Questions, questions

[slobby]

1. Are robots supposed to mutate? It seems odd, but I do love how my pudgy chrome idol is now sporting quills.

2. What exactly does the wayfaring skill tree do? Does it increase the chances of encountering dromads/faction leaders/merchants? Finding legendary lairs? Both? Also am I correct in assuming that legendary lairs are currently only available in marshes?

3. Mid/high level tinkering regents. They seem incredibly difficult to come by. With the scavenger skill I can find the first 4 types no problem. The following 4 types I can only seem to get by taking apart items or buying them from the odd trader. The last 4 I have yet to even find. The special regents needed to craft uber injectors and the like are also a mystery to me. I've been destroying saw handers, drill bots, widgets, and the like. Are they supposed to be that rare?

4. Is there anything in the game that explains what you're supposed to do with those special altars (not the ones where you're given ancient location quests)? From what I recall in the trailer it said something about offering wine or honey to one of them. I really don't want spoilers on this...just if there's a book or something that explains it.

5. I don't think I've seen an answer to this one on the forum. Will there be basic commands for followers coded into the game? (stay/follow/attack)

6. Is it planned in the future that the merchants at the Six Day Stilt will restock their inventory?

7. Is there an item that replicates dominate? Ganglionic teleprojector only works on robots right?

I think that's it for questions now for two other points.

1. I found Ursic and gave it to my chrome idol. Unfortunately eveytime he used temporal fugue the copy that he made was hostile.

2. The downside of faction reps, RNG item rarity, and followers.

So in my current game I have a lvl21 true kin. He's stacked. I'm happy. While journeying throughout the countryside he's met many a leader and has offered water to many of them and made friends. He's also recruited a legendary chrome idol (also stacked) and needs to get it up to snuff. Here's where the problems come in. Unfortunatley I need salt to make the flaming ick potion, and I can't find it. So I have chosen not to run Golgotha since I don't want my tongue to fall out. Generally in my past play throughs I tend to slaughter goatfolk en masse to gain xp at around this time in the game, but they like me. Everything on the surface likes me (except snapjaws). So I have to go into the caves, which is fine. Except my main character benefits from exploring the ruins/caves just north of Grit Gate, but there is no way to keep my kamikaze underling from dying. So I'm stuck grinding the caves under Jappa while hoping that there's a regent trader down there who has salt for sale (highly unlikely-it'd be better to wander the country side looking for a merchant, but then I'd get no xp for my robot).

Before I got my underling I actually considered raiding Bethesda Susa, but bailed when I saw what awaited at the front door. Now if I can get my little buddy up to my level I can probably tear it up. The problem is that I have to grind low level trash, which doesn't help me at this stage in the game.

I'm not really complaining. It's pretty similar to mid/late game in DCSS (bouncing around from area to area trying to get what you need to progress). I just wanted to point out a potential flaw in the game. I realize that much of the problem lies on my 1) not wanting my characters tongue to fall out and 2) wanting to level up my robot friend. The solutions to both are in two of my questions above. If the merchants at the six day stilt restocked their inventory I could get salt, and if I could give commands to my followers I could power level it in no time. I suppose I could also just start picking fights with goatfolk leaders as well to make them hostile again...At least there're options. :)

[Luke]

I'm often wrong on this stuff, but I'll take some shots:

Other Point 2: There should be a way to create salt by pouring water on the ground and making dilute salt, then further distilling it by boiling the water away. I've tried pouring on a torch sconce as well as throwing a lit torch on the puddle of dilute salt, but I haven't gotten it yet. Maybe someone else has done it correctly?

2: Should make getting lost more rare. I rarely if ever spot positive encounters such as dromads, villages, or farmers from the world map. If I cheat and set my stats crazy high and top out wayfaring, I seem to NEVER get those encounters from the world map. So it seems to just reduce the chance of ANY encounter. Not sure if that is intended.

5: I thought there was, in one of the recent updates? When you (L)ook at a follower, you now have a "give" and "attack target" option. The attack option lets you send them at any specific target. small, but at least it is something.

6: The merchants themselves periodically rotate. You should find entirely different shops there, after some time has passed.

[slobby]

Originally posted by Luke:

2: Should make getting lost more rare. I rarely if ever spot positive encounters such as dromads, villages, or farmers from the world map. If I cheat and set my stats crazy high and top out wayfaring, I seem to NEVER get those encounters from the world map. So it seems to just reduce the chance of ANY encounter. Not sure if that is intended.

It does make getting lost more rare. I don't think I've ever got a notification that there was a dromad or something from the world map (only legendary lairs and ruins). To see those merchant encounters you have to be out of the world map going screen by screen by screen.

Originally posted by Luke:

5: I thought there was, in one of the recent updates? When you (L)ook at a follower, you now have a "give" and "attack target" option. The attack option lets you send them at any specific target. small, but at least it is something.

Is that what that does? I thought it meant to attack your follower. I'll have to try it with my next follower since I lost my chrome idol to an unfortunate nuclear explosion.

Originally posted by Luke:

6: The merchants themselves periodically rotate. You should find entirely different shops there, after some time has passed.

Any idea on the time frame? In my current run I'm 21hours and 170000+ turns and the shops are exactly the same.

[Avloren]

Originally posted by slobby:

3. Mid/high level tinkering regents. They seem incredibly difficult to come by. With the scavenger skill I can find the first 4 types no problem. The following 4 types I can only seem to get by taking apart items or buying them from the odd trader. The last 4 I have yet to even find. The special regents needed to craft uber injectors and the like are also a mystery to me. I've been destroying saw handers, drill bots, widgets, and the like. Are they supposed to be that rare?

The 5th and 6th bits (dark red, dark green) are pretty common, you can get them by disassembling chem cells, recoilers, muskets, revolvers, spectacles, and other things commonly found on surface merchants. The last 6 bits (dark blue and up) are pretty rare. I get them mostly by disassembling various higher tier artifacts - any weapon that's a laser or better, helping hands and exoskeletons, nuclear/antimatter power cells, sphinx salt injectors, etc. These things aren't too rare when you get deep enough underground. You do very, very rarely see a scrap on a merchant that yields one of the higher tier bits. If you're lucky, you can also find dromad merchants deep underground that are full of rare artifacts (expensive, but worth it if you need the bits).

The other regents, like you use for the rarest injectors, are much worse than bits. Some of them I never see in a given playthrough. Seems like you're much more likely to get an eater's nectar or an ubernostrum than the regents used to craft them. A Baetyl once wanted 5 arsplice seeds for a quest, he was going to give me a gun or something.. no thanks, bro.

I think this is all working as intended - the higher tier bits are only really used for making and modifying higher tier gear. You shouldn't need a lot of those things, you have to choose carefully how to spend the ones you get. All the things that you're meant to consume lots of (grenades, ammo, chem cells, most injectors) are made with the much more common first 5-6 bits.

The only part I really disagree with is how hard it is to make some injectors, especially the weaker ones with exotic ingredients. Ubernostrum or Eater's nectar, sure, they should be hard to make since they can have permanent effects. Mid-level consumables with a temporary effect like blaze, sphinx salt, shade oil etc. just don't seem worth the difficulty of acquiring their ingredients. Especially sphinx salt, which uses a higher level bit you're better off saving for gear and mods that are permanent.

Originally posted by slobby:

2. The downside of faction reps, RNG item rarity, and followers.

...

Friendly factions:
You know that you can attack friendly creatures, right? Control-arrow to force attack them if you're a melee. It won't even affect your standing with that faction, as long as you avoid killing one of the leaders. This means that there really isn't any downside to being friendly with a faction - you can still kill absolutely everything, it just means that they won't attack you first.

It'll still be tricky to find something that's rewarding for your character and unlikely to murder your robot buddy, but that's the price you pay if you want to level up a companion I guess. You have the entire map to pick from, even the parts filled with friendlies, so there's got to be something he can manage that's harder than Joppa area.

Salt:
I saw someone else post that the "dilute salt" you get from pouring saltwater on the ground actually works as a cure ingredient. Take this with a grain of salt (ahah), because I've not been able to test it - haven't seen salt as a cure ingredient lately.

You also might check out the rainbow forest (3x3 section of purple-looking stuff in the jungle a ways East-NE of Kyakukya, just east of the Tomb of the Eaters). It's full of weeps (stationary critters that produce limitless amounts of a random liquid), you're likely to find a salt one in there somewhere. You can get lucky and find the right weep in any randomly spawning fungal map, actually, but the rainbow forest is guaranteed to be there and to have a ton of weeps. Note it's a pretty dangerous area, your robot might get killed, and you're very likely to get a fungal infection. Also note that it's impossible to move through it on the world map, you'll automatically become lost the moment you enter.

[Swirler]

I would like to piggyback off this post to ask some questions as well.

1. What does proselytizing do? How can it be used? Is it effective?

2. Is gift giving a way of doing diplomacy with people or is it more for unlocking secret rewards?

3. Item storage, if I drop items on the ground Can I pick them up at a later time? Are there despawn mechanics in place for them?

If I store items in a chest I do not own will I lose those items or will they be despawned at a time in future?

4. I notice some water collected is "brackish", are there other types of water and what purpose do they have?

5. What do things like Trumescent, bloated and the like mean?

[Luke]

Originally posted by slobby:

I don't think I've ever got a notification that there was a dromad or something from the world map (only legendary lairs and ruins). To see those merchant encounters you have to be out of the world map going screen by screen by screen.

It used to happen back on the pre-steam version. I'm not sure when it stopped, but I assume it is a bug that it is not doing it now.

The most frequent would be that you see smoke through the trees and have the choice of approaching a goat folk villiage, but sometimes you could get farmers and merchants.

Originally posted by slobby:

Originally posted by Luke:

6: The merchants themselves periodically rotate. You should find entirely different shops there, after some time has passed.

Any idea on the time frame? In my current run I'm 21hours and 170000+ turns and the shops are exactly the same.

Long. Last 'long' game I played, I almost wondered if I mis-remembered the feature as it didn't seem to be happening. Sometime around when I was doing the Ommonporch quest I think it repopulated.

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

1. What does proselytizing do? How can it be used? Is it effective?

It does what it says on the can! converts people to be your followers. What you can target is governed by level and Ego.

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

2. Is gift giving a way of doing diplomacy with people

Yep. You get faction with them, and adjustements with anyone they have relationships with. (L)ook at them first to see what the diplomatic consequences will be.

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

3. Item storage, if I drop items on the ground Can I pick them up at a later time? Are there despawn mechanics in place for them?

Not 100% sure, I think there are /some/ despawn mechanics? I know if you drop a chest of items in a town, it will stay there forever. maybe any drops are safe, but certainly putting things in a chest in town is safe.

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

If I store items in a chest I do not own will I lose those items or will they be despawned at a time in future?

I doubt it will despawn, but you might trigger hostility against the owner of the chest? better to use an unowned chest. They only weight "1" so easy enough to bring some back to town.

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

4. I notice some water collected is "brackish", are there other types of water and what purpose do they have?

basically any fluid can be contaminated or mixed with any other fluid, and they acquire appropriate adjecitives as you mix them. Used for various potions to cure diseases. Things probably happen when you drink them, but probably not anything good.

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

5. What do things like Trumescent, bloated and the like mean?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tumescent

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bloated

The things you are looking at are adjectives describing your relative level of hunger and thirst. The two examples above are your maximum fullness levels, after which you might start vommiting if you consume more. Qud has some creative word use -- Tumescent just means full of fluid in this case -- not that you are sexually aroused.

Some roguelikes actually apply negative status effects (slow you down, and such) if you are too full, but I don't think Qud does this? Could be wrong.

[Swirler]

Thank you for your responses Luke, it's good to know items won't despawn in chests. I notice carry capacity is a limiting factor when playing a human esper.

[Luke]

Originally posted by Luke:

Originally posted by slobby:

Any idea on the time frame? In my current run I'm 21hours and 170000+ turns and the shops are exactly the same.

Long. Last 'long' game I played, I almost wondered if I mis-remembered the feature as it didn't seem to be happening. Sometime around when I was doing the Ommonporch quest I think it repopulated.

You know, even now I'm not sure I remember this correctly. It might be that I was confusing visits from two different saves. But I'm fairly sure that they do repopulate. maybe unormal will chime in.

[Avloren]

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

1. What does proselytizing do? How can it be used? Is it effective?

Proselytize is the best! It has many uses.

It tries to convert an NPC (can be friendly or hostile) to join you. They'll become friendly if they weren't before, follow you around and attack your enemies. They'll become part of your "faction" so they'll have the same relationships you do - i.e. if you're friendly with crabs, they will be too. You can (l)ook at them, then hit (g)ive to trade items with them; they'll automatically equip gear upgrades you trade to them.

It will only work on NPCs your level or lower (unfortunately you can't tell what their level is ingame, but the wiki knows). Chance of success depends on Ego. You can keep trying on a friendly until it works with no penalty, trying won't turn them hostile. You can keep trying on a hostile too I guess, it's just that he might kill you before you succeed. You can only have one proselytized ally at once; if you proselytize a new one, the old one should remain friendly but will stop following you around.

Uses:

Get an ally to help in combat. As an Apostle (starts with proselytize trained) at level 1 with maxed ego, with a couple tries you can convert a watervine farmer in Joppa for a good early game ally. Later on you'll be able to get more powerful allies and equip them with good gear.

Make a faction leader from a hostile faction friendly, so that you can share water with him and repair your reputation with his faction.

If you accidentally aggro an important NPC, say one you need for a quest, proselytize can force them to be friendly again. You can then talk to them and progress your quest.

Use to get any item in an NPC's inventory (but not what they have equipped). They will trade you these items for free using the (g)ive command after you proselytize them.

Last-ditch defense against a hostile enemy in melee range, you can try to proselytize him just to stop him from killing you. As a bonus he'll attack his former friends for you, and you can now attack him and kill him without him fighting back.

If you proselytize an important NPC you don't want following you around, say a quest NPC or merchant, you can proselytize something else (the first unimportant creature you come across) to get the first one to stop following you.

Originally posted by Mad hatters in jeans:

2. Is gift giving a way of doing diplomacy with people or is it more for unlocking secret rewards?

It's for modifying your faction reputations. Whenever you see a faction leader (pink tile), (l)ook at him and see who loves him/hates him. You can either kill him to get a bonus with the factions that hate him, and a penalty with the factions that love him - or share water to get the reverse (as long as he's already friendly, proselytize can fix this if not). By choosing intelligently, you can ensure you always get a net gain in reputations, eventually many factions will love you. The ritual works on robots, but you'll need oil to share with them, not water.

Note that while Chrome Idol leaders are part of the Napthaali tribe, all of them are also loved by the robot faction. They're low level and pretty common in the jungles around Kyakukya, so it's easy to proselytize them, share oil, and gain robot faction. Having the robots love you is very useful at high levels, as the most dangerous enemies in the game are robots. [Edit: was wrong about Napthaali starting neutral, I think my last character got lucky with a snapjaw leader that was hated by them]

Important: you must never kill an NPC that you have done the ritual with. Try it on a character you're not too attached to, if you want to find out why.

[slobby]

Originally posted by Avloren:

The only part I really disagree with is how hard it is to make some injectors, especially the weaker ones with exotic ingredients. Ubernostrum or Eater's nectar, sure, they should be hard to make since they can have permanent effects. Mid-level consumables with a temporary effect like blaze, sphinx salt, shade oil etc. just don't seem worth the difficulty of acquiring their ingredients. Especially sphinx salt, which uses a higher level bit you're better off saving for gear and mods that are permanent.

I agree with your sentiment.

Originally posted by Avloren:

Friendly factions:
You know that you can attack friendly creatures, right? Control-arrow to force attack them if you're a melee. It won't even affect your standing with that faction, as long as you avoid killing one of the leaders. This means that there really isn't any downside to being friendly with a faction - you can still kill absolutely everything, it just means that they won't attack you first.

It'll still be tricky to find something that's rewarding for your character and unlikely to murder your robot buddy, but that's the price you pay if you want to level up a companion I guess. You have the entire map to pick from, even the parts filled with friendlies, so there's got to be something he can manage that's harder than Joppa area.

Yup, I know about holding ctrl. Just seemed like alot of work. :) So I went slumberling/loot hunting, and found a Leering Stalker on lvl3 below Joppa. Sure am glad that robots aren't hostile at the moment. :)

Originally posted by Avloren:

Salt:
I saw someone else post that the "dilute salt" you get from pouring saltwater on the ground actually works as a cure ingredient. Take this with a grain of salt (ahah), because I've not been able to test it - haven't seen salt as a cure ingredient lately.

Thanks for the info on this! I think it works...my tongue started rotting so I made a batch with some salt I bought in Bethesda, and got some message about it tasting like snails ass or something. Tongue still kept bleeding so I poured some salty water out picked up the dilute salt, made another batch and got the same message. I think my tongue has to fall out first for it to work though since I'm still bleeding everytime I eat/drink.

[slobby]

Originally posted by Luke:

Originally posted by Luke:

Long. Last 'long' game I played, I almost wondered if I mis-remembered the feature as it didn't seem to be happening. Sometime around when I was doing the Ommonporch quest I think it repopulated.

You know, even now I'm not sure I remember this correctly. It might be that I was confusing visits from two different saves. But I'm fairly sure that they do repopulate. maybe unormal will chime in.

Lol I read your reply this morning before work and was super excited since I was on the Omonporch quest. Got home, booted the game and went to the Six Day Stilt and nadda. :(

[Avloren]

Originally posted by slobby:

Thanks for the info on this! I think it works...my tongue started rotting so I made a batch with some salt I bought in Bethesda, and got some message about it tasting like snails ass or something. Tongue still kept bleeding so I poured some salty water out picked up the dilute salt, made another batch and got the same message. I think my tongue has to fall out first for it to work though since I'm still bleeding everytime I eat/drink.

Yeah I'm pretty sure you have to wait for it to fall out. Unfortunately you won't know if you've successfully cured it until you take the ubernostrum after drinking the flaming ick. If you got the ick wrong, perhaps because dilute salt doesn't count, then your tongue will start rotting again and your ubernostrum will be wasted.