Caves of Qud (ROGUELIKE)

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://steamcommunity.com/games/333640/announcements/detail/1318840070702095326

• Added a new music track for Golgotha.
  
• We incorporated the combat changes from the beta branch into this week's main-branch patch. Here's a summary of all the changes.
  • Some penetration bonuses on weapons were bugged, such as the +1 and +2 bonuses axes and cudgels got, respectively. We fixed these bugs, but we removed the axe and cudgel bonuses since they're part of an older design. Instead, we replaced them with different critical hit behavior for each weapon class.
    • Cudgels now get +1 penetration and daze on critical hits.
      
    • Axes now get +1 penetration and cleave on critical hits.
      
    • Long blades now get +3 penetration on critical hits.
      
    • Daggers now get +1 penetration and cause bleeding on critical hits.
  • We tweaked all melee weapon stats to account for these changes.
    
  • Two-handed weapons now grant a flat +1 penetration bonus instead of having a higher strength mod cap. Their damage was also shifted up a tier.
    
  • The sharp melee mod works again.
    
  • Gaslight kris and gaslight flyssa work properly again.
    
  • We also tweaked some of the melee weapon skills.
    • Axe: The Cleave penalty is now capped at half your strength mod, rounded up.
      
    • Short blade: Shank's cooldown is now 10 rounds if you shank from your primary hand. It's still 20 otherwise.
      
    • Short Blade Proficiency now grants +1 to hit and you make primary-hand short blade attacks as if your quickness were 25% higher. This means you make five attacks for every four that your normal-speed opponents make. These faster primary-hand attacks can trigger offhand attacks.
      
    • Long Blade: Reduced Improved Aggressive Stance's to-hit penality from -4 to -3.
• New weapon mod: masterwork. Masterwork weapons score critical hits twice as often.
  
• Added a new tile and flame animation for great magma crabs.
  
• Glowfish can effectively bite now.
  
• Chitinous puma can once again equip their natural claws.
  
• If you use psychometry while confused, identified artifacts are no longer named things like 'Uhummwuhwah'.
  
• While on the world map, you can now 'l'ook at the tile you're standing on.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the critical hit target to change from 20 when you were charging.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the critical hit target to sometimes change when using a missile weapon.
  
• Fixed some cases where NPCs' strength modifiers were used to determine the difficulty of dodging their projectiles.
  
• Fixed an issue where creature AI wouldn't get mad at you when you used a combat power and missed with it.
  
• Fixed the journal getting unbound when you reset to default keybindings.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the system menu to pop up when you escaped the inventory screen in the new UI.
  
• Fixed some cases where abilities allowed you to attack phased creatures.
  
• [modding] Changed the event parameter names for PerformMeleeAttack to "Attacker" and "Defender".
  
• [modding] Refactored the 'PenHitBonus' parameter in Combat events to use the 'PenCapBonus' and 'HitBonus' parameters instead.
  
• [modding] Moved the chance to trigger Jab (the Short Blade power) into an attacker based event.
  
• [modding] The AttackerGetWeaponPenModifier event now allows modification of the attack's PenBonus and CapBonus.
  
• [modding] Refactored melee combat so that the chance to perform an offhand attack with robo-hands or the Multiple Arms mutation resides in the AttackerQueryWeaponSecondaryAttackChanceMultiplier event, allowing for similar behavior via mods.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Been playing this only for an hour but I already love it. You instantly feel like you have arrived at a new world instead of some randomly generated array of levels. The overlay UI is the best I've seen in a roguelike.

 

[Biscotti]

Last three deaths were all due to slime: One time I slipped right into a gatling gun's line of fire and got perforated, other two times I kept slipping while trying to escape up a set of stairs until eventually everything chasing me managed to gang up on me. Truly my most formidable foe so far.

 

[thesheeep]

Last three deaths were all due to slime: One time I slipped right into a gatling gun's line of fire and got perforated, other two times I kept slipping while trying to escape up a set of stairs until eventually everything chasing me managed to gang up on me. Truly my most formidable foe so far.

Hahaha, the slime, bane of any cave mutant.
When there are a few characters around, and everyone is slipping, you can faintly hear the Yakety Sax in the background...

 

[Palikka]

You guys got any good games?

ê Game summary for Blatodia Baxinus ê

This game ended on Saturday, July 08, 2017 at 8:30:17 PM.
You were killed by Xcixkklgiclkv, the echoing Eyeless King Crab Lord.
You were level 28.
You scored 174173 points.
You survived for 194243 turns.
You found 41 lairs.
The most advanced artifact in your possession was: bloody powered exoskeleton 0 -2 [chem cell (Used) <DA1>] <BA6>.

This character was fucking awesome! A true kin praetorian, clensing the wasteland from the mutant scum.
Lost both of my hands, right hand to a salty madpole and left one to a sawhander, and spent 15 hours running around the settlements and caravans looking for ubernostrum injectors to grow my hands back. In my desperation for food and money I even attacked a snapjaw fort, killing everything by ramming them with my body armor. After a LOT of running around handless I was able to tinker myself some injectors to get my hands back.
Then I get lazy and while watching my other monitor I dont notice my hp going down to a crab that wasnt even that tough
Really stupid death since my character was pretty damn powerful for the place I was in.

I have now played for about 70 hours and the game is absolutely fantastic.
It's still very rough around the edges. Like the UI being a bit crap at times, sounds not working on all weapons and the map generation giving weird errors/force loading (whatever this is). Also the AI can bug out every now and then, like once I killed a quest important npc but after the fight the npc just appeared back and stood there like nothing had happened.
It's definately playable in this condition, just that after another year of dev time this game is going to be fucking glorious.

 

[Iznaliu]

I own the game but I've never got around to playing it. Any suggestions?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

I own the game but I've never got around to playing it. Any suggestions?

Play it?

 

[Reapa]

You guys got any good games?

ê Game summary for Blatodia Baxinus ê

This game ended on Saturday, July 08, 2017 at 8:30:17 PM.
You were killed by Xcixkklgiclkv, the echoing Eyeless King Crab Lord.
You were level 28.
You scored 174173 points.
You survived for 194243 turns.
You found 41 lairs.
The most advanced artifact in your possession was: bloody powered exoskeleton 0 -2 [chem cell (Used) <DA1>] <BA6>.

This character was fucking awesome! A true kin praetorian, clensing the wasteland from the mutant scum.
Lost both of my hands, right hand to a salty madpole and left one to a sawhander, and spent 15 hours running around the settlements and caravans looking for ubernostrum injectors to grow my hands back. In my desperation for food and money I even attacked a snapjaw fort, killing everything by ramming them with my body armor. After a LOT of running around handless I was able to tinker myself some injectors to get my hands back.
Then I get lazy and while watching my other monitor I dont notice my hp going down to a crab that wasnt even that tough
Really stupid death since my character was pretty damn powerful for the place I was in.

I have now played for about 70 hours and the game is absolutely fantastic.
It's still very rough around the edges. Like the UI being a bit crap at times, sounds not working on all weapons and the map generation giving weird errors/force loading (whatever this is). Also the AI can bug out every now and then, like once I killed a quest important npc but after the fight the npc just appeared back and stood there like nothing had happened.
It's definately playable in this condition, just that after another year of dev time this game is going to be fucking glorious.

unique king crab is not tough?

 

[Palikka]

I could outrun it so no. Like an idiot I tried to melee it instead of killing it from range.

 

[Space Satan]

So, compared to ADoM, is it better or worse?

 

[thesheeep]

So, compared to ADoM, is it better or worse?

Much, much better.

But then again, I really don't like ADOM, so maybe they aren't really too comparable.

 

[cpmartins]

Game was pretty tough on lower (-20 or deeper) levels. Then I found the Geomagnetic Disk.

 

[buffalo bill]

So, compared to ADoM, is it better or worse?

I like ADOM, and maybe it's debatable which has better game mechanics, but Caves of Qud slays ADOM (and most RPGs) in writing, story, setting, music. I also like Caves of Qud's visuals better, but for me only the ASCII version of ADOM is tolerable to look at, so maybe I'm weird on that.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://store.steampowered.com/news/externalpost/steam_community_announcements/2472890725404482987

Feature Friday - July 14, 2017
16 JULY - ALPHABEARD

• Espers are now being watched.
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  • New item mod that shows up in very particular circumstances: extradimensional.
    
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    • You can choose to watch the psyches of your enemies radiate into nothingness.
      
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  • New food item: humble pie. Why be full of yourself when you can just be full?
• Get-item dialogs now display your total weight.
  
• Fixed some issues while displaying some non-standard ASCII characters in the new UI.
  
• Circuitry-obsessed sultans now wire things to other things instead of just wiring things to themselves.
  
• Fixed an occasional exception in combat.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Yeah they added a bunch of new story stuff.

 

[Whipping Post]

So, compared to ADoM, is it better or worse?

ADOM has been in development for over 20 years, so it's more complete content-wise, and better balanced than Qud. ADOM is also very unforgiving and rewards a cautious playstyle, so I think it's one of those games people either love or hate depending on how masochistic they are.

Qud on the other hand, gives the player access to powerful abilities right off the bat, you accumulate new ones very quickly, and it's also less focused on traps, so it's a more fast-paced game than ADOM. Qud's setting is much more interesting than ADOM's, it also has it beat aesthetically. Another thing in Qud's favor is its character building system, which is more flexible than ADOM's class based system.

They're both great games, but I think Qud has a long ways to go yet in terms of development before it catches up with ADOM.

 

[Iznaliu]

So, compared to ADoM, is it better or worse?

Nothing can beat ADOM.

 

[buffalo bill]

Maybe I just don't like traditional fantasy settings, but for me it goes CoQ>CDDA>ADOM>Nethack>ToME (of roguelikes I've played other than Brogue, since I've barely touched it, and Neo-Scavenger, since it seems way less like a traditional roguelike than these others). Even in its unfinished state, I'd be happy to put CoQ next to Fallout or Darklands as one of the all-time great cRPGs, and I don't feel the same about ADOM, even though ADOM is really a good roguelike. The world of CoQ feels alive, new and mysterious: maybe if you like settings and writing then CoQ>ADOM, and ADOM>CoQ for mechanics--though as was pointed out, CoQ offers way more variability and control in character-building, so the mechanical comparison is debatable.
CoQ is definitely somewhat unbalanced, but I don't take that to be necessarily a bad thing.

 

[B0rt]

So, compared to ADoM, is it better or worse?

ADOM has been my favorite roguelike since the mid-90s, though I'm always down for a game of SLASHEM / Nethack (CLAN EIT still OWNZ J00 btw)

CoQ has finally begun to unseat ADOM for me over the last year. It's not just the aesthetics, a lot of it is just has to be the sheer virtuosity of the game. I definitely feel that ADOM's influence is present in some of the gameplay -- CoQ does punish rash or overly incautious behavior in a broadly similar sense, it's just that character build/abilities and relatively robust combat mean that nearly every successful PC build has a means (and a need) to fashion one or more "exit strategies" for getting the hell out of trouble in a hurry. The game world might bite you in a fashion familiar to ADOM players, but it at least gives you tools to cope with such a world, providing a refreshingly non-forced means of making frustrating deaths a bit more avoidable.

well that's the idea anyway, I still have trouble with turrets when playing without esper gimmicks (cause I suck at CoQ)

 

[Davaris]

I think that's because this game has all the mechanical virtues of the best roguelikes in addition to a setting and writing that competes with (and is better than, in my opinion) the best non-roguelike crpgs. The only reason every Codexer won't play/love this game when it's finished is because they are closet graphics whores, I suspect.

Also a lot of codexers just suck at roguelikes and die a lot.

I've never understood the appeal of rougeylikes. Playing a randomly generated game with no end? I can't see a purpose to it.

I watched a play though of this last night and was very impressed with the Fallouty char generation and the writing. If only it was an RPG.

 

[Palikka]

I've never understood the appeal of rougeylikes. Playing a randomly generated game with no end? I can't see a purpose to it.

"with no end" ???

 

[Davaris]

I've never understood the appeal of rougeylikes. Playing a randomly generated game with no end? I can't see a purpose to it.

"with no end" ???

Yeah you are right. You have to find the widget and return. I guess I am confusing it with other ascii games inspired by it, because they all look the same. However in each case the feeling I get with these games is the same. The world is different each game, so no end to it. You can never get the feeling of becoming familiar with the individuals and places in it, because next game they are gone.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I've never understood the appeal of rougeylikes. Playing a randomly generated game with no end? I can't see a purpose to it.

"with no end" ???

Does it even have amulet of yendor or similar end game condition?

 

[Davaris]

I've never understood the appeal of rougeylikes. Playing a randomly generated game with no end? I can't see a purpose to it.

"with no end" ???

Does it even have amulet of yendor or similar end game condition?

You mean Rodney?

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I've never understood the appeal of rougeylikes. Playing a randomly generated game with no end? I can't see a purpose to it.

"with no end" ???

Does it even have amulet of yendor or similar end game condition?

You mean Rodney?

No, I meant to ask if the game have any kind of end goal at the current state.