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

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

So I picked this game up a couple days ago and kind of expected to bounce off of it because it looked really complicated and the controls took me a little while to figure out. I ended up playing it pretty much all day yesterday and it's extremely good. Psychically melting people's brains, jedi mind tricking farmers into scavenging caves for crayons. It's great. My furthest run was to the Rust Gate where I was promptly gunned down by several turrets when I opened a door. Have a game saved ready to strike out Red Rock as soon as I get off work.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2017 13:49

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 22:06

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Angry Diplomat posted:

Do you mean Rust Wells, Grit Gate, or the rusted arch? Rust Wells have never had turrets in my experience, and I can't remember the last time I saw one in Grit Gate, but yeah they sure do love showing up at the archway. There can be great loot down there but it's also a lot riskier than anything else in that corner of the map.

Turrets don't gently caress around; if you open a door and see them you should generally just leave and close the door again. Later on when you're tougher you can take out musket and rifle turrets no sweat, but laser turrets are always dangerous and chaingun or missile turrets will straight up kill your rear end irrespective of level if you give them the remotest opportunity to do so.

I was heading for Argyve's last quest but I may have gone to the wrong area. It was a big compound and the first door I opened had turrets loving everywhere.

Rusted Arch sounds right.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2017 17:12

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

heard u like girls posted:

In my experience it's usually easier to skip Rusted Archway and go to Grit Gate instead and let the robots help you kill stuff.

I go: Give Argyve 2 artifacts if i have em > Rust Well for wire > Red Rock for girsh corpse > Joppa > Check historical site > Grit Gate

I've been doing Red Rock before Rust Well, maybe I'll try it the other way around tonight. I've also been using the cool Esper build in the OP and it's been a blast so far. Do you guys have any other fun builds you like using?

# ¿ Mar 16, 2017 18:12

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

heard u like girls posted:

Basically if i can take on Eyeless Crabs and Knollworms without too much running away, i take the tunnel back for the sphere of weight.

Honestly I didn't even know there was a tunnel back to Joppa, I hosed off out of there as soon as I had a corpse to carry back.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2017 19:04

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

So I have been using Proselytize on the watervine farmers in Joppa so I have a distraction for mobs. Is there a way for me to manage their equipment or give them stuff?

# ¿ Mar 16, 2017 19:59

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Samopsa posted:

You can give them stuff by [l]ooking at him and [g]iving items, select them and [o]ffer them. They equip the best gear automatically.

If you have domination as a power you can control your dude and level him up/select skills/mutations/hand-pick gear etc.

Awesome, thanks. Figured I may as well be giving them studded leather and stuff.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2017 20:44

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Unormal posted:

Welp got native gamepad working and it's... actually pretty drat good feeling to play with. I'm going to have a 0.01 working prerelease ready for tomorrow's patch.

I actually kinda think Qud would work really well on a console now.

I'd buy every version of it, just saying.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 13:35

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

So I have run into an issue on my latest play through which I was planning on doing a Youtube series on and suddenly I can't trade with NPCs? I've gone through my key bindings, everything's vanilla, made three or four different characters and I'm having the same problem. Verified game cache on steam and that didn't fix it. I can initiate trades, select goods, but when I hit "o" nothing happens.

Have any of you guys had this problem?

Nevermind, figured it out. Had enabled prerelease button mapping and that seems to have messed it up. Disabling that fixed it.

Theotus fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Mar 18, 2017

# ¿ Mar 18, 2017 04:53

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Unormal posted:

Yeah the prerelease has some broken or plain missing binds scattered across random screens still.

All good, I feel kinda dumb that I didn't figure it out since I had checked a bunch of boxes and didn't think to uncheck them. As a side note, not to like, shill myself, but here's the first episode of the series I'm starting. Some weird audio issues I didn't catch on the upload, but I think I've got that sorted out.

I meant to just do a quick overview of character creation and ended up talking for 20 minutes. I love this game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em1rZjhVn3w

# ¿ Mar 18, 2017 05:25

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

heard u like girls posted:

Watching this finally cus i remembered this link.

e: Part II when ?

Hey, thanks for checking it out. I've been meaning to get back to it, but I got side tracked playing Eternal and getting hammered for the last few days. I'll definitely get to it this weekend at the latest.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2017 17:32

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

heard u like girls posted:

https://www.twitch.tv/ptychomancer

yay i managed to catch one live !

Episode two is up just for you buddy.

# ¿ Mar 24, 2017 03:37

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Ah, the Goro.

# ¿ Jan 3, 2020 21:58

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Holy poo poo dude.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2020 20:51

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Yeah you should probably go do that. Clearly this game is dangerous to your mental health and probably blood pressure.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 00:46

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Going to be diving back in after work today. The builds in the OP still the way to go for beginner players?

That willpower build sounds super fun.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 18:04

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

The builds in the OP are basically a shitpost I made like fifty versions ago. They were functional but not entirely serious then, and things have changed a lot since.

Here are the builds I would actually recommend for a beginner.

BJMOMMEMBICCDCDNDX

This is a "get out of jail free" build. Freezing Hands lets you win fights by completely disabling your opponent. Teleport + Clairvoyance lets you instantly nope out of any fight that goes badly.

BEMOMMEMBCBEBLBOCB

Classic "axe turtle" / centaur. Designed to take advantage of Charge in the Tactics tree -- it has strong synergy with both axes and the Horns mutation. Shield Slam also works well with this. Note that horns technically count as short blades, if I'm not mistaken, so you may wish to splash into that tree in addition to axes, down the road.

BBMOMMEMBNBOB2CCDN

A slight variation on a build I posted a few pages back -- by request, it is completely focused on passive bonuses. (I swapped out Double-Muscled for Multiple Arms -- swap it back if the slightly lowered Strength bothers you.) You'll want to spec into Long Blades right away for Defensive Stance, as the gimmick here is basically movespeed + DV.

For any build that doesn't start with it, Acrobatics -> Spry should be your first two skill purchases.

Try and get to level 3-4 before heading to Red Rock. You can fight crocs in the salt marsh, or even venture into the hills to fight snapjaws (they drop good early-game armor) but don't enter any other biomes.

Another alternative is to start as a Nomad, get the quest from the Zealot in the starting town, and then immediately visit the Six-Day Stilt. As a Nomad you have Wayfaring + the salt pans skill, so if you travel on the world map you are extremely unlikely to get lost. Upon reaching the Stilt the quest reward XP will instantly carry you to level 4, and almost to level 5. This doubles your hit points and makes you far more likely to survive.

Sweet, thanks!

# ¿ Jul 22, 2020 19:39

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

So I decided to try out the Axe Turtle, but I swapped out Amphibious for Evil Twin because it sounded more interesting. Game has changed a lot since I last played it. Is that UI stuff that was posted earlier something that is actually going to be adopted or is it just someone doing it on their own?

BEMOMMEMBCBEBLBOEC if anyone wanted the code, all credit to Tuxedo Catfish.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2020 02:07

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

So can anyone give me an opinion on Horns compared to something like Double Muscled? I'm looking at basically doing this:

Genotype: Mutated Human
Calling: Marauder
Strength: 20+2 Agility: 16
Toughness: 20 Intelligence: 14
Willpower: 16 Ego: 14
Mutations: Carapace , Multiple Arms, Night Vision
Skills: Dismember, Charge, Butchery

This is the core so far with 4 mutation points remaining. I could do something like Horns + Beak, or take a defect to get real spicy about it. Anyone have some suggestions?

Edit: Went with this for now: BEOKOIKIAAU1BCBNBP

Theotus fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Dec 11, 2020

# ¿ Dec 11, 2020 02:24

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Take a defect and get both, they have fantastic synergy.

If I am planning on building to hack dude's limbs off, is Chimera/Unstable Genome worth having, or would those points be better spent on the Horns/Beak?

# ¿ Dec 11, 2020 02:57

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

beer gas canister posted:

I'd skip those and take Irritable Genome, Mutiple Legs, and Two-hearted. Irritable Genome works because flat stat boosts are always good with this type of build, and so is Carapace. I'd also reallocate a couple of points out of Toughness and into Strength. There is a similar melee build in my post history that uses Long Blades that's worked extremely well for me.

Something like this? BEQKMIKIBCBNBOBPB4CN

# ¿ Dec 11, 2020 03:49

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Well that run made it to level 10. Made it out to Six Day Stilt, traded a bunch of books, got axes in all my hands. Back tracked to Redrock and got the corpse and worked my way back through the tunnels. Right at the end my brain was detonated by some random P'toh dude chilling down there. Good run, I guess.

Anyone got a cool Esper build I can add to the library?

# ¿ Dec 11, 2020 09:53

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Dachshundofdoom posted:

Quoting myself from a couple pages ago:

Here's a Light Manipulation+Sunder Mind+Force Wall+Clairvoyance esper-style build: BFLLMKNKB2CNDCDJDLDU

I threw in Triple-Jointed and Irritable Genome, but realistically your drawback and non-core mutations don't matter for this and you can swap them around as you please, I just took a 4-point drawback to fit in a 3-point physical mutation. Tonic Allergy would let you optimize the build more (and most tonics are pretty useless so who cares if they're not safe), but I strongly suspect the 33% chance to randomly screw yourself over with salves isn't worth it. You might be able to make up for it with cooking, though. The important part is the 4 mental mutations. This build starts out with poor Strength and mediocre Agility because you didn't spend 8 years in Esper school to go around hitting people with your hands like an animal. This build also starts out with 16 Ego because Glimmer sucks and you want to keep it below 50 even in the endgame. The main focus is using Willpower to minimize the cooldown on Force Wall, because eventually Force Wall will literally last longer than its cooldown and you can freely encase any single enemy in a deathcube forever and boil its brain right out of its skull. You can also just pop up a wall and shoot everything on the other side to death. You'll note that I didn't actually take Esper; I did on my first run with this character, but it was a waste of a point and did nothing for me, there's really no need to buy more mutations and if you do save up to buy one you'd probably rather have a physical mutation anyway. In particular you're strongly encouraged to have at least one physical mutation before level 5 because of the excited genome change, it's literally up to 9 free mutation points you're leaving on the table otherwise.

Anyway, you start out squishy and awful because you're a brain wizard. You solve this problem by vaporizing anything even vaguely threatening with Light Manipulation. If you meet a slumberling or an albino ape, that's free XP. All single dangerous targets can be encased in Force Walls and murdered by dropping Sunder Mind and tapping 5 until their head explodes. Use Clairvoyance in conjunction with Force Wall and Sunder Mind to do this from across the level. Put your first two attribute points into Intelligence and Willpower, then put the rest into Willpower, Agility, or wherever you feel lacking. You go into Long Blades exclusively for the +2 DV and eventually for disarm, then you steal Saad-Amus's sword and now you can freely melee whatever you like. Don't worry about buying more mutations, just put points into Light Manipulation, Force Wall, Sunder Mind, and Clairvoyance in roughly that order of priority. Wear Knollworm Skulls and any other Ego-boosting equipment you find (like the Flume-Flier), buy a face from the mad watervine farmer on the way to Mamon Souldrinker. Feel free to eat hunters' brains once they start showing up, but in general don't let your Ego get out of control or you WILL get screwed over eventually. You're gonna do a LOT of waiting on cooldowns but reading lines like "Jotun Who Parts Limbs' head explodes!" makes it all worth it.

I'm trying this out and it's going well. Could you elaborate on why you went with Triple-Jointed?

# ¿ Dec 13, 2020 04:57

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Having a great time with the dragon build, actually my furthest run so far.

Anyone have suggestions for a mental mutation focused build to try after this character gets smoked trying to headbutt the wrong thing?

# ¿ Aug 11, 2022 05:28

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Rolling through Grit Gate head first.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2022 22:03

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Those sprites rule.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2022 06:11

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Anyone have a suggestion for a dual wield pistol or general ranged build?

# ¿ Aug 12, 2022 07:41

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Zeerust posted:

If we're assuming Mutated Human, I would recommend a stat line that heavily favours Agility and mutations that enhance your mobility. For example:
code:
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- Triple-Jointed allows you to use your Agility skills without triggering cooldowns.
- Wings makes you untouchable to melee threats when you're out in the open. As a priority, level Wings to the point where your fall risk is zero percent.
- Electrical Generation is a powerful short-ranged attack, but can also power Jacked ranged weapons, which your high Intelligence will allow you to tinker in the later game, with a little luck.
- Multiple Legs is a general get-out-of-jail-free card. If you're getting mobbed underground, run away!
- Tonic Allergy can be a pain, but you shouldn't have to rely on tonics too much, and Irritable Genome is much more inconvenient for this build.

You could change up this build by swapping one of these mutations for Force Wall or Force Bubble, but they're very situational and take a while to recharge, whereas Multiple Legs gives you the permanent power of Hit Da Bricks.

Put one of your rapid advances into Triple-Jointed, then I would recommend probably putting the rest into Electrical Generation. A larger resolve of Zap Power is never bad.

For melee combat, I would recommend going into Long Blades, mostly because Defensive and Dueling Stance let you disarm and escape enemies.

This game is so wild.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2022 09:31

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Are people still trying to troll the discord so hard such screening is still necessary? That's wild.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2023 08:47

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

If you're a telepath who is missing their tongue and you attempt to proselytize a creature who you can't make telepathic contact with, the failure message is now clearer.

I love this game.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2023 12:46

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Edit: Never mind answered my own question.

Also I just found out about Patreon pets, that rules. Definitely going to have either a chair, or mirror that shouts at people follow me from now on.

Theotus fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Sep 23, 2023

# ¿ Sep 23, 2023 08:31

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Is single weapon fighting pretty much the way to go for punch man true kin builds currently?

# ¿ Apr 8, 2024 20:53

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 22:06

Theotus: Nov 8, 2014

Snake Maze posted:

Yeah, I don't think multiweapon has anything to offer for that setup. Single weapon fighting gets you more attacks with more penetration, and leaves your offhand free for a shield or glowsphere or something.

Nice! Reading through the skills since the rework and there's so many I want on pretty much every build now. Nostrums in the Physic tree seems extremely convenient for dealing with fungal misfortune.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2024 22:18

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