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[forsaken1111]

"Fetch me five rat tails from yonder basement!"

[ConsUme]

So... the game is out in early access... for $9.99 okay I can handle that...

Wait the ASCII version is still free?

I'm confused?

[rumpel]

Yeah, there's an outdated ASCII version still available for free download. You can play ASCII with the Steam version too, btw.

[Ehndras]

Aww, damn. 9.99. I'd love to play CoQ, but i'll have to wait a few months til my financial situation improves and I actually have a functioning bank account. Is there any gameplay difference between the Steam and standalone ASCII versions?

[Beggars` Sect]

I think a new, easier quest that lets new players pick up the ropes would be better. Red Rock and Rustwells both have nasty surprises.
Perhaps a quest set in a location with just snapjaws (Or similar, easy enemy) with an easy objective like 'get the big glowing thing'? Preferably not far out of Joppa, too? Just to ease newbies in.

I believe that biggest help to newbies would be more decent coverage in press (and of course in the manual/webpage too) regarding what roguelikes really are and how to approach them. Hint: they`re not CRPGS (despite all the similarities) and shouldn`t be expected to behave as such. What would be the point of an "easy" quest as suggested above, if later on game goes back to "normal"? Only more frustration (also for the non-newbs, I get this in TOME a lot having to slog through super easy first dungeon). And if you start tinkering with the game proper you might as well go and write a CRPG.

What I`d tell the new players would be to try and change their mindset and understand the rules - otherwise they will never enjoy a true RL. So, stop being attached to "you" as your precious character, after it bites the dust hit the Random Creation and watch another poor sod`s story unfold. Embrace the permadeath and enjoy the tension plus new found urgency to do things right, instead of sleepwalking through some scripted battles. Learn to retreat...when was the last time you had to do it in a CRPG? Probably never - plot won`t advance. And so on and on...

As for Qud itself, there`s no grinding unless you want to. First quests can be tricky, especially with more esoteric characters, but that`s whats it`s all about - ADOM is similar. Anyway, usually these weak at start kick butt later on.

The only "problem", (similarly to ADOM again and most RLs with an overworld) is the repetitive nature that might seem to some as an excuse in calling for ability to save. Randomizing the overworld would help in a way but...with Qud`s level of complexity there`s never a dull moment anyway, so why bother?

[Witty]

I've never had to grind a character. I think some people just have a different idea of exactly what kind of game Qud is striving to be.

Having played quite a bit following the initial steam launch - I really have only two major complaints.

Firstly, the sidebar message reel isn't very good. It's very clunky, and it's pretty damn hard to tell what exactly is going on, and when it happened. Not to mention you can never go back and read old messages (AFAIK) once new messages crowd out their place - so figuring out why you're suddenly on fire or something means you basically have to guess. Having a DF-style report screen, I feel, would greatly help this issue.

Secondly, I personally feel the surface world is waaaay overcrowded with hostiles. I was walking through the hills near the rust wells in travel mode - got lost  - and suddenly found myself surrounded by pretty much everything, all trying to kill me and only me. A squad of those hill hermits, snapjaws, baboons - just everything. I died obviously, but it really did feel kinda cheap to me. Literally every screen I ran too was just littered with these guys. I firstly don't think it makes much sense for all these critters to be allied with one another in the first place, and I definitely don't think they'd all be living in such close proximity to each other in such high numbers. Spread out their populations a bit.

[Dostoevsky]

Is there any gameplay difference between the Steam and standalone ASCII versions?

As I understand it, the patchnotes here (http://steamcommunity.com/app/333640/discussions/0/530646080848194826/) are currently only for the 10 buck version, but unormal has suggested (possibly in this very thread) that the free version will also be updated in time. In the end, the key differences will be tiles/sound/music (and the latter two are not yet in the steam version).  Not 100% sure that my memory is correct there, but that's what I remember.

[Mephansteras]

I....just....unormal, this faction system....

[unormal]

I....just....unormal, this faction system....

Blame Jason, I'm just trying to make it stop crashing.

[Mephansteras]

Ah. Well, hilarious in any case.

[forsaken1111]

Oh god my sides

[BigD145]

Why don't the crabs like me? I just keep telling them they have cancer.

[blackmagechill]

It also leads to one of the funniest bugs in the game, where Ulraig the warden is hated by the zealot or Mehmet and then clobbers them when they try to fight him over tricking their faction out of their fresh water or whatever.

[unormal]

[SteamQud July 21, 2015]
*Moved every remaining event to the event pooling system. What could go wrong?
*Fixed a really stupid memory leak with the event pool, sheesh.
*Fixed a really insidious bug where silent & cancelled flags wouldn't always get properly reset in event pool events
*The ammo magazines of clone's missile weapons should properly have their contents cloned instead of referenced from the source object. This probably didn't entirely break the object copying system.
*Clones now wait for their entire body to finish materializing before trying to equip stuff. This also probably didn't entirely break the object copying system. Seriously no-one caught this bug in 11 years?
*Updated pathfinding to no-longer allocate as much garbage on the heap. This probably didn't entirely break pathfinding.
*Farmer's daughters are now slightly less captivating.

[UristMcDwarf]

i'm interested in this hilarious faction system

tell me more