i don't know what i'm doing

There's a learning curve here but the moment you get past it you're suddenly playing one of the most jaw-dropping games of all time. There's no game or game world like this.

Imagine becoming a door, and being closed with so much power that you die...
This can happen in this game

Qud gives you the freedom to achieve god-like power in a way that is unlike any other Sandbox RPG.

You gain secrets and hidden lore naturally as you progress through your characters' lives. I recommend doing a couple Classic mode characters, and then a quicksave-scumming (F5, F9) run to experience the horizon-towering Chrome Spindle, of which Qud stands above it's contemporaries.

If you like CDDA, Fallout, and a little bit of weird faction interactions, GET THIS GAME!

I didn't like Caves of Qud at first as it's not very intuitive to get started, and it also starts off slow even when you do know what you're doing. To be frank, I originally refunded it.

Came back a few months later and bought it again, looking for my next roguelike fix after playing through ToME4.

Glad I gave Qud a second chance, because it's a very cool exploration-based roguelike with lots of variety in builds and steam workshop mod support. Useful mods include QoL improvements, a Dark Souls style checkpoint save system, and more content in general.

The interactions are quite interesting in general. One example being this one time I got a fungal infection on my head, which caused me to not be able to wear a helmet, but I gained cold resistance and a special edible mushroom kept growing from my head, which I then picked regularly during my travels to use as cooking ingredients. lol

There's also a pretty creative mutation system, such as getting X-Men style abilities, or growing additional weird appendages like plant blossoms. Alternatively you can go for a cybernetics implant character instead.

The new build I'm running started off as a bleed dagger focused rogue with really high str/agi/toughness, but after a few mutations later, he is literally a 4 armed, triplejointed, regenerating ninja version of Goro from Mortal Kombat. I have 3 daggers and one fungal infected fist that releases spore DoTs, so the melee flurries are crazy. Having 4+ bleeds and a poison simultaneously on an enemy is pretty common.

It's a unique and inspired game, and if you don't mind the old-school graphics and can get past the slow start, there's a strange and magical world tucked away in the Caves of Qud.

No idea what's going on. First my skin gets itchy and then I grow extra appendages. Think I've got the hang of it, get a quest to go to another settlement, something barfs fire on me and I die instantly. Killed probably two dozen characters now. A+ 10/10

If you use Roleplaying function and save the character in settlements, it is more fun to try again with the same character... to make it stronger.

I've never played a game with such an intoxicatingly strange and immersive atmosphere before. After starting off exceedingly weak and struggling to survive, with patience and experience you'll begin to see the limitless possibilities in front of you: the many paths towards turning your character into an unstoppable force. The most similar experience I've had was with Morrowind, but the RPG elements of Qud are vastly more complex.

Read a guide, and take the time to learn the keybindings. After an hour of struggle, the deaths became further and further apart and the game opened up immensely.

I have fine memories of Caves of Qud from when I was younger, and I'm happy to say that they have not disappointed. I'm running the beta build right now so don't know how much has been fully implemented into the standard version, but many if not most of the UI issues and difficulty navigating the menus has been taken care of. It looks really cool now, no more fiddling around for minutes trying to navigate between the quest menu and the locations menu, you're able to look at your quests and hover over them, which will show their location on the map, then you can click the quest and have it automatically take you to the locations menu so you can more easily mark where you need to go on the map.

I've logged more than 100 hours between all the iterations of this game I have played, and it's so cool to see the world come alive in its current form. The story and static characters are awesome, so much has been added since the last time I've played!

I will say to folks that if you're looking for procedural generation in the same vein as Dwarf Fortress, it's definitely different in that regard. Most of the procedurally created characters are not much to behold, mainly serving as trading partners and quest givers. They don't move away from their individual zones generally, the cultural mechanics are very interesting but not as depthy as Dwarf Fortress.

I would more readily compare this game to a retro-futuristic Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, in that it is fundamentally not a story about the random NPCS you meet around the world, it's about your character and your actions throughout the narrative. And now with the beta update on the UI, it's much easier to navigate and enjoy yourself in a way that neither DF or CDDA can bring to the table. The graphics are smooth, there are cool effects, you can chop off your own arms and regrow them with injectors and mutations, and many of the performance issues have been improved dramatically since I went to the beta branch.

As far as the story is concerned, the narrative is really cool. It touches on very serious issues in a wholesome way, that makes you think about the situations that come up in a complex and nuanced way. There's surprises, hard choices, and those choices define your character and the world's interactions with them. There's also hidden nuggets of wisdom and complexity to many of the characters.

As an example without going into too much detail and spoiling anything, in the early game you'll encounter a character that's mute, and the game very adeptly describes the hand motions that go into the character's use of sign language in their response to your questions. It took me a while to notice that was what was happening, but it's little touches like that that bring depth into the world of Qud. The story is full of moments like that, little moments of inclusivity that are touching without the game feeling like it's preaching to you. Pay attention, and you'll learn something.

And if story's not your thing, you're completely unbound to follow it. Travel to the bowels of the earth to battle rock monsters for the precious gems you can extract from their rocky corpses, grow wings and fly to anywhere on the map without worrying about getting killed early. Wear special clothes to make you look like particular sects of people, then schmooze their leaders that you'll find procedurally generated around the world, become a fungus ridden plaguebringer that drips wax everywhere.

There's so much to do in this game, the worldbuilding is great, the world is open but confined at the same time, which brings a degree of focus to it which games like Dwarf Fortress and CDDA sorta make you figure out for yourself. The game walks you through the more heady elements of it, and if you can get past the retro graphics, you'll have a good time running around the world, discovering artifacts and forgotten lore. Great game, and glad to see so much care and work continuing to be put into the game after all these years.

Thanks to the developers for bringing such life to their vision! Strongly recommend to anyone looking for something a little different that they can sink some time into.