Underrail News

Hi guys,

Back in October I mentioned that we started working on a new standalone Underrail campaign. This is still true, but we've also decided that we're going to give the engine a major upgrade which will help us create a much better game, both visually and mechanically. The thing is - there are certain design and technical decisions that were made early during the development of Underrail that are very limiting to us now, but are not easy to change just due to the amount of content that would have to be redone. So instead of taking a hammer to our beloved game, we're going to improve upon all these things (that we yearned to do for years) in a fresh stand-alone game that will still be based on the same engine core and gameplay mechanics. We call this game Underrail: Infusion.

I'm not going to list all the things that we intend to change/improve upon in Infusion, but I will say that they include both the visuals, as well as mechanics and world design. I'm going to try to post more frequent dev logs, as I did back in Underrail's alpha days, as to keep you guys in the loop. All that you see in these early days you should consider to be work-in-progress. I don't expect we're going to enter full production any time soon - not this year, for sure, as for now we're just focusing on improving the engine, the toolset and optimizing the content pipelines.

First thing I want to show you are the new environment graphics. Keep in mind that Infusion will be taking place in a completely different part of Underrail, so this is not a rework of any existing tile set, but a new one.



I've done a lot of work on the rendering engine and the way the assets are organized and rendered which allows Mac to more easily produce and organize a bunch of different variations of the same object, and also to easily animate them or give them other visual properties and behaviors without having to go into the gameplay code. Inversely, gameplay stuff can now be easily implemented before the assets themselves are made as they are only loosely coupled. This is going to greatly improve our efficiency when churning out new content. Technically, we're sticking with the same tile size (96x48) but we're going to make the tile relatively smaller in regards to objects, that is, everything is going to get bigger, which will increase the graphical fidelity. This is going to affect various combat mechanics as well, but we're discuss this at a later date.

That's it for now. We have more exciting stuff that we've been working on in the meantime as well, but it's not quite ready to be shown still. Let us know how you guys like the new visuals.

Also, in a few months you can expect the new content update for Underrail. This one is probably going to be released on experimental branch first and will stay there for a while, just due to the nature of the gameplay changes I've made. I'm sure you'll all be very happy with the changes, but just in case you might want to experience psionic characters in their current form before that happens.

Cheers.

Hi guys,

We're rolling out the first content update after the Expedition release and we're doing it directly on the main branch so good luck everyone! But first, a few words regarding our current state and our future plans.

Despite having hardly any mainstream press coverage upon release, Expedition sold decently well in the initial wave and then kept doing well in the following weeks. This is very encouraging because this tells me that during the years we did manage to establish a big and dedicated enough of a fanbase, that is keeping an eye on the game and spreading the word about it, that we are no longer at the mercy of whims of individual mainstream journos of dubious gaming pedigree. Speaking of individual whims, we did in the end get a huge visibility boost (that translated into a financial one) from our friendly Ugandan YouTuber in the form of this video. Much love to Sseth.

Our plans for the future are two-fold. First, we intend to release at least a couple more content updates. These updates will vary in size, but you can probably expect something comparable to this one. They will feature mostly minor quest changes, new items, couple new areas and possibly some moderate mechanical changes. I don't know how frequent these will be, but we'll do our best not to keep you waiting for too long.

Secondly, and this will be our major focus, we'll start working on another expansion for the game. This one will be a standalone campaign in which you'll play as a new character in an area that will not be connected to the main game. We decided to do it this way for two reasons: first, because the base game is big enough as it is and we don't want to add more of the big content chunks either horizontally or through further character scaling (we will be adding some smaller stuff through the content updates, though); and secondly, we want to be able to revisit certain base mechanics and design patterns we used in the base game and improve upon them without either making the game inconsistent or having to redesign major parts of the base game. We'll talk more about what these things are and how we're improving upon them in the future.

That's it regarding our plans. We'll try to keep you guys posted on the development.

* * * * *

Anyway, here's the patch notes for the update (the list includes the changes from 1.1.0.13 and .14 that were not present on the main branch until now):

Tweaks

• Cooked shot with incendiary chemical blob pistol will now apply fear effects to the fire-fearing creatures
  
• Fence door made a bit easier to click
  
• Reduced the maximum combat and movement speed up while in turn-based mode to 500% (down from 1000%) to avoid it glitching out some abilities
  
• Kareem and Freddy now also sell fish
  
• Sapke now uses W2C bullets
  
• Loot from Arena matches will now be stored in the loot locker behind Lanista
  
• [Expedition] Locusts will now spawn out of the hive every second turn instead of every turn
  
• [Expedition] The sounds of crabs poping out of the ground will no longer stack in order to burst your eardrums
  

Creatures

• Added Mole Cricket - a puny early game insect
  
• Added Young Psi Beetle - a weaker version on regular psi beetle to be used in the early game on lower difficulties
  
• Added Small Sentry Bot - a weaker version of the regular sentry bot to be used in the early game on lower difficulties
  
• A certain evil robot assistant has been upgraded
  
• Balor and Cornell now have unique models
  
• Core City faction members now have distinctive looks
  

Crafting

• Added a throwing net blueprint. One net requires 50 fabric scraps.
  
• Added a thin and frag grenade and mine case blueprints. Create multiple cases from a metal plate (scales with plate quality).
  
• Added lockpicks blueprint. They can be crafter from any type of metal plate and lockpick level scales with metal quality. Also at very high levels of metal quality you'll create bonus lockpicks. This is a rare blueprint.
  
• Changed the required amount of scraps when creating a repair kit to 40 (up from 20) per stack
  
• When recycling an item, the total weight of the scraps will always be less than the weight of the original item
  

Items

• Added a faction specific armors and item for JKK, Coretech, Praetorian Security, Protectorate, Free Drones, and [REDACTED]
  
• TNT Charge value changed to 800 (up from 350)
  
• Added digital timer and cardboard container as a static merchandise to several traders
  
• Huxkey can now be sold as electronic device
  
• Improved Jawbone crossbow
  
• Added a new unique crossbow somewhere out there
  
• Changed the weight of repair kits to 1 and advanced repair kits to 2 (up from 0.25)
  
• Changed the value of .44 JHP bullet to 52 (up from 20). No idea why it was so cheap before.
  
• Fishing rod made a bit easier to click
  
• Fishing rod's range has also been increased, making it possible to fish from some elevated platforms
  
• Dismantling the fishing rod will now be done by right clicking and choosing that option
  
• Added graphite as static merchandise to couple of stores
  
• [Expedition] By popular demand the certain fancy armor will now sport the hood and mask on the player character also
  
• [Expedition] Added bison milk consumable
  
• [Expedition] Sormirbaren Spirit Staff no longer reduces psi costs
  

Quests/Areas

• Added a couple of mini-dungeons that may randomly appear in the early game
  
• The player can now ask Quinton for another set of putrefying bolts in case they used them up and still haven't managed to finish the quest
  
• Fixed a gate leading to Depot A not being lockpickable
  
• Added an agility check for climbing over the fence near the Protectorate embassy in Junkyard
  
• [Expedition] Added a few extra visual clues to that cool dude's first old home; also lowered safe's required lockpicking skill to 60
  
• [Expedition] Added an agility check for climbing over a wall in JSHQ's barracks
  
• [Expedition] Tweaked the way camp loses supplies over time (slowed down and made a bit more consistent and dependent on more factors)
  

Feats

• Cut-throat action point cost changed to 25 (down from 30) and can now also be performed out of stealth against incapacitated targets
  

UI

• You will now see which targets qualify for Ambush feat proc based on their and your current location. The indicator will be placed left of the target's health bar.
  
• Fixed the small offset of different chemical ammo icons that are show above the XP bar
  
• The log will now write "is destroyed" for non-living targets
  
• [Expedition] Fixed the vehicle weight display bug
  

Bugs

• You will no longer be able to export your character while riding a vehicle
  
• When casting electronic imprint on a "melee" trap, such as bear or blob trap, the trap will no longer jump to your location to trap you, but instead be destroyed in a regular manner; However, in addition to this, the electronic imprint will also automatically backfire in case you attempt to place it on top of any trap and apply its damage and stun to the invoker
  
• Fixed the bug that would sometimes cause the game to crash when fighting t-lings in DC
  
• Fixed the bug that caused the Expose Weakness tooltip to sometimes show the wrong reduction value when specced into it
  
• Fixed transition problems with the rocks gap on the Forsaken Island
  
• Fixed the exploit that allows Forcefield and some other abilities to be used to determine if there are hidden NPCs on targeted tiles
  
• Hyperallergenic will now also trigger when consuming psi boosters
  
• Fixed the bug that caused a certain popular NPC to kill you in the end for no reason
  
• Industrial bots are now immune to immobilization
  
• Fixed the bug that caused knife to be invisible when wearing a riot armor with a shield and a cloak
  
• Fixed the bug that caused chemical destabilization to expire before the damage over time effects (such as acidic entanglement) are applied for that turn; from now on, when resolving a turn, all damage over time effects will be applied before affecting the expiration of any status effect
  
• Fixed the bug that caused the cameras to sometimes not detect your various thieving shenanigans (such as the case sometimes was in Ray's shop).
  
• You can no longer decapitate the last boss
  
• Fixed the bug that caused the keybindings to stop working when the map window is closed (by dialog or opening a container, for example) while you're entering a custom note
  
• Fixed the bug that would cause the crawlers and deathstalkers to subtley hint at their future hiding location when escaping by using the ceiling
  
• Fixed hostilities with Gorksy in CC propagating to SGS even when they shouldn't
  
• Fixed a bug in Foundry prison where erasing security footage didn't prevent hostilities with the rest of the settlement in certain cases
  
• [Expedition] Fixed the bug that allowed the special ability of a certain unique armor to be turned on even when not wearing it
  
• [Expedition] Fixed the bug that caused Razor to become invisible when using the shotgun
  
• [Expedition] Fixed the bug that would cause multiple paranormal entities to spawn from a certain corpse instead of just one
  
• [Expedition] The expedition will now leave the items from the player's locker behind upon undeployment
  
• [Expedition] Fixed Ethan being able to teach the players temporal manipulation abilities without them having psi empathy
  
• [Expedition] Fixed a certain agent not recognizing you gave him Something Important(tm) in certain instances
  
• [Expedition] Fixed some minor ending slides issues
  
• [Expedition] Fixed an instance in which a certain kidnapping event can occur even when it shouldn't
  
• [Expedition] Fixed a scripting bug that in some instances caused a transition error when entering the Arch Island docks map
  
• [Expedition] Fixed being able to get a new mission even after being fired from the expedition
  
• [Expedition] Fixed a group of sec-troopers appearing inside an important building in the camp when they shouldn't
  
• [Expedition] Fixed Seeger sometimes hanging out in front of the Arch Island Keep when he should be in his tent
  
• [Expedition] Fixed an issue with certain attacks occurring even after the defenders have left the Black Sea
  
• [Expedition] Fixed the bug that caused the crash after completing the Crimson Horticultural Center (potentially can be triggered on other points during the course of the main quest)
  
• [Expedition] Fixed being able to kill a certain man hanging out in the Dominating Bar in Core City with gas grenades, traps, etc.
  
• [Expedition] Choosing to destroy a certain robot in Lemurian Health Center no longer breaks the quest
  
• [Expedition] Fixed the bug that prevented the Sormirbaren Ballistas to not be able to detect you fully on their own
  
• [Expedition] Increased the range of Sweep attack to at least match the range of regular spear attacks
  
• [Expedition] Plasma mines will now have the proper explosion radius of 2, instead of 3
  
• [Expedition] Fixed the bug that caused Shield Bash (and possibly some other special melee attacks) to use the current weapon crit chance and bonus stats
  
• [Expedition] Shotgun will no longer trigger Ambush since it's not a single target weapon
  
• [Expedition] Opportunist will no longer trigger on sea snakes
  
• [Expedition] You can no longer mount jet skis while immobilized
  
• [Expedition] Fixed bunch of locust hives that were inaccessible for melee attacks (this will not affect the current playthroughs in which you've already visited the area of the hive)
  
• [Expedition] Fixed the bug that prevented the paranormal phenomena in certain graveyard to chill out if you leave the area for a while
  
• [Expedition] Fixed a bug with a certain kidnapping event which was introduced in 1.0.1.13 experimental
  
• [Expedition] Fixed a certain captain's visitor coexisting in two places at once
  
• [Expedition] Fixed the certain infinite trading profit bug that was available to the master merchants
  
• [Expedition] Psycho-temporal Contraction will no longer be affected by armor penalty on following turns
  
• Various minor dialog and map fixes
  

Let us know how you like the changes and additions. Cheers!

After more than three years of development, it is finally complete.

Whereas the base game began as a one man undertaking and slowly grew from there as people joined the team and steadily settled into their multidisciplinary positions to form the current core team of four, which gives it a recognizable progress of content quality and design; the Expedition is, from start to finish, the work of this, now more experience and skilled team, laid upon a more solid design foundations.

For those who haven't been following the development: Expedition DLC features a huge underground lake on which a secondary campaign takes place. This campaign becomes accessible during the normal course of the play sometime during the mid-game. Here is a more detailed list of features:

• Around 250 new areas
  
• Leveling character past level 25, up to level 30
  
• Ability to ride and upgrade many different jet skis that vary by speed, defense, firepower and utility
  
• Three new weapon classes - spears, swords, and shotguns; all of these can be crafted and there are also special unique ones
  
• New psi school: Temporal Manipulation
  
• Just under 80 new feats, some of which are special new veteran feats that get unlocked beginning with level 26
  
• Specializations - a new way to improve your character; starting with level 16, a character will gain one specialization point that they can use to improve their feats along one or multiple dimensions
  
• New consumables, tools, blueprints, and more
  

We all put a lot of effort into this huge expansion, and each member of the team really poured his heart out into it, in his own way – through visual, narrative or mechanical aspects, to make sure it's not only big, but also a recognizable labor of love. And because it's often the case that people think that Underrail is till a one man operation, I'll use this opportunity to familiarize you with the Stygian Software core team:

• Dejan "Styg" Radišić (myself) - lead developer, programming, overral lore and themes, some writing, a bit of everything
  
• Stefan "Phrygian Dominant" Čupović - level and quest design, writing
  
• Mario "Mac" Tovirac - 2d & 3d art, various design work
  
• Nikola "Johnny" Petrović - 3d art, mostly character and creature models
  

I also want to thank our dedicated fans that helped us thoroughly test the game for bugs and imbalances, as well as build up and maintain useful player resources (wiki, character build tool). Though you come at a price of occasionally having to read through your uncalled for suggestions and complaints, I must admit that all this would be much more difficulty without you.

Once the dust settles, I might do a more detailed piece about my thoughts on the Expedition development – what we did wrong and what we did right. I'll also talk more about our future plans then.

In the meantime, if you enjoyed the base game, please head over to the store page and purchase the Expedition DLC.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/694330/Underrail_Expedition/

If you are new to the game, you might be interested in the bundle option that allow you to acquire the base game and the expansion together at a small discount:

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/10645/Underrail__Expedition/

Also, the release will be pushing the new version of the base game (1.1.0.9) to the live branch as well. For the full list of changes see the previous dev log and add the items below to it:

Mechanics

• When returning to an area after fleeing it during combat, your initiative penalty will be -1000 (up (or down?) from -10)
  
• Cryokentic Orb can now counts towards fulfilling Hypothermia's psi ability requirement
  

Items

• Lifting belt now increases carry capacity by 30, but the mechanical damage reduction is changed to 5% (down from 10%)
  
• Changed the riot gear mechanical damage resistance and threshold bonuses against melee attacks to 100% (up from 75%). Will be applied retroactively.
  
• Riot gear will now receive flat mechanical damage threshold of 2. Will be applied retroactively.
  
• Tweaked the description of ballistic panels to better fit their use in different armors (will not be retroactively applied to already crafted items)
  

UI

• Listed starting action and movement points in the combat stats window
  

Bugs

• Fixed the bug that sometimes caused player to receive fear status effect (though it doesn't affect player in any way)
  
• Fixed the bug that caused the item immunity effects to appear as though they are not being applied in the tooltip (darkened label) even if they were
  
• Thermodynamic Destabilization no longer ignites targets on explosion when invoker doesn't have the Pyromaniac feat
  
• Chill and freeze status effects will now always properly remove burning effects
  
• Cryogas will no longer affect characters that are immune to chilling
  

That's all for now, guys. Cheers.

Hi guys,

In preparation of the expansion release, we're releasing a new version of the base game (on which the current testing version is running on) to make sure that no major breaking bugs have been introduced.



To play experimental branch on Steam, you right click the game in your library and go to "Betas" tab. To do so on GOG, you select the game and choose More->Settings. Make sure you don't override all your live version saves just in case something goes horribly wrong.

Here are the patch notes:

General

• Added the ability to speed up the game while out of combat
  
• Added achievements to the GOG Galaxy version
  

Feats

• Kneecap shot bleeding percentage no longer scales from perception, but base bleeding damage percentage changed to 125% (up from 75%)
  

Mechanics

• Unarmed and fist weapon attacks now incur 140% of target's damage threshold and resistance (up from 125%)
  
• Increased the damage reduction factor of resolve against neural overload
  
• Resolve will now reduce the damage received from doppelgangers
  
• Changed the way the burning damage stacks (in cases when it stacks) - the new burning time left equals either the time left of the existing effect or the duration of the new effect - whichever is longer; the old and the new periodic damage are adjusted so that they produce the same total damage over time; one of the major effects of this change is that you can no longer increase the amount of original damage by constantly resetting the timer
  
• Separated fear effect caused by burning into a separate status effect and limited it to 2 turns regardless of how long the burning lasts (or if it's extinguished early); this will prevent the fear from lasting too long either from a long burning effect or because of the burning effect being refreshed; also this fear only occurs when a non-burning target is ignited and not when burning is being prolonged/refreshed
  

Items

• Throwing nets now last up to 2 turns (down from 3) and have a cooldown of 4 turns (up from 3)
  
• Bullets have new icons
  
• Increased the chance to entangle enemies when firing acid blob pistol
  
• Increased the chance to freeze enemies when firing cryo blob pistols
  
• Reduced the chance to ignite enemies when firing incendiary blob pistol; the total burning damage done from igniting the target will remain the same, but will be spread over more turns (one turn per each
• 80% of the original damage repeated)
  
• Reduced the weight of chemical ammo
  

Nice Things

• Containers that you opened once will now have darker labels
  
• Organic enemies that die while burning will now be smoking and appear charred
  
• HE grenades and some other explosions will leave temporary marks on the ground
  
• Gas clouds will now fade in/out
  
• New barrels
  

Bugs

• Fixed the bug that would allow player to cancel leveling up without being able to reattempt it
  
• Fixed the problem that caused the items to take up weird positions in the filtered inventory when the player attempted to reorder them manually
  
• Cut Throat no longer bypasses stun immunities
  
• Corporeal Projection feat now has a proper icon (instead of using the one from Fast Metabolism)
  
• Throwing knife will now again properly play impact sounds and effects
  
• Fixed the bug that caused expertise to add the damage bonus for each separate mechanical damage listed for the weapon, instead of just once (you thought I'd never find out, did you?!)
  
• Fixed the hole jump crash in Institute
  
• Heavyweight will now always apply before Critical Power
  
• Certain giant appendages can now be hit by cryokinetic orb
  
• Changed the way the cryokinetic orb shards interact with the orb impact tile so now the creatures occupying the tile can also get hit by some of them
  
• Punching bags will no longer bleed when you punch them
  
• Global entities (those that can travel between maps) will now also have their suspicion meter drain with time
  
• Incendiary chemical pistol burning effect will now stack damage with existing burning effect
  
• Fixed the Nimble bug that would in certain situation give bonus movement points
  
• Various minor map and dialog bugs
  

That's it. Let us know how you like the changes.

Hi guys,

We've been wrapping the DLC up and the development is finished now. We're moving into the final stages of testing. First we'll do some internal testing on the new version before releasing it to our testers (we're accepting additional testers now, so if you're interested apply here) and then finally releasing it for everybody on July 22nd 2019.



Sometime between now and the release, there will also be a new experimental version of the game (that will be pushed to the main branch before release).

Thank you all very much for being patient with us and I hope you'll find it worth the wait.

Cheers.