User:Kernelmethod/Sandbox:Build Guide

Introduction

Welcome! This guide is a spoiler-free intro to buildcrafting for new players.

First, some disclaimers:

• If you're just looking for a build to play, check out the build library. Alternatively, try out the presets! This guide is primarily written for players interested in creating their own builds.
• This guide assumes you've played Caves of Qud for at least a couple of hours. It's helpful to be aware of some basic game mechanics when buildcrafting, although this guide does its best to cover useful information you may have otherwise missed.
• This guide is oriented towards character creation and the early game. This is where most new players struggle; by the time you're able to consistently reach the mid- and late-game you'll probably have at least some sense for how well different builds will fare.
• This guide is primarily written for people playing mutant characters. "Build design" is, of course, just as much a concept for True Kin characters as it is for mutants, and the ideas presented here (building toolkits for different situations) are equally pertinent. However, most of the interesting build design questions for True Kin are deferred to the mid- and late-game; they primarily survive the early game by having better stats and finding good gear. For mutants, the choices that are made during character creation will affect their entire run.
• This guide is not intended to give specific recommendations. You won't see a "best mutations" tier list; this guide won't tell you the best stat distribution for an esper. It's hard to avoid recommendations altogether, but in general, the goal is for you to come away with a framework with which to judge what builds you would enjoy playing.
• And finally -- this guide is highly opinionated, and by no means definitive! There is no objectively "best" build; there is barely even a meaningful concept of what a "meta" build might look like in Caves of Qud. If you have a build idea that goes outside of the guidelines given in this tutorial, then you should try it out! To the extent that there is a best build, it's is the one that you enjoy playing with.

Additional references

Alongside this tutorial, here are some other references that you may find useful:

• Dij's "Basic Qud Gameplay FAQ for Beginners"
• Build library: the wiki's build library includes builds for beginning, medium, and advanced players. If you're looking for a place to start (and none of the game's presets are to your liking), you should check out this page for some inspiration.
• Qudzoo Build Library: Qudzoo is another helpful resource for comparing your builds with those that others have crafted.
• Early Game Checklist

Preliminaries

Primary stats

See the attributes page for more information:

• Strength: affects how much damage your melee attacks do by increasing their PV. It also increases your carry capacity. Strength is required for the Axe and Cudgel skill trees, as well as a few others.
• Agility: affects the accuracy of your attacks, and improves your DV. It is required for the Pistol, Bow and Rifle, and Short Blade skill trees, as well as a few others.
• Toughness: affects how many hitpoints you gain per level, and how many you recover per turn. It's needed for the Endurance skill tree (which has various useful defensive skills), and is also used for a handful of saving throws, such as saves against being poisoned.
  HP gains from Toughness are applied retroactively: if you gain an extra point of toughness at level 10 and go from 20 Toughness to 21 Toughness, you gain HP to match what you would have had if you'd had 21 Toughness since level 1. As a result, picking up high Toughness at the start of the game doesn't confer any advantages over picking up high Toughness later in the game (outside of improving your early-game defenses).
• Intelligence: affects the number of skill points you gain per level, which in turn impacts how many different skills you can pick up. It is also required for the Wayfaring and Tinkering trees. Like Toughness, skill point gains from Intelligence are applied retroactively, so achieving high Intelligence in the early game doesn't give you an advantage over achieving high Intelligence in the late game.
• Willpower: reduces the cooldown of your abilities. It increases your MA and your health regeneration, and is required for the Self-discipline skill tree.
• Ego: improves the level of your mental mutations, and is required for the Persuasion skill tree. Higher ego also improves trade prices.

Secondary stats

Beyond the stats listed above, there are also secondary stats that you don't get to adjust directly during character creation. However, these stats may be influenced by gear, cybernetics, and mutations, and are just as important to consider when designing a build:

• AV (Armor Value): AV decreases the number of penetrations of incoming attacks, reducing the damage dealt to you.
• DV (Dodge Value): DV increases the chance of dodging an attack, and is increased by having a high Agility. It is worth knowing that in the early game, AV tends to reduce damage much more than DV -- one point of AV reduces damage roughly as much as 3 points of DV.
• HP (Hitpoints): you die when you hit zero. HP is increased by Toughness.
• MA (Mental Armor): MA decides how well you protect against psychic attacks. In the early game this includes attacks from the notorious Sunder Mind mutation carried by novices of the Sightless Way, which can quickly end runs if you neglect your MA. There are few ways to increase MA, but one of them is by having a high Willpower.
• Quickness: Quickness (QN) decides how many actions you can make per turn. You start with 100 base QN, with every additional 100 QN equating to (on average) one additional action per turn.
• Move speed: Move Speed (MS) decides how many movements you can make per turn. Like QN, you start with 100 MS, and every 100 additional MS equates to one additional movement per turn, on average. Note that QN also allows you to make additional movements per turn, and in fact QN and MS stack together very well. However, it is easier to increase MS to high values than it is to do the same for QN.

Step 1: True Kin or Mutant?

The first decision you have to make when designing a build is the most important: are you playing as a mutant, or a True Kin? In brief:

• Mutants get their cool abilities up-front, but have lower stats and are more locked into their build than True Kin.
• True Kin play more like traditional roguelikes: they don't get their superpowers until later in the game. In exchange they get higher starting stats, and they get to be more flexible in the late game.

Both types of character are equally powerful, they just require different playstyles. As mentioned in the introduction, if you're interested in playing as a True Kin, character builds aren't as important for starting the game. On the other hand, if you're playing a mutant, then read on!

Step 2: Building a toolkit

Many players will try to classify build types into a few categories; one common breakdown is "melee", "ranged", and "esper". It's fine to think of builds in this way if you find it helpful, but this perspective can also be quite limiting: many builds that fall into several of these categories, or none of them.

An alternative way of viewing builds, which we'll adopt here, is to see them as different sets of tools in a toolbox. What tools does your build have to handle situation X? What weapons will let you fight opponent Y? A toolkit can consist of cybernetics/mutations, skills, stats, items, or anything else that might feasibly be useful for handling a given situation. When selecting these tools, you should think about how they might complement on another: if one mutation allows you to detect and avoid enemies while also allowing you to attack them from range when paired with another mutation, then those mutations will synergize well with one another.

Let's start with a coarse-grained view of these tools by dividing them into two categories: defensive tools and offensive tools.

Defensive toolkit

Every character starts off with the Sprint skill, which can be used to try to run away from difficult situations. However, usually you want to have at least one or two more tricks up your sleeve for when you're in danger.

Factors to consider include (from most to least important for beginning players):

1. How well do I absorb damage? Is there a specific kind of damage that I'm vulnerable to? (Both of these problems are usually solved by making a modest investment into Toughness and Willpower).
2. How can I escape from large groups of enemies? What will I do when I'm surrounded?
3. If all else fails, what is my trump card? What tricks do I have to reliably escape?
4. How can I escape from specific types of enemies? (This is especially important if there's a certain enemy type that you've noticed causes you a lot of trouble, like novices of the Sightless Way or slugsnouts.)
5. How do I detect and avoid trouble in the first place?
6. How can I mitigate certain effects? What will I do if I get poisoned or confused, for instance?

For example, as a mutant, you could choose to build around Multiple Legs and Two-hearted to solve these problems by beelining your way out of danger. As a True Kin, having shade oil injectors can help you in an emergency by simultaneously boosting your DV and phasing you out (just keep in mind that it may be difficult to find these injectors in the early game!).

It's useful to know a bit about game mechanics when answering these questions. For example, normally it's impossible to use a recoiler when there are enemies nearby, so you can't just rely on one by itself to teleport away from foes. However, you can recoil if you're surrounded by your own forcefields, so a common strategy for mutants is to grab Force Bubble or Force Wall so that you can surround yourself and recoil away (serving as a good trump card).

Here are some more examples of defensive tools, and how they address the questions above:

• Carapace increases your AV, which helps you absorb more damage (Q1). It also dramatically improves your heat resistance and cold resistance, which will prevent you from being set on fire or frozen (Q6).
• Multiple Legs allows you to move around faster, which is very useful when running away from groups of enemies (Q2). yeshyrskin slippers can also serve the same purpose. However, since Multiple Legs scales unboundedly, it can also help increase your AV (addressing Q1) by using it in combination with Ironshank (Ironshank raises your AV while Multiple Legs replaces the lost movement speed).
• Temporal Fugue gives enemies a ton of new targets that are just as powerful as you, giving you enough time to escape. It has a high cooldown, so it can't be used frequently, but it is useful when you suddenly find a situation you need to get out of immediately (Q3).
• In the mid- and late-game, EMP grenades are a good defensive tool specifically for dealing with robotic enemies and enemies with lots of tech (Q4). Since you'll probably want to craft a lot of them, you'll want to take Tinker I as a prerequisite. The Electromagnetic Pulse mutation can also achieve the same effect.

Offensive toolkit

Qud isn't all about running away; sometimes you'll need to stand and fight, too. When designing your build, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1. Will I be fighting enemies up-close, from afar, or both? How will this affect the tools I put in my defensive toolkit?
2. How will I fight large groups of enemies?
3. How reliable are the weapons in my toolkit? E.g. how likely is it that my attack will be miss, be ineffective, or be on cooldown when I need it?
4. How will I fight specific types of enemies? E.g. how will I defeat enemies with high AV, like tortoises and cragmensch? How will I defeat ranged enemies, like snapjaw hunters and slugsnouts?
5. What other effects am I applying to enemies? E.g. can I dismember them, or inflect bleeding on them; and if so, how will these affect the battle?
6. What is my trump card? If there's an enemy that I absolutely need to defeat and can't run away from, what can I do to guarantee victory over them?

For example, Sunder Mind is a powerful mutation and is excellent for defeating enemies with high AV and high health. However, it only attacks one enemy at once and takes several turns, so it isn't strong against groups of enemies. It also has a moderate cooldown of 80 turns and is ineffective against enemies with mental shields (such as oozes and robots), so it isn't terribly reliable. As a result, you probably want to have other offensive tools besides just Sunder Mind for fighting enemies. For example, you could pair Sunder Mind with a ranged weapon, which will be better for dealing with groups of enemies and can hit oozes and robots, but won't deal as much damage.

Offensive toolkits can include:

• Any kind of weapon, from a steel butcher knife to a crysteel warhammer, is a part of your offensive toolkit if you can wield it effectively against the enemies you're facing.
• Flaming Ray deals damage to enemies in a line, has a fairly low cooldown, and deals decent damage, making it a fairly reliable (Q3) weapon that can be wielded against groups of enemies (Q2). It can be combined with melee weapons, an even more reliable source of damage, and in conjunction with Multiweapon Fighting and Multiple Arms it can consistently set enemies on fire (Q5) when you perform multiple melee attacks per turn.
• Temporal Fugue also serves as an offensive trump card (Q6), giving you a temporary but significant boost to your damage output.

Other tools

Having strong defensive and offensive toolkits will help you survive in Qud, but throughout the game you'll also run into situations that require a different set of abilities. While it's impossible to enumerate every single thing you'll need to consider during a run, here's a small sample of the scenarios you should at least think about:

• What will I do to trade? How will I get enough water to buy items that I need (and prevent myself from dying of thirst)?
• How I will recruit new followers to my party?
• How will I complete (some specific quest)?
• How will I deal with (some specific environmental obstacle)?

It's not really possible to craft a build that will handle every scenario in a satisfying way, but if you can prioritize scenarios from "things I absolutely need to be able to handle" to "problems that I can live with", you'll be able to craft a build that you enjoy.

Defects

If you're a mutant, you'll also need to think about what defect you'll want to take (you don't have to take one, but most builds do). When picking a defect, the three main considerations are

• What new tools will I be able to pick up if I take this defect?
• What new tools will I need to pick up to cover for this defect?
• How will my other tools be affected by this defect?

For example, Tonic Allergy (D) is a powerful defect to pick up because it gives you four extra mutation points. However, it partially removes tonics from your arsenal. This may limit your ability to use, say, rubbergum injectors to reduce fall damage, or blaze injectors to unfreeze you when you're frozen; so you'll need to find different tools to handle those situations.

As another example, Amphibious (D) gives you three new mutation points. It is a nice defect in that it is unlikely to negatively impact any offensive or defensive tools, but it introduces a new problem: you now consume water much faster than you would otherwise. As a result, you'll need to find a way to make up for this new problem. For example, you could pick up the Fasting Way skill as soon as possible; alternatively, you could push up your ego so that you can sell items you pick up during your travels for more (and thereby make up for the water you've lost).

Step 3: Choosing your stats

Once you've figured out what your toolkit looks like, you should start picking stats that support your toolkit. A good rule of thumb here is to select initial stats that make your character well-rounded, and then specialize as you level up. Even this rule is fairly flexible; however, experience has shown that one of the largest contributing factors to new players dying early is that they take defensive stats that are far too low (e.g. in the range of 10-12). This leads me to my one semi-specific recommendation for your build:

Don't set your Agility, Toughness, Willpower, or Intelligence below 17, and ideally not below 18. You certainly can set these stats below 17, if you wish; but usually this just ends in a miserable time. Each of these stats is valuable to all builds in its own right:

• You need Agility to improve your DV as well as to ensure that your attacks hit (if you're using melee or ranged weapons).
• You need Toughness to improve your hitpoints as you level up, as well as to increase the rate at which you gain health. The generally useful Endurance skill tree also has Toughness prerequisites.
• You need Intelligence to gain skill points as you level up. Also, the Tinkering and Wayfaring skill trees both have Intelligence prerequisites.
• You need Willpower to improve your healing rate (alongside Toughness) and to reduce most of your ability cooldowns. In addition, Willpower is one of very few ways to improve mental armor in the early- and mid-game, which is needed to defend against psychic attacks, such Sunder Mind and Confusion attacks by Seekers of the Sightless Way. Finally, the Self-discipline tree has Willpower prerequisites.

In general, there are two stats that you may be able to afford to dump: Strength and Ego. These involve some significant tradeoffs, however:

• Builds that focus on dealing melee damage will almost never want to dump Strength, unless you're planning on relying exclusively on vibro or psionic weapons. Dumping strength will also reduce your carry capacity, so you'll need to prepare to spend most of the game limited to just 200# - 250# of gear (without items that enhance carry capacity).
• On the other hand, builds that use mental mutations heavily, and builds that depend on gaining new team members using Proselytize and Beguiling, need Ego. Builds that dump Ego will have reduced income and must spend more on items. They also aren't able to take any skills in the Persuasion tree.

If you're not willing to make these tradeoffs (or you're unsure) then I'd probably recommend setting Strength and Ego in the 17-18 range as well. If you do choose to dump one of these stats, then you can put the extra AP into an attribute that supports your offensive toolkit (or alternatively, you can put them into Toughness to make your character ultra-safe).

Selecting a caste / calling

With a general idea of what you want your character's stats to look like, you should pick your caste (for True Kin) or calling (for mutants) to, primarily, support those stats. For example, if you're building a mutant that relies on melee damage, you probably want to pick a calling like Marauder or Warden which give you extra Strength (needed for the Cudgel and Axe trees), or Arconaut for extra Agility (needed for Short Blades).

Skills are a secondary concern. If you can choose a caste/calling that has skills that align with your build then all the better, but most skills can easily be picked up after you level up a bit. On the other hand, attribute points are few and far apart, so it makes sense to prioritize them first.

Some examples

We'll wrap up this guide by looking at some builds through the lenses we've established in the previous sections. Keep in mind:

These are not "recommended" builds, nor are they an endorsement of specific skills and mutations!

When reading the discussion of the presented builds, think back to the steps presented earlier: how do each of these builds craft an offensive and defensive toolkit? How do their stats support those toolkits?

Gas Giant

:by kernelmethod:

Attributes

Strength: 14
Agility:18
Toughness:18
Intelligence:18
Willpower:21
Ego:17

Greybeard
Mutated Human

Mutations

Adrenal Control
Carapace
Corrosive Gas Generation
Heightened Quickness
Sleep Gas Generation
Irritable Genome (D)

Starting skills: Cudgel Proficiency, Berate, Calloused

Start with +100 bear reputation

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Our first build doesn't fit into the "melee" / "ranged" / "esper" trichotomy at all, but it still works very well by following the framework we've outlined:

• Offensive toolkit: Gas Giant's exclusive source of damage, the center of its offense, is the Corrosive Gas Generation mutation. This mutation requires us to be close to enemies and is difficult to direct, but it does a lot of damage, and is very good at killing large groups of enemies. Because we rely on Corrosive Gas Generation so much for damage, we take both Heightened Quickness and Adrenal Control. Both increase Quickness, which is always good, but for this specific build it's even better as it allows us to release gas faster. Adrenal Control also raises the level of other physical mutations, which benefits both our offensive and defensive toolkits.
• Defensive toolkit: we take Carapace, which helps us absorb more damage by increasing our base AV. It pairs nicely with Corrosive Gas Generation because we can start generating gas and then tighten our carapace, so that we can keep generating gas while greatly reducing the damage dealt to us. To accompany Carapace (and provide a "get out of jail free" button), we take Sleep Gas Generation, which knocks out any enemies who are causing us trouble. It also pairs nicely with Corrosive Gas Generation because both mutations can benefit from gas tumblers, which we can find in the mid- and late-game.
• Defects: Irritable Genome (D) is essentially four free mutation points, because all of our mutations are good and we want to level up all of them (although we probably want to level up Corrosive Gas Generation the fastest). As a result, the downside of Irritable Genome (every other mutation point gets randomly spent) has little impact on us.
• Stats: this build relies very heavily on three activated abilities -- Corrosive Gas Generation, Sleep Gas Generation, and Adrenal Control. As a result, we want to boost Willpower as much as possible, since it will allow us to use these abilities frequently. Because we don't do any melee damage, we're okay with dumping our Strength stat a bit (we still need some Strength so that we have a decent amount of carry capacity).
  We could probably also dump Ego since we don't have any mental mutations, but -- going by our rule of thumb earlier -- we usually want our early-game build to be well-rounded. It would be irritating to have low carry capacity and to have to sell everything at a low price.

Notice that the offensive and defensive sides of this build synergize very well together. For example, Adrenal Control and Heightened Quickness benefit both our offensive and defensive kits; Carapace allows us to defend (with "tighten carapace") while we're still attacking; and Willpower is a good stat for both our offensive and defensive mutations. The one major downside of this build is that we've pinned all of our offensive hopes on Corrosive Gas Generation, which (by its imprecise nature) is difficult to use in certain mid- and late-game scenarios. However, all of the other advantages we've described allow it to clear early-game areas like Golgotha and Bethesda Susa with ease.

Rhinoconaut

:by Gnarf:

Attributes

Strength: 18
Agility:22
Toughness:18
Intelligence:18
Willpower:18
Ego:16

Arconaut
Mutated Human

Mutations

Double-muscled
Heightened Quickness
Horns
Triple-jointed
Two-hearted
Irritable Genome (D)

Starting skills: Short Blades Proficiency, Scavenger, Gadget Inspector, Spry

Start with random junk and artifacts

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Rhinoconaut is a dagger-focused build by one of the Caves of Qud devs; I've played variants of it and found it very approachable.

• Offensive toolkit: this build is designed around using Horns (which functions as a Short Blade) as its primary source of damage. Short Blades benefit even more from raising QN than most other weapons, which makes Heightened Quickness an attractive option. Horns is unusual as it has an unlimited PV cap, which means that it can do an unlimited amount of damage with sufficiently high Strength. However, the Short Blade skill tree requires Agility for all of its skills. As a result, Rhinoconaut takes both Double-muscled and Triple-jointed, which increase its base Strength and Agility, and provide further boosts the more we invest in them. Their side effects also complement Horns (e.g., Triple-Jointed allows us to perform Shank more frequently).
• Defensive toolkit: Two-hearted improves this build's Toughness, thereby raising its hitpoints. It also makes it easier to run away from enemies. Heightened Quickness provides some defensive utility by allowing the player to move faster. In general we can see that Rhinoconaut's defensive tools are a little more limited than Gas Giant's, so it doesn't have as many options for running away from danger. It makes up for this by having a very strong offense.
• Defects: as with Gas Giant, all of our mutations are good; we want to level up all of them. So Irritable Genome (D) is a good defect for us to pick.
• Stats: this build relies on both Strength and Agility for its offense, so the stat distribution is very well rounded-out. It is a little more specialized towards Agility since the Arconaut calling, which is good for Short Blade users, has higher Agility. It takes fewer points of Ego because it doesn't have any mental mutations, and hence doesn't benefit from Ego very much.

Duke Nuke 'Em

:by kernelmethod:

Attributes

Strength: 14
Agility:20
Toughness:18
Intelligence:21
Willpower:18
Ego:16

Scholar
Mutated Human

Mutations

Electrical Generation
Phasing
Triple-jointed
Amphibious (D)
Light Manipulation

Starting skills: Gadget Inspector, Heal, Harvestry, Hurdle, Tactful

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We end with another build that doesn't cleanly fall anywhere in the "melee" / "ranged" / "esper" trichotomy. I've selected this build because it allows us to explore how the core toolkit of a build can evolve throughout the game.

• Offensive toolkit: this build has two mutations for dealing damage in the early and middle game: Electrical Generation and Light Manipulation. The damage of both of these mutations can be increased by investing mutation points into them without investing attribute points (unlike e.g. melee and ranged weapons, which require us to level Strength and Agility). This allows us to level Intelligence instead, so that we can take skills in the Tinkering tree and make tinkered items a staple of our offense in the mid- and late-game. Triple-jointed exists as a way to increase our Agility slowly as we level up, which will make it easier to use Pistols and Rifles in the late game as a source of damage as well. Both of these options will pair nicely with our choice of Electrical Generation, since we can then mod items with jacked to give them a free power source.
• Defensive toolkit: the primary defensive tool in this build is Phasing, which makes us temporarily invulnerable from most enemies and makes it easier to run through obstacles. In the early game it pairs nicely with Light Manipulation, since its projectiles will hit enemies while we're phased. In the mid- and late-game, Phasing is particularly useful because it allows us to avoid the effects of bombs we set and grenades that we throw. It's also more useful to us than if we had picked up a defensive mutation like Force Bubble, whose effects we can replicate using tinkered items (e.g. force bracelets).
• Defects: Amphibious (D) gives us three mutation points without limiting the effectiveness of any of our tools. The downside (we drink more water) can be dealt with by picking up Fasting Way in the early game.
• Stats: our offensive toolkit depends on Willpower (for Electrical Generation) and Ego (for Light Manipulation) in the early game, and Intelligence (for tinkering) and Agility (for ranged weapons) in the late game; so we can't dump any of these stats. However, it never particularly needs high Strength, so that's one stat that we can dump. Since we want to get to Tinker III as quickly as possible, we choose Scholar for our calling.

Unlike the other builds we've described, this build's offensive toolkit changes pretty dramatically over the course of the game. This isn't frequently a good idea; if you pursue two orthogonal goals then you're unlikely to achieve either of them. The reason that it works for this build is that these goals aren't totally orthogonal -- by improving Electrical Generation in the early and middle game, we have a very strong power sourced for jacked items in the late game. And we can pursue them in parallel, by investing most of our MP in improving our early-game offenses and most of our AP into our late-game offenses.