Caves of Qud is so incredibly cool

Games Video Games
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I already mentioned it in the main vg thread, but I’ve been playing Caves of Qud properly for a few days now. This is my third attempt at getting into it, the first was aeons ago, when the project first started; the second a few years ago, where I failed due to insisting on playing permadeath mode (don’t do that); and this time it’s truly sunk its fangs into me.

So what is it? It’s a turn-based RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world where the main currency is fresh water, and talking plants and animals is probably the least weird thing you’ll encounter. It looks and plays a bit like a traditional roguelike, but with a tileset instead of ASCII graphics. It uses a combination of bespoke/fixed content and procedural generation to create the world.

And it is completely unhinged. I’m just impressed every time I push into a new zone. So below are a few spoilery anecdotes from my early game.

oh apparently you can lose limbs in this game?

Early on I found an “ubernostrum injector”. Reading its description said that it lets you regrow a lost limb. I’m like, cool! Apparently you can lose limbs in this game!

At some point I contracted an illness that rotted my tongue away. I literally couldn’t do actual dialogue with NPCs anymore, vendor prices shot up, etc. Thankfully, I had a book that describes cures for various diseases. It said that the disease I contracted could be cured by drinking a concoction of 1 part honey, 1 part cider and 3 parts water from a “flaming vessel”, then regrowing my tongue by whatever means.

So I did that. I literally found a glass bottle, put it into a fireplace until it became “flaming”; manually poured in honey, cider and water; drank it; then injected myself with ubernostrum.

And it worked! I didn’t craft an item that’s a cure or anything, I literally just mixed some fluids together (fluid handling is a big deal in this game), and then used another thing for its stated purpose. So cool

you can smell this place

The game has a pretty atmospheric soundscape. A quest around level 15-20 takes you to a place called Golgotha. It’s an ancient abandoned factory/waste disposal grounds? You constantly have to wade through sludge, are under assault by malfunctioning machinery and slime monsters, as well as sewer eels trying to sweep you off your feet (and into the sludge; which is how I contracted that tongue illness).

The soundscape really sells the atmosphere of this clanging, yet squishy, dilapidated facility. It just feels gross. It’s great.

my current weapon

There’s a variety of “artifacts”, and some of them need power. For that, there’s a variety of fuel cells, the most common being the “chem cell”. It gets used up, and you can manually refill it with some tinkering materials. But there’s more advanced ones.

Right now, I am wielding a laser pistol fuelled by a “biodynamic cell”. You put blood into it to power things.

So I’m shooting blood lasers.

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Qud rocks. Incredibly cool and a great game to play for 30 minutes or 3 hours

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I’ve only scratched the surface, but I love CoQ! The mix of authored and procedural environments reminds me of Fallout, it’s such a joy to explore.

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I don’t know if anybody else from the dev team is on cohost, but I know that one of the writers is: Caelyn, @ectafoole. She’s great

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It’s great. I should really just bite the bullet and play not-roguelike, I’m not good enough at the game to get too far for the most part before I hit something nasty and eat total shit.

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I couldn’t imagine playing it in not-RPG mode.

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Yeah, for sure. And dying still hurts just enough to make it feel authentic–you often lose not only the attempt at the dungeon when you die, but also the actual version of it that you rolled.

Yesterday, I picked a fight with an optional boss, died, and on my second run through the same dungeon didn’t get multiple pieces of really cool loot that I got the first time around.

(Also, it’s just too big a game to play it on Classic, to be honest.)

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It didn’t exist when I started playing is the thing! So it feels like a cop-out even though that’s nonsensical.

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y’all convinced me to put this on my Steam Wishlist lmao. very happy it’s steam deck verified, seems perfect for that sort of environment

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The first statue near the starting town in my game was made to commemorate a former Sultan buying a cool mask at a market, and having it stolen later that day at the bar. It was incredible.

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I tried it out on deck since I’m traveling this weekend

It works surprisingly well; for a button-heavy genre like this, anyway.

Left stick is mapped to “indicate direction”, and then you press something else on top to actually do something (like right trigger to take a step). This solves the issue of diagonal inputs being inconsistent on sticks, an issue I know very well from other RLs on consoles.

The default controls are picked very tastefully to give you access to the most options with relatively little hassle, “go-to interesting location” for example covers most movement in towns.

Definitely still a better experience on a full PC, but I did a couple hours on a new character last night without feeling like I’m hugely limited!

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I play Qud on controller on PC, and made sure I knew the combination (or remapped it) to cycle my abilities on the bottom bar. Incredibly helpful to make sure that’s mapped when using a controller.

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augh I had Qud on my wishlist for ages and then, when I finally picked it up, bounced off it. I want to love it so badly but I can’t quite get there. any tips for a total beginner (and not a veteran of the kind of game Qud is)?

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I wish I had something useful to say here! I bounced off it twice myself, as I said before. In my case it really was just about defeating my inner capital-g Gamer (ie. don’t play on permadeath, you have nothing to prove).

It’s kind of difficult for me to give concrete advice, like, outside of actually watching somebody play and answering direct questions as they come up, sorry :pray:

Probably just… give it a couple attempts whenever you feel like it?

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totally fair tbh! I’ll maybe give it another go tomorrow, I have a few days off work and time to kill. :)

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1st tip from me, as someone who got into it earlier this year: Use the Roleplaying mode. Sure you may lose some progress, but it’s better than having to reroll. Once you get the hang of it some you can always reroll for a specific character type.

2nd: You will Die. A Lot. A Lot Lot Lot. Sometimes you’ll just go up a screen and find an elite enemy or find that your missed ranged attack hit a neutral enemy type, and suddenly you’ll have two swarms of enemies on you.

3rd: Camping through the night to eat is a pretty good idea, because with the survival skills you can start to give yourself buffs from meals, and the fire can help you pass time til morning when it’s easier to see and navigate.

4th: This one is a more “as you play you’ll gain intuition” things, but as you go you’ll start to pick up on the best price-to-weight ratio items as you go. So you’ll pass on the bronze longsword because something else nearby dropped an iron dagger which sells for more.

5th: Your water (money) counts towards carrying capacity, so trading for “Trade goods” like copper ore or whatever is a good idea. Since they always keep the same value, trading say, 50 water for 1 Silver Ore is price neutral, but carrying weight positive.

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Thanks for this! I picked the game up recently after hearing so much good stuff about it and having “beginner advice” is always nice for me getting into something big and deep like this.

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If you’re playing on controller (or Steam Deck), I also recommend checking your control bindings and binding “ability panel switch” to like, LB/L2 + Up/Down so you can access more of your stuff easily.

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“beginner advice” articles are the new “reading the manual for the game on the drive home”

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So so real

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