What is max level and what is late game generally like?

[Mogwai]

So looked at wiki on levels and it didn't really mention max level or maybe i missed it? Also what is late game like, do you have be very strategic/careful can things just squash you? or it more of a cake walk because of power scaling reasons and such?

[glass zebra]

Enemies grant less experience when you are far above them ( tier table[wiki.cavesofqud.com]), so getting very high up is still hardly possible. Books always grant full experience, but you won't keep getting higher and higher xp books. Afaik the level is simplified something like 5+5*tier, so when you get into higher levels areas you will still outlevel that area at some point since tier 8 is max (afaik).

I've only been playing this for maybe 4 weeks now, but so far it seems like end game becomes basically meaner and meaner with less focus on just adding damage and more on adding new tricks for enemies. Damage wise it can still be easy, but there is still a lot that can harm you in many different ways. Early game is basically just: put on some armour and ignore dodge and just smash stuff. The more you progress there will be more and more enemies that you do not want to touch you in any way.

Just following the main quest line gives you a "pretty good taste" for that and will convey more and more additions to the mechanics for you. Even though Qud sometimes feels a bit messy (for freedom and purpose) I think they have done a very good job with that part and presenting it to players.

There is also more headshaking boni and items for the player available or easier affordable, which includes the rare liquids, eaters nectar and polygel, which you can see early on, but might not get a lot. Items and enemies will slowly enter that kind of headshake state too. Or even surpass it.


How far in the story/tiers are you yet? Did you notice any increase really? Did stuff like penetration or dodge or debuffs have any meaning to you yet?

[Mogwai]

Very cool, only very early, my highest character is 13, i was told to talk to a wise bear in Grit Gate and help the centaurs at Bay Leh. That is the furthest i have gotten.

Edit:
Also to add, I understand AV, DV, MA, PV, etc and know the basics of melee combat such beginning with a roll to hit, etc, but not really focused on how much each stat matters.

[glass zebra]

Yeah but for the most part those values are all rather low in early game. You might notice the high dodge value of giant centipedes or the high armour of bum bettles (which are neutral by default) early on, but those things will get extremer and more noticeable. I basically ignored that until I started a long blade character and had the active choice to focus on these things during combat.

If you were asked to go to Grit Gate you already met Qudzu, which are super low on damage and basically lack any defense while also being immobile.. but being able to hurt your equipment. The next part after visiting Grit Gate will give you a taste of heck. The Barthrumites will also give you some info about the big quest areas if you talk to them, but you will probably still underestimate what's coming.

I hope you won't get too annoyed and instantly look for strategies online after facing that. Damage and defenses will raise and some enemies go into ridiculous values, but many other enemies take another path. Even really late there are enemies that you can one hit with weapons you did not focus on, but you will want it like that.

[Mogwai]

Oh wow i really like that, yeah i actually thought it was really interesting the Qudzo dilemma, where in the rust wells there is plenty of basically 10's of little pockets of exp in exchange for a chance to destroy gear. I see what you mean now. the enemies aren't following this linear path where they just scale as meat shields with big sticks, but they challenge you in different ways. Very cool.

[glass zebra]

At least you can repair the rusted gear (if they don't double rust it)..

You will still see meatshields. If you travel the surface area a bit, you can also meat tortoises really early on which are basically shields devoid of all meat already. There will also be enemies easily penetrating you 5 times if you don't get extremely high armour, but for the most part just keeping up with the tier you are in and getting like maybe 5+tier AV with 5+tier PV will make most enemies feel decent on those values, with the ones falling out of that formula being very noticeable still. There are also the trivial enemy swarms. Redrock and the Rust Wells had narrow tunnels, but don't expect it to stay like this. In Qud you are never really immune to even the most trivial enemies.

There is just more on top of that, but so far the game seems "easy" on those common difficulty mechanics and is being mean to you in uncommon areas.

[Mogwai]

yep oh wow can't wait ahahahahaha

[Shoom]

the deep underground is crawling with various things that can kill you in many creative ways, not all of them might be dangerous to you but some creature down there is bound to counter your build, some will disarm you, some will destroy your gear, some will permanently scar you, some will instantly kill you, some will swarm you, some will turn your strength against you.

my advice is to use precognition or bring heaps of spynhx salt and use it to figure out how they behave before engaging them, I've lost so many characters due to curiosity and overconfidence. also think thoroughly before acting, there's likely one ability or item at your disposal that can save you. urberries, injectors and the run ability are your best friends.

[Lolpingu]

Approach godhood by growing your stats and ability pool, while acquiring increasingly powerful artifacts that offer more and more exotic options in combat.

Fight increasingly tough enemies with increasingly interesting abilities that make fighting them require some thought.

For example, one enemy lower down has moderate defensive and offensive stats and attacks in infinitely spawning swarms like giant centipede. The problem? They reflect all the damage you do to them back at you. All of it, including your 100 damage phase cannon crits. Simply mowing all of them down as normal is not an option unless you can health-tank your own damage. You need to consider how you will deal with this quirk as you approach them.

Most of the end-game enemies have interesting mechanic like this, and you have to fight random mixes of them, so you need to approach combat cautiously and adaptively and put your equipment to good use to solve the problems the game throws at you.

I find that the hardest enemies in the game, like the pyramids, feel like puzzles, rather than mere gear checks. They have a devastatingly powerful weapon and hellishly strong defenses. You need to personally come up with a solution to each one of these factors and then put all of your solutions to action in sequence if you want to take one of those things down.

I love that about this game.

[glass zebra]

There are a lot of different ways to kill pyramids. I've done it with one plasma grenade and then shortblades only without really taking any damage and keeping them in freezelock from weapon mods. You can also go the other way and turn them into pure flame. With every weapon or build you should have some options, but they seem to require more than just: charge and kill unless you are level 40 or higher with lots of neutron flux maybe.

When I first met the bugs, I had to flee and when I returned there were to many of them too kill for my max hp pool. They even reflected the damage of my gas grenades and the reflected damage is not capped with their max hp. If you don't have a character focused on hp or can instantly reach the spawner, they are a huge issue. When I first saw them, I didn't even know they had a spawner untl I ran around screaming and saw something behind 5 of them. I definitely needed planing to not kill myself in 3 hits.

The game has a lot more to offer than using the same tactic for everything. A lot of enemies that can be super dangerous can be super easy to defeat, but need attention nonetheless.

[Lolpingu]

That's the thing with static enemies that can't adapt to you. Once you know how to beat them, it will work every time.

To someone like you that has experience in the game, nothing is much of a puzzle anymore, because a puzzle isn't really much of a puzzle anymore if you already know exactly how to solve it.

To a new player, the game is chock full of puzzles, however. They need to think and experiment to find what works. You should let those players find their own solutions to those puzzles, because once they know those solutions, those puzzles stay solved, taking away that wonderful experience of hitting a wall and having to figure out how to get past it.

It remains fun to go up against randomly generated compositions of different kinds of enemies that require you to come up with a unique strategy to deal with all of them, but figuring out that one way to deal with a particular enemy is something super satisfying that people should experience themselves.