/rlg - Caves of Qud guide

    Caves of Qud newbie guide version 0.0.1 by Anonymous

    Character Creation:
    1)New players should play mutated humans. The lower stats and starting gear don't matter as much as you think. Mutations make a nice crutch.
    2)Don't waste mutation points on morphotypes, and stick with physical mutations for now. That way willpower and to a lesser extent ego can be dump stats.
    3.1)Favor these mutations (roughly in order): multi legged > two-hearted > regeneration = double muscled = triple-jointed > Freezing hands > Flaming hands.
    3.2)Electrical Generation probably goes here, but I haven't played with it enough. The last two reverse when you can get to Golgatha consistently.
    4)Avoid Burrowing Claws and Multiple Arms. They aren't terrible, but they are most likely over priced.
    5.1)Backgrounds for physical mutated humans: Arconaut, Marauder, Nomad, Warden, Watervine Farmer. These are all fairly equal.
    5.2)Marauder and Watervine start with axes, which are arguably the strongest weapons in the game.
    5.3)Arconaut gets amazing skills, and agility is the only stat with both defensive and offensive uses.
    5.4)Warden starts with good skills, but only a buckler and real shields are annoyingly rare.
    5.5)Nomad starts with the amazing Recycling Suit, and good skills for survival/exploration; need to invest in a weapons skill ASAP.
    6.3)I exclude Gunslinger because starting with guns as a mutant is not a very good idea.

    Things to do in Joppa:
    1)Get the quest from Mehmet to go to Red Rocks.
    2)Find the three houses with chests in them. Go in each one, closing the door behind you. Loot the chest with the door closed.
    3)Optional: Kill the zealot of the six day stilt. Nobody will care, and his book is worth a lot of dosh.
    4)Go to the southwest corner and get the quest from Argyve. If you got two artifacts in step (2), then you can turn them in now for a quick level two.
    5)Sell any junk you collected to Argyve and Mehmet for their vinewafer.
    6)Press <, go up twice, and press >. You should be at Red Rocks. Find the entrance and explore the first three floors. Beware plant life; it's generally more deadly than anything else.
    7)The fourth floor should be your first real threat. Remember to collect the corpse of one of the glowthingers to bring back to town.
    8)After the fourth floor is cleared, you can follow the underground river south to its source; you have a good chance to get up to folded carbine and maybe a floating glowsphere. A miner's cap and anti gravity sphere are virtually guaranteed. From the source, go up until you're back in Joppa.
    9)Or you can be a pussy and just go back overland.
    10)Go do the quest for 200' of wire in the Rust Wells. There's three dungeons here, so you can grind quite a bit. Just be careful if the last floor is a vast underground cavern, don't explore to far or you'll be killed.
    11)Don't go straight to Grit Gate. It's worth it to explore the Rusted Gate on your way. The loot on its last floor can be quite amazing.

Stat allocation: for newbies playing physical attackers, put int at 16 to 18, ego at 14, and the rest into physical stats. By the time you come back from red rocks to sell your loot, you should hopefully be over level 6 (which gives +1 to all stats) and have a knollworm skull to wear (+1 ego) so that you get fair prices at the shop.

Shops restock on a timer, by the way. There will be a message upon reentering a town if any shop owners refreshed their stocks.

All weapons are good in certain situations.
Cudgels: best penetration, worst damage dice. They tend to get 2x, 3x, or 4x criticals thanks to their penetration, and do steady damage against opponents with extremely tough armor.
Axes: second best penetration with the cleave skill, and much better dice than cudgels.
Long Blades: High +hit from the skill tree, but mediocre penetration. You really have to pump a lot of xp into the tree to get the most out of it, unlike axes or cudgels.
Short Blades: Get multiple attacks per round and synergies with two other trees. Easily the best offhand weapon (which is why Child of the Wheel is an amazing background for True Men).
Ranged: I think this really depends on the first good energy weapon you find. I prefer backgrounds that don't start with ranged skills, so I can choose later based on what I find.

I have never bothered with the wayfarer skills, but I consider starting with Mind's Compass to be quite useful.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Caves of Qud Tinkerer build

    You want to play a Tinkerer?  Terrible idea!  Tinkerers have shit survivability when the game starts and most will die before reaching Red Rocks unless you've spent entirely too much time grinding in swamps or the RNG has blessed you considerably.  BUT! For those of you who know the best part of playing in a post apocalyptic wasteland is TECHNOLOGY then maybe if you put in the effort and follow my lead, you might make it more than a week before you fast travel yourself to death because you forgot to get food.

    Step 1.  Choose stats!

    Your dump stat here is going to be Will.  It'll be awful later on when your mind is being sundered (x4) for half your health, but you need enough points for a minimum of +2 strength.  Only get Int up to 21.  You'll get more later. Dump the rest in agility.  If you're feeling especially adventurous, you can take a neg 1 in Ego... or even boost it up to zero... if you've made the proper offerings to the RNG.

    Step 2. Choose Tinkerer!
    You'll get +3 Int, and the worst starting loadout in the game.  Basically, a bunch of randomly determined equipment... really random.  And a stun rod. It may be charged, it may not be.  It's crap anyway. It never stuns... at least not enough to be meaningful.

    Here's where things get dicey.  I've spawned before with a pair of helping hands.  I've spawned before with little but my wits and a few batteries.  What you do have however is a few trinkets, crafting bits, and telescopic monocle.  Your first order of business is to go through your inventory either way and asses your situation.  If you've got crayons and bent folding chairs, skip to step 4.  Otherwise, learn your two recipes and continue on.

    Step 3. Collect dosh!
    Go talk to that red f and get your first quest, then go raid the unoccupied rooms.  CLOSE THE DOOR before you open chests that aren't yours.  Then go to the trader in that bottom right building.  You need to get yourself situated.  If you don't have a bent folding chair and you see one, it'll be like 4 cents, get it.  Don't disassemble it. Purchase the musket and slugs.  If there's a desert rifle you can afford, get that instead.  Equip that immediately.  If you can afford it, pick up a good axe.  Don't worry if you can't.

    Step 4. Collect XP!  Go see Argyle on the right side of town.  Talk to him.  Give him the cheapest trinkets you have.  If your trinkets are all actually useful, you might have to make a painful decision.  The stun rod and cell might be your best bet, but you'll probably be able to swing giving him your monocle and something else random.  The best solution here is crayons and metal folding chairs, but that's not always an option.  Collect your level and the next quest.  Take a look at his inventory, see if there's anything you want.  If you're fast enough, you might actually swing one of those cheaper blueprints.  Crafting Nightvision or a laser weapon early on in the game can be a huge boon, but you got to earn it.  Disassemble other bits of scrap.

    Step 5. Level! But don't spend any points yet. You got to wait to see how this plays out.  Head out into the swamp, murder some plant life, collect fish.  They make good provisions.  You don't have to do this for a whole level, but if you've the patience, it's not a bad idea. If you do level, that should put you around 250.  Save that. We'll get to it in a bit.

    Step 6. Make another offering to the RNG. Head north.

    You're gonna set out for stuff now.  These are your directives. Hunt snap jaws.  They have neat things, but you're looking for either axes or bucklers. Your musket should get you through most of this, but be very careful.  Don't fire at anything more than three or four squares away.  You've not put any points into the skill, this thing is a goddamn blunderbuss, and if you hit an Equimax, that is your ass.  You have grenades.  You will probably fuck up using them.  Many of them have a blast radius only slightly less than you can throw.  As soon as you get an axe or a buckler, put the points into the appropriate skill.  If you get an axe first, get whack, if you get a buckler, get the shield skill... and axe mastery.  Seriously.  Axes have an ease of use, penetration and damage that makes them pretty choice.  Long swords are dumb, short swords are good for offhand, and cudgels are okay if you're into reliable(ly low) damage, but when you've whacked, cleaved, and tripped a salt hopper, you'll understand.

    WHY AM I SAVING THESE POINTS?  You're saving those points because you might get something so good to start it changes your mind.  If by some miracle you discover a chest with an electrobow in it, you put those goddamn points into bows and rifles. You have to remain flexible.  Eventually things will level out, but your ranged weapon choice is an important one, as is your off hand choice.  If you get something like a real shield early game, you might actually consider leveling accordingly.  That normally doesn't happen though, so it's better to just save up for offhand strikes.

    If you see a salt hopper, just sprint away.  They're the bugs from Starship Troopers.  You are not Johnny Rico.


    At this point, it's time to gradually fight your way up to Red Rock, selling your stuff as soon as you can't carry anymore. Be sparing with using your musket.  Nomad Traders can be hard to find, and Tam doesn't restock nearly fast enough for you to pretend you're fighting redcoats out in the rust. Find a chest.  Take the chest.  Put it outside Tam's hut.  Keep full waterskins and trade goods in the chest.  They'll be safe there, and won't detract from your weight limit.  Try not to sell waterskins.  Better to fill them and keep them for large purchases.  Same goes for trade goods.  If you can keep them about until you get ego boosting equipment (like a knollworm skull) and get some points into ego (automatically of course. Never put points into ego.) they'll be worth more. Always buy nuggets, as they are lighter per dram than money.  Store those too.  Don't let that money burn a hole in your pocket.  Keep it for when a laser weapon or solar cell blueprint shows up.

    You're going to get an attribute point.  Here's your decision.  If you by some miracle have gotten a lot of neat (but not necessarily useful) artifacts, your first attribute point should go into int.  This will bring you up to 25.  Take expert disassemble.  This will be by far the most expedient way to acquire second and third tier bits.  Dismantling recoilers for pure alloy is pretty much the best way to get pure alloy.  If you're not doing so hot in that regard, put it in strength.  You may be tempted to put it into agility.  If you've gotten anything better than a musket, then go for it.  Otherwise you are goofing off, you need penetration and carrying capacity.

    Eventually you'll clear Red Rock (don't go deeper than you have to.  Fire ants are the bugs from Starship Troopers... the book, not the movie, complete with goddamn lasers.  If they hit you while you're standing in water, there is nothing anyone can do for you except hope you were wearing bark armor, and that you smoke cure in a delicious fashion.) and be ready to go on your next step towards the rust wells.  The rust wells are not particularly alarming.  Your skills should look something like Whack,Trip/cleave,Shield(75%Block ),Ranged SKill,expert disassemble,off hand strikes,butcher, master butcher (skip the middle one).  On your way to the Barathumites, pick up scavenge...maybe.  The fact is scavenge doesn't yield too many bits, and certainly not enough of the good bits, but when you get to the Grit Gate, there is tons of garbage, and if you made the mistake of paying for lead slug blueprints, it might stifle my giggling at you.  Avoid the jungle. Go through the flower plains.  Goatfolk are no joke.  Be sure to talk to the Grit Gate after you've taken the quest.  They'll let you in to trade with them.

    That's pretty much it.  From there your character options should open up significantly and you'll have the basic skills and equipment to get through whatever comes next.  Don't be afraid to run.  Qud has more hp than you do, so if the going gets tough, get going.

    A WORD ON TURRETS.
    Don't sell bows unless you have over half a dozen.  Bow turrets are bad ass.  Deploying a turret exhausts you, so don't use them mid combat, but if you're in a situation where you have prep time, bow turrets can turn slumberling fights into games of cat and mouse... only the cat is taking 1d4 every turn.  Good places for bow turrets are:

    *The tops of stairs.  Angle them so they shoot at your back... or rather, anything chasing you back to the entrance.

    *At Snapjaw arrow slits.  Set them up at opposite sides, wait a few turns, collect equipment.

    *Around tough monsters.  ATTENTION! Do not set up turrets directly in line of sight of sleeping monsters. They will fire while you are exhausted, ruining your plan... and probably your character.

    Note: Eventually, something always seems to fuck up and turn your turrets hostile.  They won't shoot at you... intentionally... but they will shoot your other turrets.  Best to stagger them so they don't have line of sight on each other.  Also, bow turrets aren't particularly accurate.  Try to keep something between you and the turret directly (like a snap jaw) so they don't hit you on accident.  This takes a little practice.

    This concludes the tutorial. Enjoy being Batman.