1. Underrail
  2. News

Underrail News

Dev Log #54: Specialization and Veteran Level Changes

Hi guys. I did some changes regarding veteran levels which I originally introduced back in October.

First of all, player will continue to receive the normal amount of skill points when leveling up even on veteran levels now. Also, dervied stats such as health, detection and such will scale normally on veteran levels as well. However, players will also gain a feat every even level instead of every level when leveling on veteran levels. So basically everything is going to work as with normal levels with the exception of the feat pool being expanded with veteran feats once you hit veteran levels.

Allowing of the further skill scaling beyond the 25th level, however, requires us to provide some use for such high skill levels, particularly in crafting. To address this, the end-game areas and stores will have some of its loot/stock scaled up if the Expedition DLC is installed, particularly when it comes to crafting components. In the future, we also intend to address the problem of other non-combat skill scaling (such as social skills and hacking/lockpicking) by adding high level encounters/opportunities, so while currently it might not make sense to max out these skills, in the future it will have benefits.

However, the second, and more important change, is that on veteran levels you'll also get three specialization points.



You use these specialization points to further improve your non-veteran feats, often across specific dimension, as demonstrated in the GIF above. Your investment of points in any given specialization cannot exceed your veteran level (or the maximum allowed points for that specialization).

That's it for now. Let us know how you like these changes.

Dev Log #53: Expedition Gameplay Video

Hi guys.

Just wanted to let you all know that, even though we've been quiet, we're working hard on getting all the content for the expansion done, now that all the new mechanics have been implemented. The good news is that the the bulk of the main quest, including all the heavy scripting, c&c, etc, is complete and functioning (for the most part, it needs further testing, of course).

For those who just can't wait to get to explore the Black Sea themselves, here's a short video from the recent internal testing that we've done (this is NOT a trailer). It does contain some spoilers, though we tried to censor the important stuff, so be warned.

https://youtu.be/qHXG2SCMEGk

Anyway, that's it for now guys. Let us know what you think.

Dev Log #53: Expedition Gameplay Video

Hi guys.

Just wanted to let you all know that, even though we've been quiet, we're working hard on getting all the content for the expansion done, now that all the new mechanics have been implemented. The good news is that the the bulk of the main quest, including all the heavy scripting, c&c, etc, is complete and functioning (for the most part, it needs further testing, of course).

For those who just can't wait to get to explore the Black Sea themselves, here's a short video from the recent internal testing that we've done (this is NOT a trailer). It does contain some spoilers, though we tried to censor the important stuff, so be warned.

https://youtu.be/qHXG2SCMEGk

Anyway, that's it for now guys. Let us know what you think.

Dev Log #52: Jet Skis

Hi guys. We're all but done with the biggest feature of the expansion and that's the player's ability to ride jet skis.



Since the expansion takes place on Black Sea, naturally you will need a way to travel between all the small islands, bays and between far shores. You will be able to do this on a dozen of different jet skis, ranging from super light racing jet skis to mini-destroyers, which you can further customize under the hood by installing better engines, batteries and suspension systems. The models themselves differ way by the combat cover, durability, stability, speed, damage resistances, as well number of and maximum size of a parts you can install into them; some vehicles can have multiple engines and/or batteries. Also, some jet skis will have special attacks or abilities.



Once you get to the Black Sea it won't take long for you to get a hold of the most basic "junk jet", but to get the quality stuff, both in terms of the jet ski model and the parts, you'll have to spend a fair amount of charons at a specialized shop in Core City. You'll also have to decide what are the most important characteristics of jet ski for you, as no one model will be best at everything.



While riding a jet ski you'll be able to use most of your weapons, abilites and utilities. The most notable exceptions are sledgehammers and sniper rifles, which are not available while driving. Also, short range melee weapons (fist weapons and knives) and unarmed attacks, though still performable, will suffer significant penalties. When an attack is aimed at you, it has a chance of hitting the jet ski instead (or in case of AoE attacks, a percentage of the damage hits the vehicle), depending on the cover it provides, in which case the damage is tested against its resistences and the amount that penetrates those is deducted from the vehicle's durability. If the durability reaches zero, the vehicle is destroyed and you die (you never learned to swim).

That's it for now, guys. Let us know how all this sounds and I hope you're looking forward to some naval battles with pirates and worse things.

Dev Log #51: New Weapon Types

Hi guys. In the past few months we've been working (and we're still working) on a couple of major features for the expansion, but we didn't want to show any of them before they were ready. First of these that are now done are the new weapons, so without further ado I give you the three new weapon types - the spear, the machete and the shotgun.



The choice of spear and machete as new weapons was mostly thematic (you will learn why in some later dev log), but these weapons will also have their own place in the melee arsenal. Spears are meant to be versatile offensive and defensive weapons, while machetes are meant to be high risk-high reward weapons that will rely on the user keeping up the offensive. More on the exact mechanics of this will be revealed later when I get to implementing their specific feats. There are two types of machetes that differ slight in critical chance/damage stats.



Now the interesting one of the bunch is the shotgun. I say this because the mechanics of the shotgun are unlike anything else that we had in the game so far when it comes to weapons. When a shotgun is fired it launches a number of pellets that may hit the intended target, some other target in the attack cone or might miss completely. So the chance to hit with the shotgun is not so much indicative of weather or not you'll inflict damage on the enemy, but how much of the damage you launch their way is going to land on the primary target.



I'm going to give you some random shotgun stats below, but keep in mind that this has not be properly balance tested and that before we get a chance to play around with this new weapon a bit it's hard to gauge it's effectiveness and what the numbers should be in order for it to fit into the role intended for it. There is a lot of factors that come into play here depending on the situation and it will take some time to make sure they perform as expected at different ranges (medium, close and point blank) and against different enemies (low armor/high armor). By the way, pay attention to the interaction with the different ammo types when considering the raw damage stat.





I've also implemented the ability for weapons (and gear in general) to grant you special attacks and abilities so expect more of that in the future.

The process of adding these new weapons took a long time because we had to change the way we handled animations of all the different human models and it required a lot of manual labor to get things in order. However, now that we have done this, it will allow us to add more new weapons in the future (not in this DLC, though), to which we are rather looking forward to. I'm not gonna lie, we already know what weapons we want to add in the future, so just keep that in mind when you're posting your wishes.

Anyway, let us know what you think of the new weapons.