Caves of Qud (ROGUELIKE) - coming December 5th

[ᚱᚨᚷᛖᚠᚢᛈ]

dagger build with only 1 decent stat instead of 3

Dual wield? Multiple arms? Its strange, if you read the skill descriptions for Dual Wield and Short swords skills, you'd end up with 100+% attack chance for secondary arm. Does that apply if you have 4 arms?

Also, now I want a fully geared out Goarman Shaman. Those things are nasty as fuck. Stats better than Savages and Skills too, and also 50HP. That thing is nasty.
Would a dagger build even get past the armor?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Dual wield is a waste of skillpoints. Just crank DV as high as possible and rely on Rejoinder to murder everything for you. Enemies will attack you 5 times a turn and kill themselves while you ignore them.

 

[cpmartins]

Development of this game progresses almost as fast as grimoires

Will check back in 10 years to see if autoexplore still ignores turrets (resulting in them having free turns, possibly killing you), what kind of new stupid mutation/item/implant/anything-but-actual-content was added, and whether there is a new quest before the "lol gaem not finished" message pops up. It's quite likely that my little adventure will be ended by a random out of depth bullshit chrome pyramid next to the starting village, or on some bugged dungeon floor which features no exits

Friendly with the Robots. that piece of shit kills me anyways because I was in the general vicinity of one of their enemies.
Good game overall. Could do with more content though.

 

[ᚱᚨᚷᛖᚠᚢᛈ]

Multilegged, multiarmed, regenerating, 4 axe wielding maradeur found a Hand E Nuke, took extra room to throw it... The End.

 

[ᚱᚨᚷᛖᚠᚢᛈ]

The goatmen shamans you can run into... 8 level Disintegration == 8d10+16 dmg to organics in a 7x7 area. That was a death sentence to my snapjaws. A good sacrifice, now I have Mister Pain beguiled, convincing doesnt work though.

Getting a second follower is hard. He constantly gets killed by stray Disintegrates... But the Shaman is also better at handling Disintegrate than snapjaws were with Teleport (Suicide) and Stunning Blow which was stunning me and them primarly.
The Shaman AI doesnt always throw the ability for some reason, and it also equips better shit, so the goatman can be mule now too.
He also has Horns equipped but also extra Massive Horns in his inventory, which can be put into his offhand

 

[ᚱᚨᚷᛖᚠᚢᛈ]

There is an unseemly ice chameleon, rimewyr or seomthing, that does like 25 ice dmg per attack and rapes anything in sight. Yet Dominating it shows an attack of 2d2 (and 5 penetration). And its best stat is agility with +5 or something. Wtf?

 

[ᚱᚨᚷᛖᚠᚢᛈ]

Jotun, He Who Parts Limbs is very easy to mentally dominate. Jotun dual wields twohanders, and has 44 Str... Survives Disintegration easy peasy. Hello, personal troll bodyguard!

 

[ᚱᚨᚷᛖᚠᚢᛈ]

Oh its a boss level with 3 bosses and the third one is full-on bullshit, he is invisible... And since I have no damage output and the thralls are too dumb to even tie shoes its all dandy and shit...
At least the goatfolk shaman has glotrot and not me... Of course I cant dominate and use him anymore since he thirsts when under my control and for some reason, he cant drink... But he can eat vinecrackers or something and they give a bit of water...

 

[buffalo bill]

Figure I'd re-post my early access review for CoQ here to try to get more people on the codex interested--to me this game has as much potential as underrail did when it was in early access (I also overplayed that before it came out) and most of the criticisms from early in this thread, including about poor ASCII graphics, are no longer applicable. The review below is obviously rather over-the-top positive, and there are definitely things that could be improved--like more/different kinds of quests, more dialogue and C&C--but the current state of the game warrants greater attention from the codex.
(brief) REVIEW: I am cutting and freezing my way through the post-apocalyptic mushroom jungle wearing my clone's face, on a quest from a race of subterranean albino ape technologists, feeling like a powerful mutant warrior wielding a surreptitiously acquired fist of the ape god. Then I suddenly come upon a group of sludge-beings that spontaneously evolve from primordial goo and lava and who are just barely able to collectively melt me to nothingness despite my psychically boosted toughness, sleeping gas spraying out and a clutch of grenades. Of course this is all typical in Qud.
Pros: huge game world, intuitive UI, incredibly unique and deep setting w/ lore contained in books, characters, descriptions and the physical environment (and the philosophy references e.g. to the logic of Russell and to Socrates are awesome for someone who knows any philosophy), huge amount of ability to customize character both at start of game and throughout play, huge amount of player agency (as there should be in any proper roguelike, but this world and its emergent gameplay feels more natural than e.g. ADOM, which I also enjoy but no where near as much as Qud), beautiful graphics (for me anyway), really truly great music (though it needs more), new features and bugs squashed every week, optional permadeath and saving/loading, dynamic faction allegiances, infectious diseases with procedurally generated cures, tons of items to craft and various ways to modify gear, cybernetic implants, strategic turn-based combat (of course, since roguelike)
Cons: main quest is not yet finished, and after countless hours in Qud starting a new character in Joppa for the umpteenth time feels a bit tedious (but still worth it)
Overall: game is amazing, up there for me with classics like Fallout 1/2, ADOM, Darklands, Ultima Underworld. If the game continues to develop to completion I'm sure it will be considered one of the all-time great RPGs by those with refined taste.

 

[Tom Baker's Arse]

Outstanding game, really getting into the deep mechanics. Writing is tops of any roguelike I've ever played, without a doubt. The world-building is amazing. Still in EA but updates are weekly.

 

[Musaab]

It just gets better and better as we go. The devs are really putting in the work on this one.

 

[Blaine]

I've owned this game for years because I knew just from reading about it that it was something special, but it's been relegated to the back burner.

Problem is, I use a tenkeyless keyboards these days, and rebinding the many functions and combinations that use numpad keys (without even properly knowing how to play yet, or having muscle memory for any of them) is a huge chore. The laptop layout is pure bullshit, although I understand why it's included.

I'm soldiering on through, though. I'm using directionals for movement plus Insert, Delete, Home, and End for diagonal movement. Most of the keybindings are rebound aside from Wait commands, Force Attack Up, Force Attack Down, and a handful of others I haven't decided where to place yet.

I'm almost tempted to use this game as an excuse to buy a full-size Ducky mechanical keyboard. I do have an old Logitech rubber dome full-size keyboard from the dark ages before I became a mechanical hipster, but I hate it.

Everything about this game so far suggests massive incline.

 

[you know what time it is]

Is it still directionless and filled with kobolds to the brim? I mean, i'm all in for hobo simulators but this isn't one (at least it wasn't when I played it a year ago), not much to do but to kill shit and complete some quests.

 

[sser]

Oooh, fresh meat. Soften 'im up, boys (and girls, I see you pink birds).

N/m. Way too for me.

 

[Blaine]

Is it still directionless and filled with kobolds to the brim? I mean, i'm all in for hobo simulators but this isn't one (at least it wasn't when I played it a year ago), not much to do but to kill shit and complete some quests.

Well, there's also a huge overworld map (I estimate a total area of 2400 squares/rooms on the surface alone) with unknown fathoms of subterranean labyrinths to explore; descriptions for every unique NPC, each type of generic NPC, and every type of item; a whole lot of character customization, handy when you're dying a lot anyway; a solidly incline control scheme, UI, graphical implementation, and functional workings of the game's engine; cool "simulation-like" touches such as destructible terrain, fiddling in-depth with inventory items and containers, etc.; and a gnarly far-out setting and theme.

I've barely done much more than rob a preacher, loot some farmers' houses, pet a cat, and bonk some wildlife, and I'm pretty excited about how it's all coming together. It's almost like a board game that's just fun to set up and use, even if the game itself turns out to be merely okay.

I took my time rebinding my controls at my leisure while screwing around. I've finally got every single one custom-rebound in an orderly fashion (and memorized/know what each one does). I RTFM (what there is of it) and consulted some spoiler-free basic guides.

 

[Blaine]

I spent about thirty minutes running around the periphery of Joppa murdering seahorses, lily pads, dragonflies, and the occasional crocodile with my Pure Aryan Praetorian HULK SMASH! introductory character while familiarizing myself with how all the shit works. He came with a lot of fancy equipment and shit, a halfway-decent consolation prize for having no mutations or psychic powers. I picked up the basic butchery skill and will probably pick up harvestry next to complete the noob circle of life, which is running around collecting hooves and magic plants while pursuing miscellaneous quests.

 

[Musaab]

I've remapped the controls to VIM style on my XPS 13. It works fine.

 

[buffalo bill]

Mutations get crazy powerful, so true kin nearly counts as a harder difficulty level, even with the additional attribute points. But as far as I can tell all semi-reasonable builds will work, and weird ones can be used to get cool synergies (e.g. using mutation to leave webs on the ground around turrets you've deployed). If you haven't, definitely bind a key for the single-turn wait command, since it's useful both to end short cooldowns and do things like bat yourself out when you are on fire. As to trash mobs: I think they go with the genre, for better or worse, but this game has a fair amount of harder and rarer encounters with enemies that have unique abilities/strategies (e.g. cragsmench with crazy high armor, twinning lampreys that must be killed as a pair, freezing and invisible troll bosses). Even low-level enemies have unique behaviors that require different tactics when you are low-level, like baboons that throw stones at you and run away or stationary plants that seed-spit at you. And as you level up/kill same enemy types the xp reward goes down, so grinding is discouraged.

 

[Tom Baker's Arse]

Mutations get crazy powerful, so true kin nearly counts as a harder difficulty level, even with the additional attribute points. But as far as I can tell all semi-reasonable builds will work, and weird ones can be used to get cool synergies (e.g. using mutation to leave webs on the ground around turrets you've deployed). If you haven't, definitely bind a key for the single-turn wait command, since it's useful both to end short cooldowns and do things like bat yourself out when you are on fire. As to trash mobs: I think they go with the genre, for better or worse, but this game has a fair amount of harder and rarer encounters with enemies that have unique abilities/strategies (e.g. cragsmench with crazy high armor, twinning lampreys that must be killed as a pair, freezing and invisible troll bosses). Even low-level enemies have unique behaviors that require different tactics when you are low-level, like baboons that throw stones at you and run away or stationary plants that seed-spit at you. And as you level up/kill same enemy types the xp reward goes down, so grinding is discouraged.

Agreed. At low levels True Kin may be the way to go, but at the higher levels Mutations are mind-blowingly awesome. The thing about this this game is that the mechanics and world building are both so deep, and that is why it keeps you coming back for more, PC death after PC death.

 

[Damned Registrations]

True Kin do have another advantage that isn't very obvious to a new player: Injectors (potions) are far more powerful for them. It's not enough to make up for the infinitely scaling mutant with like 10 points in every fucking mutation you could want, but it's probably good enough to carry you through all the normal content if you know how to abuse it properly (i.e. learn the recipes to make them and get the trait that lets you use more than one.)

 

[Blackmill]

Guys, the wiki mentions a Metamorphosis mutation, but I can't find it in character creation. Has it been removed from the game? Is mine bugged?

 

[buffalo bill]

It's part of the unfinished content. I think you can turn on that content from the options menu.

 

[Urthor]

This game is unbelieve, can't figure out how to buy 1 musket instead of 3 at a time though, that's just annoying. Playing it on a TKL keyboard gets you though.

And yeah, just lol at all the guides telling you to not use mutants.

 

[buffalo bill]

This game is unbelieve, can't figure out how to buy 1 musket instead of 3 at a time though, that's just annoying. Playing it on a TKL keyboard gets you though.

And yeah, just lol at all the guides telling you to not use mutants.

Use the +/- keys to increase/decrease individual items from a stack in the trading screen

 

[Trash]

Most roguelikes turn me off because the setting barely seems to matter and it is just powergaming, grinding and slashing. This whole Dying Earth one however seems amazing. Do they use the setting for more than just background or can I have my immersion like the story, exploration and setting fag that I am?