EleMentalist Build Guide

Everything you need to create, play, and succeed with a spellcaster-type (but not Esper based) mutated human!

The EleMentalist Build Guide

Electricity, Fire, Light! What more could one want? Future sight, of course.

Howdy! o/ This guide is the result of me noticing that build guides for Caves of Qud sort of just don’t exist, and then spending several days writing... One. Yep. This is my favorite build to play in Caves of Qud, after trying an innumerable amount of them, and here’s exactly why that is!

• A very easy early game, which is usually the most lethal part of any Qud run by far

• A set of tools that stay useful even at higher levels — nothing falls off or becomes mediocre

• Resources aren’t limited by equipment, and no single item is required to make it work later on

• Power scales up at a reasonable rate without ever feeling like you’re falling behind

• Little variance until you reach ~20th Level, at which point it can diverge in several directions

The EleMentalist is a split Mutated Human build, which means that it doesn’t favor Physical or Mental mutations — it uses both to great effect. It plays very much like one would imagine a “mage gunslinger” character does, but is notably not an Esper build. Those are limited to Mental Mutations, which excludes them from using things like Excited Genomes (more on that later) and also encourages them to dump certain stats to feed their Ego. We don’t do that here, at least not entirely! Ego is still good for us, but it isn’t absolutely necessary to pump up.

The EleMentalist is also a great beginner build, and can carry you pretty far on its toolkit alone. I don’t usually start “gearing up” until 30th Level, and find it easy enough to make do with whatever happens to drop until that point. For context, “gearing up” means looking through merchant inventories for proper upgrades and the like. We’re pretty safe with just our basic toolkit until much later in the game, though it may behoove you to prepare appropriately for certain steps in the main quest regardless.

If you’re just starting out, I recommend playing the EleMentalist in Roleplay mode. This mode gives you a checkpoint to reset to every time you visit a village or similar settlement, and is much more forgiving than the Classic mode. I don’t say this just because Qud is hard; it’s actually because many parts of the main quest can blindside you with really nasty stuff that you won’t be able to handle unless you know what to bring in advance — stuff like Cold Resist for a certain step, as well as EMP Grenades for another. Dying to stuff you didn’t prepare for feels absolutely awful on Classic, but at least on Roleplay you can go in again with that knowledge in place without having to build up an entirely new character.

By the way, if you prefer the Google Documents experience to Steam Guides, I've published it there as well. Here's the link![docs.google.com]

Creating the EleMentalist is Easy

In Character Creation, choose the Mutated Human Genotype and then the Arconaut Calling. This gives us +2 to Agility and a number of useful Skills to start off with. In the Mutations section, choose these:

• Electrical Generation

• Flaming Ray

• Brittle Bones

• Light Manipulation

• Precognition

By the way, wanna know a secret? If you choose “Preset” and pick your favorite sprite, you can back out and change everything to play the game with that sprite instead of the base Arconaut sprite. I dunno if that’s a bug, but if it is I don’t want it fixed! The game does a good job of explaining what all of these Mutations do, also, but I’d still like to offer my own explanation and include why I chose them.

Electrical Generation is a sort of “chain lightning” effect which starts in melee range — it goes in the direction you target — and then chains to other enemies within 1 square until it runs out of places to chain. Notably, it can and will also chain into bodies of water and along spider webs. It’s best used on large groups, which it can rip through with high damage, but care is necessary both to position them and to make sure you aren’t chaining onto something that is currently your friend. This can’t miss, also! Later on, this will let us donate our accruing charge to our equipped Artifacts that need it to operate.

Flaming Ray is a beam (well, a ray) of fire that extends up to 9 squares from your character, which can be aimed in any direction with the mouse or numpad. It has a very short cooldown and pretty high damage, with the caveat that it... You know... Sets stuff on fire. This includes loot on the ground and some liquids such as asphalt and oil, so care is necessary when using it. Notably, it does not set loot that an enemy is carrying on fire or anything. This means you don’t have to worry about lighting anything you want to use up unless it’s already on the ground! Similarly, containers such as bookcases will not destroy the items inside when they burn up. They’ll just drop them on the ground, unharmed. This one also can’t miss.

Brittle Bones is a defect, which means that it has a negative effect rather than a positive one. It sounds scary to take 50% more damage from bludgeoning and concussive damage, as well as falls, but this becomes irrelevant in the later game when your HP is high enough. One shot deaths are not common in lategame Qud, unless you’ve done something like stand in a Decarbonizer’s giant red firing line! This is to get us 4 extra points to play with, and nothing more.

Light Manipulation is a great ability that scales well and is multi-use. It makes you produce light in an area around yourself, sort of like a torch or glowsphere might, in an area that’s dependent on the level of the mutation. But, there’s more! You can also use a skill called Lase to remove some of this light (one square radius, in fact) and deal damage that also depends on level. Not only can this not miss, it also has infinite range so long as you can see your target and there’s no obstacle between you. Lase can hit a target literally across the map, so long as there are no obstructions! It’s very, very good and scales well. As an added bonus, this gives you a natural chance to refract light-based attacks! Lasers fall into this category and are particularly deadly in the late game if you don’t have the means to refract them.

Precognition isn’t an offensive ability — it’s actually our only defensive ability, to start! This mutation isn’t one that protects you when it’s used; rather it should be used before you get into a situation that’s too sticky to get out of. When you activate Precognition, you basically create a “checkpoint” that you can return to after a number of rounds (dependent on level) passes by. In most cases, dying in between will also slingshot you back to the “checkpoint” unharmed. Certain enemies like Esper Hunters and those who wield Psionic weapons can get around this, but they’re rare. Use this if you can feel yourself starting to get overwhelmed, or even more liberally like “before you go down any staircase” if you want to be as safe as possible. The choice is yours! It has other uses, too... But that will have its own section.

On the next screen, here’s how to distribute your Attributes:

• STR 16

• AGI 20 (This is 18 + 2 from your Arconaut calling!)

• TOU 18

• INT 18

• WIL 16

• EGO 18

What do these stats do for us, you might ask? I won’t go as in-depth here, but I can help with that. STR affects our melee weapons’ Penetration, which in veeery basic terms means that it increases their damage. We aren’t going to use melee weapons a lot, so it doesn’t need to be high. However, it also affects the limit of weight we can carry, so it shouldn’t be too low. Hence, 16! AGI affects the accuracy of all our attacks, including missile weapons, which we will actually be using regularly. We also get 1 Dodge Value for every 2 AGI above 16, and that’s good. TOU increases our HP most importantly, but also our resistance to poison and disease. It’s real good, but not necessarily worth further investment into.

INT gives us more Skill Points, which actually isn’t that great, and also affects how well we can identify Artifacts — that can be anything from folding chairs to missile launchers, so it’s important for that. Most importantly, though, INT is required to make use of the Tinker skill, and that makes it worth our points more than anything else. WIL lowers our cooldowns and adds to our Mental Armor, which helps us resist mental attacks. It’s actually really good, but most of our abilities either have a very low cooldown (Flaming Ray) or their cooldown isn’t affected by WIL (Light Manipulation). EGO affects prices in shops, but more importantly it raises the level of Mental Mutations for every 2 points above 16. That means we’ll get +1 to Light Manipulation and Precognition naturally, but do note that mutations can never be higher than ½ your current Level (rounded up). This means they’ll be 1st Level when you are also 1st Level, but the moment you hit 2nd Level they will go up automatically with you!

Finally, Starting Location. I recommend that you start in Joppa if you’re a beginner, but the choice isn’t too crucial. You can’t really go wrong, so to speak! Select whichever you’d like. By the way, on the subject of Mutations gaining bonus Levels...

Excited Genome? Is That Some Indie Band?

What the heck is an Excited Genome? I’m so glad you asked. If you’ve fiddled around a bit before you started playing the EleMentalist, you’ll know that this pops up sometimes and gives you extra Levels in a Physical Mutation of your choice. Note that I specified Physical. Excited Genome can’t be put into Light Manipulation or Precognition, because they’re Mental! You get an Excited Genome on any Level that ends in 5 — 5th Level, 15th Level, 25th Level, 35th Level, and on, and on. It gives you 3 free Levels in the Mutation you choose, and we’re going to be putting all of them into Flaming Ray. This saves us a lot of Mutation Points that we’d otherwise use to add Levels to it, and also lets it go beyond 10th Level. All Mutations can’t go any further than 10th Level on raw investment, which means you need bonus Levels in order to break that cap!

For this reason, we also don’t have to overinvest in Flaming Ray at the start. We only need to add 1 point to Flaming Ray on Levels that end in 6 or 8, not including 6th Level. That means 8, 16, 18, 26, 28, 36, 38, 46, 48, and 56. Most runs don’t really get past 35th - 40th Level, for reference, but later levels are there for posterity. By investing in this way, Flaming Ray will stay at its cap (½ our Level) more or less forever. If we assume we’re getting to ~40th Level, it’ll end up at ~20th Level in “endgame”. For reference, that deals 20d4+1 Fire Damage and increases the ambient temperature of any creature it hits by just a little bit... 810°F or 432°C, to be exact. With a certain lategame armor, this can become 1,215°F or 657°C! This means they’re going to catch on lethal fire, without many exceptions, and stay on fire for longer.

Precognition is Like Cheating, But It's Legal

Do you recall that I mentioned Precognition has other fun uses besides saving your life? Well, I’ll get into the nitty-gritty of that now! As mentioned before, this mutation lets you create a “checkpoint” that you can return back to at your leisure, or automatically if you die during its little window. An ability like this is rife for creative abuse, and boy can we abuse it. For example...

When you choose a new Mutation after character creation, you’re limited to 1 of 3 randomly offered ones. What if I told you that using Precognition and then buying a “random” Mutation isn’t permanent? That means you can peek ahead at what your pool looks like, though you can’t alter it (it’s seeded and semi-permanent) with Precognition alone. On that note...

When you use something like an Eater’s Nectar Injector, which gives you +1 to a random Attribute or +1 Mutation Point, it’s random every time. This is not seeded, which means you can target whatever you want through smart use of Precognition. By the way, as an added and devilish bonus... Using Eater’s Nectar or similar items will re-seed the Mutation pool that you’re offered when you buy a new one. These items are rare, so you can’t do this a lot without abuse of Metamorphic Polygel or its like, but it does let you semi-target Mutations that you actually want. The re-seeding is seeded (wow that’s quite a sentence), which means that you will always need another Nectar or similar item to re-seed the pool. You can’t just keep using the same one via Precognition and expect a new pool each time.

When you complete a quest for a procedurally generated village (so, anywhere but Joppa and other permanent villages) you receive a choice of 3 procedurally generated rewards. What if I told you this wasn’t seeded, and you can just keep using Precognition until you get the item that you want... Or at least one that isn’t totally useless? Well, I’d be telling the truth! This makes it easy, if a little tedious, to get some very nice gear such as a VISAGE or Hologram Bracelet earlier than usual.

Hey, speaking of buying new Mutations, what are we even looking for? Once again, I’m glad you asked!!

New Mutations or New Creative Ways to Win

As I mentioned in the very first part of this guide, we have a lot of directions we can go with this build. First, though, I should talk about where we’re investing in the first place. We want to invest in Flaming Ray at the Levels I mentioned above, and we also want to bring Electrical Generation as well as Light Manipulation up to 10th Level as soon as possible. Note that Light Manipulation will have bonus Levels, so the “10th Level” that it displays once you’re 20th Level will be more like 7 + 3 or 6 + 4 or so. Make sure to keep investing until its actual, “raw” Level is 10th before any modifiers. Precognition is what I call a “one point wonder”, which means you never need to invest into it. Some of the Mutations in the list below are also like this, and I’ll denote them with a * after their names!

We’re already a pseudo-Esper with how many “spell-like” abilities we have, and that’s one direction that we can go! EEGO will continue to go up as we gain Levels, whether or not we’re actively adding points to it, and that will slowly increase the potency of our Mental Mutations. By the time we’re buying some new Mutations (~20th Level) we should have a solid +3 or even +5 to all of our Mental Mutations depending on what gear we came across on the way and our Attribute investment. Gaining more of these will raise our Psychic Glimmer, however, which will start to bring Esper Hunters in to hunt us down... Never as many as a pure Esper build, nor as powerful, but hey. Conversely, if we don’t want to deal with Esper Hunters or we want some more Quality of Life stuff, buying new Physical Mutations is always a safe bet.

Anyway, let me just list all of the Mutations we have use for. If you don’t see one in this list, it’s not useful for this build at all. I’ll be ranking them on a 1 to 5 scale, listed as ( X / 5 ) after their name.

Physical Mutation Tier List 2022 (REAL) (IMPOSSIBLE)

• Adrenal Control ( 2 / 5 )
  This gives a nice bonus to Electrical Generation and Flaming Ray for a short time, but not much more. If you have several other Physical Mutations already, it could be better than 2 / 5.

• Electromagnetic Pulse ( 3 / 5 )
  This is actually pretty good, but can get you in hot water if it hits your allies as well. If you plan to recruit an army via Proselytize and / or Beguile, this becomes 0 / 5. Not at all worth it, then.

• Heightened Hearing ( 4 / 5 )
  The first very good Physical Mutation, but it has downsides. Normally, enemies don’t “animate” until you can see them. Since you can see them sooner via Heightened Hearing, it means that everything in the area will be active immediately. This can be super annoying. It also won’t let you rest while you can see enemies, so it’s hard to rest in the field with this active.

• Heightened Quickness ( 5 / 5 )
  Quickness is incredible. 10th Level gives us +33 Quickness, which basically means we get a free round (in which the enemy can’t act) every 3 rounds. There are exceptions, as some enemies also have high Quickness, but they’re rare.

• Multiple Legs ( 5 / 5 )
  Oh Resheph, it’s so good! We get a boost to our weight limit, but more importantly we also gain move speed. The boost is hard to “math out” in exact rounds, but it basically means you can hit Sprint and leave almost any enemy in the dust easily. This is borderline broken as an escape tool.

• Phasing ( 4 / 5 ) *
  Since we don’t actually have a “real” escape tool (Precognition is more like a prevention tool), this is actually a pretty good one. It also lets us phase ourselves so we can hit certain enemies who are perma-phased without the need of things like phase-conjugate grenades or certain weapons.

• Photosynthetic Skin ( 4 / 5 )
  Again, Quickness is incredible. This one takes a little more work to acquire, since you have to bask in sunlight or use your naturally-accruing cooking ingredients for the bonus, but it’s great.

• Regeneration ( 3 / 5 ) *
  So, this is just a really convenient Mutation, to be honest. The natural healing rate is nice, but the part where you regrow limbs that get dismembered is what we’re here for. That’s why it’s a one point wonder; we can wait as long as we need to grow back that leg that got munched off.

• Sleep Gas Generation ( 5 / 5 )
  I slept on this Mutation for a while, but it’s actually super great. Not only does it grant immunity to other forms of sleep gas, it basically hard disables almost everything around you for a long while. It doesn’t work on robots, sadly, but no ability is perfect!

• Triple-jointed ( 5 / 5 )
  A bonus to our Dodge Value, missile weapon accuracy, and a percent chance for our Skills that need Agility to not go on cooldown when used? Hoo, that’s a lot in one ability. It’s +6 AGI at 10th Level, which basically removes the need for us to invest in AGI at all on top of that.

• Two-Headed ( 3 / 5 )
  Better than it sounds, and not just for the reduced action cost of Mental Mutations. Having two heads means you won’t die if you’re beheaded, and the ability to use more abilities per round (if they’re Mental Mutations), and also a high chance to shake off annoying stuff like Confusion.

• Two-Hearted ( 2 / 5 )
  We honestly get enough HP from our starting TOU value, but this can still be nice as a safety net. The added Sprint time is pretty nice as well, but it isn’t as impactful as some other Mutations.

• Wings ( 5 / 5 )
  There’s just so much good about Wings. They don’t work underground for flying, but they do in every other way. You can Jump super far at high Levels, Sprint like hell as well, and you get to zoom around the world map with barely any time passing or chance to get lost. Superb!

Mental Mutations Tier List 2022 (REAL) (IMPOSSIBLE)

• Beguiling ( ? / 5 ) *
  This one’s harder to rank, because it depends on your playstyle. If you’d like to build an army, then this is 5 / 5. If you would rather roll solo, then it’s 0 / 5! This will let you recruit another NPC (on top of the one from Proselytize) to your party, so it’s great for that. You can also abuse some merchants with it, but that method is extremely cheesy and makes the game super easy.

• Burgeoning ( 3 / 5 )
  This is actually very good, but there is a caveat... At lower Levels, it creates plants that can harm you just as much as they do the enemies. For that reason, it’s not really worth using at all until it’s close to 10th Level (including modifiers). If you’re willing to wait, definitely grab it!

• Clairvoyance ( 4 / 5 )
  This is pure quality of life, but it’s crazy useful for that. At 15th Level it reveals the entire map for you for 34 rounds, which is basically as high as you need it to go. Clairvoyance synergizes super well with other Mutations that need you to see enemies, but ignore obstacles, like Sunder Mind.

• Cryokinesis ( 5 / 5 )
  What’s not to love? It freezes most everything in a 3 x 3 grid and leaves a spreading chill mist that deals decent damage. It does have some anti-synergy with flaming ray, as something that’s on fire will be extinguished if it steps into the mist, but then it’ll probably be frozen instead. If you plan to use the Thermo Cask armor, this becomes... Like... 6 / 5.

• Domination ( 5 / 5 ) *
  Domination is very flexible in the same way Precognition is, but it can feel more like actually cheating when you use it in some ways. You can do things like Dominate a merchant and then trade their entire inventory to you, for example. If you do plan to build a party or army, this is necessary so that you can actually spend Levels that your crew gains.

• Ego Projection ( 2 / 5 )
  This one’s fine, but since we’re not using melee attacks very much it’ll be used on Agility at most times. That gives us some more Dodge Value and better accuracy, but the latter is rarely an issue once you reach late game.

• Force Bubble ( 4 / 5 )
  While technically invalidated by a piece of equipment which can do the same, this is still nice to have. It will be destroyed by sources of Normality such as gasses and fields of the stuff, but is still very useful to give yourself some breathing room in very tight spots. If you plan to use a Force Bracelet, it’s maybe 2 / 5 as a backup in case of EMP. If not, definitely consider picking it up.

• Pyrokinesis ( 5 / 5 )
  The same story as Cryokinesis, except it has the benefit of synergizing well with your Flaming Ray. You can really ramp up a target’s temperature with this, and if you’re wearing a Thermo Cask you might even be able to vaporize them — that’s an instant kill. Again, if you plan to use that particular armor, this is like a 6 / 5.

• Space-Time Vortex ( -5 / 5 )
  I put this here with a special rank because it is Such A Bad Idea. Invariably, you will accidentally get sucked into your own Space-Time Vortex at some point. This puts you at a random place on Qud, including deep underground, and there could be anything nearby wanting to eat you. Don’t.

• Stunning Force ( 2 / 5 )
  This isn’t bad, but the damage is kind of unfortunately low. The knockback can be very useful for shoving enemies into dangerous liquids, but it has such a long cooldown as well that it’s hard to recommend as a serious pick. Still, it can have its niche uses!

• Sunder Mind ( 5 / 5 )
  Aww hell yeah, the damage here is so sublime. It also synergizes well with Clairvoyance, because you only need to see your target to use it. They can be 9 rooms away with no way to reach your immobile self, and it’s just over for them. Some creatures with no mind are immune, though.

• Teleportation ( 4 / 5 ) *
  Like Phasing, this is high rated because it’s a great escape tool and we lack one. This is another one that synergizes well with Clairvoyance, so you can know what you’re warping into before you just make a blind jump.

• Temporal Fugue ( ? / 5 )
  So, this really depends on what other abilities you have. These clones are indiscriminate, meaning they’ll use anything in your toolkit (including inventory!) and don’t care if you happen to be in the area of effect. Stuff like Cryo- and Pyrokinesis will be dumped onto you, sometimes more than once, and that can be extremely nasty. It’s a little risky, but as long as you make use of Precognition before hitting the Temporal Fugue button, you might be alright.

• Time Dilation ( 4 / 5 )
  Once again, Quickness is king. Reducing enemy Quickness is a great sort of prevention AND escape tool, if you think about it. They have to be pretty close to be hit hard by this, but most sticky situations you’ll find yourself in will involve something right up in your face. It’s good.

Attributes? In MY Character? Hmm...

The EleMentalist can go in several directions, as mentioned numerous times prior, which will affect how you spend your Attribute points. First, some clarity on when and how these arrive to spend at all! Starting at 3rd Level, you gain 1 Attribute Point to spend every 6 Levels. That means 3, 9, 15, 21, etc. To add to this, you gain +1 to ALL Attributes every 6 Levels. That means 6, 12, 18, 24, etc. By 12th Level, you will have +2 to all of your starting Attributes and 2 points to spend on whatever you want, which is quite major! Make sure to spend these as you get them.

Personally, I like to put my first two attribute points — at 3rd and 9th Level — into INT. This gets us the very useful Trash Divining Skill at 9th Level and also Tinker II at 27th Level (assuming that’s all we put into INT). Tinker III requires a lot more INT, but is also not super useful since you can buy most of the products that you would Tinker up anyway. The main reason we have Tinker at all is to modify our gear, not to make it, and all of the very crucial stuff comes with Tinker II. From there, I recommend putting them all in either AGI or EGO.

If you don’t plan on getting a lot of Mental Mutations, and would like to develop more in the direction of a “gunslinger”, I recommend investing the remaining points you get into AGI or WIL. You need 29 AGI to get the best Pistol or Bow & Rifle Skills, which is a tall ask unless you choose to acquire Triple-jointed. If you do get Triple-jointed, then you want to invest in WIL for the mental armor and cooldown reduction so that you can use your weapon skills more often. This has the added benefit of shaving rounds off of Flaming Ray’s already short cooldown, and also causing Electrical Generation to build up slightly faster.

If you do want to use primarily Mental Mutations, and want to turn into a “spellcaster” of sorts, then you should put all of your points into EGO. The game becomes skyrocketing your EGO so that you can further boost all of your accrued Mental Mutations, though this will give you a high amount of Psychic Glimmer in short order. Going above 100 begins to spawn some fairly deadly enemies, so keep that in mind! In the absolute worst case, you can eat Humble Pie to lower your EGO if necessary. If you really want to game the system, you have a chance to gain +1 EGO each time you kill an Esper Hunter, so you could fully invest in WIL and just let your EGO go up naturally via this method over time. Both work well.

I can’t recommend investing in STR or TOU for almost any reason. Sorry!

Skills are Like Coffee... I Like my Skills Like I... Nevermind

The EleMentalist has no set priority on what Skills to get at which Level, in most cases, but there are some that you should get as soon as they’re available. In the end, you’ll want to choose between Pistols (dual wielding them and using Akimbo) or Bows & Rifles. In the latter case, you’ll just be using a rifle because bows aren’t actually that great at any point in the game. I recommend a Phase Cannon if you plan to go this route, and High-voltage Arc Winders for the Pistol route. Anyway! Here are the Skills you absolutely want as soon as you hit certain Attribute requirements:

• Trash Divining at 21 INT
  This will passively reveal locations to you, and also teach you Secrets that you can trade for reputation via Water Rituals. Getting it early is crucial!

• Tinker II at 23 INT
  Most of the best item mods require this Skill, but even Tinker I has some pretty good ones.

• Jump at 17 STR
  Great for getting over pits, but also a nice repositioning tool in the middle of combat. This and Juke are your primary “get me away from this bad situation now” tools.

• Calloused at 23 TOU
  What’s not to love about +1 Armor Value? We start with Spry, which gives us +2 Dodge Value, and this is a similar no brainer.

• Juke at 21 AGI
  It’s free movement. Great for repositioning to line up a Flaming Ray or Electrical Generation use without provoking further attacks, or to get out of dodge faster. Just very useful!

Aside from those, there are other useful Skills to acquire at your leisure. The entire Cooking tree is very nice, but do note that you can learn Harvestry from Joppa villagers via the Water Ritual and the same is true of Spicer from the Yd Freehold. You also want to get basically every Skill in either Pistol or Bow & Rifle when you can, since missile weapons are our main source of non-Mutation damage. Pistol has higher theoretical damage against low-armor or low-resistance targets, but Rifle will eventually use the Phase Cannon which deals one massive hit at the cost of a large amount of Electrical Generation or energy cell charge. Both are good, but I tend to prefer the Rifle approach myself. Also, Wayfaring is borderline required for long world map traversal. Endurance and Self-Discipline have some great Skills to invest in once you have an abundance of points, too!

Finally, there are some interactions you might not think of immediately that are useful. Investing into Long Blades gets you Defensive Stance, which is a permanent +2 Dodge Value while you’re holding a Long Blade — regardless of if you plan to attack with it or not. That’s free for us, since we’re not really hitting in melee anyway, and is a significant boost. Shield is also nice for our offhand, but isn’t worth going for unless you have an abundance of points that won’t go anywhere else more critical. Long Blade also has access to Swipe and Duelist Stance, which will let us disarm opponents... We can use this to get Jacked weapons from turrets. What does Jacked mean? This seems like a good segue. :D

Tinkering and Jacking It, Wait Let Me Rephrase, Oh God

Tinkering is really good. Like I said before, we aren’t using it necessarily to make items, but rather to modify them. We’ll still be making grenades for sure, but long-term items like accessories and armor are easier to just buy and then modify. There are a lot of good modifiers for weapons, which I’ll go into later in this category, but the most important one is Jacked. This particular modification allows an item we’re wearing to pull from our “local network” of charge, so to speak. In layman’s terms, this means it will draw from our natural accumulation via Electrical Generation and basically ignore the battery inside. You should always have a battery inserted anyway, in case of emergencies, just for clarity!

Pretty much all of your electronic equipment should be Jacked. This might sound like it’ll have a huge power drain, but the truth is that it barely cuts into your natural accrual at all even in late game. Our WIL affects how much we generate, though not by a huge amount, and that tends to keep up with whatever we’re going to be powering via the passive +1 to All Attributes Levels we gain. More or less, you should be receiving ~1000 Charge per round even when donating what seems like a lot to all of your gear. It’s great! Like I said before, however, certain equipment can come with the Jacked modification and doesn’t need you to tinker with it at all. By disarming any turret, you’ll get a copy of its weapon that is Jacked.

When you want to upgrade to a Laser Rifle or two Laser Pistols, it’s as easy as going into a Ruins tile and disarming a turret or turrets with Swipe in Duelist Stance. Phase Cannon turrets also exist, which means you can get a Jacked Phase Cannon with relative ease as well — just don’t die while you’re trying to land the disarm, eheheh. That’s all well and good, but what other modifications are good? What should you be looking out for at schematic vendors? Have a handy bullet list:

The Tinker Mod Bullet List, Get It? Like Bullets? OK

• Electromagnetically-shielded
  This should be on absolutely everything that uses charge in your inventory. If YOU get hit by EMP, all of your Charge from Electrical Generation is dispersed at once. This means your stuff won’t be powered for one round unless it has a battery inside, and if it’s not shielded, it just shuts off entirely for a number of rounds. That will get you killed, so this is absolutely necessary.

• Jacked
  If it didn’t come with this on it, you should add it as soon as possible. Like the above, all of your gear that relies on batteries should be Jacked when possible. Notably, stuff that is Magnetized will use your Floating Nearby slot and can’t benefit from Jacked at all. Keep that in mind!

• Magnetized
  This is nice to put on something like a VISAGE, which would usually take up your face and arm slot. A Magnetized item only uses the Floating Nearby slot, but it has the caveat mentioned above... It can’t be Jacked or benefit from your passive charge. It’s still worth it, 100%. It’s worth noting that Pistols in this slot will benefit from Akimbo, so maybe that’s worth considering? Even Rifles will, actually, but that means you’ll have to invest many Skill Points into Pistols that you won’t be using otherwise. It’s still worth thinking about!

• Overloaded
  If you plan to use Pistols, this should be placed on both of your High-voltage Arc Winders. It gives them +3d4 damage, which is basically a 50% damage increase. It’s not as good on any other weapon, only offering +2 damage, so don’t bother there.

• Phase-conjugate
  This is not great on gear, but is fantastic on grenades. If you don’t have Phasing yourself, certain enemies are difficult to deal with because they’re permanently phased. This causes a grenade to phase out right before it detonates, and it will massacre such creatures.

• Masterwork
  Pretty good on pistols before you get arc winders that will want Electromagnetically-shielded, Jacked, and Overloaded. This or Scoped are both great choices, and will serve you extremely well.

• Sharp
  This is what you put on your melee weapon, most notably a Vibroblade. These particular weapons will always penetrate once, ignoring your STR modifier, and Sharp makes them do so twice instead. In layman’s terms, it’s double damage. Kind of. It’s worth it!

• Serrated
  Quite good on a Long Blade; it gives a chance to dismember on every hit. This can be useful even if the chance is low, and also lets you chop off faces which you can equip over your own face (like a normal, well-adjusted individual) for bonus EGO.

• Beamsplitter
  A decent contender for High-voltage Arc Winders; in some situations this may be better than Overloaded. The reduced Penetration doesn’t matter, because Arc Winders don’t penetrate in the first place. If you’re shooting in melee, this can theoretically triple your damage.

• Scoped
  As mentioned above, this and Masterwork are fantastic before you have the means (or a weapon that requires) the Jacked + Electromagnetically-shielded combo. I usually put this on my Phase Cannon as a third modification.

• Phase-harmonic
  This is also good on grenades, but kind of expensive. It makes you hit things that are in or out of phase, rather than one or the other. Don’t put this on a Phase Cannon, because it basically has this effect by default! That’s why it’s called a PHASE Cannon.

• Airfoil
  Try to put this on all of your grenades. Extra range can save your bacon in ways you wouldn’t believe. This is a really cheap mod as well, so it’s no sweat to add it to stuff.

• Lanterned
  This is for helmets only, and it’s really good. The light radius is based on the item’s Tier, which is basically its rarity. Higher-end helmets with this attached remove the need for a glowsphere, and that lets you keep a Magnetized something-or-other around for good measure.

• Flexiweaved
  A nice thing to put on any kind of armor. Unlike weapons, armor is much more flexible (hah) in how you can mod it and what you might like. Many things come down to preference!

• Refractive
  This reflects light-based attacks, which include lasers. Our Light Manipulation gives us a natural % chance to do this, and Refractive gear stacks with that. There’s no point in having more than 100%, so just fill in the rest of what Light Manipulation can’t provide and call it good. You want to get a 100% refraction chance before you go anywhere very dangerous (like the Moon Stair).

• Reinforced
  Similar to Flexiweaved, this is just a nice thing to put on any armor if you have the room. Use it liberally and enjoy those Armor Value gains!

• Spring-loaded
  This is nice to put on boots, especially if you have Multiple Legs. You really can’t go wrong with more Movement Speed, the same way you can’t go wrong with more Quickness. It always helps.

• Two-faced
  Absolutely essential for any helmet. Put this on as soon as possible, because it gives you an extra Face slot to work with. Not only can you get fun stuff like night vision via that slot, you can also equip other people’s faces (you read that right) for a bonus to EGO. Very, very good.

• Visored
  Once again, like Flexiweaved and Reinforced, this is a good “dump mod” for helmets. They’re usually full with Jacked + Lanterned + Two-faced, but just in case, this is a good alternative.

• Wooly
  Don’t sleep on Heat & Cold Resistance, especially if you intend to use Temporal Fugue. Having 100 Heat Resist will make Flaming Ray do literally no damage to you, as well as Pyrokinesis, so this makes Temporal Fugue a lot safer to use if you do end up going with it.

• High-capacity
  Nice to put on most batteries, especially higher end ones that already carry a lot of charge. There will be times when you can’t rely on your own Electrical Generation entirely, and you will thank Resheph that you had good batteries to fall back on during these critical moments.

The Gear Makes the Non-Binary Gentleperson

Alright, so we talked about mods and almost everything else, but what kind of gear should you be looking out for? It’s hard to know, as a beginner, what’s worth keeping or wearing compared to what is crap and not at all worth it. Luckily, Qud is not actually very complex in this department until you get into the very late game. For early game, you sort of just want to wear whatever gives you the most Armor Value and ignore Dodge Value almost entirely. Mid game you might want to balance these values more, and then late game you just want as much of both as you can physically manage. Dodge Value is slightly better than Armor Value at this stage, but it’s not enough to even consider ignoring Armor Value or letting it fall to the wayside.

In the early game, try to get yourself a Knollworm Skull for the +1 EGO that it provides. Acquiring a Musket is also a good idea — Tam in Joppa will always be selling one when you first spawn in. You should get yourself an Issachar Rifle as soon as you can; it’s like the Musket with higher damage and six rounds instead of a measly one. From there you ideally want to get a Carbine, which fires in a burst of three rounds instead of just one and has a high ammo capacity. A Masterwork Scoped Carbine can carry you for an extremely long time, in particular. After that, you should move on to laser weapons and the higher-end stuff beyond that which I won’t spoil.

As far as melee weapons go, just use whatever Long Blade you’d like so you can benefit from Defensive Stance. Once you get a Vibroblade or the special Vibrokhopesh, it should stay in your hand for more or less the rest of the entire game. If and when you dive into the Shield skills, you should pick up a decent one that doesn’t have too much of a Dodge Value penalty (-2 or -3 is good).

Once you reach 30th Level or you feel like you might want to go on a shopping spree, I recommend scouring the vendors in Ezra and the Yd Freehold for Flawless Crysteel stuff (or just Crysteel if you’re impatient). These are very good; they’re conquered only by Zetachrome which is much rarer and doesn’t show up in shops very often. There are a few special pieces of gear to look out for that aren’t Crysteel or Zetachrome, however!

Specific Gear List for Specific People

• Freeze Ray
  Paired with a Thermo Cask, this is a spectacular rifle to use until you get a Phase Cannon. Even after you have one, the Freeze Ray can still justify its use in many situations. It has anti-synergy with Flaming Ray, but our eventual goal may be to become a temperature master in any case.

• Thermo Cask / High-energy Thermo Cask (Body)
  These Armors require charge in order to operate, but synergize insanely well with Flaming Ray and Cryo- or Pyrokinesis if you happened to get them. They increase the damage of these abilities and the severity of their temperature effects by 25% and 50% respectively, and also provide a very heavy amount of Heat & Cold Resistance that is super convenient. They do require Charge in order to work, so you should apply Jacked for sure.

• Telemetric Visor / VISAGE (Face / Face + Arm)
  Both of these allow you to automatically identify Artifacts, which is extremely useful when you are browsing merchant inventories. Most of the higher-end guns start off as unidentified Strange Artifacts. The former only occupies your Face while the latter uses Face and an Arm slot, but it also provides some interesting benefits like seeing an enemy’s exact HP intead of just a vague “Wounded” state. The VISAGE is also great to Magnetize for this reason.

• Night-vision Goggles / Night-sight Interpolators (Face)
  The former is generally useful, especially for finding distant targets to Lase at night, but the latter takes it a step farther. It gives you perfect vision in an 18-tile radius, which is fantastic, and is sort of like a permanent mini-Clairvoyance. This lets us use a Magnetized slot by removing the need for a Floating Glowsphere, but it does require charge to operate.

• Kesil Face (Face)
  This is difficult to get — it involves a harsh combat challenge — but it’s so incredibly worth it. It’s acquirable during a main quest step, which is rather obvious once you get there, and provides a truly insane amount of stats while worn. Try to ignore the fact it was some cool guy’s face, once.

• Nylon Bodypack / Molly Netting (Back)
  I usually wear one of these on my back until roughly 30th Level, at which point I feel the need to swap to a proper cloak. The bonus weight limit is very good, and modding the former with one of Slender or Willowy is even better. Having more weight limit is super convenient in early Levels.

• Chrome Mantle / Quartzfur Cloak (Back)
  These are both great Back items that provide good resistances. I like the Chrome Mantle better for its +1 EGO, but they’re both useful no matter what. Once I’m done with a Bodypack or Molly Netting, I’ll swap to one of these and keep it on forever. It’s worth noting that the Kaleidocera Cape is situational, since you can’t add Refractive to it and further boost its meager refraction rate. It can still be pretty good if you’re starved for Resistances, though!

• Neck-ring (Arm)
  An oft-overlooked early game arm item that is really useful. Just one of them will give you enough reputation to make baboons stop throwing rocks at you all the time, and will also let you do the Water Ritual with Legendary Baboons — that can be very useful.

• Snakeskin Armlet (Arm)
  It gives +2 Dodge Value, which usually becomes +1 when averaged out by your other Arm slot. It’s better than nothing, and good in the early game before you’ll occupy these slots with other useful gadgets.

• Hologram Bracelet / Tri-Hologram Bracelet (Arm)
  These are both so good! They create 1 and 3 holographic versions of you, respectively, which will more or less “taunt” enemies and take the heat off of you for a while. They can’t be destroyed by damage or anything like that, but they have high charge draw to compensate... Which is totally nullified by your Electrical Generation. No reason not to have these in the middle game.

• Ontological Anchor (Arm)
  This projects a Normality Field in your square, which is more useful than it sounds. Enemies who can use Force Wall will try to trap you in it and then pick you off, but this lets you walk through such walls like they don’t exist. Not great to keep on at all times, but good to have in your inventory so that you can hot swap to it when you get caught in these situations.

• Force Bracelet (Arm)
  This works like the Force Bubble Mental Mutation, but it has high charge draw to compensate for that fact. Just like the Hologram Bracelets, our Electrical Generation takes care of that handily. We can keep a forcefield around ourselves indefinitely, which is actually insane and broken for most of the game. If you want to play “easy mode”, add Jacked and keep this on at all times. You win.

• Precision Nanon Fingers (Hands)
  If you’re going to use Pistols, these are a must. They triple all chance-based effects from your weapons, including critical hits... That brings the base chance from 5% to 15%, and also boosts Masterwork in the same way. These are another good candidate to add Magnetized to if you’re using Pistols, since they will stack (6x instead of 3x) in that case. Or you could magnetize another Pistol, which will fire via Akimbo, by the way. Fun stuff!

• Ninefold Boots (Feet)
  Similar to the Ontological Anchor, these are nice to have in your inventory for a hot swap if things get a little dicey. They teleport you 9 squares in a direction you move instead of just going 1 square like normal, which is great for getting away from bad situations. They consume charge like any other device, however. Make sure they’re Jacked and put in a good battery!

• Hoversled (Floating Nearby)
  As soon as you don’t need your Floating Nearby slot for a glowsphere, this is a replacement. It works like the Nylon Bodypack or Molly Netting by giving you more carry weight, which is never unwelcome with our relatively low STR. Slender or Willowy is a nice modification for it.

• Point-defense Drone (Floating Nearby)
  Another great option for the Floating Nearby slot, provided you don’t have anything you want to Magnetize. Missiles aren’t necessarily a huge problem with our naturally high Dodge Value, but extra insurance against them is never a bad thing. This can’t be Jacked and will require a battery, but can still be pretty useful in most situations.

How To Buy Gear and "Influence" Merchants

Knowing what to equip is all well and good, but where can you go to actually acquire this gear? I have good news! I will tell you exactly where! Right now! Okay! Sometimes we’ll be lucky enough to find some of the stuff listed above on enemies (or friends) that you just burned or lased to death, but we really can’t count on that in the long-term. Qud’s late game is, believe it or not, entirely dependent on one’s local economy. Or non-local, in certain cases, if we want to go that route.

Basically every village on the map that isn’t procedurally generated has at least one vendor in it, with some having several. As a rule of thumb, the farther east you go, the better the inventories on these folks will be... But also the more dangerous it will be to get there. I recommend having the Wayfaring Skill and Wilderness Lore for Jungles as well as Rivers & Lakes before you make the trip to the farthest east settlement — the Yd Freehold. Similarly, you should have at least Jungles if you plan to make the trek far north to Ezra. Both of these places have good vendors, with the former’s being slightly better.

Both of them are also plants! Sixshrew is Ezra’s sentient plant vendor, and xe can carry Crysteel or Flawless Crysteel stuff pretty commonly. Yla Haj next door to xem is a tinker, which means she sells schematics for you to learn and use. Argyve in Joppa is another tinker like Yla, by the way, and their inventory of schematics isn’t really limited by location or anything. You could find modifications that you want at any schematic vendor, anywhere!

At the Yd Freehold, we have Tillifergaewicz (henceforth Tilly) and Bep. Tilly is like Sixshrew but with a better inventory, and she’ll more commonly carry Flawless Crysteel as well as Zetachrome on very rare occasions. She can also have some pretty sick stuff like High-voltage Arc Winders and most of the gear listed above, provided you have the means to identify it without looking at it such as a Telemetric Visor or VISAGE. Tilly is not a Tinker, alas, so she can’t identify these things for you. Bep is the Freehold’s Tinker, actually, and the best source of rarer Tinker bits — 6, 7, and 8 bits specifically. He usually stocks components which can be broken down into these bits for a fair price, and also has a rock tumbler next to him that can turn rough gems into smooth ones. This increases their value slightly, and is free to use.

Finally, as set locations go, there’s the Six Day Stilt. It generates several random vendors when you first arrive that don’t really change, so it’s a bit of a crap shoot to see who you get. There is one guaranteed Ichor vendor, who can sell you things like Cloning Draught, but that’s the only one you can count on. Having a Schematic vendor or especially a Jeweler here can be incredibly convenient, but do note that there’s no recoiler for this settlement like there is for most areas. You’ll have to make one yourself by creating a Programmable Recoiler via Tinker II.

And then there’s non-local economies. Caves of Qud has, believe it or not, a lot of caves which you can descend and find new ways to get creatively murdered. Deeper caves don’t really respect the biomes above them, which means that anything can spawn once you get far enough down and it won’t care if you happen to be one square away from Joppa — you’re getting stuff from everywhere. Notably, diving in the Ruins causes things to ramp up faster than normal as you go down in levels. Worth knowing!

Not only can we find good gear and loot just lying on the ground (literally) down there, we can also come across vendors. Dromad merchants, to be precise! The farther down you are, the better the average stuff these merchants will start to sell you. If you find a good one, you can set a Programmable Recoiler there and come back to check their stock whenever it resets. That’s every 5 - 8 ingame days, by the way! The same is true for all the ones I mentioned above, so it pays to do sort of a “merchant tour” every time we feel like a few days have gone by. What if we don’t want to wait that long, and we’re rich, though?

I mentioned the Ichor merchant at the Six Day Stilt, specifically that he sells something called Cloning Draught. If we splash that onto any of these aforementioned vendors, it creates a replica of them with a new, but similar, inventory for sale. Qud can really be busted open in this way if you’re not careful, but at least it’ll still cost you a lot of currency. Deep dromad merchants are the best candidates for this! That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever clone Tilly or Bep, as they’re also decent options, but the “theoretical best” thing to create clones upon clones of is going to be a dromad merchant at some crazy depth.

Late Game? How Do I Even Get There?

I’ve talked a lot about these mysterious realms called middle game and late game, but how do you actually reach those points? Where can you effectively gain Levels so that you can experience them? I’m so incredibly glad you asked. I’ll go in brackets of five, for ease and organization. Let’s go!

Level 1 - 5

You can kinda do whatever you want here, though I wouldn’t recommend Red Rock immediately unless you know what you’re doing. Baboons do die very easily to Flaming Ray and Lase, but a complete newbie might find themselves in a bad position once they run out of metaphorical “ammo”. The most boring way is to kill Glowpads and Glowfish near Joppa, but it’s also the safest in theory. I usually just go into Canyons to fight Snapjaws and their like, which don’t provide too much challenge.

Level 5 - 10

Now is the time to do Red Rock, in my opinion, and it’ll get you to 10th Level easily. If you’re feeling spicy, you can even travel the underground river back to Joppa. Simply follow the river at the bottom of Red Rock south until it ends, then ascend staircases to find yourself right back in Joppa! How fun. You could also just keep grinding away in the Canyons if that better suits your style and mood.

Level 10 - 15

It’s time to head to the salt desert. Find a spot on the world map and use the > key (descend) to go down into the proper game zone... Then just pick a direction and walk. I highly recommend you travel during the day, as this will let you fully abuse Light Manipulation’s infinite range. These are the quickest and safest levels due to that, though Dawngliders can still be a little risky if you get caught in a bad situation. You’ll also acquire an Issachar Rifle for almost certain here while massacring raiders. Do not travel at night in the desert or you will very likely die. You have been warned!

Level 15 - 20

You can stay in the desert if you want, and it’s very safe. Dawngliders give good experience all the way to 20th Level, but Issachar Raiders fall off hard after 16th. Another, more exciting option is to head to the Jungle and hunt Naphtaali and Goatmen. These groups can get a little risky, particularly the latter, but they’re fun to fight and give very good EXP besides. Don’t forget that you can hit Sprint and run away from any fight that seems unconquerable!

Level 20 - 25

The Jungle is still fine here, if a little slow. You can move the Banana Grove up north, but I wouldn’t recommend this unless you have Wayfaring or Wings and won’t get lost while heading up there. The immobile trees are worth a lot of EXP with very little struggle, but there’s a better place where you can get similar EXP and also valuable goods... The Ruins! This is the first “truly challenging” area to explore, and it’s full of goatmen and turrets along with tricky enemies like Juice Saps and Ants. There are a lot of laser turrets here, meaning you can disarm them for a Jacked Laser Rifle or two Jacked Laser Pistols with relative ease. You should have Light Manipulation high enough to refract a lot of their attacks, which makes that process considerably easier.

Also, the Ruins are the best and safest place to go for money if you don’t want to do stuff like create and sell lava or the like. Things like Jacked laser weapons are particularly valuable without weighing a ton, and so are the large piles of energy cells you’re going to pick up while destroying turrets here. Carbide and Folded Carbide weapons from goatmen are also alright, especially if you can convert them into less weighty gems via a Jeweler at the Six Day Stilt.

Level 25 - 30

Again, the Ruins are fine until 30 but may get a little slow as you progress. If you’re feeling frisky, the Deep Jungle on the east side of the map is good for these levels. There are enemies called Life Saps there which will permanently drain 1 - 2 Max HP every time they attack you, but that isn’t actually a big deal in the long run. If you’re using auto explore, or even if you’re not, there’s a decent chance you will get bitten by a few of these while you’re grinding up levels here. I consider that a necessary and ultimately “easy” tax, due to how little time it takes to grind here.

Level 30 - 35

Lake Hinnom is the place to go for these levels, but I recommend shopping for gear and making sure you’re prepared before you go there. Several difficult enemies reside in Lake Hinnom, and they can really ruin your day if you’re not careful. You should also make sure not to venture into the Palladium Reef while exploring there, because it has enemies that will absolutely wreck you if you aren’t being super careful. This is where the game gets harder, and you stop having relatively safe areas to grind out your Levels. Don’t get discouraged! You can actually win the game (meaning complete the current main quest) at these levels, absolutely!

Level 35+

We are now out of “safe” or at least “safe-ish” areas to gain Levels. Everywhere that provides decent EXP also has some really scary stuff there, and I recommend giving up the idea of level grinding here as a concept. Your build is mostly complete at this point, so everything you gain is just a bit of “win more”! There are still ways to reliably gain Levels even at this point, though. If you’ve found books in your travels and haven’t sold them, they can be turned in at the Six Day Stilt for a modest amount of EXP... Turning in a lot of books at once can result in tons and tons of it, which will propel you to 40th Level and beyond in time. Another NPC at the Six Day Stilt will accept Resheph Secrets for EXP, and now is the time to turn them in to that end. Basically, you start relying on these two NPCs rather than monsters.

You’ll still gradually gain Levels as you complete quests and turn in these items, but don’t expect to get significantly higher in Level unless you really cheese and turn in a billion books via Scribe cloning or other means. This is end game, 100%, and it’s where improving your equipment matters more than just gaining some Levels. Shop around, buy new Mutations, do whatever you can to increase your general survivability rather than adding more to your offensive repertoire. You can do it! I believe in you!

Tightening Up the Graphics on Level 3 and Other Tips

Ever wanted just, like, random advice? Here’s where I’m going to file away small stuff that I’ve learned which can help you play this build — and Caves of Qud in general — better or more easily.

Flaming Ray can create steam. If launched over a body of water, it will vaporize that water and turn it into scalding steam. This deals further damage and spreads over time, but be wary! You are not immune to propaga— I mean, to steam, so try not to step into your own death sauna if you can help it.

Flaming Ray vaporizes some liquid and ignites others. Isn’t this the tip I just gave? Not entirely! Most liquids that aren’t, like, lava can be vaporized by firing Flaming Ray over them. This can help you traverse areas that have some dangerous liquids in them, or just help you not get dirty or slow down by having to swim. Additionally, you can light up asphalt and oil with it and they’ll burn for a looong time.

Electrical Generation and Quickness are platonic friends. There’s a difference between “a round” and “your round” when you get into high Quickness levels or you have enough Movement Speed to travel multiple squares in a single round. Light Manipulation, for example, will recover 1 Lase charge for every 15 rounds... That doesn’t mean 15 of YOUR rounds, it means 15 rounds at base Quickness (100). Electrical Generation thinks that’s cute, because it does specifically use YOUR rounds. That means any bonus rounds you take will still have you generating fresh electricity, even if only you acted. Fun!

Penetration is the source of most damage. Some things like Electrical Generation and Flaming Ray don’t penetrate, which means they don’t scale with any kind of Attribute — they just deal flat damage. Things like our melee and missile weapons, as well as Lase from Light Manipulation, do penetrate however! Penetration is effectively a damage multiplier, meaning that if you penetrate 4 times you are doing roughly 400% of the weapon’s base damage. There’s no way except Level to scale up Lase’s Penetration, and no way at all to scale up missile weapons’, but melee weapons either scale with STR or don’t scale at all (if we’re using a Vibro weapon). This is the most important stat for dealing damage.

WIL has a functional limit for cooldown reduction. Once you’re at 32 WIL, further levels of it will not reduce your cooldowns anymore. You have 80% cooldown reduction at this point, for reference, though Skills and Mutations have a minimum of 5 rounds of cooldown no matter what. Some things such as Flaming Ray will reach this point before 32 WIL, even! You’ll still gain Mental Armor with successive amounts of WIL, so gaining more isn’t a waste or anything. :D

The main quest is not designed to be followed exclusively. In fact, it’s recommended that you grind out several Levels in between each step if you want to do them when they’re “current” and challenging. There’s little to no penalty for waiting until you’re overpowered, though! If you just want to stomp all over these quests, and in some cases it’s worth doing so, wait as long as you’d like to get going. The only situation in which you might want to do something “early” is the quest More Than A Willing Spirit. Doing this one (that means finishing it) at 18th Level or lower will get you a fantastic missile weapon. It’s not too difficult so long as you’re careful, and if you remember that you can vaporize liquids easily.

Some liquids are worth drinking! Sunslag, for instance, will give you +1 Quickness for each dram you consume (up to a maximum of +10). It’s also incredibly valuable, so you might like it more for that, but doing everything 10% faster is definitely appealing! Drinking Brain Brine can have some positive effects, but can also have negative ones. It’s seeded in the way that your Mutation Pool also is, but this seed can be reset via Eater’s Nectar just as well! You can also cook with Neutron Flux for a Russian roulette of “permanent +1 Armor Value with no limit” or “death”. This one is NOT seeded, so Precognition is nice.

Metamorphic Polygel is aways worth buying. Using this on an item creates an exact duplicate of it, with some exceptions like the Kesil Face that can’t be copied. It does work on Eater’s Nectar and on Sultan Relics that operate similar to Eater’s Nectar, which is usually the best thing to use it on. You can also use it on liquid containers to create more liquid, if necessary! It’s startlingly low-value compared to just how much it can break the game, so there’s rarely a reason not to buy it if you see it.

Recoilers are the best items in the game. Whenever you visit a new settlement, always make sure to buy a Recoiler for it. These are always listed as “small stone” in vendor inventories, and are one of the only items that use this particular moniker so they’re easy to identify. These let you teleport there at your leisure, instantaneously, so long as you’re not in combat. They work even deep underground! If you get stuck underground, recoil. If you need to check merchant inventories conveniently, recoil. Solar or Radio-powered energy cells are best for these, since they slowly recharge over time in most cases.

Trade Goods have a golden $ by their value. This symbol means that their value is fixed, and it won’t raise or lower based on your EGO or other factors. In almost all cases, Trade Goods have a better weight to value ratio than a canteen full of water does, so they’re worth keeping around. Gemstones like Topaz are the best Trade Goods, but there’s sadly no guaranteed Jeweler anywhere in the game. You can luck into one at the Six Day Stilt, but otherwise you’ll likely be lugging around a lot of Bronze Ingots instead. I like to keep 2 - 3 Canteens full of water (that’s 128 - 192 drams) and then an assortment of other liquids in smaller amounts for doing the Water Ritual with folks who have a unique non-water preference. These liquids are Oil, Slime, and Blood. One Faction even uses Neutron Flux, but they’re decidedly rare.

The Water Ritual makes Qud so much easier. Certain NPCs, as well as all Legendary creatures, will let you perform a Water Ritual with them. This costs 1 dram of water, or sometimes other liquids if they’re not humanoids, and will affect your reputation with the many factions of Qud instantaneously. Killing these same people will also affect your reputation! If someone’s “Loved” by Bears, then doing the Water Ritual with them will make Bears like you more. Conversely, killing them will make Bears hate you more. Just don’t kill anyone after you’ve done the Water Ritual with them, because that’s sacrilege. It’s bad.

You can do the Water Ritual with enemies. Normally, foes refuse to speak with you if they’re already determined to kill you, but who cares? If you equip a Love Injector in your main hand (denoted by a *), you will stab them with it when you attack. Provided you penetrate enough to deal any damage, they will fall instantly in love with you and become your friend! Then you can perform the Water Ritual as normal, which might make them your friend by default when you’re done. You can even find guns which you can load with injectors to guarantee penetration, or learn how to Proselytize either by investing Skill points or asking a Mechanimist to teach you. Whenever I see a Legendary being of any kind, or NPC who can be Water Ritual’d, I weigh the options and do what seems best. This does include ignoring them entirely!

Other Other Tips or A Clone of Other Tips

The best faction to become friends with is Robots. Some of the scariest enemies in the game are robots, but they won’t attack you by default if you become their friends. If you see someone who’s Loved or Hated by Robots, consider befriending or killing them (as necessary) to sway your own standing. Many late game areas, as well as deep underground areas, are made much less deadly this way! Other useful factions to befriend include Consortium of Phyta for better vendor prices with Sixshrew and Tilly, Crabs because Magma Crabs are kind of scary, Trolls and/or Cragmensch to make Bethesda Susa easier, and (if you can forgive yourself) the Putus Templar so that you can buy Eater’s Nectar instead of ripping it off their corpses. You’re befriending fascists in that last case, though, so maybe feel free to just kill them and reclaim their gear for the good of Qud instead.

Schrodinger Pages from the Annals of Qud are great. This is the other way to gain reputation, and they come in two varieties. They’re either set to a specific Faction or are “chapter unspecified”, which lets you use them with any Faction. These give 180 - 200 positive reputation with the listed Faction with no penalty or cost besides the currency you paid to acquire them! Scribes and Bookbinders sell them with some regularity, so if you find one of those make sure to note it down or find a way to recoil there.

Historic Sites are a great place to find Legendary enemies. This can give you a lot of reputation shift in a short amount of time, with the added bonus that these places also contain a huge amount of books. I typically keep my books in a chest in Joppa until I reach the point that I want to turn them in for levels at the Six Day Stilt (usually at 35th Level or a few earlier if I’m feeling impatient). Each Historic Site also has a Sultan Relic at its lowest floor, which can be anything from a weapon with unique effects such as giving you bonus levels in Light Manipulation to a superpowered version of Eater’s Nectar that’s twice as effective. It’s worth noting that the latter works the same way as Nectar does, meaning it re-seeds your Mutation and Brain Brine pools.

A Tattoo will change your sprite’s colors. This is just a fun one. You will have to give yourself at least one tattoo during the main quest... Well, not HAVE to, but it does make a certain thing a little easier. The first color you choose will affect your sprite’s main body, while the second affects tertiary things like their clothing. I’m a fan of yellow and violet, personally! Also, don’t be shy, tattoo your face. It’s not like you’re gonna be working retail in Qud, so why not? Everyone should see your sick tattoo. Everyone.

Reading is fun in Qud! This doesn’t specifically apply to books; it’s just me saying that the dialogue and basically all of the writing in this game is worth your attention. When talking about books, however, do note that most books with a white name are procedurally generated and will be gibberish. If the name is any color but white, it’s a fixed (non-random) book and will have interesting info inside. Of note is the Corpus Choliys, which is always sold by the mayor of Kyakukya! It contains the cure for every disease you might contract while exploring Qud, some of which are... “Special”.

Final Thoughts and Miscellaneous Stuff

Caves of Qud is a great game. It’s probably the most open-ended game I’ve ever played in terms of what it lets you do and, frankly, get away with. If you want to bend the rules, it lets you. You can bend them until they break, if you want to Dominate merchants and level up nigh-infinitely, or you can play it like a truly immersive roleplay experience without missing out on much. The “best option” is to kill everything you find and loot it, including friendly NPCs, but the reward for that is miniscule in the long run while still feeling worth it if you happen to go that route in the moment. As with most roguelikes, the murder hobo route is the most efficient, but it never feels particularly necessary to win. There are so many tiny optimizations you can make, like drinking Sunslag for a total of +10 Quickness, that genuinely feel like they matter even if they’re miniscule.

You can beat this game with only the EleMentalist‘s starting Mutations, if you really want. Everything else is just gravy, but it still feels great to acquire and level up any of the useful Mutations that I mentioned above. This is probably the closest you can get to playing Dungeons & Dragons with a very supportive Dungeon Master in single player video game form, and I very much admire the developers for creating an experience like this one. For continuing to add on to it, as well! It’s crazy that this game isn’t even done, and that there’s more in the pipeline to release and “complete” it. I hope this guide can help more people experience this incredible game.

If you have any questions, or could use some advice, feel free to send me a message. I’m u/yamato1240 on reddit! Thank you for reading this far, and I hope you enjoy Caves of Qud!! o7

Also, definitely check out the Steam Guides for this game, as there’s a lot of useful information there. This is especially true for beginners, this guide in particular covers a lot of minutiae that I don’t get into here regarding the game’s systems.

[Aurelius]

Really cool guide! Thanks!

[RedPine]

1. If you have Flaming Ray, you can get 80% of the benefits of Electrical Generation without Electrical Generation. Put thermoelectric cells (powered by lava) in all your gear, use Flaming Ray on a wall a few times, walk up to wall, all thermoelectric cells gets refilled.

More tedious and less reliable than EG, but it's an option.

2. You can actually dump ego to 10, start out as an Apostle, and still be able to reliable proselyze merchants by level 12 or so - with a few boosts from cooked love and/knollworm skulls/faces. Even as a pure esper/primarily esper build, I consider Ego to be a dump stat. Ego is also the easiest stat to farm once you start getting esper assassins.

This is a little minmaxy though, and makes the early game more !fun!.

[Lights]

Nice build, I'll have to try it out sometime

[Lights]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/428038631228440586/1066106358094635130/787k1g.png

[markiplierfan1995]

that would absolutely work well, and I initially started this build with freezing instead of flaming ray in fact! I just wound up needing the single point, and also flaming ray does noticeably more damage at higher levels which is a big plus.

[Silibus]

I'm surprised that it took this long for someone to make a "Elemental Spellcaster" build guide! Something I noticed on my current character is that if I freeze an enemy with Freezing Ray, then hit them with Charge/Charging Strike, they'll shatter. Maybe there's a melee version of this character build that can be made based on that?