Question about Rogue-like games

[ColdSteel]

Hard to believe this thread has seen no traffic since 2006. It also appears to be the only thread for roguelikes here so I broke out the necro mouse.

I finally got around to trying out a new roguelike with a lot of buzz, Caves of Qud. This game is the real deal, folks. It's AWESOME. It took me a while to get over the cost and buy it ($9 right now) and then once I got it I had to wait until I was in the mood to dive into something as deep as this is and learn it. Friday was that day. After a few false starts, I now have my esper apostle up to level 11 and just starting to feel his oats. I was trying like heck to find a merchant in the game I could buy some pistols from and this morning I got around to identifying 2 weird artifacts in my pack and turns out it was a twin pair of semi automatic pistols, woohoo. The game world is enormous. Both above and below ground. There's so much stuff you can do that I can't even begin to describe it all. I'm curious if anyone else has been playing this?

About This Game
Caves of Qud is a science fantasy roguelike epic steeped in retrofuturism, deep simulation, and swathes of sentient plants. Come inhabit an exotic world and chisel through layers of thousand-year-old civilizations. Decide: is it a dying earth, or is it on the verge of rebirth?

Who are you?
Play the role of a mutant indigenous to the salt-spangled dunes and jungles of Qud, or play a pure-strain descendant from one of the few remaining eco-domes—the toxic arboreta of Ekuemekiyye, the Holy City; the ice-sheathed arcology of Ibul; or the crustal mortars of Yawningmoon.

You arrive at the oasis-hamlet of Joppa, along the far rim of Moghra'yi, the Great Salt Desert. All around you, moisture farmers tend to groves of viridian watervine. There are huts wrought from rock salt and brinestalk. On the horizon, Qud's jungles strangle chrome steeples and rusted archways to the earth. Further and beyond, the fabled Spindle rises above the fray and pierces the cloud-ribboned sky.

You clutch your rifle, or your vibroblade, or your tattered scroll, or your poisonous stinger, or your hypnotized goat. You approach a watervine farmer—he lifts the brim of his straw hat and says, "Live and drink, friend."

What can you do?
Anything and everything. Caves of Qud is a deeply simulated, biologically diverse, richly cultured world.

Assemble your character from over 70 mutations and defects and 24 castes and kits—outfit yourself with wings, two heads, quills, four arms, flaming hands, or the power to clone yourself—it's all the character diversity you could want.

Explore procedurally-generated regions with some familiar locations—each world is nearly 1 million maps large.

Dig through everything—don't like the wall blocking your way? Dig through it with a pickaxe, or eat through it with your corrosive gas mutation, or melt it to lava. Yes, every wall has a melting point.

Hack the limbs off monsters—every monster and NPC is as fully simulated as the player. That means they have levels, skills, equipment, faction allegiances, and body parts. So if you have a mutation that lets you, say, psionically dominate a spider, you can traipse through the world as a spider, laying webs and eating things.

Pursue allegiances with over 60 factions—apes, crabs, robots, and highly entropic beings—just to name a few.

Follow the plot to Barathrum the Old, a sentient cave bear who leads a sect of tinkers intent on restoring technological splendor to Qud.

Learn the lore—there's a story in every nook, from legendary items with storied pasts to in-game history books written by plant historians.

Die—Caves of Qud is brutally difficult and deaths are permanent. Don't worry, though—you can always roll a new character.

[Max Peck]

I do like the trailer.

[hitbyambulance]

very strong Gamma World influence

[ColdSteel]

Yeah, it's pretty cool. It also has a bit of a dwarf fortress flavor/vibe as well with the game descriptions and some other stuff. It's got some heavy sim aspects to it and the writing is just excellent. The books you find are really fun to read as are the descriptions of objects and mobs. The mobs are very interesting because they are basically characters that are playing against you. When you use the 'look' command on them and it says they are wearing a glowsphere, heavy steel hammer ,and chain main and you kill them, that's exactly what they drop. I saw a ragged hermit that was carrying a glowsphere (which I really wanted) so I dominated his mind using an esper power and made him drop it. I was going to let him live (he was friendly) but my watervine farmer follower (I had convinced him to follow my with my proselytize skill back in Joppa) decided to kill him for some reason, probably faction related. There are a lot of factions in this game and you can earn favor/hostility with them all.

Because the mobs are characters, they have all the types of skills and equipment you do. I took my watervine farmer's vinereaper away and gave him a 2 handed sword and some boots and good armor. I also gave him a mutation when he leveled up (your followers level up too) and he grew 2 extra arms so I gave him two hand swords. He rocked. I also gave him the butchery skill and he would butcher hog corpses and the like for food for us. He could also harvest watervines for food and water. I was sad to lose him in a battle with about 20 mobs but I soon replaced him with a giant boar that had a mutation that allowed him to shoot rifle slugs from his snout. He was great until he ran into another rifle boar.

Then there's the crafting, called 'tinkering' which you can ignore or not. I've started investing in it and have just gotten the skill that allows me to build basic items from data disc schematics. So now I can make my own ammo and recharge my energy cells. I can't build guns yet though. If all of this sounds cool, it's because it really is.

[spelk]

I've now done a no-nonsense guide to getting started in Caves of Qud

www.cavesofqud.com

"Charge at the radiated apocalypse with your horns proud and your fulminating gas thick and noxious! Warm to the diversity and poetry of Qud!"

http://www.ascii-curious.com/2017/12/chewing-qud.html

I'm no expert at all, but this takes you through the steps of getting assembled and ready to rock and roll.

[ColdSteel]

Great beginner's guide! That first link is not working though.

You may want to mention that beginners at character creation should make sure they have 10 Ego at a minimum or else they won't be able to afford to buy anything from shop keepers early in the game when they need stuff the most.

There is a big new release currently in the beta branch that massively revises the food/eating part of the game. It looks interesting.

I haven't played the game since they revised the cybernetics system. Are true kin worth playing now or do mutations still rule?

[morlac]

I've now done a no-nonsense guide to getting started in Caves of Qud.

"Charge at the radiated apocalypse with your horns proud and your fulminating gas thick and noxious! Warm to the diversity and poetry of Qud!"

http://www.ascii-curious.com/2017/12/chewing-qud.html

I'm no expert at all, but this takes you through the steps of getting assembled and ready to rock and roll.

Sweet, will check this out tonight. I have been fiddling around with this for a few. Mostly making characters. Yes, the Gamma World vibe is huge with this one and the reason I bought it.

[ColdSteel]

I decided to start a new mutant character on Thursday based loosely on a build I saw that looked interesting. It's a max survival build and so far at level 18 I'm enjoying it a lot. He has about 250 hit points and 12 AV so he's one tough sucker. I've been lucky with sparking baetyls so he's had a bunch of extra attribute points from that too. I finished Golgotha at lvl 16 without getting Glotrot so that's always a relief. Then I went to Six Day Stilt and got two levels of XP from all the books I turned in to the librarian there. This is such a fun game.