See that guy over there, bitten to death by a wet giant centipede? Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got here.

Well would you look at that, I’m actually keeping up with a plan for once! Well, one post a plan does not make but – it’s a start.

So here I am, finally starting up Caves of Qud, or at least going back through the tutorial. I did this before, a few times actually, but this time I took notes! And the controls are weird, (no “Press WASD to move” here!) so I needed a refresher.

Ok, so maybe not weird for Roguelike but weird for me.

I can’t recall a game that I’ve played in the past that uses the NumPad as directional. In the context of a 2D, grid based, world it makes sense. 8 for up, 4 for left, 2 for down, 6 for right, and 7,9,1,and 3 to move diagonally. As I write this, I am noticing my NumPad actually has arrows on these keys, just in case I forget.

The arrow keys can also be used but having to press shift+arrow key to move diagonally doesn’t feel great. The mouse can also be used to move, in fact, you can play the whole game with just the mouse, but some actions take a lot of clicks and learning the keyboard shortcuts seems like it will be quicker overall.

Plus they make me feel like I’m playing some bespoke relic of the past and that’s fun in and of itself.

Back to the tutorial!

The tutorial let me know that building a character in Caves of Qud was somewhat of a process and we certainly don’t have time for that. This is a tutorial after all.

I was presented with 6 pre-made characters but was only offered the choice of one, the Marsh Taur. Part human part marsh! Well, actually, I think it’s just a human with four legs but it shoots freezing rays out of its hands and can run down enemies from great distances. Probably on account of having four legs. From the description it is the most survivable starting build. If that’s the case, I have my work cut out for me here….

Choosing a character, I was plopped into one of the titular caves “powdered in salt and dust from across the ribbon of time”. I learned how to move, how to fight, and how to look at things.

I’ve played a decent amount of Tales of Maj’eyal so I am familiar with the style of Qud’s turn based combat system. using L to look and choosing which tile to look at took some time to get used to. I could also right click with the mouse but taking my hands off the keyboard to do so is a bit weird. From playing TOME, I also kept wanting to press Z to auto explore which doesn’t do anything. Qud seems to be more about exploring where as TOME is more focused on getting you to the next fight.

I fought some Snapjaws which are a type of humonoid/dog pack hunting monsters. After my victory, I fought a wounded bear. That’s right, I,the mighty Marsh Taur was able to defeat a badly wounded bear!

I also leaned how to pick things up and equip them. The inventory screen is the one place that I’m using the mouse. There are too many key presses there to equip or unequip something and it’s way easier to just drag it to an equipment slot like every other game.

Eventually, I found a the stair well out of the cave and was taken to the world map which , to be frank, is kind of hard to look at:

In fact, that’s one part of the game that has taken a lot of getting used to. It’s kind of hard to see what’s going on and to tell what something is from a glance. I’m sure the more I play I’ll understand what things are, but as it stands, I am constantly “looking” at things to see if they are friend, enemy, item, or perhaps just a tree.

After emerging on to the surface, the tutorial had me go to the town of Joppa where it abruptly ended. Leaving me in town to figure out what to do next. I found a guy who gave me a quest. When I doubt do a quest. There was a creature eating the watervines of Joppa in Red Rock and I was tasked with defeating it.

So I set off, two squares to the north of town on the world map to look for this mysterious creature. When I arrived, I was immediately attacked by a pack of rock throwing baboons. I fired my frost ray at one but it has quite the cool down so I was forced to chased the monkeys through the fields and a volley of rocks to take them out one, by one with my axe. After killing one or two, I started picking up the rocks they were throwing and throwing them back. Take that!

I wandered around for a bit to see where I was suppose to go next. I’m not sure if it’s one to one but I did confirm that traveling between screens does move you around the world map eventually. I ended up two squares away from Red Rock by the time I realized I wasn’t going the right way. On my return to Red Rock via the world map, I found a stair case down to a cave.

Entering the cave I saw a cave spider which I quickly dispatched with a few tossed rocks. Then I encountered an amoeba which didn’t seem to do much damage but left my weapon Slimy after it was defeated. I couldn’t tell what the Slimy status did other than leave a trail of slime behind me for a while.

Further into the cave I encountered two snap jaw scavengers. It turns out, my freezing ray does damage in a line up to 9 squares so I was able to take out both snapjaws with one blast!

Feeling confident, I ventured further into the cave and found a wet feral dog. Looking at it told me that it was friendly. I walked over to it to see what my interaction options were. I could talk, trade, pet, attack, or examine. Talking to it and trading it did not produce results. I did pet it a couple times hoping it might join me on my quest. While I was petting the dog, I was attacked by a centipede.

It’s just a centipede, how hard could it be right? Ok, it’s a giant centipede, but still…Frost Ray! Dismember! Still not dead? I’ll just attack it one more time. But, alas, it was one time too many. The mighty Marsh Taur fell after about 30 minutes.

I have a lot to learn if I’m going to keep playing this….