No double entendre intended. It just never occurred to me to, apparently, go around stealing shit from the people in Joppa.
Oh. I had high hopes… Not that I’m into lewd jokes and… Anyway.
I think somebody in the village points to you stealing stuff is as simple as closing doors behind you so that nobody can see you. They don’t actually tell you to do it.
I’m not a thief but I never played without stealing and crafting things from the finds.
I’m not saying the chests shouldn’t be random, just pointing out that them having high quality gear in them shouldn’t really be a requirement for a good start.
Not stealing from the three chests in Joppa would make things a lot tougher!
Most of the time I can do the first two quests from the guy in the SW corner of Joppa just by turning in items from the chests. That gives a nice start in XP. Then I head south killing alligators and other hostiles. I suspect that it isn’t discussed much because it is a grind. Most of the time I will run into an historic site or a legendary something and use some cheesy tactics to earn a good amount of XP before heading on to get wire or the body.
My only other early game trick is to walk everywhere at the zoomed in level to maximize random spawns. Again, more grind but I find it acceptable in a roguelike.
It’s been a while since I played Qud, so I may be misremembering the terminology, but making sure to “identify” or “examine” any weird items you come across is key. The “pointy artifact” in your inventory might actually be a nuclear grenade. Or a sentient mushroom.
I ran across this tweet from one of the devs and it got me excited to make a few runs:
I’ve not played this game yet because it’s in early access, but I noticed @tomchick has the ‘Marsh Taur’ as his avatar now—I recognised the distinctive style, looked at some screenshots and spotted it! What’s the story there, Tom? :)
Pretty sure that Tawaret from Moon Knight! :)
Hit F5!
Shh, I’m pretending it’s not early access. :)
Well spotted, @geggis. I couldn’t resist because I love how open it is, and how much it’s letting me just explore, and how even though I assume a lot of it is procedural, it feels so hand-built. I’ve played a few default Marsh Taur warriors to learn it (one got to level 8!), but now I’m working on setting up and exploring my own character builds. They’re dying pretty quickly. A level 1 farmer, far from home on an exploration job, stumbling into a campsite of named bosses never even made it to level 2, for instance. But exploring these different careers from local villages is even more robust than I would have expected.
But, yeah, early access. Ugh. I don’t even want to know what’s still missing from Caves of Qud.
-Tom
Ah I see! Well I can’t blame you; everything I’ve seen and read about it sounds so weird and rich, from the emergent play to the writing, and I’ve been tempted to fire it up myself so many times.
There’s a mod I’m currently checking out that adds some beginner quests and instruction to help ease you in.
Speaking as someone that’s put hundreds of hours into the game, I don’t think it’s a matter of what’s missing. It’s pretty complete. The real question is what new, crazy shit are they going to add next. It’s really not any more EA than any other classic roguelike out there that spent decades adding and adding stuff. Games like ToME are a good example. It may be released but Darkgod still is adding more stuff. Cogmind is heading the same way. Classic roguelikes are different.
Yeah, this is what finally convinced me to stop holding out. In fact, I had started with Cogmind, but decided if I was going to sample one of these early access classic rogue-likes, why not go with the most ambitious one?
But I’m convinced this way lies madness. It’s not a far jump to start playing early access deck-builders, and then before you know it, I’m sampling the occasional early access survival game, and suddenly – boom! – I’m @Jason_McMaster, subsisting on a steady diet of tragically unfinished games and not even minding.
-Tom
You should live your best life.
Hah! I saw your exchange with the Cogmind dev on Twitter and this made me laugh and oh no at the same time:
https://twitter.com/GridSageGames/status/1524570354601295873?s=20&t=7Cdt6Pawh3TqIjNU4KWygQ
I can’t catch Tom anymore with this avatar madness. He shows up in the most unlikely place, like games never to be finished. I feel dizzy.
Damn it the thread bump got me playing this again and I can’t stop. On my current run I have a level 32 pure esper with a glimmer of 190 and the esper hunter psychic assassins are after his ass constantly. His ego is 64 and I want to see how far I can push that number before they finally get me.
Psychic assassins! Man, I wish this was on mobile.
It’s planned (there has even been a tentative interface for the past 5 years or so). No idea what’s preventing a release.
I read somewhere they are waiting for full release on PC, which…