Caves of Qud News

206.4 - 'beta' branch

• Added a new piece of furniture: wire extruder.
  
• Added wire extruders to Grit Gate, Yla Haj's workshop, and the Yd Freehold.
  
• We made several balance changes to the Horns mutation.
  
  • Horns now costs 4 mutation points instead of 3.
    
  • Changed the damage scaling from 2d(3+[rank/2]) to 2d(3+[rank/3]).
    
  • Changed tho to-hit bonus scaling from +rank to +(rank/2)+1.
    
  • Changed bleed damage scaling from 1d2+(rank-4)/3 to 1d2+(rank-4)/4.
    
  • Changed the bleed save target from 20 + 3*rank to 20 +2*rank.
    
• We made some balance changes to Single Weapon Fighting.
  
  • Made all the stat requirements Strength OR Agility instead of just Agility.
    
  • Descreased skill point cost to 100sp.
    
  • Renamed Expert Strikes to Penetrating Strikes, increased the skill point cost to 200, and increased the stat requirement to 23.
    
  • Broke Weapon Mastery into two skills: Weapon Expertise and Weapon Mastery. Expertise costs 150sp and has a 21 stat req, gives 50% chance for a second attack. Mastery costs 300sp and has a 29 stat req, bumps the second attack chance up to 100%.
    
  • You can now make offhand attacks with horns and stingers even if Single Weapon Fighting is toggled on, but if you make either one your primary weapon, then you do not get offhand attacks with the swapped limb.
    
  • Made Penetrating Strikes no longer apply to non-creature walls.
    
  • Extra attacks from Weapon Expertise and Weapon Mastery now trigger off activated weapon abilities.
    
• We made some balance changes to Multiweapon Fighting.
  
  • Made all the stat requirements Strength OR Agility instead of just Agility.
    
  • Increased the stat requirements of Multiweapon Expertise and Multiweapon Mastery from 21 and 25 to 23 and 27, respectively.
    
  • Increased the skill point cost of Multiweapon Mastery from 150 to 200sp.
    
• Gave the Girsh nephilim base resistances.
  
• Gave portable wall a new tile.
  
• When two spacetime vortices come into contact, they now explode instead of one being sucked into the other.
  
• Stable, stationary spacetime vortices are now points of interest.
  
• Creatures now refuse to chat or trade with you when they are on fire.
  
• Kesehind now knows how to use the shield he carries.
  
• Walking by flowers now refers to some flowers rather than a set of flowers.
  
• Made some performance improvements to autoexplore.
  
• Added a popup message when a companion fall down a pit.
  
• Improved messaging when robots are affected by Sunder Mind.
  
• Temporarily replaced overly long melee attack sounds.
  
• Irisdual beam is now more audible through walls.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the legendary grand newfather's followers to be much lower level than they should have been.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused lockups in autoexplore.
  
• Fixed a bug that made Flaming Ray and Freezing Ray hands variants stop working after eating the Cloaca Surprise or Crystal Delight.
  
• Fixed a bug that made the first deployment of a stasis grenade's stasis field be unaffected by normality.
  
• Fixed a bug that brain brine to not be consumed upon drinking.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented entering clams.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the achievement for defeating a chrome pyramid to not be awarded.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused you to be unable to attack with hooks for feet.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused hooks for feet not to regenerate again.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused irisdual beam's vfx to be delayed by the firing of other missile weapons.
  
• Fixed missile weapon VFX from offscreen zones being displayed.
  
• Fixed pagination controls on character generation screens.
  
• Fixed a bug that would rarely cause an object to become invulnerable.
  []
• Fixed a bug that would rarely cause a UI lockup when interaction with an object.
  
• Fixed a bug that made Flaming Ray and Freezing Ray hands variants stop working after eating the Cloaca Surprise or Crystal Delight.
  
• Fixed the spelling and capitalization of Dyvvrach's name in the fourth step of If, Then, Else.
  
• Fixed a typo in a medassist module loading message.
  
• [modding] The Consumer part now has the fields Message and FloatMessage for configuring its message log message and, optionally, a floating text message.
  
• [modding] The parts Breeder, LeavesTrail, LeaveTrailWhileHasEffect, PopulationSpawner, and DeploymentGrenade all now support extended blueprint syntax (# can preface a comma-separated list of blueprints to select from, and @ can preface a population table name). The first four also have a new Range parameter that allows objects to be deployed at a randomizable range from the source.
  
• [modding] ModSerene and ModHorrifying now work with existing equip slots configurations, adding a head and/or face requirement if not already present, rather than replacing existing configurations entirely.
  
• [modding] Any mutation that grants natural equipment (such as wings or hooks for feet) can now specify variants using the "MutationEquipment" tag.
  

Our next feature arc, Creatures of the 7th Plague, is now in beta! Big picture, this arc includes the next quest in the main questline, significant updates to the UI and input, lots of new visual and sound effects, lots of performance improvements, and many gameplay changes.

If you'd like to help us test it, right-click on Caves of Qud in Steam, select Properties, click the Betas tab, and switch to the 'beta' branch. Check out this thread if you want to post your feedback and get access to fast-forward wishes to help test the new quest. Note: previous saves won't be compatible with this beta.

Live and drink, friends. Patch notes below.

[h3]NEW MAIN QUEST AND THE GIRSH NEPHILIM[/h3]
Added the next leg of the main quest. Talk to Barathrum after completing the Golem.
Added the Girsh Nephilim, 7th plague of the Gyre. Lairs to come.


[h3]UI AND INPUT [/h3]
Several of these changes were merged in from the "input" beta.

Merged all input managers down to one, meaning you no longer have to change settings for gamepad to work.
Added a new keybind screen and made key binding more flexible, with many more commands now bindable.
Made keyboard, gamepad, and Steam Deck input much more robust across the board.
We added a new Abilities screen ('a').

• Added icons for every ability.
  
• Added in-depth, dynamic descriptions for many abilities (the rest to come).
  
• You can reorder abilities on the Abilities screen and they will also reorder in your hotbar.
  

We made several enhancements to the ability hotbar.

• Your abilities are now automatically hotkeyed. You can change the hotkeys from the Abilities screen.
  
• Added hotkeys for scrolling through your hotbars (default ctrl+1 - ctrl+5).
  
• New ability icons also appear on the hotbar.
  
• Added the new ability icons to the old UI sidebar. They also now respect the order of abilities on your ability screen.
  

We added many new visual effects.

• Added new visual effects for several abilities: flaming ray, flame breath, teleportation, slammed, digging, and temporal fugue.
  
• Added new visual effects for several types of deaths: decapitation, transmuted, consumed, lased to death, and immolated.
  
• Added new visual effects for several missile weapons: all lead slug weapons, all arrows, laser rifle, chain laser, laser pistol, point defense laser, spitting seed plant, light rondure, flamer thrower, null ray pistol, and rocket launchers.
  
• Added new visual effects for several other creatures and items: aloe pyra, flaming vents, HE grenades, neutron flux, and hookah.
  
• Added new visual effects for throwing.
  
• Replaced the combat slash animation with a new one that has three grades of intensity for 1, 2-3 and 4+ penetrations.
  
• Added a new animation for bludgeoning damage.
  
• Added a new block animation.
  

Added a new, highly visible autoexplore danger indicator.
Added new tiles for some flashing status indicators: swimming, wading, covered in spores, flying, and sprinting.
Holding down movement keys to move quickly is now safeguarded by the autoexplore danger indicator.
Added gamepad button glyphs for Xbox and PlayStation controllers wherever the UI indicates a button bind.
Right-stick up and down now defaults to page up and down in menus.
Added default force-attack diagonal bindings: Ctrl+Shift+arrow keys.
Added a bunch of new keybinds.
Page Up and Page Down can now be used to navigate popups and the look menu.
Changed the default bind for the Factions page to ctrl+f.
Removed "laptop defaults" keybind options. The new defaults should be usable without numpad.


[h3]GAMEPLAY[/h3]
Added new creatures: grand newfather, temple mecha mk I, and temple mecha mk II (legendary).
Added new items: grappling gun and longreach grappling gun.
We revamped the First Aid skill tree.

• Renamed the skill tree to Physic and reduced the initial purchase cost to 50sp.
  
• Staunch Wounds now simply improves your bandaging rolls, both in and out of combat.
  
• You can now use Staunch Wounds on your companions.
  
• Removed the Heal and Set Limb skills.
  
• Added a new skill: Nostrums. 100sp. INT 21.
  
  • You can treat bleeding, poison, illness, and disease onset at a campfire.
    
  • Treatments can be applied to companions.
    
  • Some treatments require a medicinal ingredient.
    
• Added a new skill: Amputate limb. 50sp. INT 23.
  
  • You can voluntarily amputate your own limbs.
    
  • You can amputate your companions' limbs, if they are infected or equipped with unremoveable equipment.
    
• Added a new skill: Apothecary. 100sp. INT 25.
  
  • Healing tonics you apply last an extra round.
    

We revamped the Dual Wield skill tree and made changes to how offhand attack changes are displayed. (Experimental: subject to change)

• Renamed the skill tree Multiweapon Fighting and the skills Multiweapon Proficiency, Multiweapon Expertise, and Multiweapon Mastery.
  
• The bonuses to offhand attacks granted by Multiweapon Fighting skills now apply to all offhand limbs, except mutation-based weapons like Horns and Stinger. This now includes chimera limbs, as before, but also limbs granted by Multiple Arms and Helping Hands.
  
• Reduced the offhand bonuses from the three skills from (effective) +20/40/60% to +20/35/50%.
  
• Reduced the skill point cost. Each skill is now 150sp, down from 300sp.
  
• Natural offhand limbs and weapons wielded in offhand limbs now display their offhand attack chance in their descriptions.
  
• When you swap your primary limb, your old primary inherits the offhand chance of the new primary you swapped to. This was always the case but is now easier to track due to the offhand chance getting displayed in the limb/weapon description.
  

We added a new Single Weapon Fighting skill tree. (Experimental: subject to change)

• Single Weapon Fighting. 150sp. AGI 17. You no longer make offhand attacks in exchange for mastery with a single weapon (toggleable).
  
• Opportune Attacks (free with skill) - Whenever you score a critical hit with a melee weapon, the cooldowns of up to two random weapon or shield skills are immediately refreshed.
  
• Expert Strikes. 200sp. AGI 19. Your attacks always penetrate one extra time.
  
• Weapon Mastery. 150sp. AGI 23. Whenever you make a melee attack, immediately make a second attack for free.
  

We made improvements to how mutation variants are chosen and displayed.

• Added new tiles and descriptions for each mutation variant. E.g., horns, horn, spiral horn, antlers, and casque now each have their own tiles and descriptions.
  
• Added new tiles and descriptions for Flaming Ray's ghostly flames and Freezing Ray's icy vapor.
  
• When you choose a variant during character generation, the appropriate tile and description are now displayed.
  
• When you randomly choose mutations during character generation, you can now get mutation variants.
  
• When you gain a mutation after character generation, you can now pick a variant.
  

Increased Gun Rack's license point cost from 4 to 6.
Intravenous ports now stack by adding to the tonic's duration its original duration, before any modifiers, for each implant.
Objects that occlude vision, like trees, and stationary pieces of furniture now have a chance to be hit if a missile passes through their space.


[h3]MISCELLANEOUS[/h3]
Added MANY new sound effects.
Changed the penetration SFX to match the 1, 2-3 and 4+ tiers.
Replace "Then Things to Do When You Start the Game" with a "Quickstart" guide that has up-to-date info and dynamic keybinds.
There is now case specific death messaging for dying from reflected damage.
Removed the unfinished dungeon Trembling Dunes, to return at a later date.
Simplified the campfire sounds.
Greatly improved save & load performance for both the game and previously visited zones.
Greatly improved performance when new game objects were created.
Improved general rendering performance.
Improved performance when sounds would play during your turn.
Improved performance when custom effects play during your turn, particularly offscreen.
Improved performance when a creature takes damage and attempts to alert nearby allies.
Reduced memory usage & fragmentation for long play sessions, particularly when saving or loading the game often.
Reduced save file size.


[h3]BUGFIXES[/h3]
Rejoinder no longer counterattacks while toggled off.
Fixed a bug that caused Light Manipulation to cast ambient light even when out of charges.
Fixed a bug that caused some popup selections to cancel autoexplore immediately after.
Fixed an issue that caused a spurious option popup when selecting a category in the trade menu.
Fixed some grammar issues in Disintegration's messaging.
Fixed a bug that caused several dynamic quests to stop working if you swapped bodies.
Fixed a bug that prevented "find a relic"" dynamic quests from immediately completing the find step if you already had the relic when you got the quest.
Fixed a bug that caused the first step for site-finding dynamic quests to not complete if you found the site before you got the quest.


[h3]DEBUG & MODDING[/h3]

• Improved the map editor UI.
  
• The workshop uploader now provides a native file picker for images.
  
• The workshop uploader now allows you to close the upload status screen after an error.
  
• The workshop uploader now allows you to elide hidden files from your uploads.
  
• The map editor now provides a native file picker for maps.
  
• Fixed a bug in the map editor that caused dragging the map to be scaled improperly.
  
• The mod manager now displays disabled mods as grey instead of red.
  
• GameSystems.FireEvent now supports all events fired on the player
  
• There is a new GameSystems class which provides public static helpers for raising an event on all game systems.
  
• Added string, int, float, list, and dictionary properties to Quest XML.
  
• ReflectDamage is now an IActivePart.
  
• Systems now support PlayerEquipped, PlayerActivating, and PlayerObjectAddedToInventory.
  

The beta for our next feature arc — Creatures of the 7th Plague — is coming next week! Once it's up, we'll post our Feature Friday updates to the beta branch until the beta is over and merged into the mainline.
Keep an eye out! Live and drink, friends.

204.108

• When you first get a recoiler, you now gain an activated ability Recoil that selects from among your recoilers to interact with, sorted by the most recently used. In existing saved games, drop a recoiler and pick it up again to gain the activated ability.
  
• The default interaction for programmable and reprogrammable recoilers in your inventory is now "imprint" if they have not yet been imprinted.
  
• Recoilers are now metal. Existing recoilers in saved games will not be affected.
  
• Autoexplore no longer attempts to talk to sparking baetyls that are hostile to you.
  
• The offer dialog for sparking baetyls is now clearer about exactly which items will be offered, and it prefers to offer less valuable items.
  
• Swoop now respects being disabled via the "direct ability use" interaction.
  
• Barathrumite tinkers and arconauts who are no longer part of the Barathrumites faction are now described as urshiib tinkers and arconauts, respectively.
  
• Stairwell teleporters are now interesting. Existing teleporters in saved games will not be affected.
  
• The default interaction for data disks is no longer "learn" when you already know how their recipe. For known item recipes in your inventory, the default action is now usually "build"
  
• Creatures no longer attempt to use Intimidate or Menacing Stare against brainless targets.
  
• You can no longer use crayons on the world map.
  
• Fixed several bugs that made creatures much less willing to forgive friendly fire incidents than they were supposed to be.
  
• Fixed a bug that made skin glitter implants held as thrown or improvised weapons refract light. Existing implants in saved games will not be affected.
  
• Fixed a bug that made being overburdened cause some actions to fail silently.
  
• Fixed a bug that made attempts to unequip cursed items fail silently.
  
• Fixed an exception that could happen rarely when liquids were moving around.
  
• Fixed some cases where in unusual circumstances you could be blamed for targeting someone with a missile attack who you hadn't meant to target.
  
• Fixed a bug that made autoexplore path to sparking baetyls whose request you had fulfilled and whose journal entry you had deleted.
  
• [modding] Added a MutationOnEquip part for equipped items that can give/improve a mutation.
  

204.106

• You can no longer deploy wire strands on the world map.
  
• You can no longer deploy wire strands that are rusted or broken.
  
• Creatures can now only vomit once every three turns.
  
• Creatures in stasis can no longer be dismembered or decapitated.
  
• Learning Kickback now enables NPCs to fire missile weapons at point-blank range if they did not previously do so.
  
• Neelahind now knows how to use the shield she carries.
  
• The cragmensch and glittermensch capacity to extract boulders from their own bodies is no longer visible via techscanning.
  
• Chiral rings equipped by someone in stasis no longer dismember adjacent creatures.
  
• Autoexplore now chats with sparking baetyls that you have not yet spoken to.
  
• Pathfinding now goes to slightly more effort to avoid being next to pits.
  
• When unlocking a door with a security card that is in a stack, the stack count is no longer displayed.
  
• Creatures can no longer start flying while overburdened or while engulfing another creature.
  
• Engulfing now forces both the engulfer and engulfee to land if they were flying.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused NPCs who equipped a piece of armor in place of a worse piece of armor then become enthusiastic to equip the worse piece of armor as an improvised weapon.
  
• Fixed a bug that made trading for very low value items free.
  
• Fixed a bug that made being submerged prevent beginning to swim or wade.
  
• [modding] Updated Harmony to version 2.2.2.
  

205.65 - 'beta' branch

• Fixed a bug that prevented 'find a relic' dynamic quests to stop working if you swapped bodies.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented 'find a relic' dynamic quests from immediately completing the find step if you currently posess the relic when you get the quest.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented 'find a specific item' dynamic quests to stop working if you swapped bodies.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented 'interact with a specific item' dynamic quests to stop working if you swapped bodies.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the first step for site-finding dynamic quests to not complete if you found the site before you acquired the quest.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Temporal Fugue to have no cooldown.
  
• [modding] Improved the map editor UI.
  
• [modding] Fixed a bug in the map editor that caused dragging the map to be scaled improperly.
  
• [modding] Systems now support PlayerEquipped, PlayerActivating, and PlayerObjectAddedToInventory.
  
• [modding] GameSystems.FireEvent now supports all events fired on the player
  
• [modding] There is a new GameSystems class which provides public static helpers for raising an event on all game systems.
  

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204.104

• The reload command no longer attempts to reload point-defense drones.
  
• When creatures die in the same square as a wall or other movement-blocking object, items they had equipped now drop into a nearby passable square if one is available.
  
• Creatures are now more likely to use Quill Fling if they are adjacent to multiple hostile creatures and less likely to use it if there are adjacent to friendlies or neutrals (especially if those are badly hurt) or objects that may cause trouble to damage.
  
• Copies of the sheaf of tattered parchment no longer appear randomly in the world.
  
• Barathrumites present in Grit Gate at the start of A Call to Arms no longer perform idle behavior until A Call to Arms is over.
  
• Horned chameleons that are mimicking something else's color are now only recognized by autoact as hostile at a distance of 3 squares or less.
  
• Mimics that are mimicking something else now are no longer recognized by autoact as hostile.
  
• Clonelings now stop cloning attempts in progress when their ability to clone becomes forbidden or otherwise unusable.
  
• Spider creatures who have prominent roles in villages no longer compulsively attack creatures who become stuck near them. The same is true of Sheba Hagadias if she is a spider creature.
  
• Sheba Hagadias is now automatically revealed if she is a type of creature that is usually hidden.
  
• When you try to walk into a brick wall, your way is now referred to as being blocked by some brick, not a brick.
  
• Idle creatures will now sometimes move to a chair that isn't too far away in order to sit on it for a while, rather than only sitting on chairs that are in the same square as them.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused excessive failure popups when trying to auto-equip an item while stuck.
  
• Fixed a bug that made falling down a coral pit display messages both that you fell down a coral pit and fell down a deep shaft.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused villages and ruins to generate with far more inaccessible areas than intended.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused temporal fugue clones to spawn their own copies of Either/Or.
  
• Fixed a bug that made it impossible to hit walls with thrown objects.
  
• Fixed a bug that made throwing reveal the identified appearance of unidentified artifacts.
  
• Fixed a bug that made energy cell replacement on artifacts in your inventory or equipped default to cancelling out of the dialog if you had no suitable cells for the artifact.
  
• Fixed a bug that made containers filled with convalessence, even in normal environmental temperatures, sublimate away and, in the case of regen tanks, explode.
  
• Fixed an error that could occur during world generation when spawning legendary animated versions of high-tech furniture.
  
• [modding] Updated the mod compiler, allowing projects to use C# language version 9.
  
• [modding] Updated the mod toolkit's csproj template.
  
• [modding] Added Before="[ELEMENT_ID]" and After="[ELEMENT_ID]" attributes to Conversations.xml, which positions the element relative to the referenced id.
  

205.63 - 'beta' branch

• Fixed a bug that caused doubled navigation inputs in some cases.
  
• Fixed 'm' not opening the modding utilities on the main menu.
  
• [modding] The workshop uploader now provides a native file picker for images.
  
• [modding] The workshop uploader now allows you to close the upload status screen after an error.
  
• [modding] The workshop uploader now allows you to elide hidden files from your uploads.
  
• [modding] The map editor now provides a native file picker for maps.
  
• [modding] The mod manager now displays disabled mods as grey instead of red.