Finding Shug'ruith?

[blinkmoth]

So i've had trash divining and mumble mouth pretty much since the beginning, now at level 48, still 0 luck with finding Shug'ruith. No legendary gyre wights either.

I did find a legendary Plasmatic Girshling; took a cloning draught to water-ritual, but didn't tell me anything about Shug.

I have a few cloning draught and metamorphic polygel lying around if that would help in any way. Also found a legendary ichor merchant who frequently sells more.

Could I clone the legendary girshling, would the clone give me new secrets? Would it be possible for him to disclose shug's location?

Any other tips, except "run around with mumble mouth for 30 hours and accept that the dev has made the worst design choice in video game history"?

(I dont wanna use wishes, it's been a 100% legit Classic run so far and I really wanna keep it that way and get the Greater Victory.)

[DiamondBot10]

I think Caves of Qud does a great job at almost everything except for this. I don't think you can ritual cloned legendary creatures. Finding Shug'ruith is by far the grindiest part of the game. I think just getting as many secrets as possible and going top to bottom through the entire map is the only consistent way to find them. Its unfortunate.

[glass zebra]

Cloned creatures do not have hates/likes or water ritual options.

[Icedfate]

psychal gland paste also reveals secrets. you can cook 3 every time you get hungry. not common items though. you need to keep an eye out for them from chefs and kippers. I'm always checking the chefs and kippers, because i'm always looking for nectars.

an easy way to scan for the paste is look for purple text. there's one other food that uses purple text (spine jam, i think), but scanning for purple text is faster than trying to read everything on the list.

bonus tip : Nectar is easy to scan for. Look for a 3 digit price tag.

[Damon]

I believe there is much more trash is just find kraken in Salt Dunes and follow its path lol. But probably not good strategy either way.

[Pizzarugi]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

psychal gland paste also reveals secrets. you can cook 3 every time you get hungry. not common items though. you need to keep an eye out for them from chefs and kippers. I'm always checking the chefs and kippers, because i'm always looking for nectars.

an easy way to scan for the paste is look for purple text. there's one other food that uses purple text (spine jam, i think), but scanning for purple text is faster than trying to read everything on the list.

bonus tip : Nectar is easy to scan for. Look for a 3 digit price tag.

To add to this: If OP doesn't mind using mods, there's one called Shopping List they can install that highlights merchants if they have items you're looking for. One of the best QoL mods if you're like me and clone armies of merchants trying to get rare items like neutron flux, zetachrome weapons, tacos, psychal glands and their paste, etc.

[Chan]

I don't know how they came up with this idea because it's so awful and just one of the worst concepts for an enemy in a game like this. It's such a slap in the face to people's time and efforts when there are so many parts of the map that are only accessible via traveling by foot. I spent like 7 hours going up and down/left to right across the entire map and found every single ruin, lair, village and workshop I could physically find until I got tired of it. Ended up wishing myself to it's lair because our time is short and finite and I tried playing the game and it's not worth the efforts. It was nice to see it was in the mountains in the upper right hand corner though where if I was crazy would've needed to walk until I found it or prayed to God mumblemouth/trash divining might've revealed it. I don't really like to "cheat" but in this one instance I think it's completely fair.

[Pizzarugi]

I think a fair balance would be to prevent Shug lair from spawning in impassable parasangs (mountains, moon stair, and rainbow wood), and you're guaranteed or at least given a high chance of being pinged about discovering it while exploring the overworld.

It means you still have to put in the work of finding it, but it won't be in extremely tedious to explore regions of Qud.

Another option, or something you can add on top of my suggestion, is to add hints to its location in books like the Ruin of House Isner. Hell, make its location something known to the Troll faction.

[blinkmoth]

Finally found him, thanks for all the tips.

Buut yeah, this really needs to change, it's plain insulting for players who dont wanna cheat their way through it. Seeing how well everything else works in this game, I can't help but think that the devs consider this an intentional time sink, but if that's the case, they really lack any basic understanding of how grindy gameplay loops can and can't be fun. This isn't it. The implementation is unbelievably inept.

Originally posted by Pizzarugi:

I think a fair balance would be to prevent Shug lair from spawning in impassable parasangs (mountains, moon stair, and rainbow wood), and you're guaranteed or at least given a high chance of being pinged about discovering it while exploring the overworld.

It means you still have to put in the work of finding it, but it won't be in extremely tedious to explore regions of Qud.

Another option, or something you can add on top of my suggestion, is to add hints to its location in books like the Ruin of House Isner. Hell, make its location something known to the Troll faction.

yes to the first part but it should still only be a last resort.
There should other ways to find him that don't involve the player wasting the time of their life brainlessly running around a map.

Books with hints could actually work. Secrets in general; there could be 10+ rumors that would help you narrow down to the location. "on date xy, a dromad caravan came across a yawning pit 4-9 parasangs east of ruin name.", "on date xy, the villagers of blabla felt the ground shake and heard distant rumbling coming from the south", etc

Or, yes, if some factions know their location, that would work too. In fact, Wardens *do* know the location and can share it in water-ritual, but the chance is low.

This would actually be an very low-effort way for the devs to fix this; make Wardens *highly* prioritize Village and Cradle location secrets (Shug, Rermadon) over all the random goatfolk villages and whatever. I think Wardens already do prioritize that to some degree, but not nearly enough for it to be more than a shot in the dark to find out shugs location. Side effect would be that you could know the locations of lots of villages early on, but that has actually very little impact on the playthrough. This would probably really just be tweaking one single number in the code and would go a long way.

[Icedfate]

a simple fix could be just putting a guaranteed legendary gyre wight spawn somewhere, like the trolls in bethesda.

[Krlutin]

lol

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3426591787

lmao even

[blinkmoth]

Originally posted by Krlutin:

lol

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3426591787

lmao even

So? I think you're missing the point here.
I've also found him randomly multiple times in the past, as I'm sure have other people in this thread.

The girsh nephilim are basically the entire endgame, referenced throughout the game's lore from the first quest on that you pick up at level 1. And whether or not you can eventually find and fight them *should not be up to RNG*. It's laughably bad design. *That* is the point.

[Krlutin]

I know bro, im just joking around.

Having him pop up like this out of the blue made me remember seeing this thread the other day.

Absolutely agree with you on all points.