you mean Rusty Wells, east from Joppa?
Golgotha?
Because if I played this game I'd want to join the only pro-human faction but it seems to be the only one set as non-joinable and the devs have made it out that wanting to play as a Templar is Nazi behaviour.
water mainly interacts with heat, steam in particular is pretty deadlyyou mean Rusty Wells, east from Joppa?
There is deep salty water at the bottom. Game make a prompt "do you really want to get there?" but water, have absolutly no impact on anything. You will get wet only (not sure if salty too). It doesnt affect equipment, HP, nothing gameplay wise. Which is a BIG decline, from old ADOM where water were deadly (probably even too much).
And honestly in RealLife(tm) water is a big pain. If you get wet you move slower, you can get sick, you get blisters on your feet, you can freeze, your food get spoiled (all electronics - cybernetics i would presume too, who will make them waterproof in post apo?). And i mean not deep water (you shouldnt be able to swim with 300pounds of backpack, heavy armor, and weapons in both hands anyway).
.... and salty water?! huh... try to walk 1 day with clothes soaked in salty water, after swimming in the sea. I have a rash on butt for a week.
You are probably seeing smoke, which is just cosmetic (though can be annoying tbh). Steam has a whiter color and causes a lot of damage. Water can also become frozen. Some of the heat effects in the game are cool. For instance, blood heats creatures up, so builds that rely on freezing opponents should avoid causing too much bleeding. And most (all?) enemies have a heat at which they vaporize, so coating a high-level enemy in plasma (with grenade or sparser gun) and then causing them to heat up can get rid of some otherwise impossible enemies.
1.0 pre-Launch Information
Dromad Deluxe edition, speedrunning contest and merch
Hey friends,
Caves of Qud 1.0 comes out in just over a week, on December 5th! It’s been an emotional and exciting time and the team has been hard at work with all the finishing touches on the update. We wanted to share some info about what you can expect on launch day.
Dromad Deluxe Edition
The 1.0 version of Caves of Qud launches alongside the Dromad Deluxe edition, which includes Caves of Qud, the newly enhanced soundtrack now with over 2 hours of music, and the Pets of Harvest Dawn DLC pack with in-game companions to start the game with. And most importantly, if you purchase the Dromad Deluxe edition, you get a special, shiny, dromad badge on your main menu screen!
If you already own Caves of Qud, don’t worry; you can complete the Dromad Deluxe bundle by purchasing the OST and Harvest Dawn pet pack separately.
Merch!
We’ve been working very closely with Mighty Merch to develop a line of Caves of Qud merch that both channels Qud’s esoteric vibes and features your favorite characters & quotes. The first wave will contain t-shirts, stickers, posters, and pins, with more designs coming in future waves. Please note that these are launching as pre-order items from the Mighty Merch Store.
Speedrun Contest for Streamers
Starting December 5th, we will be holding a special contest for streamers to celebrate the ending of the main quest in the 1.0 update. Choose your run difficulty and beat the game as quickly as possible in front of an audience to win fabulous Caves of Qud prize packs. This is a contest designed to be streamed and shared with your community. Full details and rules can be found here.
FAQ
Q: Will the 1.0 update make my old saves incompatible?
A: Yes. Due to the nature of 1.0 update, old saves will not be compatible with the new patch on launch day. BUT! You can always continue playing old saves by switching to one of our legacy branches. The currently live branch is 208.x; you can switch to this branch now to avoid updating when the patch drops on December 5th.
Q: What is the exact time of launch?
A: 9am PT// 12pm ET// 5pm GMT
GTFO - current soundtrack is perfect. By forced adding 2h of music, it would only dilute perfection with forced hipster sounds.
Either its a pet like a dog, or stock to butcher like a cow.
There are some RPG (pnp) games where you play as various animals, including mouses but i can't recall any rats.
Caves of Qud 1.0 OUT NOW!
A monumental milestone, but more to come…
We are proud to announce that after 17 years of development, Caves of Qud launches into 1.0 today. A new trailer celebrating the launch will also be debuting today at PC Gamer’s Most Wanted showcase. Make sure you tune in starting at 12 PM PST/3pm EST/8PM GMT/9PM CEST.
The Caves of Qud 1.0 update includes:
Launching alongside 1.0 is the Dromad Deluxe edition, which includes:
- The conclusion of the main quest, with multiple endings
- Lots of new music, sound effects, items, and final UI polish
- Tons of bugfixes and small feature improvements
- The base game
- The finished original soundtrack, now with over 2 hours of music
- The Pets of Harvest Dawn DLC, with your choice of 13 unique companions to start the game with
- And most importantly, the Dromad Deluxe seal stamped on your main menu!
Dromad Deluxe Edition
Includes 3 items
Add to Cart
-10%
-13%
39,35€
34,12€
If you already purchased the base game, you can complete the Dromad Deluxe collection (and get your seal) by buying the rest of the items in the bundle.
What’s Next?
What comes after 1.0 for Caves of Qud? First and foremost, the team will be taking a well-deserved break. Putting the capstone on a game as complex as Qud took a whole lot of work. After that, we plan to continue updating the game, with two big feature arcs already in mind. Whether those are free updates or paid DLC has yet to be determined.
And while we might push updates to the live branch, we’ll be keeping save game compatibility stable between big feature arcs. This should allow modders to feel comfortable getting to work on new mods. Compatibility might break when a big feature arc does drop (whether it’s free or DLC), but we’ll give plenty of lead time in the run up to those releases.
Other than that, we’ll be working on supporting other platforms. More news on that later.
Beginner Tutorial
We’ve collaborated with SBPlaysGames to create a beginner tutorial designed for first time players who want to jump in quickly. If you have been hesitant to start playing, this guide is a great companion to stat your journey. And if you have any friends who are Qud-curious, send them this video!
Reddit AMA
We are hosting an AMA on r/Games with the Caves of Qud team on Monday December 9th 2024 starting at 10am PST/1pm EST. Bring your questions about Caves of Qud development, what it’s like working on an Early Access title for over 15 years, or something dank such as their favourite Dune memes!
Merch is Live!
The first wave of official Caves of Qud merch by Mighty Merch is now available for pre-order! Show off your love for our esoteric indie roguelike with a Live and Drink t-shirt. Hang up a print of a fictitious sci-fi novel featuring a strange and wondrous vista from the world of Qud. The first wave will contain t-shirts, stickers, posters, and pins, with more designs and items coming in future waves.
Speedrun Contest for Content Creators - Update to Rules!
Attention Qud experts, speedrunners, and streamers alike! We are holding a special contest to celebrate the 1.0 update and the end of the game. Choose your run difficulty and beat the game as quickly as possible in front of an audience to win fabulous Caves of Qud prize packs. This is a contest designed to be streamed and shared with your community. PLEASE NOTE: Rules have been refined and updated since last week’s post so please review all the details again. Full details and rules can be found here.
A Thank You…
It feels like a fever dream to be releasing 1.0. Seventeen years of development, nine and a half years of Steam Early Access. The only constant has been that whenever we’ve shown the game to a wider audience, there are more and more weirdos just like us who are ready to connect with it. Thank you so much for supporting us through the years — some of you since the very beginning — and helping us bring something original and heartfelt into the world.
Full Patch Notes for Caves of Qud 1.0
END OF THE GAME
- We added the end of the game, including the conclusion of the main quest and the ability to beat the game, with multiple endings.
In support of this we added many, many things that are too numerous to list and would need to be redacted anyway. Enjoy!
SOUND & MUSIC
- Added several new music tracks, mostly for the endgame but one for overland maps in the salt marshes, desert canyons, hills, and flower fields.
- Added several remasters of existing tracks.
- Added many, many new sound effects.
UI
- Added a new main menu with animation.
- Refactored the main menu and secondary menu options.
- Polished the frames of several submenus, like the Mods menu and Modding Toolkit.
- Renamed the Skills & Powers screen to Skills, the Attributes screen to Attributes & Powers, and the Inventory & Equipment screen to Equipment.
- We made several functionality improvements to the Equipment screen.
- Added a new option that allows pagination binds to move between inventory and equipment panes and arrow keys to collapse / expand categories. (Options > UI > "Navigate inventory and equipment panes with left/right pagination instead of movement binds"; must have advanced options enabled)
- The option "Equip/unequip highlighted item when pressing right or left" now functions in modern UI when using pagination navigation on the Equipment screen.
- Added a new option to expand whichever of the inventory or equipment panes is currently focused. (Options > UI > "Expand the equipment or inventory pane when focused"; must have advanced options enabled)
- The proper pane on the Equipment screen is now selected based on how you enter the screen (ie, hitting 'i' will enter the screen with the inventory pane in focus).
- Added a selection highlight to the inventory and equipment lists.
- Added hotkeys to the equipment pane in list mode.
- Dragging an item onto the paper doll background now autoequips it to an appropriate slot.
- Right-clicking a piece of default equipment on the paperdoll now inspects it.
- The inventory search filter now prefers exact substring matches instead of fuzzy searching by default. The search mode can be changed in the toggle options on the Equipment screen.
- Added tooltips for the filter categories.
- Added compute power to the secondary attributes pane of Attributes & Powers screen. It only appears if you have compute power greater than the default of zero.
- Added a new option that allows the character sheet to expand to full height or full screen on large monitors. (Options > UI > Character sheet size)
- Buy Mutations and Show Effects are now navigable options on the Attributes & Powers screen.
- The Quests screen now supports expand and collapse-all binds.
- Left and right now expand and collapse categories correctly on the Tinkering, Journal and Quests screens.
- Collapsing a category on the Skills screen now selects the proper parent category.
- Using search on the Skills screen now searches all skills, including unexpanded categories.
- Added a sort menu to the Reputation screen.
- Added tooltips for the Journal tabs.
- Removed the unused "general" category from the chronology.
- The stage dock width is now saved between sessions.
- Improved the character creation UI on small screens.
- Improved the formatting of the Skills screen.
- Improved the formatting of the Tinkering screen on small screens.
- Improved the formatting of the Quests screen on small screens.
- Right-clicking on the worldmap now defaults to look instead of the interact menu.
- Becoming nook terminal lines can now be clicked.
- You can now right-click the background to exit the becoming nook terminal.
- The modern UI now properly shows robot modules.
- Opening the abilities menu when you have no abilites no longer shows placeholder text.
OPTIONS
- We did a big refactor of the options menu.
- Massively simplified and reduced the number of default "simple" options.
- There's now a "Show advanced options" checkbox next to the options search bar (and in the Legacy UI, an App Settings option). Enabling this reveals all options.
- Did an edit & cleanup pass on option categories and text.
- Deleted some deprecated options.
- Added a volume slider for combat sounds.
- Added a volume slider for interface sounds.
- We did a refactor of the control bindings menu.
- Did an edit & cleanup pass on binding categories and text.
- Deleted some deprecated binds.
- Changed all references from 'keybindings' to 'control bindings'.
- Search text is now cleared when reopening the options menu or control bindings.
TUTORIAL
- The tutorial pumping station no longer stocks hundreds of drams of free freshwater.
- Sprint and Freezing Ray are taken off cooldown if you need to use them.
- Fixed a bug that allowed you to take the starting chest.
- Fixed a bug that allowed you to miss with Freezing Ray.
- Fixed a softlock in the tutorial if you failed to equip the torch.
- Fixed a bug that allowed you to reset the starting location to Joppa.
- Fixed a bug that prevented you from getting the battle axe.
GAMEPLAY
- We reduced the point cost of some mutations.
- Quills now costs 3 instead of 4.
- Psychometry now costs 3 instead of 4.
- Stunning Force now costs 3 instead of 4.
- Pyrokinesis now costs 4 instead of 5.
- Cryokinesis now costs 4 instead of 5.
- The Star-Eye Esper preset now has Sense Psychic.
- Stunning Force now deals damage in up to 3 increments based on proximity to the center of the blast, as it's supposed to.
- You may now seal yourself in [redacted] when you are gigantic.
- Pools of liquid indirectly affected by warm static pouring now glitch into a safer subset of liquids.
- Charge can now be used while standing next to plants without melee attacks.
- Love tonic effects now more reliably expire when old zones are loaded.
- Restocking merchants now more reliably trade away unimportant items sold to them.
MISCELLANEOUS
- Added special time icons for Tzimtzlum and [redacted].
- In addition to all the new objects, we added several new tiles for old objects.
- Added a new figurine tile.
- Added four new sultan statue tiles.
- Added a tile for portable wall.
- Added a tile for psychic glimmer.
- Added new tiles for all golems.
- Added new tiles for albino ape, ogre ape, cragmensch boulderer, cragmensch luminary, glittermensch boulderer, glittermensch luminary, several merchants, Mayor Nuntu, plated knollworm, worm of the earth, dromad caravan guard, juicing cannibal, bow turrets, yempuris phi, and the Pilgrim calling.
- Proselytize now asks which creature to target when there are two+ targets in a square.
- Bask is now disabled when not usable.
- Plants summoned by Burgeoning are now considered trifling and, for example, won't generate messages for follower deaths.
- Toggling the Trash Rifling ability now resets the autoexplore ignore list for trash in the zone.
- Added an explanatory popup when a vendor identifies an item for you.
- Improved the performance of power transmission elements.
- [modding] Subtype tiles are now flipped to be right-facing programatically.
- [debug] Added a new “resetauto” wish to reset the autoexplore ignore lists for the zone.
BUGFIXES
- Fixed a bug that caused containers to rarely become filled with 'objects' and 'pooledobjects'.
- Urchin cherubs are now properly mobile.
- Fixed a memory leak on the Attributes & Powers screen.
- Fixed a bug that caused creatures separated from their leader to sometimes ignore your attacks.
- Fixed a bug that caused powered items to be drained rapidly if traveling on the world map in a vehicle.
- Fixed a bug that caused sensing effects like Heightened Hearing to apply to yourself in darkness.
- Fixed a bug that caused gigantic, two-handed equipment to use more slots than required, if any were available.
- Fixed a bug that caused flame and frozen sound effects to rarely play at inappropriate times.
- Fixed a bug that caused blank 'this rank' and 'next rank' entries in mutation descriptions.
- Fixed a bug causing rapid mutations to not apply some changes to mutation effects.
- Fixed a bug that caused the layout to jitter on the Skills screen when the scrollbar appeared and disappeared.
- Fixed a bug that caused stacks to temporarily disappear from trade after recharging an item from the stack.
- Fixed a bug that caused sultan statue names in the journal to not be properly highlighted.
- Fixed a bug that caused extremely long names to break the layout on the Attributes & Powers screen.
- Fixed a bug in the scrollbar positioning of wide popups.
- Fixed inconsistencies in the direction the player tile faces.
- Fixed a rare exception during object destruction.
- Fixed an issue with right-trigger wait on Steam Deck.
- Fixed an issue with click-to-explore pathing.
- Fixed some responsiveness issues at 1.5x in 1080p.
- Fixed some responsiveness issues with Skills lines.
- Fixed some intermittent layout issues in the status screens.
- Fixed some layout issues in character creation
- Fix a rare exception during zone build.
- Fixed the "mod with tinkering" item action in the classic UI.
- Fixed a description error with ThermalAmp and hamsa selection.
- Fixed problems with the disabled mouse input option.
- Fixed a bug with display names of some quests involving dynamic items.
- Fixed a bug that caused tooltips to get stuck open.
- Fixed a bug that caused tinkering line items to be unclickable.
- Fixed a rare bug in zone generation due to random baetyl rewards not generating properly.
- Fixed a bug in the scroll position of the journal map when highlighting a new entry.
- Fixed a bug that caused layout issues in the map editor when reopening after reloads.
- Fixed a bug that caused the comparison tooltip to overflow on small screens.
- Fixed a bug that caused the hover tooltips to sometimes flicker.
- Fixed some layout issues on small screens on the Equipment screen.
- [modding] Fixed an issue with AllowedMutationCategories on Genotypes during character creation.
Yes, hello.
I DMed you.
Caves of Qud review
An epic science-fantasy RPG and a new great in the genre.
Across the great salt desert there is a jungled plateau encircled by mountains and speckled with the ruins of an advanced, ancient civilization. At its center lies the Spindle, a towering cable that stretches into and through the heavens. This is where your stranger arrives, the protagonist in an epic science-fantasy RPG full of engrossing stories and elegantly-designed, deep world simulation. It's the best one I've ever played.
Caves of Qud is a traditional roguelike RPG in form, a top-down, turn-based game that relies on text and simple-yet-evocative graphics to convey its world. It doesn't stick hard and fast to permanent death, though, instead letting you choose whether you want save points and even tweak how much fighting you'll have to do. Nor does Qud stick hard and fast to the traditional roguelike rules of having an opaque, frustrating user interface and arcane, entirely keyboard-driven control scheme—it even plays very well on a mobile PC like the Steam Deck.
You make your character from a variety of archetypes that describe normal humans or the far more numerous mutant inhabitants of Qud. You then build in a relatively freeform way, choosing new skills, upgrading your abilities, and gathering equipment for a dizzying and thrilling array of possibilities. From there you set off across Qud from your starting village in true RPG sandbox fashion, choosing to follow or not follow the many quests and whimsical distractions you may come across. A lot of that will involve carefully delving into the ruins of the ancient civilization of the Eaters of Earth, fighting the strange and deadly creatures you find there, and pilfering their treasures.
Each playthrough has the same world map but randomizes nearly every local area according to a complex system of generated histories chronicling the sultans who ruled Qud in ages past. What they did then influences what you find now, where you go, and what you can expect to find there—and it integrates that generated history into the main story quest's fixed objectives in clever and subtle ways that you might otherwise think had the hand of a designer behind them. Though it may take you a hundred hours to really get to grips with and master Qud, a seasoned player can burn through the main story in 15 hours.
Layer qake
The big-idea, high weirdness science-fantasy world of Qud's far future is of an old genre (think Dune) with its own tropes, such as influence from ancient mideast cultures and mythology, but one that's so underutilized in videogames that the setting comes off as refreshing. The spires of humanity's utterly ruined past sit below and on top of Qud, forming a layer cake of dungeons filled with objects from a civilization so outrageously advanced that they invented teleportation and mined the neutron-degenerate matter at the heart of dead stars. The Eaters' civilization was once so advanced that its fall was just as spectacular as its rise, leaving Qud a vast ruin cut off from the universe and scoured by terrible plagues—fresh water is so precious, for example, that a dram of water is the only true currency on Qud.
Pure-blooded "normal" people have become one of many different successor species and ancient genetic engineering combined with reality-altering phenomena have unleashed a tidal wave of strange creatures onto this world—the many talking plants, for example, barely register as exciting compared to a Twinning Lamprey, which exists in a strange quantum state where only when both its bodies are killed simultaneously will it die. Qud is a world where you start off fighting Hyena-people in a swamp with a bronze dagger and end it clad in zetachrome armor made of forgotten matter from the start of the universe, fighting mecha and cosmic terrors while wielding an eigenrifle that fires a subatomic particle beam capable of piercing through every single thing on the screen, friend or foe.
Rich storytelling
The main quest takes you on a journey well-suited to pit stops, dotted with odd characters like a deaf-mute albino bear-porcupine gunsmith and a very rude talking fungus you have to bring with you by letting it grow on your skin. It also stays varied: You'll delve ancient ruins for lost technology, yes, but also manage diplomacy among factions, make friends, solve riddles, and unpick that generated history. All of this is written in a prose so flowery and rich that it passes beyond purple and arrives in the same place as something like Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, utterly unafraid to pillage the depths of the English language for the right words and then invent its own words when those don't quite cut it. I could fill this review with phrases cut from item descriptions. ("It's a large piece of rock, older than every idea" reads the description for a boulder. "Its shelled torso is downside up and sprouts a bouquet of crumpled legs," I'm told about the corpse of a giant crab.)
The world and writing and story are so appealing in part because Qud draws from a diverse set of sources that aren't just other videogames and obvious, obligate nerd pop culture stuff. Its cultural borders extend well outside the limits of so many games. It's rare we get the pleasure of playing a videogame influenced by Dune or The Book of the New Sun or Gamma World that also freely quotes Lord Byron and A.E. Housman while drawing elaborate allusions to the Hebrew Bible.
Get weird
Your character's traits and background will be just as rich as the world's. You might play a True Kin, one of the last unmutated remnants of old humanity close enough to their biology and genome that the Eaters' technology, robots, cybernetic implants, and miracle medicines still recognize and work for you, enhancing yourself with cyberware like extra-large hands and firearm hardpoints to wield four two-handed chainguns at once. You might instead be a mutant with a beak, wings, night vision, and talons whose mutations grow in power so that they can sunder steel. Your mutant might have psychic powers like cryokinesis and telepathy and disintegration. You might even play as a purely physical chimera that grows twelve arms, or a purely psychic esper who becomes so powerful that their Glimmer attracts extradimensional hunters and predators from beyond our own universe.
It's not just variety that makes Qud so fun, it's the depth of simulation in the world you explore. Aside from your health value or the rare damage calculation that can go to the hundreds, you rarely have to deal with numbers larger than 30 when considering statistics and attributes. But Qud's world is powered by a physics simulation that lets you drill through walls with a jackhammer or melt rock into lava or spread clouds of corrosive gas that shift in the wind. The characters you meet all have a faction and a base attitude and an allegiance to it that plays out in hilarious ways: You might be beloved by apes, causing the shaggy white monsters that roam the canyons to leap to your defense, or hated by insects, causing typically chill giant dragonflies to come after you with a vengeance. Manipulating other factions' attitudes toward you is key to enjoying Qud, causing you to form alliances with groups like the machine-worshipping Mechanimists or become self-appointed protector of the villagers of a randomly generated town. I defended one with my life because I thought it was hilarious that its mayor was a talking pig that was hated by other swine for "defiling their holy places."
Stay weird
Random generation can of course make or break a game like Qud. Sometimes it's against you in the most hilarious ways, sometimes it's just frustrating as you plumb some deep stratum praying that the next chest has some upgrade—please, any upgrade—for your gun or armor. Sometimes it's for you as it spits out a unique relic that feels purpose-made to fit just the character you wanted to play—as a sword-wielding knight I once found a shield that could reflect enemy lasers back at them.
Your tolerance for unpleasant, run-ending (or save-reloading) surprises has to be pretty high as you first discover things like which robot is armed with missile racks and how to kill a Twinning Lamprey and how when you see a biblically accurate angel you should just run away. You can contract infections or lose a limb, but to enjoy yourself those must be interesting problems to solve or situations to exploit, part of your overall story rather than frustrations. The fun to find in Qud is about learning—reading the flavor text for hints, figuring out which randomly-generated named creature to befriend, and carrying a variety of tools for different situations. Always have an EMP grenade on hand, for example, to deal with wayward robots. You have to be willing to try and fail and to learn when it's better to run away, consolidate your gains, and try again tomorrow. Every challenge in Qud was not hand-made to be beaten. Quite the opposite, in fact.
That is no surprise to fans of the traditional roguelike's deep details and convoluted systems and surprising random events. For others it will be unpleasant at first. Caves of Qud has what is likely the best, most modern interface and controls in a game of its kind, but the experience is still at times frustrating as you try to unravel just what happened in the last combat round that caused you to die. For some who have not played games like this before, simply the act of learning to control and maneuver your character will be frustrating. Despite this I cannot recommend Caves of Qud enough for its innovations in mechanics and storytelling, however anachronistic it may look.
Besides, on top of it all? You can easily mod this game.
The Verdict
94
Caves of Qud is a genre-defining achievement in play, story, and roleplaying freedom.
