Why does everyone say that Red Rock is a "trap quest"?

[irisidem]

Most beginner guides I've read label Red Rock as a "trap quest" claiming that it will almost instantly kill you. However, barring a few /extremely/ unfortunate events (ie. going onto a level with a slumberling woken up by a seed spitting vine) Red Rock is pretty safe. Most of the snapjaw enemies are fairly weak, with a few exceptions, and you usually have enough xp to level up several times after just a couple floors. So I'm curious: Do you think that Red Rock is a good very first quest? Why or why not?

[Pixel Peeper]

I never start in Joppa so I never even get that quest in the first place. I only do Red Rock for the very, very precious Small Sphere of Negative Weight you can find there.

If I did start in Joppa... some character builds have an insanely strong early game and some are pathetically weak at first. I'd totally do Reck Rock right away with the former. But for the latter, it'd be very, very risky, so I'd rather just kill a few things on the overworld to level up a few times first.

[irisidem]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

I never start in Joppa so I never even get that quest in the first place. I only do Red Rock for the very, very precious Small Sphere of Negative Weight you can find there.

If I did start in Joppa... some character builds have an insanely strong early game and some are pathetically weak at first. I'd totally do Reck Rock right away with the former. But for the latter, it'd be very, very risky, so I'd rather just kill a few things on the overworld to level up a few times first.

Yeah, builds with lower toughness will have a very hard time in Red Rock because of the plants. Both young ivorys and jilted lovers can inflict bleeding, which can decimate an unprepared character. You can work around this by stocking up on bandages, but these are a bit expensive early on. In general, it seems like unless you are playing an extremely fragile character, Red Rock is fairly safe, even for level 1 characters.

On weaker characters I have tried attacking overmap enemies, but that's always quite slow.

[Yerland]

Red rock has a number of situations that I find dangerous to level 3 or so depending on your character build. Ameobas can do surprising amounts of damage with their multi attacks.
Bears are around.
Young ivory can kill a wounded character before they realise what happened.
Large parties of snapjaw and centapedes sometimes effectively ambush the player.
Asphalt pools under stairs can be unavoidable traps that leave players vulnerable and unable to flee.
All of these threats seem less common over at the rest wells and I take my low level characters there first. That's not to say red rock is impossible for new character, a good melee build that is careful could do it, or an esper with several good combat mental abilities would do fine. But not all early characters are optimised for early play, and red rock isnt the easiest spot around.

[gnpaaron]

Slugsnouts are not uncommon in red rock and they will waste a squishy build early on

[Pixel Peeper]

I narrowly avoided a bear, then ended up with two Quillipedes and an eyeless crab on me.

Definitely not someplace you can do with just any new character. Especially if you're a newbie.

[Iduno]

Knollworms are bad, but you can usually deal with them. Crabs barely/rarely take damage when you're low level and weak. Slugsnouts can kill you with a lucky hit. And there are enough monsters ready to kill you that you can't always handle them all at once.

Once you kill a few snapjaws and gear up a bit, it's not a big deal. Just don't go running there like it's a tutorial area.

[Mattrex]

Players have, in general, been trained by video games to expect that when they are handed a quest, it's something they can complete immediately with the tools they have available to them right then. RPGs in particular have a habit of littering a player's path with precisely-calibrated breadcrumbs to ensure that the players are following a more-or-less fixed path with a predetermined outcome.

So, someone starts this game, and the first person they talk to gives them their first quest of the game, to go to Red Rock. "This must be the tutorial quest," they think, and expect that they will be able to complete it at first level with whatever gear they happened to spawn with.

The trap is that Red Rock isn't a tutorial, except insofar as experiencing a miserable death in the wilderness from being unprepared is educational.

[Thrax]

Red Rock is not a trap if you are savy and experienced, but it is certainly difficult and sets the tone for Qud.

For optimal Joppa gameplay, there are 3 or 4 other things I would do first, but I usually do alternate starting so that I don't spend every game following 5-10 minutes of a methodical routine to gain half a dozen levels and spring past Red Rock to much more lucrative areas.

I think being given a direction is decent, and as far as things go, it is good. The Rust Wells is more of a trap in that it will likely strip a new player of any decent gear they have, even if they can complete it.

[Pixel Peeper]

Honestly, it's hard to pass up the much shorter, easier and more rewarding quests from random villages.

My last one gave me two quests that didn't even require fighting anything and there were weeps right next to one of the objectives. When I came back they gave me a hoversled.

There was also another village nearby which had two Yonderbush fields, granting me well over 2,000 drams' worth of no-weight cash.

And then I found out that the Stilt had a Giant Honey Weep and Giant Water Weep in it, with the librarian being a Giant Oil Weep. And there were three Dromads with tons of crazy gear in there.

I bought an artifact worth nearly 8k without even knowing what it was, geared up and went out again.

Game's easier when your first weapon is an Eigenrifle.

[Digital_Explorer_Arts]

I use a alternative to complete the missions and never go to Red Rock, what you need is in any cave.

[House of Eats, Shoots and Leaves]

Most of these guides are pretty old.
Red Rock used to share the spawn table of other underground regions, so you'd sometimes run into fire ants, saw-handers or Putus Templar.
Nowadays the occasional slugsnout is the most dangerous thing in Red Rock.

[Aquillion]

It's in comparison to Argyve's quests. Generally speaking, the Rust Wells quest is:

1. Safer, in terms of more reliably having easy enemies.

2. Shorter, in terms of not requiring that you go too deep (often you don't have to enter the caves at all.)

3. More rewarding, in that it gives you a vital recoiler, plus access to Grit Gate. (Once you have the Droid Scrambler, Grit Gate itself is generally safer than Red Rock, since you'll have allies to fall back on in case things go wrong. And accessing Grit Gate's merchant allows you to buy ammo in large amounts, among other things.)

4. Actually necessary eventually anyway in the main plotline, unlike Red Rock.

Of course the quest after that in the main progression is much harder. But generally it's faster and easier to rush through the the first part of the main quest to reach Grit Gate; once you've done that, you can explore the area around Grit Gate and maybe do some other quests until you feel confident you can handle Golgotha.

[Luke]

I think doing the Red Rock quest actually gives you access to Grit Gate. You can tell them that Argyve calls you friend, and they will let you in to trade. Similarly, I think they let you in if you have a merchant token.

The Rust Well quest puts you on the track to do Golgotha, but if you want access to the first room of Grit Gate, the safest way is through Argyve.

[NyxNocturne]

Red Rock is less hard than it used to be. I found it pretty easy with my dominate/beguile two-headed psychic acolyte, even more so when I luckily beguiled the Queen of the Baboons! :P

[ravni]

I honestly feel like Red Rock and the rustwells are kinda the same difficulty, but I usually do the rustwells first because it gives more loot from chests, and it's easier to run away to the next screen.