Caves of Qud News

The beta for our latest feature arc -- Palladium Reef / New Chargen -- has arrived. The patch is unpolished but very functional; the full release is likely to come in the next few weeks. Here is an incomplete list of patch notes.

NEW LATE-GAME REGIONS

• Added two new late game regions: Lake Hinnom and the Palladium Reef.
  
• Added a new village, the Yd Freehold, with several new NPCs.
  
• Added new creatures: svardym hatchling, svardym jut, svardym scrounge, svardym eld, prism perch, white esh, quatravolt glider, trining lamprey, giant clam, reef hermit, plasma jelly, kaleidoslug, enigma snail, junk dollar, tongue tyrant, sultan croc, star kraken, galgal, and slynth wanderer.
  
• Added a new side quest (partially implemented). It's up to you to figure out where to get it.
  
• Expanded the Rainbow Wood and configured it to include dynamic sites like villages, ruins, and lairs.
  

CHARACTER CREATION AND UI

• Entirely refactored the character generation sequence to be much more sensible, highly moddable, and use an all-new, responsive, fully keyboardable AND mousable UI.
  
• Added nine new preset character builds. These are designed to help new players get started, but they're also fully customizable.
  
• Added two new game modes (these were already live on the beta branch):
  
  • Roleplay Mode - checkpointing at settlements
    
  • Wander Mode - checkpointing at settlements, no XP for kills, bonus XP for discoveries, creatures begin neutral to you
    
• Made several enhancements to the new UI.
  
• [Modding] Added a new, highly-extensible data file, EmbarkModules.xml, that drives character creation.
  

NEW THINGS

• Added new items: gravity grenade, plasma grenade, eigenpistol, arc winder, high-voltage arc winder, light rail, hand rail, di-thermo beam, spaser rifle, spaser pistol, space inverter, psychal fleshgun, step sowers, 3D cobblers, slip ring, gas tumbler, thermo cask, high-energy thermo cask, chiral rings, tri-hologram bracelet, night-sight interpolators, precision nanon fingers, psychic meridian.
  
• Added new cybernetic implants: tibular hydrojets, optical multiscanner, magnetic core, skin glitter, stasis projector, crysteel hand bones, and [redacted].
  
• Added three new item mods: snail-encrusted, nanon, and fitted with beamsplitter.
  
• Added two new liquids: algae and sunslag.
  
• Added a new gas: plasma.
  
• Added a new type of cybernetic implant merchant: gutsmonger. There's one guaranteed in the SE corner of the Stiltgrounds.
  
• Added organ markets.
  
• Added a whole bunch of new furniture.
  
• Added a whole bunch of new tile art.
  

OTHER CHANGES

• Made significant visual enhancements to the world map.
  
• Gave several existing merchants cybernetic implants as wares.
  
• Gunslingers now start with Akimbo instead of Weak Spotter, and they start with much more ammo.
  
• Water Merchants now start with Short Blade.
  
• Modified how plant-based cooking effects work.
  
• Changed salt krakens behavior.
  
• You can no longer disassemble non-takeable furniture.
  
• Soup sludges now appear in dynamic encounters.
  
• Added Omonporch and the Yd Freehold as landmarks.
  
• Village ovens can no longer include psychal gland paste.
  
• Morphotypes now show up in the character sheet.
  
• [Modding] Added three new body types for clams, jellies, and starfish.
  
• [Beta] Added a wish for late-game testing: reefjump.
  

If you're interested, come help us test! Our focus right now is on broad scale testing: big bugs, big balance issues, and big UI issues. Here's a thread for feedback.

To access the beta: right-click on Caves of Qud in Steam, select Properties, click the Betas tab, and switch to the 'beta' branch.

Live and drink, friends.

Hello folks,
Our usual patch cadence is to update weekly and then pause those updates as we get ready for one of our big Feature Arc patches. That's where we are right now with our next Feature Arc: the Palladium Reef / Character Creation Rework!

We plan to put up a beta in the coming weeks (no date yet), so to give us the focus we need, we're pausing weekly patches as of this week. We may still sneak one in now and then if there's a reason to, but it's safer not to expect it.

Thanks, friends. Until the sponge, live and drink.

201.114/202.74

• If you already have Burrowing Claws, taking a skulk tonic now boosts its level.
  
• Creatures who feel victimized by inanimate objects no longer become retributively angry, usually.
  
• In order to bask, photosynthetic skin mutants must now be able to move their extremities and not be in combat.
  
• Items marked as important no longer show up in the picker for donating at the Sacred Well.
  
• Books marked as important now ask for confirmation before you donate them to Sheba Hagadias.
  
• Roads that pass through Bey Lah and its outskirts now connect properly.
  
• Data disks now display the shortened names of the items they build.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused diagonal autowalk to allow zone transitions.
  
• Fixed some inconsistency in the appearance of data disks for gaslight weapons.
  
• Fixed a bug that made overloaded laser pistols continue to appear as a distinct objects from laser pistols.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused skulk tonics to display endless popups if you lost your burrowing claws or dark vision before the tonic duration expired.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused zone building to sometimes fail if you saved and reloaded on the world map.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused you to forget things too frequently with Amensia.
  
• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused quest steps based on visiting a zone to complete before you visited the zone.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused ruins to build endlessly if a door was animated.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the entrance to Oboroqoru's lair to build endlessly if there was a tree in the northwest corner.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the up and down stairs in Oboroqoru's lair to be disconnected if you approached them from below.
  
• Fixed a bug that occasionally caused the hollowed tree to generate too close to Bey Lah.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the hollowed tree to generate without floor tiles and Bey Lah's outskirts to generate with grass instead of flowers.
  
• Fixed an exception when cancelling aggression.
  

201.113/202.73

• Digging tools now work on rubble and boulders.
  
• You can no longer clean things while frozen.
  
• You are now asked for confirmation when loading ammo that's marked as important.
  
• You no longer get popup messages for unlocking security doors during autoact.
  
• In their requests, sparking baetyls now refer to cooking ingredients in terms of servings rather than sets.
  
• The root knot is more friendly.
  
• Added an option to control the 'press right to equip selected item' behavior on the Inventory screen. It defaults to on.
  
• Fixed a variety of bugs related to primary limb selection becoming unset over serialization cycles
  
• Fixed a bug that made autoexplore inaccurately say there was nothing left to explore when actually it was being sensitive to the presence of enemies, particularly when using clairvoyance.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused dropping objects to exit the inventory screen.
  
• Fixed a bug that made it possible to be a point of interest when dominating some creatures.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused map generation in ruins to prefer to spawn sultan statues in the northwest corner.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused psychic hunters to occasionally spawn on the world map.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented turrets who gained mobility through flight from flying in combat.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused world generation to fail if you became loved by a faction before the game started.
  
• Fixed the Bey Lah zone name appearing as "flower fields" instead of Bey Lah.
  
• Fixed a bug in how electrical discharges are attributed.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the interact menu of [redacted] to persist through after you [redacted].
  
• Fixed some text coloration issues when noting a location in your journal.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused action queue inconsistences at the start of a new game.
  
• [modding] You can now use placement hints for zone and party objects in faction encounters.
  

201.110/202.70

• Added a new item mod, overloaded, that can be tinkered or found on a variety of electronics, including most energy weapons. Overloaded items have increased performance but draw extra charge, generate heat when used, and have a chance to break relative to their charge draw.
  
• Overloaded laser pistols are now normal laser pistols with the overloaded mod applied.
  
• You can no longer repair items in combat, generally.
  
• The micromanipulator array implant now lets you repair items in combat at an action cost of one turn.
  
• Added new dialogue for crab farmers, leech farmers, cat herders, snail farmers, goat herders, amoeba farmers, beetle farmers, and schematics drafters.
  
• You can no longer enter yourself if you are a piece of enclosing furniture such as an iron maiden, a regeneration tank, or a psionic sarcophagus.
  
• Spray bottles can now be manually sealed and unsealed.
  
• Ganglionic teleprojectors now cost less charge to activate but have a per-turn cost while active.
  
• Nulling armors, ontological anchors, and items with co-processors no longer consume charge on the world map.
  
• Added the option to set a custom autosave interval for zone transitions (Options > Automation > Automatic save on zone transition).
  
• Cases where chairs, beds, and enclosing furniture move or are picked up while someone is using them are now handled properly.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused psychic hunters to never spawn if you abandoned your original body.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused AI to continuously reload their magazine and liquid-loaded weapons if they also had an empty energy cell socket.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused visible damage you were responsible for not to be printed to the message log unless the recipient was adjacent to you.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused creatures to continue to display as enclosed when the furniture that was enclosing them was destroyed.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Sunder Mind to end prematurely when targeting a companion.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Sunder Mind to not play its sound or visual effects when the target died.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Sunder Mind to print its damage message after the target had died.
  
• Fixed a bug that made the walk command attack a wall you arrive at if you have a digging capability active.
  
• Fixed an exception when cancelling aggression.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused VSync to stop functioning when the game window was resized on Linux.
  
• Fixed some missing spaces in preacher sermons and generated book text.