Caves of Qud: He ain't heavy, he's my glover

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Caves of Qud: He ain't heavy, he's my glover

Clocks: Oct 2, 2007

Snake Maze posted:

Basically just a dragon

code:

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Mutations:

Horns
Carapace
Burrowing Claws
Wings
Double-muscled
Hooks for feet

Custom Sprite! (usage instructions here)

I'll have to give this one a go! Thanks for posting the build write up!

The only thing cooler than a custom sprite would be having that sprite have a chance to be a monster or villager in the game.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 00:47

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 23:05

FlocksOfMice: Feb 3, 2009

Oh jeez, I didn't know it was this easy to make and use a custom sprite. Tempted next time I get back into it to sprite myself something up it's been a while since I messed around with spriting.

That dragon build looks wonderful also, hot dang.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 01:04

SpaceDrake: Dec 22, 2006; I can't avoid filling a game with awful memes, even if I want to. It's in my bones...!

The dragon does indeed rule.

The main difficulty with the custom player tile/sprite is that you have to work within Qud's palette system, which is a little arcane compared to how most games do it. I'm going to have to explore how that works a little further myself. It's not just "define two colors", the primary color reflects the player character's HP status (among other things) and the secondary color can be influenced, IIRC, by things like liquids.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 03:16

Pladdicus: Aug 13, 2010

qud tip if you're having trouble in the early game

https://twitter.com/dasharez0ne/status/979810839749210112/photo/1

# ? Aug 6, 2022 04:26

Unormal: Nov 16, 2004; Mod sass? This evening?! But the cakes aren't ready! THE CAKES!; Fun Shoe

https://twitter.com/ohnoproblems/status/1285818414754230274?t=WLyqd_P4D6K2HlWVkNF5Cw&s=19

# ? Aug 6, 2022 05:00

verbal enema: May 23, 2009; onlymarfans.com

Oh u fucker I just came to post that

# ? Aug 6, 2022 05:02

Pladdicus: Aug 13, 2010

lmao, that rules. real talk though, sprint and a gun will save any build.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 06:07

Mithross: Apr 27, 2011; Intelligent and bright, they explored a world that was new and strange to them. They liked it, they thought - a whole world just for them! They were dimly aware that a God had created them, was watching them; they called out to him, thanking him in a chittering language, before running off.

Snake Maze posted:

Ambiguous tiles that can plausibly work for multiple characters? Pft.

If I am being strictly honest a lot of the drive for the request comes from FF1 being a key part of my childhood, followed by FFIX and 8-bit theatre.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 10:19

Snake Maze

Jul 13, 2016

3.85 Billion years ago

Having seen the explosion on the moon, the Devil comes to Venus

Did you know it's really easy to mod in a custom preset? It might even be easier than the custom wish thing the wiki tells you to do.

Anyway, here's a workshop link to add the dragon build and sprite as a mutated human preset, if anyone else wants to play with it. Like with all the presets, you can go back and change the rest of the build after selecting it if you want to use the appearance with a different build. Let me know if you run into any problems.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 13:45

Sab Sabbington: Sep 18, 2016; In my restless dreams I see that town...

Flagstaff, Arizona

I am absolutely living for these custom sprites right now, holy poo poo, they are so good. I haven't played the game in a few months but this is giving me an ITCH to see if I can actually make it to the Tomb with an Esper for once.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 15:51

NewMars: Mar 10, 2013

I want zetachrome hand bones, just having the ability to compress anything I get my hands on into a black hole.

# ? Aug 6, 2022 22:58

Snake Maze

Jul 13, 2016

3.85 Billion years ago

Having seen the explosion on the moon, the Devil comes to Venus

Lategame horns are a thing of beauty

# ? Aug 7, 2022 16:24

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Snake Maze posted:

Lategame horns are a thing of beauty

what the gently caress???? What mutation level are those?

fake edit: L16

# ? Aug 7, 2022 16:36

inscrutable horse: May 20, 2010; Parsing sage, rotating time

Zetachrome vibrohorns :stare:

# ? Aug 7, 2022 16:40

Angry Diplomat: Nov 7, 2009; Winner of the TSR Memorial Award for Excellence In Grogging

Snake Maze posted:

Lategame horns are a thing of beauty

lmao save difficulty 68

Yeah, if you're built for them, high-level horns are easily among the deadliest melee options available to any mutant (barring endgame absurdity like multiwielded nanon finger serrated vibrokhopeshes or the ol' many-limbed chimera with 20 freezing short blades or whatever).

Tuxedo Catfish wasn't bullshitting - if you intend to invest heavily in the Horns mutation and have non-garbage Strength, you should absolutely consider making your head your primary limb, because headbutting will remain an incredibly solid all-around melee option for basically the whole game if you keep upgrading your horns.

e: to clarify, I am saying this as general advice to any newbies reading, not trying to lecture someone who has clearly already achieved the awesome power of the mutant soccer hooligan :v:

Angry Diplomat fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Aug 7, 2022

# ? Aug 7, 2022 16:57

Danger - Octopus!: Apr 20, 2008; Nap Ghost

Is there a way to lock the message log to one side of the screen? I find it really distracting the way it switches between left and right.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 16:57

Serephina: Nov 8, 2005; 恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー

In classic mode, you can flip the log off entirely with a hotkey, but not the side flipping as Qud adheres to the tty style, ie the screen is fixed and there are enemies under there you need to see.

A better solution is to enable the more modern UI features, which makes the log transparent and fixable-in-place (the little dot next to the larger minimize button).

# ? Aug 7, 2022 17:04

HoboTech: Feb 13, 2005; Reading this with the voice in your skull.

Serephina posted:

In classic mode, you can flip the log off entirely with a hotkey, but not the side flipping as Qud adheres to the tty style, ie the screen is fixed and there are enemies under there you need to see.

A better solution is to enable the more modern UI features, which makes the log transparent and fixable-in-place (the little dot next to the larger minimize button).

To add to this, on the updated UI you can hit the / key on the numpad to turn the message window off and on.

One minor complaint I have with the UI - when in your inventory and using the Dissasemble All option, it kicks you out of the inventory screen right after, so if you're doing it to multiple item stacks you have to keep reopening the inventory. A very small gripe, and if there's a toggle or something I've missed please yell at me about it.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 17:44

Snake Maze

Jul 13, 2016

3.85 Billion years ago

Having seen the explosion on the moon, the Devil comes to Venus

HoboTech posted:

One minor complaint I have with the UI - when in your inventory and using the Dissasemble All option, it kicks you out of the inventory screen right after, so if you're doing it to multiple item stacks you have to keep reopening the inventory. A very small gripe, and if there's a toggle or something I've missed please yell at me about it.

You can turn on an option to automatically disassemble scrap if you haven�t already. It only triggers on pickup so you�ll generally end up with the occasional pile of stuff in your inventory anyway, but it should catch most of it. I think if you�re automatically disassembling scrap you can dump it all in a chest and then take all to disassemble it all at once, but there�s no way to disable getting kicked out of the inventory - iirc that�s just an automatic thing that happens every X ingame time units, so you don�t do a bunch of tinkering and then look up to see you�re surrounded by goatfolk or something.

# ? Aug 7, 2022 18:08

HoboTech: Feb 13, 2005; Reading this with the voice in your skull.

Snake Maze posted:

...so you don�t do a bunch of tinkering and then look up to see you�re surrounded by goatfolk or something.

Well now I can appreciate it. Also thanks, I'll fiddle with the options. Going by the past page or so, this game is way more customizable than I thought (the custom sprites are rad).

# ? Aug 7, 2022 18:17

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Angry Diplomat posted:

the ol' many-limbed chimera with 20 freezing short blades or whatever

I�m thinking about this pretty hard.

4 hands + 4 wrist blades + 3 extra hands, all with freezing weapons + a spaser rifle and a freeze ray? Should be good enough to freeze a target at distance and keep them frozen while cutting them apart?

# ? Aug 7, 2022 21:37

verbal enema: May 23, 2009; onlymarfans.com

prisoner of waffles posted:

I�m thinking about this pretty hard.

4 hands + 4 wrist blades + 3 extra hands, all with freezing weapons + a spaser rifle and a freeze ray? Should be good enough to freeze a target at distance and keep them frozen while cutting them apart?

and in freezing hands why not

# ? Aug 7, 2022 21:46

super nailgun: Jan 1, 2014

The soil here must be really good!

# ? Aug 7, 2022 22:07

Mithross: Apr 27, 2011; Intelligent and bright, they explored a world that was new and strange to them. They liked it, they thought - a whole world just for them! They were dimly aware that a God had created them, was watching them; they called out to him, thanking him in a chittering language, before running off.

super nailgun posted:

The soil here must be really good!

# ? Aug 7, 2022 22:54

Snake Maze

Jul 13, 2016

3.85 Billion years ago

Having seen the explosion on the moon, the Devil comes to Venus

Okay I promise to stop posting about horns soon, but: lmao

# ? Aug 7, 2022 23:22

moonmazed: Dec 27, 2021; by VideoGames

great now there are deep slumberlings too???

# ? Aug 8, 2022 05:47

Pladdicus: Aug 13, 2010

got my glimmering above 50. it is fun.

# ? Aug 8, 2022 06:19

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Pladdicus posted:

got my glimmering above 50. it is fun.

what�s your standard operating procedure when a hunter shows up?

# ? Aug 8, 2022 14:25

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

prisoner of waffles posted:

what�s your standard operating procedure when a hunter shows up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpLRJyWe814

# ? Aug 8, 2022 14:27

Serephina: Nov 8, 2005; 恐竜戦隊
ジュウレンジャー

prisoner of waffles posted:

what�s your standard operating procedure when a hunter shows up?

Shoot them in the face with a gun? Hunters show up stark naked and are easy pickings if you have good gear. They're more of an threat if you roll an esper who has glimmer at lvl1, but not if you get any organically later on.

# ? Aug 8, 2022 14:38

HoboTech: Feb 13, 2005; Reading this with the voice in your skull.

Chain laser + electrical generation + jacked mod = overconfidence.

# ? Aug 8, 2022 16:53

Dandywalken: Feb 11, 2014

HoboTech posted:

Chain laser + electrical generation + jacked mod = overconfidence.

Now make it 4x chain lasers :getin:

Fr kind of worried how shooty chars will handle endgame stuff, unless what you find way underground isnt indicative of whats planned for scripted content.

# ? Aug 8, 2022 17:25

WarpedLichen: Aug 14, 2008

Serephina posted:

Shoot them in the face with a gun? Hunters show up stark naked and are easy pickings if you have good gear. They're more of an threat if you roll an esper who has glimmer at lvl1, but not if you get any organically later on.

When you start getting those Rukh hunters poo poo gets real weird. You have a lot of tools to get out at that point but certain map tiles are just no go zones of clones and space time vortexes.

# ? Aug 8, 2022 18:02

poemdexter: Feb 18, 2005; Hooray Indie Games!; College Slice

Tempora Mutantur posted:

inspired by force-wall and heavy weapons chat, plus wanting to really get into all the cool Tinker-III stuff that's been added, this is what I settled on for my latest cheese/minmax-of-all-trades Tinker-III run after a few iterations:

the cheeeeeese

this is at level 24, no bonus stats just yet (at 24 this build has 4 mutation points to spare, so I rolled and took Multiple Arms so I can wear dual jacked overloaded ulnar stimulators for +4 str/dex )

as you can see from my gear as I hit 24, I focused perhaps a weeee bit much on levels:

don't worry, Grit Gate won't miss that chain laser emplacement/I'll make better use of it than that turret will the bears were a little mad when I left but when I show up next time, they'll have had time to cool off and see reason.

below are the ridiculous details of how you, too, can become a one-man ecological disaster. lots of spoilers/detailed rules-bending of qud, so, be aware.

I present a build dubbed:

The Bastard Cooper Keith _{or, "Bloody Fist of Chiquita�"}

...because you are going to be loving UP banana groves and people abroad through overwhelming firepower and rampant corruption, while focusing on a "mission for the [bear] people" at home; we're going into Brightsheol, but at what cost
code:
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general info on starting it and broad strokes for preparation/early game:

scholar for int + fewest wasted skillpoints (arguably first aid and heal is completely worthless, especially for this playstyle, but at least you won't bleed out + get a bonus 25% heal off Heal skill) so long as you have some bandages (ngl I have healed exactly 0 times so far but I feel like scholar overall has a better start here than tinker for this build's purposes)

start in the Wayfaring village, for Wayfaring.

all attribute points go into int until level 24 so that we can unlock Tinker-III (which requires a total of 600 sp for 1-2-3), past that do whatever

early rush is Six Day quest + Reseph lore turnin -> Wayfaring rep from quests if needed -> Flower/Jungle Lore -> kyakukya for Cooking -> Ezra/Omonporch for Repair/Snake Oiler (this build does a lot of loving with merchants, not unlike Keith's United Fruit Company, and snake oiler helps maximize our devious ways)

finish the quest to get a village recoiler (or any recoiler but you need at least one for force-wall safety) and start the grit gate quest line once you feel sturdy; take Salt Pans lore once you can to scum the desert looking for ruins to raid for books for more relatively-safe early exp (especially if you can wear some Issachari gear for rep since having them neutral means *a lot* of free loot + NPCs who will fight various wildlife), and or do quests from villages or hit the rusted arch and other lower-level zones till you feel ready to pick up golgotha (or don't!)

mutation specifics are:

wings-6 gives you 0% chance to fall while flying (except on Swoops which always have an 18% fall chance), a huge jump range, and plenty of speed. no need for more points there.

before you have wings-6, if you're exploring something, play normally; save flight for a quick escape on the overworld (you can always escape by going "up" on the world map while flying, but if you're flying and get knocked down you have to wait 5 potentially fatal turns till you can fly again to do it; hence, stay on foot and save it for an exit until you have wings-6, though ngl I still just liked flying around)

triple jointed-9 gives you +6 agility; going to 10 stays at +6, so the only way to get more agility past that is to use an excited genome burst on it. your call, I opt to save to the mutation point and stay at 9, +6 agi is plenty to make sure we don't miss our shots/disarms and get a nice corresponding +6 dv bonus

force wall really never needs to be leveled on this build, it's there as an emergency escape. since this build shoots up in levels fast, you'll have some passive ego boosts plus gear to keep its duration modest, but generally speaking unless you already are very familiar with the zone you're in and using force wall, the idea is that this is here as a get-out-of-jail-free card

all of that means that you'll be capped on mutations at 17, can roll a new mutation at 21, and then finish level capping Electrical Generation by 24 then progress to max it out while doing whatever with the remaining points as you level

skill priorities are, in this order:

getting the lores you need for safe travel (Salt, Jungle, and Flower at minimum but really all of them except Marsh unless you rolled it as a Scholar) as well as for more chance of encounters for more books from easy ruins and merchants and general good stuff (iirc you can still just fly into the air when lost so in a way you don't need this if you're willing to deal with that, but this build is about near-guaranteed and relatively quick level 24)

trash diviner + scavenger + disassemble so that we can take advantage of all the trash we'll come across for bits and secrets to fuel out waterbonding/shady dealings

the water bonded skills noted above (Wayfaring from starter village, Cooking from mayor of kyakukya, Snake Oiler from Earl of Omonporch (by finding at least one merchant as the Mark of Death from Rebekah's Grave in Ezra can be traded to the Earl for the necessary rep) and Repair from Ezra's Daughter of Exile if it doesn't conflict with important factions too much)

Long Blades -> Swipe -> Dueling Stance (500 sp total) so that we can borrow a chain laser from da bears

anything else beyond that/you can actually mix in whatever you want based on how comfortable you are or what you need to stay alive/actually get those skills, like I tend to take Tactics and Spry relatively early to ensure even safer escapes, long before I think I can blow 500 points on the Long Blade disarm

at some point, take Jump, because with wings-6 you get a five tile jump which is pretty useful as an extra escape/positioning tool and you have a LOT of skillpoints to spare

the important thing to remember while playing this build is that you are playing like an rear end in a top hat. Whether or not you normally play like this (*cough*) this build is going to rely on some real lovely in-world actions. Namely, wanton theft and murder of anyone who has anything we want and isn't valuable enough to keep around and just pay for the things. no chest in grit gate should have any loot you didn't steal and re-sell to the bears, for example.

Example: When you get to the six day stilt, you're gonna get your levels, turn in any books you may have for bonus xp, and check out all the vendors. you see a gunsmith with some nice firearms? or maybe a haberdasher with some molly netting, or even just a shoemaker with some leather boots you still haven't found? time to capitalize on your electrical generation and quick-flight escape.

you're going to make sure no fatal NPCs are nearby, swap places with them till you can get them somewhere secluded (not even necessarily outside of their tent) and then discharge electricity into them. around mutation level 4ish starts to it starts
to one-shot the merchants, or at least leave them open to a hit or two. if you kill em, great! loot the thing you wanted, just the one, and make sure to check first to see if anyone aggroed. if not, loot away! if they did aggro, fly away. once you get the hang of this, you can regularly just murder shopkeepers to get a real quick start, like a budding corporate franchise exploiting na�ve laborers who are just trying to make a goddamned living.

don't go too crazy, though! leave at least one glover for a shot at precision nanon fingers (I don't know if they can actually roll this) and any bookbinders you may have, as those are super good once you start printing money from tinker bits for *even more* insane levels. beyond that though, kinda go ham. chefs who carry cloning draught tend to go missing around the stilt a *lot*

the reason we don't care is that currently, if you piss off factions you're otherwise neutral/friendly with, you can leave the area for about several in game days and then everyone will be back to neutral/friendly. presumably this is here so that mistakes don't completely ruin a run, but as a bionically enhanced low-psy undead robber baron, we are gonna exploit the gently caress outta that

this is also how we get that fancy chain laser, pre-jacked. I walked up to the emplacement next to Mafeo, disarmed it, popped my wall, picked up the chain laser, then recoiled out to Kyakukya. just be aware that equipping the chain laser drops your movespeed by 25 (which is a lot) until you rack up 23 strength to take the Tank skill.

but that's fine! where we're going, we don't need speed. just flight, so that we may rain down death on the less-technologically-able than us:

once you have wings-6 for no-fail flight and the chain laser, and ideally some decent agility so you don't miss so much, take a level in heavy weapons for the hell of it as we wait on Tank (or don't) but definitely fly over to the banana grove.

enter a banana grove tile and just go tile to tile, flying around gunning down all the red death daccas and irritable palms. technically the addiyyas or whatever those bugs are pose a bit of a threat, but as long as you're auto-exploring instead of moving manually so that you can notice when you find one, even if you spawn next to it, you should be able to either fly away or blast it down point-blank before it can land a hit thanks to your solid dex. imo monochrome (blurry sight debuff shows you're infected) is an annoyance rather than a serious threat, so I just make sure I at least have the guaranteed Corpus from Kyakukya to know how to fix it.

(the reason we're massacring the banana groves is sweet, sweet XP. 575 for palms, 600 for red death daccas, 625 for the bugs, full value till at least level 25 iirc before halving. yeah, technically most of these things will slaughter us in melee, but we am become winged death for this exact reason; they're all melee, the only consistent ranged threat is if/when your stray beams hit cyclopean gibbons who will throw rocks at you, but you can literally discharge from the air into them and fry them all then immediately return to laser-gatling everything into ashes)

this is also going to give you a HUGE amount of bananas from autoexplore harvesting, which you'll want to use for psychometry to open doors by eating at a campfire, but also for learning how to tinker up all your grenades and tonics. Make sure to keep 1 of each grenade and tonic you find until you get to Ezra to eat their banana-oven-meal for guaranteed free psychometry to learn how to make your own bullets, nades, tonics, chem cells, etc since they're all learnable at level 1-2 psychometry. the salves are especially useful, just kill dreadroots as you see them/autoexplore will harvest ripe ones and you'll get a slow drip of salve injectors from finding tubers.

whether you do it before or after 24 (I did it around level 13-14, I wanted to make sure i had thermal grenades to burn the ooze pools and the guaranteed masterwork scoped carbine combined with regular bullets from merchants is actually very strong), golgotha is (relatively) easy with wing-6 and force wall and a recoiler (and an issachari rifle you lifted along the way in the salts with the ~1000 rounds that you definitely remembered to buy from Mafeo):

buy the guaranteed pickaxe from Mafeo before you leave grit gate (make sure you talk to the intercom after getting the golgotha quest so you can talk to mafeo!)

go to golgotha surface, clear it

equip the pickaxe and use your Dig ability to get through the wall next to the security door

fly down the shaft to the cloaca

if things go sideways as you try to find a droid, just force-wall yourself and recoil out of there (glow moths will wreck you in particular at these low levels unless you really lucked out on gear, don't try to move in front of them, just force wall and recoil out) because you can always just go back and fly down the shaft again, even if you sent the elevator back up. you can also decide to explore golgotha like this if you never have, but like, gently caress that. lotta trash piles for bits and secrets, though.

anyway that's a whole lotta words about a video game. wow. let's toss in a few more:

I think the balance works; if you want to be a rounded-character the cost means that you won't come online till clvl ~24 in terms of stat level 29 skills (starting with 21 and getting +8 by level 24 by spending every attribute point on reaching it) or take mutations that guarantee a faster rate (for str/dex skills anyway) or specialize and make yourself weaker in other areas (all of this being in terms of guaranteed without relying finding eater's nectar or baetyls granting stats or whatever)

Thanks for this post. I've never used wings or the electric mutations before and they are super busted. This build got me all the way to Bethesda Susa for the 2nd time in my life.

Also thanks to everyone that suggested roleplay mode. I ended up using the same build and died 4 times in Bethesda Susa but finally got through it. I'm in completely new territory now. I did the next two story line quests defend the base and eat the shroom/follow golden road and uhhhh.... this is definitely stuff I've never experienced in any classic roguelike ever and I'm incredibly impressed. I'm in all flawless crysteel armor with two crysteel long swords. Overloaded jacked laser pistols. My AV is 18 and feels great.

I have no idea how my gear gets better from here.

poemdexter fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Aug 8, 2022

# ? Aug 8, 2022 18:13

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

there's one tier past flawless crysteel but there's not really any content currently in the game where it's normal loot, presumably because the part of the game where it is isn't implemented yet. vendors or treasure in tier 7 areas can have zetachrome but it's very rare

there are also a couple of "sidegrade" items that don't have the raw defensive stats of conventional armor but offer other strong effects to compensate, most notably precision nanon fingers (which triple the base chance of any percentage-based weapon effects to trigger, including crits and even more importantly, dismemberment)

# ? Aug 8, 2022 18:23

Tempora Mutantur: Feb 22, 2005

Dandywalken posted:

Fr kind of worried how shooty chars will handle endgame stuff, unless what you find way underground isnt indicative of whats planned for scripted content.

beyond EMP/being high enough level and geared that every ranged fighter becomes an effective tank, the endgame ranged powerhouse amplifier is nanon , i.e. a Tinker-III mod that grants % chance to dismember with ranged beam weapons

now think about that on a chain laser

now think about that with precision nanon gloves, which amplify all %-on-hit effects and other stuff

now think about that with another set of hands to wear a second pair of PNGs, which stack together (partially but still)

that's the real endgame of the Fist of Chiquita, just dismembering everything from a distance and sifting through whatever's left

# ? Aug 8, 2022 18:25

Tuxedo Catfish: Mar 17, 2007; You've got guts! Come to my village, I'll buy you lunch.

Dandywalken posted:

Now make it 4x chain lasers

Fr kind of worried how shooty chars will handle endgame stuff, unless what you find way underground isnt indicative of whats planned for scripted content.

ranged attacks are overwhelmingly better than melee in the lategame, i'm not sure what you're worrying about

like yeah melee does ludicrous damage but there are dozens of enemies that basically read "if you are in melee with this there's like a 50% chance of instantly losing the game or permanently loving up your character", while the list of enemies who can do that from a distance is both much shorter and made up of enemies that are just stupid bullshit no matter what, e.g. gamma moths

e: not to mention that qud doesn't actually enforce classes or archetypes at all and sufficiently advanced characters almost inevitably trend towards homegenization. like at level 30-40 there's only such a thing as a "shooty character" or "melee character" if you actively and sub-optimally insist on not doing both

Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Aug 8, 2022

# ? Aug 8, 2022 18:26

prisoner of waffles: May 8, 2007; Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the fishmech
About my neck was hung.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

ranged attacks are overwhelmingly better than melee in the lategame, i'm not sure what you're worrying about

like yeah melee does ludicrous damage but there are dozens of enemies that basically read "if you are in melee with this there's like a 50% chance of instantly losing the game or permanently loving up your character", while the list of enemies who can do that from a distance is both much shorter and made up of enemies that are just stupid bullshit no matter what, e.g. gamma moths

e: not to mention that qud doesn't actually enforce classes or archetypes at all and sufficiently advanced characters almost inevitably trend towards homegenization. like at level 30-40 there's only such a thing as a "shooty character" or "melee character" if you actively and sub-optimally insist on not doing both

about top-tier missile weapons of the present moment:

spaser rifles can apply �coated in plasma� which lowers electrical resist and reduces the rate at which a target�s temperature returns to normal;
freeze rays freeze things for a long time if the target is coated in plasma and you�re wearing a high-energy thermo cask;
high-voltage and normal arc winders do electrical damage with no need to penetrate armor;
phase cannons do plenty of normal damage at a quite high PV.

Switching missile weapons was annoying for me once upon a time and now I�m chill with it. This post brought to you by my last two �fast nerd gun tinker� runs.

If I get nanon I think I might stick it on my freeze ray???

# ? Aug 8, 2022 18:36

Tempora Mutantur: Feb 22, 2005

prisoner of waffles posted:

If I get nanon I think I might stick it on my freeze ray???

jesus christ I didn't even think about that

no need for direct damage if you're dismembering + freezing things to death, with line-AOE

(I lucked out in a deep jungle or palladium reef tile, a kind dynamic turret tinker provided me with a jacked freeze ray)

# ? Aug 8, 2022 18:41

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# ? Apr 24, 2024 23:05

Snake Maze

Jul 13, 2016

3.85 Billion years ago

Having seen the explosion on the moon, the Devil comes to Venus

Spazer rifle + high level flaming ray (with a thermo cask on top) is another fun combo for lategame gunning. Sets you up perfectly for beacon fire, and at those levels flaming ray works well as a disable too, since enemies will stop to beat at themselves for several turns.

# ? Aug 8, 2022 18:47

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Caves of Qud: He ain't heavy, he's my glover

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