you are quite a combat-ready sort of person, but in here you may be at ease." He walks to one of the wardrobes and grabs two matte black zip bags, one large and bulky, the other small. He puts them on his colleague's desk and unzips the large one first. "This is your uniform - a state-of-the-art energizing vest. It provides good ballistic protection, but more importantly, it can keep your equipment powered up via wireless energy transmission. Then he opens the smaller one. "And this is your tactical respirator. It's lightweight and comes with dual filter canisters, smart lenses and other integrated devices." He puts the empty bags aside and turns to you. "With that out of the way, I can say I already have a task for you."We'll take a look at those in more detail in a second. We'll probe him for more questions about the oligarchs first Also If I remember correctly, if we had joined Praetorian Security, we would get chewed out if we didn't wear our uniform when talking to our superiors. I'm pretty sure that's the case when you join the Protectorate at least... So it might be true there as well. "What can you tell me about Coretech?" "Coretech is the premier technology research and application company in the whole Underrail. Founded by Rupert Simmons, it develops and manufactures a wide range of products and solutions for military, domestic as well as entertainment purposes and more. For instance, we supplied the systems used in the Arena, as well as designed and manufactured the complex machinery that makes the Gauntlet possible. These two alone define Core City as the entertainment capital of Underrail. We are innovative and determined to create a better world for everyone. And in these very troubling times, we feel we make a difference."All three of the oligarchs majorly contribute to the Arena in some manner. It seems everyone in charge of Core City is very invested in keeping their population nice and distracted, and in a manner that tends to get a of them killed too. At any rate, when you think Coretech you want to think electronics goods, robots, and energy weapons. "What can you tell me about JKK?" He smiles. "JKK is a large company owned by Gunnar Edstrom. He came to Core City many years ago and delivered something the other two Oligarchs needed. Back then, the Arena was pretty much a local event. But JKK made the first Arena match broadcast, and over time it became what it is now. Now they control the betting, they transport animals to the Arena and much more, I can say. Those tri-monitors on the streets - 'trims,' as they're called - those are being installed and maintained by JKK. Keep one thing in mind though, Agent: There is more to JKK than what I've just told you. Their operatives are capable of doing very, very sickening things, and they have eyes and ears everywhere. Just... just keep that in mind."I've never joined JKK before, I don't think you ever learn what JKK even stands for. But yes, they're the major entertainment corporation. They're operatives tend to favor more stealthy, sneaky, manipulation style tactics. Their armor gives you bonuses to crits and lockpicking and the like. Honestly their unarmed melee brawlers, the JKK sluggers, kind of fit our profile our nicely. Otherwise they use pistols and crossbows if they use anything. I think they're also somewhat thought control psionics. They sell a unique pair of goggles that improves your persuasion and thought control skills at any rate. "What can you tell me about Praetorian Security?" "Praetorian Security is owned by Chief Archibald Knight, and it can be considered the dominant security force in Core City, I can say. Still, while they claim they are the best, I have to disagree. They have the numerical advantage, but Coretech's security forces have much better training and equipment. Praetorian Security is so... old fashioned. But, let them have it their way. Of course, all this is between you and me, Agent." Smiles.If it wasn't obvious, Praetorian security are all heavy armor and heavier weapons. Their extremely bulky armor gives a ton of resistances to everything across the board (except acid and electricity) and gives 5% reduction to all melee crit chances and makes you more intimidating and persuasive. You even get a choice of having a cape if you really want to. Their helmets are pretty good gas masks that also provide additional resistances at the expense of some perception and detection. They also have built in megaphones which enhance the effectiveness of the Yell feat. They tend to wield pistols, sledgehammers, assault rifles and sniper rifle and are also basically the cops of the city. "I'm ready for my first task." "Good. Your first task, Henrietta, is to find one of our agents who has recently disappeared. He is known under the pseudonym Raul. He shows you an image of a black man with dreadlocks. "Take a look at this picture: Notice distinctive scar on his right cheek. He should have returned from his task several days ago, yet he stopped communicating with us right about that time. He was last seen entering the Core City sewer system. The sewers are not the most hospitable place, I can say, but the Faceless are one more reason why you must take extra care when going there. Find out what happened to Raul, then return to me."Oh good, we're going back to the sewers again. "What was he doing in the sewers?" "He was on a confidential mission, the details of which I can't reveal to you."That doesn't give us a lot to go on to be honest. But whatever, we're not being paid to ask questions, and we're perfectly capable of figuring things out on our own for the most part. "I'm on the job." "Good. I'll be waiting." Now we're done talking we'll check our new goodies.  So we've got a decent respirator although ours is better, but this also boost special ranged weapon attacks. Not super useful for us, but pretty decent and enhances detection too, and doesn't affect perception at all. Not bad.  And the Coretech Energizing Vest. A decently protecting suit of light armor that gives a good chunk of energy resistance/threshold has the bullet threshold increase of tactical vest which I think it would then soak up about 24 mechanical damage which is amazing and all while having an acceptably low armor penalty that it doesn't negatively affect our feats. On top of this it adds a 3% crit chance boost to energy pistols (not super important to so) and an extra 10 hacking skill. It does offer 0 electrical protection and in fact increases electrical damage by 20% which isn't great too. Lastly it has a unique special ability the Wireless Charging Aura which when activated will slowly drain the energy from the vest and evenly distribute it amongst any electrical equipment you have equipped that requires charging. Although it does so at an 80% efficiency. Does save us the pain of needing to hand charge lots of items and would probably be even more useful if we were an energy pistol user.  We won't be using them right this second but we'll stash it somewhere nice and safe for when we might need some quick energy resistance on the go. The main reason being that we'd lose the bonuses to our stealth that our current armor gives us. Ultimately we're aiming for infused rathound leather armor anyway, but we'll need good crafting skills, high quality rathound leather (which given the low level nature of rathound can be hard to do), and a whole lotta charons to make the necessary super steel as well as whatever additional components we'll want to add to the armor.  At any rate, for our first Coretech mission, their choice of armor could potentially be something of a detriment to our survival as we shall soon see.  We'll sneak through the sewers, just to avoid the constant siphoner ambushes.   Up to the north on the other side of the main channel is where we need to go.  Where we find a darkened old facility with its main blast doors wide open.  Walking inside and the doors close shut behind us.  And a man in bloody surgeons clothes steps into the control room.  We've just stepped into something of a trap.   "Yes, oh, yes! I caught a woman, yes! Sweetheart! Sugar! Darling! You have no idea how much I've waited for a girl to fall in my trap again, mhm! You... you're a pretty one, I must add." He lets out a sinister laugh.Look I know dating in the sewers is probably quite tricky, but is kidnapping everyone who stumbles into your hidden lair really the way you want to meet someone? "What do you think you're going to do with me?" "I'm not quite sur- Oh wait! Now I remember! First I'm going to grab you, darling, then I'll sink my teeth into that pretty belly of yours, I'll chew through your soft skin and then I'll gorge on your warm, succulent organs! I'll eat you alive! Mhm! And you'll be screaming the whole time - just like everyone before you! Ah he's a cannibal, and a sadistic one at that. How did he get this facility all to himself? "The only thing you're about to eat is dirt from my boots!" "Something will satisfy my hunger, I'm sure. It won't be dirt, no, no. You'll feel a tiny jolt." He laughs. Well we don't get much of a chance to evade this electrical field. At least it doesn't straight up kill us.  But turns out this cannibal doesn't keep his electric circuits well insulated from each other and the stun trap trips one of the doors.  So now it is us that will be doing the cannibalizing. Or at least the hunting down and killing part.  Nearby is an entrance to a cave system.  But there's also a substantial electronic lock. Nothing we can't handle of course.  It leads to yet another locked blast door.  With an even harder lock to hack. I think this is one of the hardest locks to hack in the base game short of some stuff in the late game. There are a few harder ones in expedition.  On the other side is another cave entrance. In case it's not obvious, if you can't hack the locks then you have to circle around to here via the caverns.  We'll check out the caverns anyway, just for completions sake. There might be some nice oddities in there at the very least.  And it's a coil spider nest. This is why the Coretech vest wasn't such a good idea to bring along as we don't really want to fight enemies that electrocute us while wearing that at all.   Their nests continue to be a pain.  There's not much worth seeing in the nest itself. If we head up north and then to the west, there's a pile of rubble that we'll need to clear to reach the cave exit, so there has to be some heavy explosives somewhere in this cave or else we'd be screwed if didn't bring any, or our drill and enough batteries to charge it.  So we'll got one layer deeper into the caves first.   Towards the back is an old river system with some dead guys by an old boat. They seem to have run afoul of a family of psi beetles.  Only the goliathuses (goliathi?) are any real challenge.  Once again I forget about the expose weakness feat, (I may have recorded my footage many days apart) and find punching heavily armor psi beetles a bit ineffective.  Fighting two at these guys at once what with psi beetles having group synergies.  So we just have to remember to keep them both locked down.    The key pain in this fight was that they stopped me from being able to use my psi powers effectively but go figure.  At least them opening their brains to fight back makes hitting them a lot easier.  Now let's see what we won.  Ah, more Core City Plans, nice. And he had some explosives on his person too.  That's all there really is to see in here so let's blow open that rubble and move on.   I never bothered to clear out the coil spiders since I don't think we need any of their oddities anymore and there isn't much reason to do it. So they all come to investigate the explosion. At least there are no greater coil spiders, they're just annoying.      And with them dead, we're off to punch a cannibal.  Not much in the way of goodies in this place so far.   Towards the back is a dead end, with some computer racks and a terminal. There is a vent to proceed further at least. I'm not sure what we would do if we had no means to open this vent. Maybe the other set of blast doors open and the cannibal attacks us directly perhaps?  Poking around the console we can try and escape this way.  But the main gate emergency release system has failed. This is why you need analogue ways of opening doors sometimes.  And the backup power is broken too.     Inside the vents we can find the dead body of one of his victims who tried to escape. He's got a bear trap on him.   Now we're on the other side of the control room.  In the back is Zaman observing the monitors for us. Down below he also has a unique robot called Chop Chop.     Zaman is finally put down now for Chop Chop to get chopped up.   And things are made slightly complicated by the fact that we just walked into a bear trap trying to reach him. Oh well at least it's stunned.  It still manages to get a round of chopping on us, it does a lot of bleed damage.  And once again we fail to apply expose weakness! It's right there!  fortunately chop chop is slow a poo poo so we can cast slow on him, move a short distance and have him was his AP trying to reach us.   And at last we remember.  And it's now a pile of scrap metal. He doesn't even have a unique oddity, just the same one as the plasma walkers, which we don't need anymore.  Zaman has a unique knife on his person, the Dehumanizer. I think its key features is that it can cause panic in a target and also synergises well with Taste for Blood, as it gives you an extra attack when it activates. Honestly not a bad knife weapon if that's your build.  Not much in the way of new oddities around here.  And a fridge full of brains. One of the few completely useless items in this game.  Some more mushroom brew is always good. Best avoid any foodstuffs down here I think.  Ah well there is this unique Coretech Pamphlet, that'll do. I forgot to examine them closely, but the dead body on the table in the back of the room that isn't bones, is Raul's body. He doesn't have anything on him that indicates what he was doing either. I guess he just came down to the sewers for whatever reason it was he tasked to do and wandered into the same trap we did. Ah well, at least he didn't die screaming in agony whilst being eaten alive, maybe. I mean he did work for the oligarch. We do too, but it's different when we do it you see because our loyalties are tenuous and mostly to SGS.  That's all there is to do in this place, so it's back to HQ with the good news. Well the news anyway.  We're able to open the main gate from here.  And we're free.    Felt like punching some siphoners for their precious organs.   "I found Raul." "I see. Where is he? What happened to him?" "He was killed by some derailed guy from the sewers." "I see. That is unfortunate. Did he happen to have any documents on him?"So he was after documents of some sort hmmm. "I found nothing."We didn't actually bother to check. But you can take it from me that he didn't have documents on him at all. He nods. "No matter then. You've done what was asked of you, so it's time for you to receive your first payment. Here are some charons, and a device I think you'll find quite useful." Hands you 300 charons and an shield emitter. "You deliver, I can say." He smiles. "I have more work for you."People really like to pay us in shield emitters it seems, oh well they're usually worth a bunch to the right vendors. "I'm ready for my next task." "This one is very serious, Agent. We've discovered that our prototype ICPD has been stolen from one of our labs, and one of our employees, Luben Greenhorn, is a prime suspect in this matter, I can say. He vanished around the time the device disappeared, and he is one of the rare people who had easy access to the device. We're searching the company grounds as well as the whole residential district - including his home, of course - but unfortunately, we still haven't been able to track him down. We tried keeping this whole situation quiet, but I fear we now have no other options but to pull all our resources for this one. That's where you come in: I want you to join the search for the device. While the device is of the utmost priority, Luben himself should be brought in for questioning as well. However, should he resis you are free to neutralize him. One more thing, Henrietta: Luben, like most employees with his clearance level, has had an intradermal chip planted in his arm, so take his tracker: The chip is difficult to safely remove, but desperate times call for desperate measures - so expect everything. ICPD must be returned to Coretech, I repeat that one final time. Otherwise it might fall into the wrong hands."Find a macguffin? No worries, we're already doing something like that anyway, and even though we haven't been all that successful it probably means we're good at it. "What is ICPD?" "ICPD stands for Intracranial pressure destabilizer, and it is a prototype device we've been developing at the moment. It has a rounded shape with four small legs at the bottom and a protruding vertical piece at the top. I understand it is a bit difficult to describe, but you will easily recognize it when you see it. The rest is classified."Well... I'm sure that destabilising the pressure inside a person skull has strictly therapeutic applications, man who works for electronic weapons tech oligarchy. But whatever, a paychecks a paycheck. "Who is this Luben, and why would he steal the device?" "He was a member of our internal security forces, someone dependable enough to have access to even the most restricted areas of this building. Not so much anymore, I can say. No one has any proof of his motives, yet. We have some suspicions, but we'll set our speculations aside. Retrieval of the device is our top priority, so that is where our focus should lie, Henrietta."So kill Luben get back experimental murder technology, got it. "I have to go now. Goodbye."  And we shall aim to do this, next time.
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Jan 9, 2024 08:42
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Chapter 61 - The Missing Greenhorn Welcome back, this is the first update where the footage was captured from my new computer, so there may be some slight differences in the image quality, hopefully they're all positive improvements but do let me know if something needs to be changed to improve readability and whatnot. This is also the first set of footage captured that includes the Heavy Duty DLC update, so who knows what exciting new features we will stumble across?  Now we've just been tasked with tracking down this Luben fellow for our generous benefactors, but I've got a few loose ends I'd like to tie up first.  So we'll be leaving Core City for a little bit and head back to the old Ironheads territory west of Foundry.     The bodies of long dead bandits still litter the area, along with some bear traps I failed to spot and disarm. The lack of traps skill on this build is occasionally annoying, but oh well.  A giant pack of rathounds blocks our way too.  Their organs will make some nice blood and adrenaline.  There's a lab to the north of here we haven't explored yet, we'll save it for when we infiltrate the Institute of Tchort, as it ties into one of their missions. It's got an item I'd like to get my hands on too, as I suspect it might potentially go well with our build.   Okay we're now in a small area in Ironheads territory that we didn't actually explore before.  There's a few of them just to the east, we'll get to them in a second, I'd like to check out this cave opening first.   Hmm, it's completely empty. I'm not really sure what to make of it. Is it a new area added by the Heavy Duty DLC or is it a one way exit from the upper caverns that I missed? Or is there some event that hasn't triggered or has since passed here? I haven't a clue.  Oh well, let's pick off the last of the Ironheads.       This last guy was one of the harder Ironheads to take down if I recall. With expose weakness, the additional levels, equipment and other traits we've since accumulated has completely neutered him now though.   Dum de dum, now to take out MacLander.  Seems we took out half of his crew the last time we came here.  He isn't alone though, he's got a psionic protecting him.   I mean the main protection of the psionic is draining our AP and drawing our attention away from the main event.  MacLander continues to resist our taser. Hmm.  We manage to hit him with expose weakness, even though he apparently countered it with a Riposte, a sword trait that lets you counter attack whenever an enemy hits you in melee. Weirdly enough, he didn't actually utilize the counter attack. We should also probably switch the pneumatic glove if we hope to actually hit him.  We're pretty low on AP now and we need to lock him down somehow before he gets a chance to act or we're dead.  So we whip a net at him and step outside of his melee range.  He manages to intimidate us with a yell, but otherwise he couldn't act.  So now, despite the slight reduction in our defensive skills, we can hit him at our own leisure.  The extra loss of protection on him is doing wonders for our damage now.  And he down he goes. Phew.  Now his unique sword is ours.  There aren't many swords beyond machetes in this game, the claymore is pretty decent too. Unlike machetes, the claymore has a small chance to daze or stun the target and its long enough that its able to perform a sweep attack like a spear. We will take it as a trophy, because MacLander was one tough customer, and with him gone the Ironheads are finished in South Underrail.  Good thing he didn't consume this bullhead pill or he'd have probably been unstoppable if we couldn't down him in one turn.  Alright loose end tied up, back to Core City.  We take the train back out of sheer laziness.   Back up at the merchants we spot some new items for sale.  We've found ourselves our first LMG.  And there's also a grenade launcher in here too. It's got some nice damage potential.  Oskar has also got some fancy new Heavy Duty blueprints for sale too.  We trade our claymore for a bunch of blueprints we hadn't collected yet. Nothing we really need to make, it's more for completions sake if anything.  We tear up some old armor to patch up our equipment.  Oscar also appears to be selling a unique grenade launcher, the Milcore MGL. It's one of those ones with the revolver chamber. You know the ones. It seems to be very heavy hitting. It has an insanely high weapon skill requirement, so this thing is probably super inaccurate for a lot of the game and the AP cost of grenade launchers is huge as well looks like.  Now it's off to the drop zone again to track down this guy.  I completely forgot that we had a tracking device we needed to use to hunt this person down.  So I end up wandering aimlessly around trying to find him.  There's a new group of people hanging out down here. there's a group of women body guards protecting some guy in this area.  It's related to the quest we have, but we can't approach them till we find out target. "Fine I'll go." Still having no luck finding him.   We wander up to where we nabbed the tunneler and a drunk guy blocks our path forwards.  We don't have time for this poo poo. Push him off the bridge.   Problem solved.   Can't seem to find this guy anywhere at all.  I notice there's a house up on a ledge that we can't reach. Dunno if it's always been there or not, but we can only check it out if we get our agility up by two more points. We might be able to do it if we ate some cave hopper steak and wear some cave hopper leather, so we might see what's up there at some point. Not today though.  Hmm maybe he's in this building with the guard out front.  Not very helpful... "Fine. Goodbye."Eh, whatever.  We'll just barge our way in.   And steal all of their stuff.    Well, that's not who we were looking for at all. This is Joe De Pacino's hideout. I believe he's the first target you go after if we had joined Praetorian Security. I guess we'll just clear out his hideout anyway.      I'm playing pretty slapdash but we're stick kicking rear end, which is nice. That gunners energy pistol is quite weak.  Pacino's got an SMG that nearly kills us with its burst fire though.  But he's otherwise a pushover like the all the rest.  And his little dog too.  And a nearby curtain get drawn, Pacino's gunfire will have attracted all those nearby.  Ah well, we may be nearly dead, but that we've got the survival instincts perk so we've just boosted our critical hit chances by 30% now so thanks Pacino.  Whilst we attempt to heal up, one last straggler approaches us from the front door.  Luckily our adrenaline hadn't left our system, our temporal contraction didn't have a dilation backlash on us so we easily sprint over and finish him off.  We gained so much health from out previous levels that we can't even fully heal from a single bandage.   Well that was pretty simple. Let's see what he's got in this safe.  Nice chunk of change. And some United Stations dollars too. Nothing we can really do with these I don't think, since we're not exactly best friends with the protectorate.  And he's got more mushroom brew in the fridge. Dude has taught us well.  Joe De Pacino's SMG was in fact a .44 caliber Tommy Gun. It is the only SMG that is capable to taking .44 rounds and has a significant critical damage bonus of 140%, which is 40% higher than all other SMG models with the exception of the Steel Cat which it is 20% higher. It also has the highest magazine capacity of any SMG also. It does come with a few drawbacks to it of course, it has a -15% and -20% penalty to its single firing precision and burst precision respectively and it is also the slowest acting SMG at 15 AP also. If we were to have it refurbished we would improve the damage bonus to 155%, as well as giving it a nice little damage boost on top of that.  Beyond that, there is precisely one oddity int his place and it's one we've also exhausted on collecting. Ah well.  The items we picked up from the fight means we didn't even lose out on healing items or buffs, so we're still came out on top even if we received no extra experience from all this.  Well that turned out to also be a dead end. Where on earth is this guy? Sometimes a more detailed mission log would nice, it's often quite easy to forget small details especially after several months long hiatuses.  Well Jon the Beautiful has always got good info, let's ask him.  "I need some specific information." "That's what I'm saying! Prepare some food and let's get started!" "Do you know where I'm able to find Luben Greenhorn? He is a Coretech Employee." "The information I'm about to give you is extremely, extremely valuable: I don't know where he is. The information is free 'cause my tummy is full, which is as rare as me not knowing something that's going on around the city. Hey, I'm Jon the Beautiful!"Huh, well that's honestly a surprise, he's almost always got something to say on any topic. At least we didn't have to buy him another expensive dinner. "See you around." Alright, at this point I was bored of wandering around in circles so I just decided to attack these jerks without provocation.  We approach from the northern position and sneak up on Svetlana.    She seemed to be in a bit of a blind spot, since nobody else even noticed her die.  Duff's the gentleman we need to talk to, but of course he doesn't need to be alive for us to get what we want of him. We're not much of a negotiator anyhow.   He and Priscilla go down nice and easy.  Tina unloads her pea shooter into our smelly rathound clad visage to no real effect.  Although she just us in the kneecap. Not that we're far away enough for that to really matter.  And she's down too.  And Duff just happens to have the ICPD on his person. Fancy that. Now we don't need to track down Luben Greenhorn at all. Just as well, we'd probably have had to kill him also.  So it's back to Coretech for another easy pay day.  "I have the ICPD." Show him the device. Harlan smiles, this time with such delight it seems almost out of place. "Perfect. You delivered again, I can say, and I am becoming more and more certain that we have made the right choice by accepting you as our employee. And Luben? What of him?" "I never found him. The ICPD was in possession of some gangsters." "That is rather peculiar, I can say. Do you have any information on how they obtained it?" "No idea." "Really, strange. But the main objective is accomplished - that is what matters the most; the device is back with us again. Here is your payment. You are shaping up to be a valuable asset, I can say. Good work, Henrietta. I think the equipment provided with the payment will be satisfactory." Hands you 400 charons and an energy pistol. "Now, I believe there is--" His headset starts flashing red, interrupting his sentence. "Hm, would you excuse me for a second? This seems important." He responds to the call: The more he listens the more serious his expression becomes. At the same time you hear numerous resounding footsteps as they stampede from one side of the hallway to the other. After a minute of silence, Harlan answers with a simple 'I understand.' He then looks at you, his countenance unchanged. "We have an emergency. One of our warehouses is under attack. We don't know who's behind it; maybe it's the Faceless, maybe... Just go there and help our forces repel the attackers! The warehouse is located in the city, just west from the main city entrance. Expect anything, Henrietta. If you need to arm yourself, do so quickly, for every second counts. Now go, there is no time to lose! Agent Henderson and her men will meet you there."We shall deal with this next time!
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Jan 14, 2024 10:56
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Are you supposed to be able to find this guy?
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Jan 14, 2024 14:34
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Slaan posted:Are you supposed to be able to find this guy? I assume you mean Luben Greenhorn? Yeah you can and normally I do. When you start the mission you get given a tracking device in your inventory you can use to pinpoint his location and then talk to him. He doesn't quite know who you are and kind of gives too much information away before realizing his mistake and becomes more hostile and I think the idea was he either sold the ICPD or was robbed and you have to go get it off the gangsters who have it instead. But I hadn't played the game in months prior to that update and clearly hadn't paid too much attention to the finer aspects of the mission when I was working on the LP at that point either. When I was recording the new footage I just kind of wanted to wing it a little and not consult a walkthrough to jog my memory. Mostly because at the time I thought you could just stumble upon him. I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be in one of the shacks in the drop zone not too far away. I spent far too much time running around in circles trying to find him that I just gave up and went straight for the guys I knew actually had the object. This game definitely can have issue with small important details getting lost in the cracks if you aren't paying attention or you come back at a later date.
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Jan 14, 2024 16:17
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Chapter 62 - Henrietta and the Hendersons Oh boy, we've got a warehouse to protect. We don't need much in the way of preparation, so we'll just huff some psi gas and get right to it.  If we had signed up with Praetorian security we'd have joined in on assaulting the warehouse. So that should give you an idea on who is behind this attack, although they won't be directly doing the attacking. We aren't yet sure why Praetorian Security would want to hit a Coretech warehouse.  The warehouse in question is a building we've walked past many times before the door to which is now open to us.  Previously we were able to peek into the warehouse from outside, when we were collecting all the random oddities about core city back when we first arrived at this place.  Looks like there's already been a small bit of fighting. This place looks like it set up to be packed with traps nicely.  "Pleased to meet you, agent. Tell me what happened here." "We got here minutes before you, and we found all security systems offline - including the ceiling turrets. Looks like one well-planned, well-executed attack. Luckily, the attackers are not the Faceless, but whoever is behind this is knows what they're doing. Prepare yourself, Agent - there will definitely be more of them coming!" "We haven't got time to lose, then. Those sandbags will provide a perfect line of defense for us. We might be a bit more in the open, but in turn we'll have good visibility and room to retreat." "Agreed. Agents, move up to the sandbags!" Get ready. Henderson and co will not be participating much in this fight at all. We're more than capable of handling all of the waves of attackers by ourselves.  So we just wait by the entrance in stealth and pounce on them as they move in.    Round one is over nice and quickly.  There is a very short cool down window between waves of guys. I guess if the fights get drawn out, they might even show up before the previous wave of guys is dead. But I never play builds that warrant such speculation.  The second wave seems like its mission a guy, but he entered in stealth. I seem to have forgotten enter stealth myself when he showed up and he won the stealhed guy won the initiative check too.  And he's a knife guy too.  He landed quite a few hits on us, so he's planted 5 stacks of carved up on us, which drops our strength down, making us hit less harder. Thankfully this is softened by the fact that we rely on our ability to stun, crit and debuff so the damage penalty is manageable. Combat gloves also don't have any strength requirements, just additional damage bonuses related to any strength above 5. If we had been using a weapon with a heavy strength requirement then this could put us in a really bad situation where we'd have a serious accuracy penalty. Knife guys are very nasty in this regard, especially when paired up with other dudes to back them up.  Lucky for us then, their main drawback isn't such a big deal.   That's round two over a done with.  Round 3 becomes a bit of poo poo show. We get netted.  And our adrenaline has worn off and we're out of AP, right next to a sledgehammer guy, with more guys around the corner.  He nearly kills us in one hit, breaking our ribs in the process which makes us even more vulnerable, and his turn isn't up yet.  And we never invested in dodge or evasion.  Darn, let's try that wave again. This time we hang out around the corner of these crate, when one of the guys bumps into us.  Now we have much better advantage.   We don't have much AP to act and these next two mercs are pretty far away from us.  We net one of them and let the last guy waste his turn trying to reach us.  He didn't get a chance to act.   And they go down easy.  Three waves of guys is probably all there is. So we start sifting through their corpses. Among the usual affair we find some 40mm grenades for a grenade launcher. Nice.  And a forth wave of guys shows up whilst we were distracted. Was not expecting that.  One of them enters stealth and switches on an energy shield while we're dealing with the other two. That's usually the behavior of a sniper, so as long we stick nice and close to them, they can't really act due to the enormous accuracy penalties that sniper rifles give you.  We haven't quite got a bead on her location we I can net her in place.  So hopefully I can waste enough of his turn moving to prevent her from trying to hit me.  And she pulls back as far as possible, so she doesn't get a chance to fire this round.  Now there's no more sniper and we just have the stunned sledge hammer guy to kill.  And that's the assault taken care of. Barely made in the front door.   "Well done, Agent, well done. We pulled through. I'll stay here and secure the area. You may now leave and report to Harlan." "Understood." There's not much else to see in the rest of the warehouse.  There's a room we can't seem to reach towards the back. The only way in there is through a trapdoor in the floor. The trapdoor leads to location in the sewers that's inaccessibly until after we've finished this mission. Otherwise we could find it if we reached a similar level of quest progression in the JKK quest line. We'll see if we can find our way in there at a later date.  For now, we have a paycheck to collect.   "The warehouse has been secured." Harlan smiles. "Henrietta, Agent Henderson already reported back. You did a great job there. I was really worried it was the Faceless attacking us, I can say. You delivered yet again, Henrietta. You never disappoint. Take this." He hands you 500 charons and a tactical vest. "One more thing remains, Agent." He smiles. "Mister Simmons would like to speak with you. He seems very impressed by how efficiently and effectively you've been accomplishing your tasks ever since you started working for us. He's upstairs - best not keep him waiting." "I'll go see him." At long last, we can finally go upstairs and meet the boss.  Upstairs is where a lot of research labs are, we still allowed to go in most of the rooms up here.  There is a locked door we can legally hack back here though. It just provides a back way to to get up to this level though. No real reason to do that unless you wanted to sneak up and burgle this place. Maybe murder the CEO perhaps? I wonder what happens if you assassinate all of the oligarchs? Never tried it.  Anyway, Mr Simmons has a gloomy but spacious office back here.  Nice sized drinks bar in here though.  "Pretty darn good." "Beautiful, that's what I like to hear, son! You'll feel even better after I tell you why I called you up here. " "Son? But, I'm a woman..." He laughs. "That's how I call everyone younger than me! It's not meant to be taken literally. But, we're not here to talk about that. I would like to take this opportunity to personally promote you, son. I've heard that you are a good employee, a great agent, and I've seen how you fight in the Arena! I loved it! To have the Invictus working for Coretech, now that is just astonishing, son! Let me tell you something, son - you really earned this promotion!"And we've finally got that promotion we deserved, being the Invictus helps us too. I don't think you actually need to become Invictus to proceed further into the Oligarch faction quests, just be a well recognized gladiator. "What do I get with this promotion?" "Straight to the point, I like that, son! I most certainly do. Son, with this promotion, you become my personal agent! You will answer to me, and me only. If someone asks you where you're going and what you're doing, you can just say: "Mr. Simmons says that's none of your drat business." He laughs. "Also, you gain access to our internal store. Talk to Harlan about that. There. That is all wanted to tell you, son!" He pauses. "Actually, maybe that's not all... I don't know if you've heard by now, but Edmund Knight was murdered recently."So at this point in the oligarch quests, they're all more or less along the same lines and coincide with the main plot. We've actually already solved them, so we're about zip through the remaining faction quests and cash out all the rewards in one dialogue interaction. "Edmund Knight?" "Edmund is the son of Archibald Knight, chief of Praetorian Security, one of the Oligarchs, and a dear friend of mine. Edmund was an intelligent, ambitious, solid as steel, and quite a handsome young man. His life had to be taken away at an early age by these... these evil, monstrous... barbarians. These... These Acid Hunters! Led by a man known only as Cornell."We already found those guys quite a while ago. "I'm quite familiar with them." "Then I'm sure you are not surprised by what I'm telling you. I don't think you've heard anything good about these lowlifes, scum - barbarians! They deserve the most severe punishment for what they did, and that's where you come in, son. We have tracked down these animals. They are hiding in the sewers beneath Core City. "So, you want them dead?" "That's it son! I want you to kill Cornell and bring me his head. As for the rest, kill them too. As commoners would say... dominate them!"We've been carrying Cornell's severed head in our inventory this entire time for this exact conversation. That and it's fine conversation piece we can whip out at parties. "I've already been to their hideout." He smiles, lifting one corner of his mouth while the other bites into his cigar. "And what did you find, son?" Show him Cornell's head. "He was guilty of some other crimes as well." He takes a look into the bag, moving the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. His face - as if he was inspecting a train schedule. "Beautiful! Beautiful! Ha! Justice is served! I knew I could count on you, son. You have done great service to Core City." "There is just this little thing about Edmund's death..." "And what is that, son?" "Cornell told me your son, Miland, killed him."So it's a been a long while since this point came up. But when we spoke to the Acid Hunters they were trying to sell The Cube to bother Edmund Knight, and also to Rupert's son, Miland, at the same time. They got into a fail son bidding war possibly driven by Edmund trying to impress his girlfriend, there was a squabble which lead to Miland pulling out a gun and killing Edmund. Miland bought the cube off of the Acid Hunters and told Edmunds girlfriend to stay quiet. I believe Praetorian security thought Coretech had kidnapped Edmund and that was the impetus behind the warehouse raid. "You trust that animal? Son... don't disappoint me like this. He was trying to trick you, trick you into not killing him! It didn't work, judging by this head of his. He takes another peek into the bag. "What an ugly bastard... Hell, why are you mentioning this if you have already done your duty?"If we were more persuasive I think we could blackmail him a bit into giving us a bigger bonus. "It all seemed very suspicious." He laughs. He laughs. "Son, you were loyal to Coretech from your first day. Don't tarnish it now. But, I understand, I understand. We all have moments like this. Here's something to help you... calm down." He gives you 600 charons. "I have more work for you. Now, what I'm about to tell you son, is highly confidential. You are to mention what I'll be telling you to no one, in or out of Coretech? Get it? Beautiful! We have recently acquired a rare and strange artifact of unknown origin. We believe that, if we were to unlock its powers, we will be able to launch Coretech into a whole new era of technological advancement! Imagine that, son! I also believe, and with full support from my advisors, that this little thing of power is precisely the reason why these Faceless are here. I want this object secured son, at all costs. And I want you to make sure of it." "It will be done sir." "Beautiful! This is where you need to go: On the lower level of Core City, near one of the under passage exits in Drop Zone you will find a locked door. Behind it lies the passageway leading to a facility of ours. Use this keycard to unlock the door; this pass must be worn at all times so that the security bots don't rip you to shreds. He gives you the keycard. "That would be bad, son." He laughs. "There will be a few scientists there, but other than them no one else is allowed. I'm counting on you. Keep that artifact safe and sound. For Coretech, for our future."So yes this also means that the lab we infiltrated where we stumbled upon The Cube belonged to Coretech security. So we've already burgled our own company. If we were working for the other oligarchs they would have provided us with a means to infiltrate this place at this point and it would have lead to the same result. Then the Tchortists steal The Cube, and now we've gotta go chase after them. "I've already been to this facility. It's not as secure as you think it is." "What? You... you cannot be serious, son!?" "The Tchortists stormed in, killed the scientists and fled with the artifact. There was nothing I could have done." "Tchortists! TCHORTISTS!" His clenched fist strikes the table, making you flinch from the sheer volume of the sound produced. "Curse them, curse them all! Those lying bastards, they... We should never have let the bastards into the city!" He bows his head, letting it hang above his desk while his fist remains in contact with the table. "All went down the pipes... Sons of rats." He lifts his head and adjusts his suit. A steady motion of his hand as it slides across his receding hair seems to have a calming effect on him. "I need to be alone now."This interaction probably seems less insane if we'd had to go off and actually do these tasks. When it happens all in the one conversation Mr Simmons seems like he's very emotionally unstable. Which who knows maybe he is? Nod. "Wait, wait... Talk to Harlan. Now leave me." "I will. Goodbye, Mr. Simmons." And that's all of Coretech Security done. We can't even directly talk to Rupert Simmons anymore as he'll be dealing with the stress of the cube being stolen for the rest of the game.  But let's pick up our final rewards before we move on. They're substantial.  "Mr. Simmons told me to speak to you about something but didn't specify what it was." He nods. "Despite the unfortunate outcome of your last mission, which I'm sure was something that couldn't have been prevented, Mr. Simmons is greatly pleased by your performance so far to the point of arranging for you to become the owner of one of the largest houses in Core City's residential district. Yes, you heard me right." He smiles. "All paperwork has already been done, I can say; you need not worry about it. You should now go and speak with a Core City Housing Corporation representative who is waiting for you in Core City's residential district. His name is Mr. Samuel Morgan, and I hope you won't keep him waiting long." He smiles.So yes, we now have our very own house in Core City. And it's a literal mansion too! It's got a few surprises for us in store that we will try and take advantage of. If we had never signed up with the oligarchs, then we would never have been a way to get this house. It's one of the reasons side stepping the oligarchs entirely isn't really worth doing. Since the trade off is losing access to Phreak, which isn't a hugest loss. "I'm not yet so familiar with that part of Core City. How do I find this residential area?" "It is in the easternmost section of this level, past the Praetorian Security headquarters. You will recognize the residential district easily; go to its northern part where you will meet Mr. Morgan. He will it give you the keys and answer all your further questions."We'll be heading over there shortly, first we want to see what the company store has on offer for us. "Mr. Simmons told me to see you about a store." He nods. "You have been granted access to our internal store. Whenever you need to browse it, just speak to me." He smiles. I'd like to see what you have available. And it's a really nice store.  Firstly, Coretech Security is selling Plasma Grenade blueprints. We will definitely want a reliable means of making a lot of the rare and deadly energy damage so that's a no brainer purchase.  We can also get blueprints for plasma mines, but we won't be able to make use of these unfortunately. But very nice for a trapper build. We also pick up the thin grenade case blueprints.  Honestly surprised we hadn't found this already. Just lets us turn metal sheets into casings for flashbangs and stingball grenades as needed.  But the crown jewel in the Coretech Security stores are AI Scramblers. A nifty little device that lets you make robots go berserk for three turns. Each device in the store varies in quality that boosts your hacking skill for the purposes of making the robots go berserk. Since we're well to do we splurge on the most expensive one. With this, and the plasma grenades in our possession, we now how basically have all the tools we can possibly have that we can utilize in fighting any robot. Well there might be one more that I can think of that we'll be finding a little later, but it may not turn out to be all that useful although I think it ultimately will. I guess we shall see.  We also find a Minigun Motor component. How neat!  Let's go check out our new abode.   Here it is, way in the back east chunk of the residential district. The building with all the graffiti on it. Morgan is standing out front of it.  "Whoa, please tell me that this large building is my new house!" "Why, yes it is! Living in such an enormous space is quite a privilege, I must admit. Since I am certain that you cannot wait to see it from the inside, I suggest we move inside and continue the conversation there." "I'm right behind you." Incidentally the front door is hackable, although I think its a fairly tricky lock. Not that it would do as much good as we shall see.  Because the house is a bit of a fixer upper.  "What the bloody hell...?" "Please, while I do understand the reasoning behind your frustration, I must firmly ask you to calm down and watch your tone. It is not how it seems, so let's not jump to conclusions here. Allow me to explain everything to you now... Structurally speaking, the building is in excellent condition; what you see here is only the product of an unfortunate accident caused by the previous owner, Mister Hank Wardell, an aging Northerner with too much time on his hands."Hank Wardell is a name we've heard before. You can find his name in the Oculus databases. It's the one that has had its files expunged. He seems to have been someone very important, but there is little to be said about the man. We'll come across someone in the Black Sea who was quite familiar with him, but beyond that we never learn much more about him. This game does a good job of peppering itself with mysteries that are never fully explained, which I like. "What did he do, make explosives?" "You can say that; at least, he was successful in creating an explosion powerful enough to demolish the whole residence - if you can call that a success. Mister Wardell had a laboratory set up inside and apparently had an interest in, ehm, experimenting with highly volatile substances for reasons unknown to anyone but him. The results were his premature death, of course, and the severe damaging of the building, as you can see. Now, considering that he had lived alone and had no known heirs, this building became city property after his unfortunate demise. Now it is being handed over to you, Miss Henrietta." At any rate he seems to have blown himself up in a home chemistry experiment, and now his rubble is ours. Given all the TNT we carry in our pockets, it's a miracle that we haven't done the same. "Now we move to the part that interests you the most, I presume: The renovation of the ground floor will be paid for by the city; you just need to visit Core City Housing Company office so that we can take care of that for you; the floor above and the floor below, however, will have to be funded from your own pocket, I'm afraid. Still, considering that you were gifted a very spacious residence in the most prestigious part of Core City, I believe the deal is indeed fair!" "Interesting. Anyway, what can you tell me about the house layout before handing me my keys?" "Yes, well, the house, as I already mentioned, has three floors: The ground floor is where the living room, kitchen, dining room as well as several other small rooms are located; the second floor has the main bedroom, gym, work room and a lovely balcony overlooking the entrance to the house. And finally, the basement level provides several rooms which can be arranged to your liking. Perhaps making a workshop if you are the... crafty type, if I am to express myself in that manner. Just please, do not demolish the house like your predecessor did." "I see. Can I have the keys now?" "But of course. Here is your key." He hands you the residence key. "I bid you farewell, Miss Henrietta. Trust me, after a bit of tiding up, your residence will look as good as new. And don't forget - Core City Housing Corporation's office is just across the street. Enjoy your new home."I truncated a bit of dialogue with Morgan here in the interest of time, but he doesn't have much of interest to say anyway. I'm sure nobody is going to be super disappointed that we haven't truly immersed ourselves in the lore that is Samuel Morgan, Real Estate agent for the Core City Housing Corporation.  Next time, we file for bankruptcy. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 10:43 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 04:17
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Oh boy oh boy, a pile of rubble to call our own!
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Jan 16, 2024 08:51
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Four waves? Burn these heretics for spiting The Rule Of Three!
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Jan 18, 2024 05:25
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Chapter 63 - The Money Pit Welcome back to our brand new luxury estate.  We'll start some renovations on the new place immediately.  Fortunately, we opposite the real estate offices so that's convenient.  The ground floor of the house will get comped by the city. Everything else we will have to pay for ourselves. All up we've accumulated just under 22,200 stygian coins over the course of the game.  This will not be enough.  "What can you tell me about Core City Housing Corporation?" "Core City Housing Corporation is one of the most successful companies in Core City. Our goal is to provide complete and affordable housing and utilities solutions to as many Core City residents as we can, running our business in compliance with the highest quality and safety standards. It's been five years since the company's inception, and during that time we've proven that we're here for you, and that we won't stop until we've provided everyone with a proper, modern home."Everyone you say? "You people don't do much business in Drop Zone, or am I wrong?" "Aaah... Drop Zone. Well, that is an entirely different situation And it is not up to me to discuss it, but know that we are doing our very best to bring proper housing solutions to as many residents of Core City as possible."Go figure. "Who is the owner of the company?" "Mrs. Catherine Saywick; she is the both the founder and the owner of the company." "And, who is that exactly?" "A successful businesswoman from North Underrail, from the famous Saywick family. Her frequent trips to Core City with her father, Reginald Saywick, made her see the opportunity to start a business here. I think we can both say that she'd made the right decision, right?"At this point we can ask him about some of the basic Core City questions regarding the arena and the faceless invasion. "What can you tell me about the Arena?" "Arena provides the most brutal, hardcore, dominating, blood-spilling entertainment in Underrail, no question about it. So if you enjoy watching gladiators maul each other to death - and who doesn't - then you ought to go and watch a match if you already haven't. Trust me - just go." He smiles. "What do you think of the Faceless Invasion?" "It's a scary situation, I'm not going to lie. We all feel like there's a stalactite hanging over our heads, you know. In spite of that, I have faith in Praetorian Security; they'll protect us from the invaders. I'm... I'm sure of it. But, why don't we move on to a brighter subject. It's not like our talking is going to change anything but make us more anxious." "What do you do here?" "I am the head manager of the sales office, but due to certain... issues - let's have it at that - we're a bit understaffed at the moment, so I have to do more work than what says in my job description." He shrugs. "It can get a bit too hardcore at times, but whatcha gonna do."I'll bet Jyle's life is similar to ours, and that being the head manager of a sales office at a real estate company in Core City likely involves whipping grenades at heavily armored gangs of psychopaths and digging up old real estate technology from mutant infested junk yards. "Understaffed seems like an understatement." "Granted, Helga was helping me up to a week ago - our interior decorations manager - but her unborn baby had different intentions. Khm, that adjective no longer applies, so you know. Therefore, I'm alone here now. But not for much longer, I hope."I'm curious what build an interior decorations manager would be... Probably would benefit from a grenade launcher to maximize the coverage of decoration in one go. "I was told to come here about my house's renovation." "Wardell residence? Yes, Mister Morgan already contacted me about that and mentioned the interior renovation. The city paid for the renovation of the ground floor only, and the renovation crew is ready to begin. Now, if you're interested in doing other work on your home, we can discuss that right here, right now."We'll also want all our junk shifted from SGS down this way too and the game provides a means for us to do this. We can't do much about our numerous stashes throughout underrail but that's okay, they're there largely for when we need cash fast and they're all short walking distances from rifts. "Then send them in. Also, do you offer moving services? I need some things moved from South Gate Station to my house here." "For you, certainly. SGS is one of the few safe locations our crews are allowed to go to, so you're in luck." "How much would it cost me?" "That depends. What do you need moved?" "I reside in a single room on the fifth floor. The furniture isn't mine, so all your crews will be taking are the items from my lockers, desk and such." "That sounds like a fairly simple job." He tells you this while walking to his computer. "Just a moment, please." After typing something in, he hits enter. "So... that would be five hundred charons."It'll going to be an expensive day. Moving our stuff will be the least of our expenses. Give him five hundred stygian coins. "Here you go." "Very good. Now, I need some information about the room, access..." Answer all of his questions...  Our stuff will be waiting for us in a crate in the entrance hall of our place.   Without spending anything else just yet, let's see what has been done so far.  Well it looks we've got a ground floor to check out at least and our new stuff has arrive. We haven't had electricity installed, so the light switches currently do nothing.  It's definitely more spacious than our previous residence.  We've got a spacious kitchen and dining area.  Some storage closets.  The upstairs and downstairs are still off limits to us.  And a room that will serve as our security room. We run back to Jyles to ask some more questions about the place and more Hank Wardell lore. "Do you know anything about Hank Wardell, the previous owner of my house?" "Ah, that old geezer. He was one of those not-entirely-on-this-side-of-the-tracks kind of men. You know, a bit derailed. He had long, gray hair and wore casual clothing, sometimes even torn in places which wouldn't be strange to see if the man wasn't almost as rich as the Oligarchs. He was close, let me tell you that." "What did he do to have so much money? I mean, his former residence must've been expensive to purchase." "No one knows - that's the strangest part of all. All we know - we who live in the neighborhood - is that he arrived from the North and just dropped enough coins to buy the house. He was a reclusive man, dedicated to some strange experimentation within the depths of his lab. Well, when he wasn't spelunking around, leaving the residence empty for weeks even. He wasn't unpleasant, though. A man could have had a nice chat with him, yet somehow, and this is strange, you'd always end up telling him more than he'd tell you. Always full of questions, and then he'd sometimes suddenly say goodbye in the middle of a conversation and leave."So he was some sort of RPG protagonist? That seems to be the best way to describe him... We might find out more about what he got up to when we reach The Black Sea, the time of which is fast approaching. "You mentioned experiments?" "Well, I don't know if those were experiments or what, but he had a lab and was always making chemicals and stuff. I know that because he had ordered a lot of specialized equipment and workbenches from us. In the end, that's what killed him. So, all in all, he wasn't bad or anything like that, he was merely very, very strange. Hardcore strange, I'd say." He laughs.We of course will be following in this footsteps. Although ideally we won't blow ourselves up. "I'd like to furnish my house." "Sure, I've got all the necessary catalogs at hand. Also, until the basement and the second floor are renovated only the ground floor can be accessed."So I'll save going through every single permutation of us buying various items and renovations, but in essence, we excavate the basement and upstairs, we buy various storage lockers, restore power to each individual floor, buy a fridge, a freezer, some bar stools, assorted decorations and paintings, carpets, a desk, a giant bed, some security cameras, we clean off all of the graffiti outside the place, and set up a personal gym. There's still a few extras we have left to purchase, like adding some plasma gun turrets to our balcony and getting some plasma walkers to patrol the various floors too, as well adding some work benches in the basement. If we bring him the head of that beast we slew back in foundry would could also have its head mounted on the wall also. There may be some other animals we can stuff and mount too, I'm not entirely sure.  At any rate, all of that will have to wait as we're essentially broke again. We are rich in junk though, so we'll be able to slowly get our money back up again, but short of progressing on to bigger and better quests, we're out of easy ways to make cash for a while. Otherwise we'll have to loop around to the various merchants in game, selling what we can afford to carry until we clear out their available cash and then wait for those vendors to restock and desire assorted items to sell again. It's doable, but would be very tedious. We're not super concerned with have large amounts of money again anytime soon. There's plenty to still be made yet.  We can see what we've done so far at any rate. But first, there's a homeless man digging through our dumpster. That's our job!  "Hey, buddy, go dig through someone else's dumpster, okay?" The man slowly turns around, squints at you with his deep-set eyes, then makes an angry face as if he is going to snarl at you. Soon, however, his face relaxes as he steps away from the dumpster and starts walking away. As he makes some distance, you can faintly hear him grumbling something to himself.Eh I feel bad about that. Look at what wealth and privilege has done to us?  Still he was about to steal our precious bottles and electronic scrap. Those are free repair kits and molotovs right there.  Anyway, let's go see, how the place is looking now.  The place has got some lighting now. And the new drapes are just to die for.  And we've got our first guest, and we didn't even have to invite him!  Sadly, we cannot ask Dude to move in with us, not that he wouldn't have just moved of his own accord.  Dude has a point.  It's very possible that Dude knew Hank Wardell at one point. Some people speculate that he is Hank Wardell, but that's unlikely, we'll eventually learn who Dude really is much, much later.  I'm not sure why the area outside of the kitchen is bare. I'm pretty sure I bought everything there is on the ground floor. Maybe I missed some things. Oh well, can't afford to buy it at the moment anyway if such things exist.  Dude definitely seems to have been here before.  And as you may have guessed, Dude's presence here is basically to let you know that there's a rift somewhere in your new house, so we don't have hoof it all the way up here from the merchants district.  Security room is doing its thing, now all we need is a mountain of cocaine and we'll be prepared for when all the people we've pissed off come to visit.  We check out upstairs. Those drapes are really something. The cracks in the floor really add character to the place too.  We've got a nice toilet. I don't think we have a shower though... Ah well, rathound fur doesn't really wash easily anyway.  We've got our nice little office, complete with printer that we also had to purchase. It doesn't actually do anything, but then neither does our office I suppose.  And we've got us a nice little bedroom in the back. And we've wisely gone with the vent system that is too small for people to climb into as well.  We have the weapons storage area. We'll shift most of our things up here once we get round to doing that.  And our personal gym, which we will definitely need as a character that fights whole squads of heavily armed people by running directly at them a punching them with pointy and diseased hands.  And we have a nice little balcony to shout at passing stranger from.  Next up, we'll tour the basement.  It's pretty bare at the moment.  There's a number of work benches we can purchase for this place. But on top of paying to have them installed, we also need to find them too. I think we've already unwittingly located all of them. Each bench increases crafting skills by 15% depending on what the bench is designed for. There's four in total, one for Biology and Chemistry, one of electronics, one for Tailoring, and one for mechanics. We can get the bio/chem one off of the medicine merchant in Junk Yard, the electronics dealer has that respective workbench in Foundry, one of the Fredd's at Camp Hathor has the tailoring bench, and the mechanic in Rail Crossing owns the Mechanics bench. They're al pretty expensive to purchase, although with a high enough merchant skill, a good level of intelligence, persuasion and some unique items you can shave off their prices considerably. But either way it'd still be a few thousand charons all up. So we'll buy them, as we need them. All of our big crafts we'll probably want to do in our basement so we can get the best quality items we can. This is essentially the key reason you want to buy the house at all really. It's not a huge one, and it also means we'll need to accrue a ton of wealth again, not only to fix up the place, but also because we still need to make some high quality super steel at some point too and that's going to even more expensive. I might try to make some before we head for the black sea actually, it'll be worth doing I reckon.  There's also a strange back on the ground in here too.  Inside is a strange Hexagon Gem. This is a gift from the Synesthete guy, the lunatic who gave us his weird head band.  If we interact with it... Replace the pentagon gem with the hexagon gem.You remove the pentagon gem from its thin aluminum socket, which you then gently bend outward with your hands so that it may accommodate its new insert. After some more careful reshaping you find the gem to be properly secured, and you can't but not marvel at how it gives the headband a more symmetrical and lustrous look. Put it away. We can rip out the old gem.  And replace it with the new one. This make the headband two as powerful, and i guess twice as weak to, depending on whether you're standing still or not. It's a pretty powerful headband, especially if you're playing a psionic. We may want it for the boost in perception if we want to check out some hidden areas at some point. Definitely could come in handy in the black sea potentially.  Now that the tour is done, let's move all our stuff in properly.  Inventory management on this scale is a bit tedious, since there's not simple way to move things from your inventory to another storage chest, I don't think. So we'll have to drag and drop things out and we'll have to do multiple trips since we can't physically carry all of this stuff. In the past I've accidentally hit the take all button after moving everything into a new locker. That's annoying, don't do that.  We also ditch most of our keys and keycards since they're really starting to clutter up our person, just the one we're probably not going to use anymore. Most door remain unlocked once you unlock them unless you choose to lock them again. I recommend keeping the card to the lower entrance to SGS on your person at all times or you'll find you'll have to take the long way round to get back in every time. Accidentally did that at the very end of the game once and found I had to do a tedious loop back to junk yard so I could get the ferry back in. Hopefully I haven't left any important key cards behind this time.  With that done, there's just one last thing to do here.  Drink some Juice and find the rift in the basement.  Next time we'll visit the sewers one last time. Zeniel fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jan 21, 2024 |
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Jan 21, 2024 04:33
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwIe_sjKeAY
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Jan 21, 2024 10:13
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Chapter 64 - Mauled at the Mall Once again, we're off to the sewers, I doubt we shall return there again, unless something truly special occurs... but hmm we'll see. Before that though we'll quickly go on a brief money making trip, selling off as much of our excess junk as we are able to. Mostly ammunition and the occasional weapon and electronic scrap part. We make a few thousand Charons. It'll be a while before the shops restock, so it'd be tedious to just grind up our cash this way. So we'll just have to keep exploring and progressing the plot. Which is fine by us.  We've starting hoarding a bit more as we progress at this point so we've got some more stuff to sell as needed. At any rate, we should go see if we can get into that room in the Coretech warehouse we saw that we saw during the raid but had no way to enter.  So it's yet another trip to the sewers for us.   We should probably be wearing our gas mask, we'd likely take less bio damage.  And the entrance to this place is indeed now available to us. I believe this place would technically be somewhat a part of where you go during the JKK questline that would be equivalent to warehouse being attacked for Coretech. But it also involves going somewhere else that we'll never be able to as well.  Anyway, this place is full of gas.  So it might behoove us to put on our anti acid/bio gear.  There's also a ton of mutants down here too.  We take out the first one. There's also a whole pack of dogs just below us too.  One Mk IV grenade is all it takes at this point. Oh how the horrors of the old junk yard mutants seem like a distant memory at this point.  That grenade is gonna attract attention, so we hide off in the corner to try and get back into stealth  There's a few hunchback mutants around though. These guys are manageable but they're pretty beefy.      And another dog.  The hunchback mutant whips a boulder at us, ow.   The mutant finds another rock to throw at us, we'll need to stop him before he gets a chance to do so.  Fortunately we tase him successfully.   And that's all threats dealt with. Piece of cake.  Not much in the way of a reward, but we've got some more rubber balls for when we need more stingball grenades and what have you.   We'll want these Plasma Micro-discharger's if we ever want to make some plasma grenades. Those are probably worth having, so we'll take em.  The caverns continue on to the east with the tell-tale webs of coil spiders, oh joy.    This first stretch of nest is just an long corridor with the occasional pockets hiding the spiders inside of them.       Nothing too exciting or difficult at this point for us.    The next area features a webbed up man who seems to have been caught recently given the eerie glow of his recently dispensed flare.  His body is liberally surrounded by entangling webs.  A whole lotta them. It's a good thing that these sorts of traps are easy enough to detect without a whole lot of perception or traps skill. I'm pretty sure you can't actually disarm them unlike other sorts of traps, except if you walk into them of course.  The webbed body had a unique oddity for us, Insect Repellent, and its rare enough to shoot us over the next level threshold.  So we've hit level 23, just another skill increase level this time. We're definitely up there in terms of levels. We're only two levels away from the original level cap, so we're probably just about ready for a trip to the Black Sea. I might hold off and see what extra levels we can scrounge from the Institute of Tchort first though, we won't do everything in there, but just enough to gain another level or two if possible. If we were playing on classic difficulty, we're likely be about three levels ahead of what we are now. But honestly, we're pretty tough at this point and I'm not sure we'd lose that much of an edge if just we set out at this point. It feels like a somewhat risky call to make though. You want to be just the right amount of prepared for the Black Sea.  At any rate we can see from this level up screen that we have our brand new heavy guns skill in the offense section. It will in all likelihood remain at 0, since guns are for pipeworkers and this goes double for heavy guns.  This level, we're just boosting our crafting skills up nice and high. Apart from biology, we may well have reached the point where we just just sink the rest of our skill points into temporal manipulation, mercantile and melee from now on. Which means we're just about ready to make ourselves our end game crafted gear. But we'll probably want the relevant work benches for that too, just in case. We're gonna need a whole lot of money and the means to produce the highest quality super steel we can. The hardest thing for us to get in my mind in this, will be some high quality rathound leather. Leather quality is somewhat scaled to creature level and rathounds are never particularly high level. Ideally we'd want it to be 100+ on quality but it's not actually possible to get anywhere near 100 quality rathound leather if we were to hunt them or even sourcing the leather by other means. After some quick research, it looks like it's only possible to potentially get up to 64 rathound leather quality. The Faceless have Augmented Rathound that supposedly have leather quality up to 72, but that would mean going to war with the faceless and we don't want to do that. 64 Quality leather seems to only be obtainable if we steal it from Booth, the tattoo artist in the sewers, or pickpocket off of a random encounter guy at Camp Hathor, otherwise we could buy up to 59 quality from Booth directly, so we may have to rob Booth. It we were simply hunting rathounds, 44 is the most we could get assuming they're rathound alphas. If we had taken the skinner feat, which gives a boost to the crafting quality of all leather by 20%, we could in principle obtain rathound leather with a total maximum quality of 86.4, which is not bad. Or more realistically, Booth's high quality leather could net us a leather quality of 76.8. But we've not got that feat and won't be taking it either, so we'll have to settle for 64 at most if we get lucky, this should be more than adequate for our purposes I'm sure. All of that being said, the reason we want the leather at all is to one day infuse this it with super steel, and the quality of the resultant infused leather will be equal to the sum of the quality of bother the leather and the supersteel used (although the quality is scaled down somewhat). As it turns out, supersteel has the greater contribution to the overall quality of the infused leather. So as long we're in the right ballpark with regards to the leather quality then I think we'll be okay.  Anyway, back to punching more spiders.               Towards the back of the cavern is a door somewhere.   Looks like either coil spiders got to this console or possibly someone JKK related.  And up the ladder in the back here...  Is the small office we were aiming for!  Inside is a security card that I'm not really sure what it's used for if anything at all. Probably JKK quest related. Besides this, there's not much else worth finding here, what fun.  Back in the sewers there's one other location somewhere in the north, the gate here is locked and not accessible unless we had joined Praetorian Security. I note this because somewhere in this location is another one of the rare and mysterious monoliths that can be found throughout the game. This time it appears to have given psionic powers to an ancient rathound, well either that or it attracted an ancient rathound that has psionic powers. I always thought it was a strange choice of faction to lock access to the monolith behind, but there you go. It's one of the few locations where you can find friendly mutants. For the sake of interest, I've transcribed what secrets that this monoliths reveals to us below. "The corpses of Leviathans rot from within as their orbits collapse into the Star. Machines gnaw and tear at the rubble of the Universe, weaving fine thread. On top of a ziggurat, far above the tallest of plant crowns, the reign of Godmen is proclaimed. The space weave ripples." I do enjoy how the greater picture of this game involves beings from outer space since such a concept must be an infathomably alien concept to many individuals in underrail. Although there are definitely people who seem to be aware of space as a concept and acknowledge its existence however.  Anyway we picked up some junk we can sell to keep boosting our cash reserves up again.  Whilst seeing if the Coretech company store was interested in purchasing anything I managed to expand their inventory with our decently sized mercantile skill. They had a slightly better balaclava then the one we typically use so I pick it up. Never hurts to have some extra stealth when you need it.  Okay well there's not much else left to do around South Underrail at this point. So let's go join a cult.  I forgot to use the forged tickets I bought off of Phreak, so now I'm 25 charons poorer, bah.   We arrive just as an ingame cutscene starts.    A robed figure comes out of the door to greet the other robed figures.   The efreitor responds by performing an identical salute, excluding the bow. "Evolution is Tchort, brother. Tell me, did you manage to find anything?"They all have the same portrait, so hopefully the conversations aren't super confusing. "I'm afraid not, Efreitor. We scanned the surrounding area but found nothing other than a handful of isolated groups of bandits and scavengers, and no one possessed what we seek. I'm afraid our initial reports might just be true - Lunatics must've been behind the theft. All leads simply point to those devolved inbreds."This guy is just named Tchortist Rassophore, which is just a title, so he's nobody important. "I will be the judge of that, brother." His stare passes over each and every one of the three individuals. "Rassophores - you all deserve rest. Meanwhile, I will wait for the second unit to arrive; they should be here soon." He sighs. "Magnificent Tchort..." He looks at them again. "I said: Go and get some rest - don't just stand there like you're frozen. Inside." He points to the big front gate.Hmm a missing doodad is it... Sounds like a way in for us... "Tchort guide you, Efreitor." "Yes... Tchort guide me..."  So naturally our way into the institute involves us getting into their good graces and this is the way its always been in the game. But a much later update added an alternative way to infiltrate the institute by sneaking in through a back entrance. I'm not certain if you can disguise yourself once you're in or if you have to sneak around once you do. It's a pretty dangerous route in however, we'll be exploring that way backwards at some point. At any rate if the sneaking way in is a possibility it would likely lock you out of a considerable number of quests and therefore experience. There's a fair few things to do once we actually get in.  So we'll take the diplomatic route in. But we'll I'm in a surly mood, so we'll see just how little charm we can employ.  "Who are you? Are you one of the Tchortists?" "I'm Efreitor Denzil and yes - I am a Tchortist. In case you haven't noticed, you are standing at the entrance to Institute of Tchort, and all these robed guards - rassophores - are its members as well. We are here to preserve safety of the Institute - so be very careful of your actions during your time here. You got your answer, now leave me alone."So Efeitor Denzil here isn't too pleased to see us. "I would like to become a member of your organization." "I'm sorry, but we can't accept new members at this particular time. We are... full, so to say. As you can see if you were to look around you, all these people here are waiting to join the Institute. But alas, as I've already mentioned, we cannot accept new members. Still, that doesn't stop them from waiting, which is to be respected. Tchort might reward their wait but... not at this time unfortunately."But you see he's just a lowly Efreitor, whereas Henrietta is a Lieutenant Double Efreitor, so we outrank him and thus we will treat him like the doormat that he is. "I don't think you understand me. I really want to become a Tchortist." "What is the matter with you? Are your ears vestigial? It's like you can't hear me properly. We. do. not. accept. new. members! Now buzz off!" "No - you buzz off! I want to become a member of your organization and you are in the way. Who do you even think you are, anyway?" "Magnificent Tchort! You must be some inbred bastard who lost the ability to understand human language several generations ago." He makes a short pause to allow some of the steam to come out and prevent him from exploding. "Look here - you don't want to be disturbing an efreitor. I can order these rassophores here to cull you instantly and they wouldn't even flinch!"Let's just keep pushing him further, do you think at this point we're scared of this many dudes standing about in robes at this proximity from us? "Order them anything you want - but I'm standing my ground here. I want to join the Institute and I'm willing to do anything to achieve that goal." Something tells you that, despite him looking 'just' angry on the outside, on the inside he's probably turning into a ball of plasma - reaching temperatures high enough to ignite nuclear fusion. Suddenly he cools down, and his tone of voice becomes calmer, losing the red-hot edge. "Anything, you say? Anything... you say? Hmmm... Interestingly, there is, well, an issue we could use some help with..." "Finally we're getting somewhere." "We have an issue with a missing figurine - a very important metal figurine. It was stolen from us and we need it back. Now, we aren't precisely sure who did it, but we suspect those devolved Lunatic inbreds to be behind the theft. They taint everything they touch with their filthy hands. The metal figurine depicts a man reaching for the Surface." He points up. "Up there. If you can find it, we might make a deal about you joining us... sister."Sounds like he think he's given us a suicide mission, very reminiscent of joining the Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout. "What is the deal with this figurine anyway? Why is it so important?" "I am not at liberty to reveal that information to you. If you do manage to retrieve it... then you'll find out more."Well we don't want to sound too eager so... "Figurine hunting, huh? I don't know... if I find it I'll bring it here." "Do not speak to me unless you have the figurine. Tchort gu-- Bah!" Good, now that we've well and truly pissed off the doorman, let's got wipe out the main bulk of Lunatics in underrail.  They're hanging out in an old shopping mall just two screens west of the university station. It's location makes me think that upper underrail lies relatively close the surface.  Unless people built shopping malls way underground? No idea.  This should be a piece of cake.  We emerge out of an old electronics shop.  We'll circle around the perimeter, picking off any lone stragglers hiding out in all the old shops. The good thing about being a melee build is we make little noise, and nobody registers the cursing that the enemies produce.  There's another guy just hanging out behind some desks.  Lunatics are all very accomplished psionics, so we definitely don't want to give them any advantage.  Some of the registers around here still contain money worth having.  We accidentally bump into a assassin hiding out behind the shelves and he wines the initiative roll.  He cuts us up pretty good, but not enough to stop us hitting back. Since he's also stealth his attacks don't attract any further attention to us either.   His overcoat isn't too bad either, better protecting against mechanical than our current mutated dog leather one. It's also got some nice extra bullet and shotgun shell threshold protection and at not extra armor penalty to our current getup. It's much more durable than our current armor too.  I do like the added acid resistance on the mutant dog one however. It's more handy for dealing with sudden acid attacks or puddles we may wander across and since we simply try to avoid taking any direct mechanical damage from firefights in the first place. Well we will take it with us, just in case, it might be worth recycling at the very least.  We raid this still functioning fridges.  We grab some cave hopper steak, might see if we can't get up into that strange balcony we found in the drop zone one day, if I remember to check it out.  Got a pair of lunatics hanging around a barrel fire up next.   Night night.  There's a bunch more lunatics up a head in awkward positions.  We've got a barber right here and then at least two more a bit too far away for our liking.  Starting a fight from this direction is not going to well for us.  So we swing back counter clockwise and approach from this way.   We find the oddity set which can only found in this place, Coupons. Which is good because we can't study any of the other oddities we find in here anymore.  We also find a rifle and shotgun technical manual. We'll need this if we wanted to have any rifle or shotgun refurbished back in Rail Crossing. Which we don't, but it's lightweight and worth a pretty penny so I'm sure someone will take it off our hands.  The two lunatics above would have joined in the firefight if we had continued fighting earlier. One of them is a lunatic freezer so he'd freeze us and protect himself with and icy shield thing.  But this way we can kill him and his friend without alerting anyone, although it looks like we may have caught the attention of the barber from earlier. Although I think he may not actually have spotted us.   and done.  And there's a nice bit of corrugated iron in the shop window we can just hide behind while we wait to reenter stealth.  Now this level of the mall is much more clear and it'll be easier to fend off attackers if our fights go poorly.  As they are probably about to.  We also have many pillars we can duck behind if we're speedy enough. They're fantastic sources of cover.  And we can just wait for the lunatics to come to us instead.  We'll probably want to the take out the scanner first, since thought control psionics are much more likely to disable us than one who can just set us on fire.  But we kill them both easy enough.  The third one manages to flank us from above, they might have come from upstairs? Or they just circled around us when we hid behind the side.  He hits us hard, since we have no fire protection what so ever, but we don't catch fire this time, which is nice.  We're suffering from temporal dilation so rather than waste a turn running up to them, we can move in the opposite direction and hide behind a pillar and waste their AP instead of our own.  Now we're in a much better position.  And we can use adrenaline to make this whole thing go faster.  And the bastard resists a taze. Blah.  But instead decides to recognize us for what we really are and moves away from us.  And fruitlessly plinks at us with a pistol, which does not go well for them..   A surprisingly robust combatant, they lasted more than three rounds with us.  But that's the lower floor of the mall sorted.  Now to tackle the upper floor.  There's a midlevel here with stairs wrapping back up in two different directions.  Taking the right side stairs first.  There's many lunatics milling about some roasting fires to the east. There's more lurking nearby too, so this is probably not the best direction to attack from for us. If we were an assault rifle sort of person it'd probably be okay to wander in from this direction spraying bullets like a madman. But that is not our path to take.  We do manage to break into an old abandoned shop though.  It's got a few traps in it.  And not a lot else.  Just some old JHP bullet blueprints, which we already know.  Hmm yeah, definitely not the safest approach for us. We'll want to take out anyone in the perimeter before we try to fight out in the open. Otherwise we'll have many a psionic hitting us from all different directions.  So we take the left stairs up instead and check out this side of the mall.       The lunatic brawler had a decent pair of shock gloves on their person. Not as good as our homemade ones, weapons you find are typically not as good as the ones you make yourself in my experience.    And we find the last of the Coupons.  A nice pneumatic reloader which we might want if we want to make a new heavy armor puncher.   There's a lunatic hanging out in an old clothing store by themselves.   And nothing else to report round here.  This shop has a chiller and a flamer standing at opposite sides of it.  The tent they've pitched is placed just well enough that we can kill them without alerting the other.     Now we're able to duck around the main bulk of lunatics and hit their leaders without alerting any of them.  The two main figures of the Lunatics are Vanga...  Who dies real good.  And Frost.  Who surprisingly takes a good few punches.   But once our criticals start coming in and the debuffs start stacking she dies as easy as any other lunatic.  And so ends the higher ups of the lunatics, not counting the ones we found underneath the oculus. But we won't worry about those.  Vanga had a set of robes we could wear if we really wanted to fit in with the other Tchortists. But the drop in perception and no bonuses makes it a questionable choice of garment.  Frost has a shot of Trance about their person. Good for boosting psi crits and boosting the cost of psi powers... Since we tend to just buff this is a straight up downgrade.  She's also carrying a unique .44 caliber pistol, the Wasteland Hawk. Clearly based on a Desert Eagle. This gun is capable of dazing nearby targets, as can ignore 40% of a targets evasion skill if used in close range, as well as packing a lot of damage in each bullet. It's main drawbacks are that it has a fairly low ammo capacity of 8, and it costs a whopping 35 AP to fire making by far the slowest pistol you can find. This is a big problem with .44 caliber pistols in this game, they're incredibly AP expensive. Most pistol builds are made around being able to fire as many times as possible in one turn, which necessitates lower caliber rounds. However there are some very successful builds that have been made that take advantage of the sheer stopping power of heavy pistols. So much like any weapon, it's not entirely useless in all circumstances. If we were to refurbish the Wasteland Hawk, as well as a slight damage upgrade it would add a decent 35% chance to cause a stun if its fired in melee range too. To us though it's a relatively lightweight chunk of change.  On the table in front of the newly deceased lunatic leaders is the figurine we came here to retrieve.  Quite a heavy little statue. Not sure if this has any practical value, but it's at least our ticket into the Institute.  Now we'll just mop up the remaining lunatics and get out of here.  We also find a Motor-cognitive Transference mentor. A thought control ability that lets to drain a targets cognitive skills and transfer it to yourself for a limited number of turns. Probably handy in psionic duels, but for us it's more money.  Now to take out these lunatics. There's two more hidden by the central pillar.  This took me a few tries, as they're all annoyingly spread out.  We flashbang the guys hanging around the food in the middle.  And take out the electrician above us.   We net the chiller chillin' in back there and prepare to take out them before the flashbangs wear off.   We hid behind this pillar and let the last guy come to us.  And then kill the guy in the net.   And we rush back over the dazed guys in the middle just as the daze wears off.  Then its just a few swift punches.  With that, we've dealt with this batch of Lunatics. I was going to say that we've wiped them out, but as well as the ones below Oculus, there's also another more dangerous group of them left to be dealt with later.  But we've done what we needed to do here for now.  So it's time to join our new family.  "Is this the figurine you are looking for?" His voice reveals instant excitement as you show him the figurine. "Yes, yes! That is the figurine alright! Where did you find it?" "In the big shopping mall west of here. You were right all along - the Lunatics were the ones responsible for its theft." Unexpectedly, Denzil falls silent. He looks like he wants to say something, but perhaps can't find the right words. "What's the matter?" "Well... I didn't really expect that... someone like, khm, you would be able to actually retrieve the figurine; even just locate it, let alone retrieve from the clutches of whoever stole it..."Yeah, of course he was hoping we'd go get ourselves killed. "Whatever. I got you the figurine as you asked. Now let me in. I want to join the Institute of Tchort." He sighs. "A deal is a deal. Hand me the figurine and then I'll go inside and discuss your request with my superiors."Nah you've got no leverage on us doormat! You bring your superiors to us! "It stays with me until you come back. You go talk to your superiors first, then you'll see the figurine again." The rassophores around you turn toward you, and you feel the atmosphere beginning to heat up again. Denzil, surprisingly, cools it back down with a single hand signal to his subordinates. "I suppose that is acceptable - but don't leave the courtyard. I'll return soon." Just as he goes to leave, he turns back to you again. "Wait a moment. I never caught your name." "Henrietta."Probably should have used an alias, but oh well, what's a few more future enemies? "Henrietta... Alright, Henrietta. Wait in front of the Institute. Here. I'll be back as soon as I talk to someone. Just, just be patient. Tchort guide you." Wait for him to return.  "Henrietta, I have talked to..." He catches breath. "uh... to the mediant and explained the situation to him. Therefore, the official word is as follows: You will be allowed to enter the Institute building, be interviewed and if deemed fit you will be offered Institute of Tchort membership. All that in exchange for the figurine you possess. Speaking of which, I would like to take it now. Then I'll lead you inside." "Alright. Here is the little metal man." Give him the figurine. Efreitor Denzil slowly picks up the figurine and scrutinizes it. Despite the fact that his face is covered with a mask you are certain that a pleased grin lurks beneath it. His admiration doesn't last for long though; he looks at you and signals you to follow him.  And we're in.  Next time, Henrietta gets audited and finds religion.
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Jan 24, 2024 17:12
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