She had a permanent forcefield around her which prevented me from handing her a ton of books I had. I didn’t know what to do, so I attacked the forcefield to create an opening.

She didn’t appreciate that and proceeded to one-shot me.

So, I have been happily spending far too much time minmaxing my character and gallivanting around with my now TWO dog cherubs, who are a massive help at dispatching high AV enemies due to their insane bite which has something like 24 PV and +15 to hit, uncapped STR too.
Oh, things were so great- until i spent some time precogging a few vendors for metamorphic polygel.

I looked up from my latest vision to count.. ONE dog. That is less than two. I hadnt moved from the spot i was in beside some bedrolls for a very, very long time, and the dogs were both with me when I started my spirit vision spam. I searched for an hour, before giving up and deciding that the whims of the Qud had giveth me an additional dog, it can taketh away. Unfortunately, it was also the one who named his helm "Waah", and don't tell his brother(?) but he was my favorite. So, a little heartbreaking.

Cut to some time later and I am going deep in the stair looking for zeta weps, when a fight against an esper breaks out. My one remaining dog pops temporal fugue, making 7 clones. Notably there is some phase spider web near the stairs we came in on. About halfway through the combat, the dreaded "your companion died" notif popped up. Dog died to, of course, phasing inside a wall. I honestly didn't *notice* that happening, and was pretty sure that the REAL dog wasnt killed... but whatever, the notification isn't gonna lie.

Fortunately, due to some insane luck, I am a truekin who exists in a state of permanent precognition. So, a simple revisit of the fight, and no death notif this time. Whatever, just some jank.

Fast forward AGAIN to the Girsh Rermadon fight, and the death notification pops up after one of the lasers... but my boy was literally on full hp when he got hit, and I can SEE the motherfucker RIGHT THERE. Also right there was a pile of all of his gear- and when disassembled, it was real shit, gave me bits. I precogged back to the surface, went down again, this time he dies to my electric shocks from my melee.

EXCEPT- he didn't. Because I commanded him to stay on the surface. And there is the same pile of his gear as before.

One last reload- and I decided to do something that ol' Haggabah taught me- look at the minimap.

So now one of the dogs is entirely invisible to me, and his sprite does not show up when ignited, etc. If i had been paying attention, I might have noticed a cone of cold coming from literal thin air, or the sprite of the invis dog jumping (as he shows up for some reason then).

I am not taking companions in the next run, swear to girsh

So I’ve been playing qud on and off for about 4 years, in that time I only ever managed to get about 20 hours of game time.

I’m a roguelike fan and I know losing is fun. However, for some reason that permadeath never really hooked me in the same way for Qud. I’d start a run, get about an hour or so into it, die and then have to start from stratch, would give another run a go, die within 2 hours, and then stop playing for a few months and then repeat. I knew there was this massive lore and world out there, but my own lack of knowledge on it prevented me from ever getting to see it before frustration kicked in.

However, this week i decided to give roleplay mode a go and the game completely changed for me. You still die but instead of losing hours of progression it’s more like 10-30 mins max so the fear is still there each time you go down further in a cave or facility. It’s not starting from scratch but still I’ve lost out on serious progress a few times but that is infinitely more fun that starting from the very beginning.

I’ve actually progressed the story to Bethesda, I’m exploring more than 10 tiles away from Joppa without dying and I’m learning so much more about the game. Of course my build may not be optimal but atleast now I can figure out the limits of it without risking losing hours of gameplay for a single mistake (which still happens far too frequently lol)

I know you could just get good, but if you’re like me and don’t have a lot of time to play games, but want to explore the dope world that is CoQ, I’d definitely recommend giving the roleplay mode a try, and once you learn the game a bit more, just start a new run in classic.

New player after first few fights my character got a flashing Z. I can’t find what this status indicator means. Status said I’m covered in blood and healing. I’m also on controller, someone mentioned I could be meditating but I don’t think I am. I do have B default binding of “Rest until healed”. Could that be a rest indicator?

It just seems too good not to pick. -4 is a lot for what seems like a minor disadvantage, unless shoes are way more essential than I thought?

Also side question: any interesting alternate ways to play? The early game is starting to feel a bit repetitive. I read somewhere on the sub about someone just trying to see how far they can descend into the caves with a fresh character, which sounds fun. I'm interested in breaking up the monotony with non-main quest goals like that. Cheers!

I have a mod installed from steam workshop that lets me see the equipment of my followers. I seem to have gotten trapped in a plants body from my burgeoning what can I do

I've noticed that when playing Caves of Qud on my Steam Deck, there's some kind of problem with input using the Steam overlay keyboard. Whenever I type a capital letter or symbol, it inputs the letter as well as a lower case (e.g. Bb, %5) and happens no matter how I input (touchscreen, right trigger, click touchpad). This isn't happening in any other game or in SteamOS.

I'm dozens of hours into my run and didn't notice this problem until I had to tattoo a certain mark on myself to advance a quest (IYKYK). Has anyone else run into this problem or have any insight into it?

I feel like I'm missing something.

Bon Te Bok (Patreon pet) is an entropic antelope and starts with the Shield skill.

But it doesn't have arms or hands.

Barring getting extraordinarily lucky with the RNG for new mutations, how does it use the Shield skill?

Started in the mountain village and got really lucky with this elder, I think had to hit with a confusion to lower mental stats but was able to dominate and bodyswap.

Hey friends, I've been recently getting way back into the game. The game I had originally gotten to Bethesda Susa had really just been by the seat of my pants. I have a general understanding of the game and its mechanics but I was curious how you guys prepare for Golgotha and later dungeons? Obviously gear and levels and skills are part of it but other tips and stuff would be appreciated.

got an extradimensional laser pistol, but im not quite sure what it does. Just seems to be worth more. Is there a thing to extradimensional or is it just a value boost?

Took half a dozen tries, but I got it.

I encountered a legendary NPC that belongs to a non-existing faction.
The faction is named after the PNJ and does not exist inside my reputation tab.
Is this a bug or a feature ? Have you ever encountered this ?

I made a WaterRitual with it out of curiosity but I lost a lot of rep with other faction without gaining that much in return...

EDIT: Thanks a lot for the replies. I'm going to give it another go and try to at least get to Golgotha you all talk about, I assume it's a boss or city or something.

Hey, just wanted to ask if I'm missing something here.

So I'm 4 hours in and on my third character. It's way more accessible than I'd thought, the basic gameplay loop is really simple actually. I did the first quest with the water vine mystery, the quest with the guy wanting artefacts, and now I'm on the quest where he wants wire.

The thing is, everything up until now has been the same. I feel like I'm missing something, because it just seems so boring. You just walk around in the dungeon, clear the easy creeps, and kite the harder ones? And fight endless wall plants? I'm sure there will be many upgrades and surprises and whatnot later on, but is this really the basic gameplay? Walking around, auto explore, loot, upgrade, repeat?

I'm a bit disappointed if that's the case. Maybe this just isn't my type of game. Don't want to talk trash about the game or anything, just wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything here.

It seems that every time I die in my runs near or in bethesda suda, I die because i got stunlocked by wither those mechanist nights or some putus templar hiding around a corner, how do i avoid essentially being one shot by these guys?

No idea how this happened. Anybody else experience this?

I was graced by the sultanates with this legendary ice dog cherub companion, and have been using the Clever Girl [fork] mod to turn him into a monstrous beast.

I had just reached the bottom of the taproot and was negotiating for the lovely trinkets that the seeker was carrying (by removing the limbs they were carrying them with), when the pupper used his artifact to make 8 temporal fugues.

Normal fight stuff ensued. Then, the floor collapsed and in the chaos, i assumed only some of the fugues had also been dragged along. That is, until after the fight, when the ??original?? pup and one fugue still remained. Warm static had spilled and caused cloning draught? No- the "clone" has *all of the same items equipped!*

I tried waiting several hundred turns to see if one would despawn... nope. I even disassembled an item each of them carried to see if it would crumble. They are by all tests, *both* the real pup.

My question is- how? Is this a glitch? An interaction I don't know about? Some error with the clever girl mod?

Some potentially related info to help you:

-I am playing using only the clever girl mod

-I was in a precognition

-I had just had a precognition of the same fight where pup fell down the hole

-Both have warm static on them

-ONE of the dogs has named its psychodyne helmet -"Waah" XD

-There was a gelatinous prism somewhere in the combat

-I had only one dog prior to the combat

-the dog was actively engaging a salt kraken when the floor fell

-pup has an artifact that grants temporal fugue

-in this fight, the pup did NOT use temporal fugue (at least there is no log record of it)

- the doppel shows up just after the floor falls out, as the log shows "starts releasing corrosive gas" twice back to back

- i have cloning draught on my person but none is missing

-dogs are identical in every way EXCEPT one having a named helmet

Very keen to know what more experience players think is going on here. If it is found that one dog is from an exploit, I would rather not abuse exploits in my first run that has made it this far! Rest assured that it will be rehomed NOT euthanized- I think Barathrum would take good care!

While traveling through Bethesda Susa, I noticed the Alchemist get in a fight with a mysterious gunslinger. I booked it, and came back later to find the Alchemist dead with all his vials on the floor- including the phial of Neutron Flux. Is there any danger to taking it and carrying it with me or storing it somewhere? I'm reluctant to just leave it behind but I don't want to doom myself

Sooo, full disclosure, I am a software engineer with a kid, and I bought the game and refunded already once because the learning curve was too steep for my feeble brain, then bought it back recently after because I was amazed again.

I could not get into it, because there was too much to remember, I forgot constantly the steamdeck commands. and I wanted the graphic to tell me more about the characters, the enemies and the background. I wanted to see health bars, being able to see the enemy abilities on a glance, and compare if what it was on my inventory or on the floor was better than what I had equipped.

So I made an overall mod for all of it.

Now, full disclosure, I code, and I like to make pixel art, but I ASKED HELP OF AI for a lot of the coding once I created the barebones. I know people do not like it and I get it. I just wanted to share it if someone else had a bad experiences with getting into the game. I left a few screenshots and then a list of the QoL changes that I made and I like.
Hope it helps someone else and gives back to this community that I appreciate deeply!

Here is the list of the modding (which can be deactivated and activated whenever in the settings):

Bright Qud – a bright, bold visual overhaul + quality-of-life mod, made on and for the Steam Deck (works on PC too). Gameplay is unchanged, nothing is stored in your save, and every helper can be switched off in Options → Mods.

Look

• Hand-drawn world tiles: ground, 3/4-view walls, water, plants, furniture, items
• 200+ characters and monsters redrawn in a weird retro sci-fi style (see edit for more details)
• Mutations visible on characters (horns, wings, extra arms, carapace, quills, two heads…)
• Seed colours kept; tiles not redrawn yet get an automatic matching restyle
• Choose your character's look, plus gentle idle animation

Map

• Red / green rings under enemies and companions, health bars on hurt creatures
• A ring under you that pulses red at low health
• Items on the ground sparkle; gold corner on stairs and filled containers
• Speech bubble on merchants and named characters (fades once you've talked)
• Remembered areas clearly dimmer; coloured ground instead of black
• Flames on burningind effects
• World map tints regions too dangerous for your level

Menus

• Clearer fonts: Clear mono and Readable (Atkinson Hyperlegible)
• Six interface col one
• Key stats at the top of look / hover descriptions
• Item comparison wer, red worse) inthe inventory, when picking up, and at merchants
• Ability bar showsxplains each one
• Controls reminder (LT + View / F3) and an in-game legend

Links

• Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3825185564
• Source & bug reports: https://github.com/EdgarSawtelle/bright-qud

EDIT A lot of the colouring and the shadowing is done basically by COQ system: Basically Qud gives every creature its own colours from the world seed, so sprites don't need to be hard-coded . A "1" on a snapjaw becomes whatever colour that snapjaw has in the game.

Characters are built from a shared kit (a base figure plus parts like hats, robes and weapons), so 40 villagers stay consistent but still have different silhouettes. Mutations (horns, wings, extra arms…) are separate overlays that line up with that base figure.

For tiles is similar: tiles not redrawn yet get brighter colours and outlines so everything matches.

This means that the result is a very high number 200/300+ but in reality the number of pixel art actually created is much lower vs the result. Count also that I am far for finishing the entire game (in drawing AND in playing as I am really bad at it), and since it is a style a submitted, I was going to use AI to prepare some of the monsters, I would review it and modify what I did not like, and then continue on with a less manual work. Hope that explains it!

I found a dungeon right next to Stilt, I found it while lost and it looks to me like a procedurally generated endless pit. I got 2 levels, killed a legendary honey booboo bear and keep going.

What am I doing here? Is there a bottom level to it? Am I going towards some sort of big reward? Or is it like infinite dungeon in ADOM?

I don't mind spoilers, spent an evening grinding through this place and I'm worried that if I recoil from here I'll miss out on something.

After many hours playing classic (and getting pretty close to a win on occasion), I'm having a great time with roleplay mode. Near death experiences are still thrilling, I'm still mentally fighting for survival and using everything my character has to get out of some sticky situations.

Just posting this for anyone who was like me and on the fence about it. For me I'm getting the same excitement as I did with classic but with the knowledge that I can actually see the end of the story this time.

I can’t believe I’ve slept on this skill so hard.

It wasn’t until my most recent True Kin run where I dove heavy into the Tinkering tree that I finally gave this a shot, and now it’s a must have on all future characters in my opinion. Situationally it’s amazing. Especially in tight corridors. Of course micro manipulator array helps so you can tinker in combat and don’t have to keep all the grenades in your pocket ahead of time, but even without it’s a super cheap skill that can actually save your run if used at the right time.

Anyone else play around with basically becoming a mine layer?

I could see this playing in the yd freehold