So hey, some people were talking about it here, and it always sounded rad, so i finally spent 9 bucks and bought Caves of Qud and I have only played one life so far, but my Murauder dude got his shit rocked after hitting level 2 by a Jilted Lover and how can I not like a game that makes me write that sentence?
So yeah, I suck at roguelikes, but give me some tips for not being a tool at this. Or share some stories of ridiculous shit.
You can rob some of the chests in the starting town without penalty by closing the door before opening them. What they can’t see they can’t charge you for. Typically they’ll have an old-world trinket you can use for the starting quest, jump starting your progress by a tad.
I worried about doing that my first time because I remembered the only time I played Baldur’s Gate, and even though no one could see me, I murdered the mayor’s son after he saw me steal some shit in the first town (on accident! combat started and I didn’t know how to get out of it) and everyone hunted me everywhere I went after that.
So I am leery of early game thefts now.
Today I made a dude who could shoot lasers out of his hands pretty well. Unfortunately, a beetle in a mine was basically immune to those lasers, and I made the mistake of hitting him to get out of the way, so he hunted me down for murdertimes. While running away from him, a previously neutral scavenger-ish dude on the surface saw us, and I think threw a grenade at us both, lighting us both on fire and eventually killing me.
That kill theiving shit.
Good game so far.
So man, I actually have gotten a character to level 4 without dying. I am a Pilgrim, but I can shoot lasers and light things on fire. But I still almost got killed by a plant once. Also when I was kinda wandering around to check out the local scene, I became lost, so I had to run from a lot of two headed boars until I could figure out where I was again (which basically meant I could access the world map again) and I did that, and made it back to the starting town without dying. Alright.
Ah good, you didn’t get stumble into and get savaged by Qud’s equivalent of piranha: madpoles. They can literally rip your face off.
I have been putting off getting into this but I am very very excited about it
Of course, next time I played that dude, he got lost a lot and eventually got killed by a Salamander.
I worked all this out on my own but haven’t gotten much farther across the ~5 characters I’ve played so far and uhhh if they get the full release out it’s basically impossible this won’t be my favourite game of the year
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a roguelike even approach this level of storytelling ambition, nor can I even think of any other roguelike from the past several years that overcame my fatigue for the genre inside of its first five minutes and it’s audiovisually perfect too
I also can’t believe someone actually succeeded in making a game that’s “like dwarf fortress, but” and it’s so supremely playable
Jilled by a kilted lover
_
This has been my contribution to the thread thank you very much
I had a Fist of the North Star style punchbro who made it to like level 10, and then got killed by a big old bug in a robot factory.
Fuck yeah, this is still my jam.
this game has been floating around in my head as one of my top ten favs for a few years now but i just started playing it again and yeah nah this owns real hard.
none of my characters has ever made it much beyond level 10 but I’ve been having immense fun picking out different “themes” for the character creation. for example: one of my favourite builds is a “spider” character; carnivorous, with 4 arms, 4 legs, hooks for feet, spinnerets, and a paralyzing sting. or my current “ghost” build, which could really be any number of mutations but i went with: beguiling (like possession?), night vision, blinking tic (i like the idea that a ghost isn’t really at home in the physical world), light manipulation (look i wanted to shoot lasers, sue me), syphon vim, and phasing (gotta be able to walk through walls).
I’m havin a great old time beguiling different buddies, it really changes to whole mood when u have a kinda stupid, highly aggressive pet that you have to chase after to keep it from attacking mad powerful enemies, and i think I’ll run w a beguiling character for a few more tries after this one inevitably goes bad.
also i downloaded some mods for the first time today too but i haven’t played w them enabled just yet so I’ll see how that goes.
finally
I finished What’s Eating The Watervine and started exploring the world map, only to get blasted by a gun-toting goatperson in the goat village.
I got the droid scrambler from Argyve but I’m too afraid to go to grit gate, so I saved and quit for now
at grit gate, literally the turn after I leveled up, I got shot and killed by a turret I could not see.
Welp. Time to iterate.
The bubble + teleport build has been getting me farther than I normally would with the sort of scrappy brawny melee monster that I would normally make, but I’m starting to feel like I’m just cheating or taking the easy mode, and that there’s much more to learn about properly playing CoQ
i made a horticulturist and got my bearings and was immediately destroyed by a dozen angry baboons in the first quest
hm
the baboons will getcha
i swear like half my mid-game deaths are from grenade-throwing goats
perfect!