Caves of Qud (now at Early Access Feature Friday #131) $

[getter77]

Feature Friday #14, boldly going where no Friday deigns to tred---Thursday. 

***Quick note: we'll be out of town next week, so there won't be a Feature Friday patch on November 13th. We'll pick up again the following week, on November 20th.

*The 'face' is a new equipment slot distinct from 'head'. So now you can wear helmets and masks at the same time, or, more stylishly, horns and a beak.
-Helmets with the "terrifying visage" mod occupy both the head and face slots.
-Night-vision goggles no longer grant +1 AV.
-The Beak defect now grants 2 bonus mutation points instead of 3.
*A new salt desert ground tile was added.
*The loading font was changed.
*Hear ye, hear ye! More tiding from the Six Day Stilt!
-The Mechanimists have managed to prune the fracti to acceptable levels. They've also noticed the appearance of colorful thorns on the plants.
-The merchants have wisely decided to (mostly) orient their tents toward the road
-Ctesiphus no longer spawns as a Mechanimist convert; his convictions are firm.
-Some regulatory agency mandated that gunsmiths stop selling 12-gauge shells; they were tricking buyers into thinking 12-gauge shotguns had been invented yet.
-The campfire choirs now have a Mechanimist preacher leading their flock. They spout short prayers (soon to be full sermons).

[getter77]

Feature Friday #15

"Look, Elder, across the marsh. It's Sytep and Tirutep."
"Aye. Back from the Stilt, they are. Fetch my cane and ferry me to the cistern. They bring tidings, and I must hear."

*Eschelstadt II, High Priest of the Stilt, has made an appearance inside the cathedral. He's giving a grand sermon to all pilgrims by the Sacred Well.
*The Mechanimist preachers on the Stiltgrounds have started delivering sermons, too. Topics include the Argent Fathers, baetyls, and the story of the Sacred Joining.
*Petramaia, realizing she had reversed her plans for the marble relief of the Edification, tore the relief down and rebuilt it.
*The marble reliefs inside the Stilt were named and given descriptions.
*The statues of the Argent Fathers inside the Stilt were named and given descriptions.
*More animal farmers and shepherds have arrived at the Stilt, including
-goat herders
-ray cat herders
-crab farmers
-beetle farmers
-snail farmers
-leech farmers
-amoeba farmers
*Farm animals no longer open the gates to their pens.
*Beetle jerky was added.
*Stiltground merchants are more conversational.
*The Stiltground road tiles were changed.

[getter77]

Feature Friday #16, where Sunday can also aspire to be a Friday with enough courage:

*New book: On the Origins and Nature of the Dark Calculus by Barathrum the Old
*Added Mechanimist pilgrims that trek toward the Sacred Well at the center of the Six Day Stilt from whereever they are in Qud
-Some pilgrims are Mechanimist converts
-Some pilgrims are listening to sermons around the Stiltgrounds
*Fracti were renamed to their singular form, fractus
*New faction: succulents
*Fracti belong to the succulents faction
*When you walk over a fractus, you take 1 damage and your movement is hampered, unless succulents like you
*Added a 'sitting' status
*The flocks of pilgrims, choralers, and converts listening to the sermons on the Stiltgrounds are all seated
*Added a grenade shop sign
*Fixed some issues with extraneous stairs getting generated at the entrances of main dungeons
*Fixed some issues with dungeon map connections in the ruins and Tomb of the Eaters

[getter77]

Feature Friday #17

Tirutep: "On guard, Sytep! A snapjaw approaches.
Sytep: Nay, nay, it's just the Elder. He's knifejacked a snapjaw's furry countenance and wears it over his own!
Elder: "Hello, friends!"

*When you wear the severed face of your enemy, you get an Ego bonus based on the enemy's level and a -500 reputation penalty with each of the enemy's factions
*Severed faces got better descriptions
*The Wardens Esther, sheriffs of the Six Day Stilt, have taken up their post
*Stiltgrounds NPCs now wander around the Stiltgrounds in a more lively fashion, walking in and out of shops and conversing with each other (unless they're rapt by a sermon)
*Pilgrims no longer belt out their intentions
*New possible Stiltgrounds merchant: schematics drafter
*Starting reputation with succulents was reduced
*Fracti actually deal damage when unfriendly creatures walk over them
*NPCs path around fracti now that it's prickly
*The sacred well was greatly embellished
*A splendid, marble dais now surrounds the sacred well
*New tile: bedroll

[jim]

Has anyone been playing this? I enjoyed it a great deal years ago, but haven't kept up to date.

[akeley]

I don`t have the latest version (cursed with an anti-Steam stance) just a bit older Humble release but it`s still as good as ever. They didn`t break anything, just added tiles & loads of new content, plus usual bug hunt, tinkering, and aim to make a main quest finishable. Qud lives & reigns supreme!

[getter77]

Feature Friday #18 

*Added tombstones with procedural inscriptions
*Added an ascii plaque to tombstone's look description
*Added 4 tombstone tiles
*Added a graveyard north of Joppa
*Added arconauts to the Stiltgrounds
*Added hookahs
*Added hookah tents to the Stiltgrounds, where pilgrims, choralers, converts, and arconauts gather and sit
*Fixed some typos
*Fixed an issue with Kyakukya's quest destination
*Upgraded to Unity 5

[getter77]

Feature Friday #19

*Added Sheba Hagadiah, Mechanimist convert and librarian of the Stilt. Her creature type is procedurally generated each game.
*Sheba awards XP for every book you donate to her. The more valuable the book, the more XP you get. You can still read books you donate by speaking with her and accessing her inventory.
*Adjusted the prices of some books.
*The entrance to the Six Day Stilt has been adorned with marble and concrete ruins.
*Added a Mechanimist graveyard outside of the Stilt.
*Added a side exit from the cathedral to the graveyard.
*The Sacred Well dais was redesigned.
*The Sacred Well dialog was improved.
*The Sacred Well now shows the reputation bonus you'll get for making an offering.
*When your reputation with a faction changes, you now get a message popup.
*Wardens of the Stilt were renamed to 'protectors of the Stilt' and given appropriate descriptions.
*Added a proper description for leafless dogthorn trees.
*The Joppa graveyard gate no longer spawns on the edge of the screen.

[getter77]

Feature Friday #20! 

*The Mechanimist officially welcome you to the Six Day Stilt! Come marvel at the cathedral, shop at the Great Bazaar, and honor Glorious Shekhinah!
*The Mechanimist zealot in Joppa now gives a quest to see the Six Day Stilt.
*The zealot was given more dialog.
*New possible Stiltgrounds merchant shop: exotic liquids.
*The Stilt merchant faction politics have changed a little.
*The Mechanimists no longer admire the Wardens Esther by default.
*Everything inside the Stiltground tents now belongs to the Stiltground merchants.
*A wrought iron fence now surrounds the Mechanimist graveyard.
*There's now a saltstone path that leads from the Stilt entrance area through the graveyard.
*Drinking or pouring from a liquid container that belongs to someone else now angers the owner.
*The Use key now examines statues and reliefs.

[getter77]

Feature Friday #21

"Nary a scholar knows who composes the Annals of Qud or when the chronicling began. But the Quantivists devised a way to entangle their own pages with the offical ledger, allowing them to insert themselves into the histories in a favorable light. A few such pages remain."

*New item: Scrodinger page from the Annals of Qud. The page is from either a random chapter or, more rarely, a chapter of your choosing.
*The unique monster builder now increases the level of the base monster when building a unique. This means that the Consider function, the part of the monster's description that estimates its difficulty, is now more accurate for unique monsters.
*The faction encounters were tweaked so that aggro, out-of-depth faction leaders don't spawn between Joppa and Red Rock, in Red Rock, or in the rust wells.
*The maps between Joppa and Redrock were changed to watervine marshes in accordance with their tile on the world map.
*Added a helpful sign outside Argyve's hut.
*Moved the starting tile in Joppa one square north. The old starting tile was OP.
*Changed the base demeanor of waydroids to aggressive.
*Replaced the scrap shovelers in the Temple of the Rock with reprogrammed scrap shovelers that are loyal to the Mechanimists.
*The Manual Equip menu now has a scrollable indicator arrow.

[getter77]

Feature Friday #22

*We've expanded support for mods.
-Mods are now loaded out of folders following the pattern %savepath%\Mods\{name of the mod}
-Mods support an optional config.json file. All fields are optional. Here's the template:

"config":
{
"id":"{id}",
loadorder:{n}
}

'id' defaults to the folder name.
'loadorder' defaults to 0. Mods with lower loadorder load first. Mods with equal loadorder are loaded in alphabetical order.
-Mods support .png format tiles in the \Textures\ subfolder
-Mods support the following data files, which are loaded additively.
Books.xml
BuildingTiles.txt
Conversations.xml
EncounterTables.xml
ObjectBlueprints.xml
PopulationTables.xml
Quests.xml
Worlds.xml
-If two entries share an ID, the one loaded later overwrites the earlier one.
-You can now assign the Load="Merge" property on an encounter table or object blueprint in a mod. For example, <object Name="Snapjaw Scavanger" Load="Merge">. This property causes the table or object to be merged into an existing definition, if one exists, instead of overwriting it.
*You can no longer pick up the Sacred Well and walk away with it.
*When you kill a unique creature, you now correctly lose reputation with factions that admired the creature.
*The grammar of generated sentences was improved, though there's still some work left. Please keep posting grammar mistakes and misspellings in the forums.

[getter77]

Feature Friday #23

*We've introduced world seeds and added some features around them. World seeds are codes that fix the output of (almost) all the random elements of the game.
-After you create your character, you can choose to enter a world seed.
-From the New Game menu, you can enter a specific world seed and play a fixed character associated with that seed.
-We've added a weekly challenge with a specific world seed and fixed character. New challenges start every Monday. Choose the challenge option from the New Game menu.
*Added an option to roll a random character.
*New book: Aphorisms about Birds.
*Added more reasons for a faction to admire, dislike, or hate someone.
*Baetyls now demand fewer invalid objects.
*Fixed a hang when pasting a character code.
*Work on changing the quest 'Ripe for the Conflagrating' has begun. Stay tuned.

[getter77]

Feature Friday #24

*We've replaced the quest, Ripe for the Conflagrating, with a new (and much more interesting) quest, The Earl of Omonporch. Some chaotic stuff is possible in the course of this quest, so stay tuned for tweaks.
*Added Asphodel, the Earl of Omonporch, and the asphodelytes.
*Added a new music track to the overworld regions.
*The overlay message log can now be resized by dragging.
*Fixed an exception during Grit Gate scripted events.

[jim]

Has anyone been playing this? I was fascinated when it came out years ago, even though it was mostly empty after the first couple dungeons.

[AgingMinotaur]

Jim: Don't know which version you tried, but I've been playing the free version (several years old), and would say it's already rich in content. I've only finished the main questline once, and never felt like I was lacking places to go and things to do. Currently favoring water merchants with amphibianism, disintegration and 4x unstable genome.

The Steam version seems to feature some very nice additions. They're filling out empty locations such as The Six Day Stilt, and I'm glad to see them replace the "Ripe for the Conflagration" quest, which was an anticlimax after doing Bethesda Susa. I'll probably get it (even on Steam ) once I can spare ten bucks, although I think the plan is to make all content public further down the road. Only tiles will be reserved paying customers.

As always,
Minotauros