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Raising an elder god sludge to consume everything that looks at you funny is pretty cool though.
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Jul 18, 2023 04:52
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  We picked up a couple artifacts on our trip to Mamon's lair, and while they're mostly uninteresting, we do find an acid energy cell with acid still inside.   Also, I was giving Minmo all the weapons to hold on to, since our own carry capacity is pretty low, but since allies will try to equip the best gear possible, she looked at her stuff and decided to use carbide weapons instead of the fugue artifact, because their attack power is much higher. Oops. Without mods or domination there's no way to control an ally's gear beyond not giving them stuff you don't want them to equip, so we'll only have one Minmo for the foreseeable future. If we ever get a second sludge we could give them the fugue knife and avoid giving them other melee weapons so they don't replace it, but we should be fine with without any time clones for now.  We stop by the ichor merchant, and it turns out he's restocked with most of the liquids Minmo is missing.        Minmo has almost achieved her final form!  The merchant also has one more liquid Minmo hasn't absorbed, but this is another of the ones we want to avoid. Algael psuedopods cause plants to grow every time Minmo attacks, and while it's not as bad as the instant death from absorbing lava, they'll block off hallways and cause friendly fire and generally cause more trouble than the extra limb is worth.   The gutsmonger, meanwhile, has a great toy for us. The gun rack blocks your back equipment slot, but in return it gives you two more missile weapon slots. This is the only thing in the game that can give the player additional missile weapon slots, and it's probably the strongest niche that truekin have over mutants.   The bookbinders have another shroedinger's page, so we become retroactively neutral with frogs.  And over in Yd freehold, Tilli has a pair of matching hats for Minmo and us to wear. Sludges have no innate AV and fewer equipment slots than a human to get them from, so getting Minmo some high tier armor gives her survivability a big boost.   With the shopping done we head back to the historic site by Kyakukya to see what enemies we got.  Chromelings, and...  Barathrumites? Hope Otho doesn't mind if these guys all have a terrible accident.  A terrible, sludge-related accident.  I hadn't bothered to install our new gun rack yet, but there's a becoming nook here and a second carbine in one of the chests, so the timing couldn't be better.    With ranged weapons you usually have to choose between a single rifle, or a pair of weaker and less accurate pistols. A gun rack lets you dual wield the stronger and more accurate rifles instead. This is great as is, but we're still missing a couple pieces of the ultimate gun build. (Most significantly, we don't actually have the skill to fire multiple guns simultaneously yet)    The waydroid falls in a fight on the second floor. I'm pretty impressed it lasted as long as it did, to be honest.  There's lots of bookshelves, and Barathrumites always drop at least one book and one data disk, so we've been learning a lot of crafting recipes on this trip, and we'll get a ton of exp when it's done.    The actual fights are pretty simple, though. Barathrumites aren't too dangerous in combat, and in hallways like these Minmo can just run through one-shotting everyone without risk.   A polygel is always a great find, and the medassist module is a great combo with the intravenous port we already have installed.    Before long we hit the bottom, and find the first and last legendary of the site.   The artifact is pretty interesting - getting AV from the floating nearby slot is very rare, and while the damage reflect is weak it opens the door to a lot of good cooking effects that trigger off reflecting damage.  We give it to Minmo, since she's getting attacked a lot more, and she has a harder time getting AV from gear. Plus she killed probably 95% of the site on her own, I think she gets first dibs.    I forgot about the books I had Slog hold onto here, so this isn't even the full haul from that site.    We level up and learn tinker II, which opens up a lot of fun recipes and mods.  The gutsmonger, meanwhile, has stocked the other implant we need to perfect our gunshooting potential.  And the bookbinders have two more schroedinger's pages for sale, including a second chapter unspecified one. I decide to go ahead and cash them in.     Both pages together are enough to bring us up to positive rep with trolls, so in Bethesda we should be able to water ritual with them peacefully.   With giant hands installed, rifles only require a single missile weapon slot instead of two. With that and gun rack together we can quadwield rifles. Since rifles are usually balanced with the idea that you'll only be shooting one of them, this can make us incredibly powerful at range.   We learned the location of two more earlygame historic sites while clearing that last one. We really want the credit wedges, so we head over to clear them out.   Mabad is occupied by boars and snapjaws, and would be appropriate for a new character to take on before Grit Gate.    Not only is it trivial for us, it would still be trivial even if we were soloing it with our terrible melee skills.  So naturally the reward is the best artifact we've gotten across both playthroughs. 2 free stat points of our choice is amazing, and we can duplicate it with the polygel on top of that! I'll have to think a bit what to put it towards - we could lean into our new gun build and become accurate enough to nail all our shots from halfway across the screen, or get enough int to learn tinker III, or just get tons of HP.   The other site is that Barathrumite cult again.   After the next level up I finally remember that I should actually buy the skill that lets me shoot multiple guns at the same time. Now we're all set up to be the ultimate gun'sbraster.   We can kill enemies all on our own now.   There are some vents spawning clockwork beetles here, but by this point we can just spawncamp them to scavenge tinkering bits from their corpses without issue.  In addition to all the books and data disks, the barathrumites also drop the occasional urberry and taco suprema. Tacos are extremely valuable and completely weightless, so they're actually a great trade good.  Since Minmo's not using it I go ahead and equip the temporal fugue dagger ourselves. Now that we can actually do damage duplicating ourselves could be useful.  Around here our inventory gets so full that Minmo can't carry any more books, so we head back to the Stilt to drop them off.   But we get distracted along the way by finding a legendary ichor merchant.   And their engraved jars reveal two more historic sites to us! We've had some amazing luck finding historic sites this update.   The ichor merchant is selling some warm static, which happens to be the last liquid Minmo is missing.  We water ritual as well - I'd like to find a legendary gutsmonger, and the best way to find legendary merchants is to ask other legendary merchants for secrets.     Oh well. We head to the stilt and drop off all the books we picked up, including the ones Slog was still holding from the last site.   We're very well read.      Slog is definitely doing well in this partnership. We head back to the entrance and pour out the warm static for Minmo, which certainly couldn't have any unforeseen consequences.     Yeah, that looks normal.   Minmo has achieved her Ultimate Form. The only liquids she's missing are cloning draught, neutron flux, lava, and algae, which are all either impossible or undesirable.    Back in the site, it turns out we were on the final floor when we left. The artifact is an unremarkable axe, but the real prize is the 4 credits.   The books from the final floor bring us up to a nice even 30. We're running out of useful skills to buy, now.  We stop by Yd to unload some of the treasure we found.   Tilli, hypothetical question: how would you feel about having a twin sister?  While that's going on we buy some great gloves. Zetachrome gear is the best in the game in terms of raw defense - anything else will be a sidegrade at best, trading off defense for other effects.    After a short wait, Tilli 2 is born! The clone spawns with an empty inventory, but she'll restock just like the original, so next time we come by they'll have twice as much stuff for us to browse.  One last thing to do - we picked up our first dram of neutron flux at the ichor merchant earlier. Neutron flux is another liquid that we wouldn't want Minmo to absorb - the on-hit effect for a neutronic psuedopod is a massive explosion that does hundreds of damage and could easily oneshot us. But that's a purely academic point, because there's no way to actually give this liquid to Minmo for her to absorb that wouldn't cause it to explode and kill us both in the process. Instead, we'll be eating it ourselves.   We'll need to take the proper precautions first, though.     Phew! Cooking with neutron flux has a 90% chance to give you a permanent +1 to your AV, and a 10% chance to cause you to undergo gravitational collapse, killing you instantly. If you're attached to your character, you generally want some kind of precognition up before you try it. We have more historic sites we could clear, but I think now we're more than ready to take on Bethesda Susa. Let's go befriend the trolls!
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Jul 18, 2023 05:04
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My vote is more int, purely on the basis of more tinkering.
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Jul 18, 2023 08:31
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I'm for int as well because tinkering = yes. Also cooking with neutron flux is a hilarious mental image. That stuff is literally dense as a black hole. What do you even do with it, fry it?
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Jul 18, 2023 08:33
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NewMars posted:I'm for int as well because tinkering = yes. Battered, deep fried, and dipped in the Qud equivalent of chocolate
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Jul 18, 2023 09:40
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Snake Maze posted:Kind of? I always wanted to show off sludge recruitment (I was hoping to pick one up on the way out with Stabtail), but it was what tipped me over the edge to go with this build instead of a tinker truekin. Legit -- I hadn't thought about it this way, but it makes total sense Also: +1 to tinkering 3
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Jul 18, 2023 12:16
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Tinker 3 lets you quad wield nanon energy weapons so uh yeah, you should do that (and then never use temporal fugue again)
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Jul 18, 2023 12:35
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Snake Maze posted:Without mods or domination there's no way to control an ally's gear beyond not giving them stuff you don't want them to equip, Give her the nuclear hand grenade, coward.  quote:So naturally the reward is the best artifact we've gotten across both playthroughs. 2 free stat points of our choice is amazing, and we can duplicate it with the polygel on top of that! I'll have to think a bit what to put it towards - we could lean into our new gun build and become accurate enough to nail all our shots from halfway across the screen, or get enough int to learn tinker III, or just get tons of HP. Here's a thought: if you clone yourself while holding a rootucus, take the duplicate and use it on yourself, do you keep the stat bonus when the clone timer expires? Because if so, I see MASSIVE potential for abuse. If you can use one on others you could even buff Baby Cthulhu's weaker stats. EDIT: One more thought. If you can't do cloning shenanigans, it might be wise to keep one rootucus so you can turn any future polygels you find into more of them. DGM_2 fucked around with this message at 08:21 on Jul 19, 2023 |
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Jul 19, 2023 07:56
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DGM_2 posted:If you can use one on others you could even buff Baby Cthulhu's weaker stats. Sadly no, IIRC if you're truekin it just gives you attribute points to spend as you please. Minmo cannot spend those, so I'm pretty sure the injector would be wasted on her.
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Jul 19, 2023 12:46
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DGM_2 posted:Here's a thought: if you clone yourself while holding a rootucus, take the duplicate and use it on yourself, do you keep the stat bonus when the clone timer expires? Because if so, I see MASSIVE potential for abuse. If you can use one on others you could even buff Baby Cthulhu's weaker stats. There have been various tricks over the years to use temporal fugue with stat boosting tonics to get infinite stat boosts. I think they’ve all been fixed by now, but it’s always possible more slipped in. You’re right about holding on to one for future polygels, though. Once we get enough to reach tinker III I’ll probably just spend them all at once, but Sixshrew and Tilli will both stock polygel on occasion so if you’re really aiming to become a postgame god it would be worth holding onto your last one so you can keep making more.
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Jul 19, 2023 13:12
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DGM_2 posted:Because if so, I see MASSIVE potential for abuse. let me tell you about every Temporal Fugue-related patch note in the last five years lol
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Jul 19, 2023 13:13
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:let me tell you about every Temporal Fugue-related patch note in the last five years lol please do 
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Jul 19, 2023 13:23
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off the top of my head you could trade with fugue clones for the contents of their inventory, which were permanent (allowing item duping) that got fixed, but you could equip anything to the thrown item slot, they would throw it even if it were inappropriate for the slot, and would be permanent (allowing item duping) fugue clone items got a new internal tag that made them turn to dust when the clones disappeared, but it could be fooled by combining the item with an existing stack of items, so fugue clones would a) constantly leave their ammo behind as permanent drops since ammo re-calculates stacks frequently and b) you could still dupe anything that could go into a stack (allowing duping of specific items) fugue clone polygel copying an item lost their "turn to dust" tag if they copied a real item (allowing item duping) fugue clones used to spawn in fixed locations in tiles around the PC, which among other things meant they could spawn on adjacent levels if you summoned them on the edge of the map; the level north of the current one was easiest. durations don't count down on adjacent levels so you could summon infinite clones if you were patient enough. this may actually still work, i haven't tried it in a while. if you were lost, you could talk to your fugue clones to get un-lost
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Jul 19, 2023 13:29
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I think there was also one for equipping stat-boosting tonics as a melee weapon and getting your clones to attack you Edit: A couple highlights from old patch notes, from newest to oldest:
You can practically taste the dupe exploits that prompted each one. Snake Maze fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Jul 19, 2023 |
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Jul 19, 2023 13:31
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I still remember that one poster's meltdown when precognition was changed to use a stable seed so that you couldn't use it to effortlessly scum neutron flux/nectar drop cooking anymore.
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Jul 19, 2023 15:17
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Angry Diplomat posted:I still remember that one poster's meltdown when precognition was changed to use a stable seed so that you couldn't use it to effortlessly scum neutron flux/nectar drop cooking anymore. link! link1!!!!!
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Jul 19, 2023 20:38
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  It's time for Bethesda Susa. We don't have the reputation to make half the inhabitants neutral or the insane ice resist that we did last time, but we do have Minmo.   You might think that living rocks can't vomit, but you'd be mistaken.  Downstairs we get a glimpse of the enemy type we're most scared of this run: clonelings. Clones were trivial on Stabtail's run through Bethesda, but if one of them manages to tag Minmo it could be a run-ending catastrophe. Minmo is very fast now, so she'll probably kill them before they get a chance, but it's possible that the movement could line up just right, or Minmo could tunnel vision on an enemy behind a cloneling, and we end up having to face Evil Minmo.  Fortunately, this is where our new guns shine. As long as we're careful we should be able to pick off any clonelings before Minmo gets near them.  The stairs spawn on the very bottommost row of the map this time.  So our arrival location on the next floor is less than ideal.   But with a little elbow grease we make it through.   Thanks to that time we poured asphalt on their enemies, and that other time that we uncovered a plot against them, the trolls are happy to chat and let us through peacefully. We won't water ritual with Jotun right now, since we'd prefer to keep our warden rep, but hopefully the other will be disliked by people we don't care about.   The doorway down is still locked. We could buy the key from Jotun...  ...but since there's no hostiles around we can also just spend a couple turns digging through the wall.   Fjorn is only disliked by Kyakukya, so we can go ahead and share our water with him.     It requires a little luck to get enough rep, but if you can water ritual with the trolls they can tell you some really great secrets. Remember Kindrish, that heirloom that was stolen from Bey Lah? It's not just a plot device, it's a real item, and we know where to find it now.   The third floor looks empty, but this time we came prepared.   With night vision on, we can finally see the third troll.   The Ruin of House Isner is an artifact pistol. Usually the way to find it is by reading the procgen books you find in the wild - they will very occasionally have a sentence that helps you narrow down Isner's location. The pistol itself is pretty mediocre and not worth sifting through a hundred pages of nonsense, but it's a much better deal when a friendly troll will just tell you where it is. Once we're finished up here, we'll go treasure hunting for the stuff we heard about.    On to the dungeon proper.  It's not too dangerous with our high level and our friends, but there's enough enemies around that we get to help fight too. Our clones rearranged the walls a bit with their gravity grenades.   The next floor down we encounter a rimewyk, and get the much more traditional experience of being instantly frozen.  A combo of gear and cooking has gotten our ice resist up to 45, which is good but low enough that we're still frozen for a turn or two when we get hit.  Of course, disabling us doesn't really help the rimewyk too much.    On the next floor down we find the alchemist.  Minmo doesn't need any more liquids, but he's still selling stuff that will be nice for us.  There's a baetyl on this floor too, but it's never gonna get what it wants.    As we keep going down a patch of lurking beth bring Minmo down around half health. I don't want to wait around for the time it'll take for her to heal up naturally, so we use a salve injector to patch her up. Since the recovery from salves scales with level, Minmo heals up very fast.     We've been lucky enough not to see many clonelings, so the descent has been pretty smooth.  Our guns are getting pretty low on power, though, so I decide to do some tinkering.  Making cells radio powered means they'll recharge over time. It's slow enough that you can't just power a gun forever with a single radio-powered cell, but having a big pile you can rotate through works pretty well.    So we make a big pile. We should be able to keep our laser rifles going more or less indefinitely with these.  A floor or two later we get hungry. We bought another neutron flux from the alchemist, so we use a sphynx salt injector and cook it up.   Yum.  The next floor down has a somewhat scary start, spawning a cloneling right next to Minmo. We can't assume Minmo will attack it, since she could go for the glow wight first. We'll just have to shoot it ourselves, and accept that the spare shots will hit Minmo.  All that expensive armor pays off. Of course, she has so much health she would have been fine either way, but I'd hate to harm Minmo.   There's a baetyl on this floor who's much more reasonable. Slender is a Tinker I recipe - we don't actually know it yet, but once we do it should be trivial to tinker up some slender gear and hand it over.  Finally, we reach the room with the becoming nooks, marking the end of the middle stretch of Bethesda Susa.   We check the shelves while Minmo runs around killing everything. Sadly none of the implants here are very interesting, but we've had good luck with implants so far so there's no sense complaining.  And of course, the credit wedges are a great reward.   We get two more license points, and go ahead and install the phase harmonic modulator from one of the racks so that we can shoot the phase spider to death instead of kiting it around.    On the next floor down, it turns out the phase spider was cleverly hiding in the wall where we can't hit it even with the phase harmonic modulator.     Fortunately we can toggle the phase modulator on and off freely, so we're able to turn it off, back away, then turn it back on when we have a good shot.  I'm not sure that was actually any easier than just luring it away, or ignoring it.  Last floor with enemies. The cannibal with a rocket launcher spawned very far away, so he'll almost certainly wake something up before we can get to him.  Minmo follows us to take him down, but the cold is finally too much for Slog and he freezes solid near the stairs.   Minmo was getting distracted wanting to kill the frozen Rhinox near the entrance, but once we ordered her to attack the Cannibal directly she made short work of him.   He seems fine.  We light a campfire to help Slog thaw out, then head over to deal with Saad Amus.    We're most of the way through smashing his chamber when the sky bear thaws out and rockets away.  And then rockets right up in our face!  Minmo: KILL  I intimidate him too, so he doesn't attack.  A second later I realize that terrifying someone with a rocket pack might not be the best plan. Minmo's fast but she's not that fast. Saad Amus disappears into the darkness.  And then attacks Slog! He must have recovered from terror over near the east edge of the map. Minmo and Cypher run to help, but they're so far away they can't make it in time. There's no point in shooting our guns from this far away either, we'd be just as likely to hit Slog.    But the fight is surprisingly close! We can't see exact health numbers, but they're both down to wounded.  Slog has no weapons for Amus to disarm, and he can poison and stun the ancient Eater to help even the odds. The fight could go either way...  But with a clutch stun at the end, Slog emerges victorious!   Great job, comrade! Now let's head down to the Mechanimist compound.  Unfortunately, it looks like during the fight with Amus another cryo chamber was cracked open. The Yempuris Phi is rapidly covering the west side of the map.  We're able to weave our way through for now, but the whole map will be overtaken before long.   We down to the Mechanimist compound. Unfortunately Slog didn't follow - he froze solid again after wandering away from the campfire, and immobilized allies don't follow you across screens.   We decode the disk. We could just recoil out now, but we can't leave Slog behind, not after he took down Saad Amus all on his own.  Right next to the baetyl are the controls to unlock the elevator so you can take it back up.  It looks like a couple Yempuris Phi have managed to sprout down on this floor. I'm sure that's fine.  The growth is thicker than ever back upstairs, but thankfully they've been mostly growing to the west.  They don't hurt too much individually, but pushing through a big field like this adds up. Thankfully there's no other hostiles around.     Slog is still frozen by the east. We don't want to try and wait for him to thaw on his own with the Yempuris Phi still growing, so we inject him with a blaze injector.   No slug left behind.    Back in Grit Gate, we tell Otho how it went, and get a promotion. Next time: Negotiations and a treasure hunt!
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Jul 19, 2023 23:36
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Goddamn, that Slog vs Saad duel 
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Jul 20, 2023 00:07
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prisoner of waffles posted:link! link1!!!!! Unormal posted:
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Jul 20, 2023 00:55
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I suppose it is impossible to drag the plant to the surface? Purely to spit(e) the residents. edit: appropriate typo habituallyred fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Jul 20, 2023 |
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Jul 20, 2023 00:55
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habituallyred posted:I suppose it is impossible to drag the plant to the surface? Purely to spit the residents. You could go wild with a Space-Time Vortex build in there.
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Jul 20, 2023 01:06
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I was worried you were going to die to the phase spider as your almighty ooze friend stood by helpless to save you.
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Jul 20, 2023 01:28
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silentsnack posted:the fun starts shortly after this update Thank you. I have been playing this game and reading the Qud thread for a while. I recall when the poster who went ballistic about this joined the thread 4 years ago, I remember being there for part of their blow up about this, and it looks like it has been 3 years since they posted in the Qud thread.
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Jul 20, 2023 01:29
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One of the funnier things about Motherfucker's meltdowns is that Precognition was improved not too long after that by adding Drops of Nectar and Brain Brine to the Eater's Nectar Injector roulette and they just dropped the game and never came back because one small change convinced them that the game was going to go the way of DCSS. Truly a stupid motherfucker.
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Jul 20, 2023 04:23
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If the phi spreads to the surface you should get a game over about it eating qud.
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Jul 20, 2023 08:59
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I always liked the idea that eaters nectar has the ability to change the future
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Jul 20, 2023 09:42
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Very cool Susa run my dude Slog ftw
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Jul 20, 2023 21:34
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verbal enema posted:Very cool Susa run my dude I had originally considered dismissing Slog to make room to recruit Saad Amus instead - in fact, the only reason I didn’t was because being frozen meant I couldn’t interact with Slog to bring up the menu! I see now that I was a fool, who didn’t appreciate what was right in front of him. How could I consider dropping Slog for some old has-been?
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Jul 20, 2023 21:44
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Snake Maze posted:I had originally considered dismissing Slog to make room to recruit Saad Amus instead - in fact, the only reason I didn’t was because being frozen meant I couldn’t interact with Slog to bring up the menu! I mean, is his clone still hanging around somewhere?
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Jul 21, 2023 03:39
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Breadmaster posted:I mean, is his clone still hanging around somewhere? I don't think there's a unique saadclone, they spawn rarely in underground ruins so you can theoretically find multiple clones in a run
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Jul 21, 2023 03:59
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  We have three days to kill, and three treasures to find. Let's get to it.  I've highlighted the map tiles where the treasures are located. They're pretty spread out.  Kindrish is in the rivers in the mountains in the far northeast  The Ruin of House Isner is in the hills north of Bethesda Susa  And Stopsvalin is in the desert canyons east of the rustwells.  We'll look for Kindrish first.  We search the whole screen, but there's no stairs or other way down.  Which is a shame, because Kindrish is four strata underground. Crossing horizontal screens is easy with the pickaxe, but we can't dig downwards.  We search the adjacent screens, and the one to the southeast has some stairs we can use to descend.   The underground river has a couple ruined walls around, but not much of interest.  The next floor down doesn't have any more stairs, but it does have the next best thing.  If a pit only drops you down a single floor there's no fall damage. We'd be recoiling out either way, so being unable to go back up doesn't matter.  There's no stairs on that screen, but one screen north we find another set leading down.  We're at the right depth now, so we just need to follow the river to the east.  And just lying around on the ground is Kindrish, the legendary treasure of Bey Lah. It has a pretty unique effect, giving a big boost to your lowest stat. For us that's a boost to strength, which is convenient for letting us carry more stuff but not too useful beyond that.  The other two treasures are on the surface, so they'll be much quicker to find.    Recall Story posted:The seven lords of House Isner feasted on boar gut and swilled wine from gilded cups in the ivy-strewn halls of their hold. They spared no concern for temperance, for the coffers of their house had swelled with gardeners' gold amassed through the sale of water drawn from the lords' wells. But as the gluttonous barons counted seven amongst their clan, so had become numbered their days of debauchery when the son of a beggared gardener swore a vengeful oath in the name of his father against the house of Isner. The Ruin of House Isner has suffered from power creep as more high-tier weapons and creatures were added to the game. 12 penetration used to be more than any other pistol could get, but there are better pistols now - hand rails, for example, have 13 penetration every single shot, and they use energy cells so they don't need to be reloaded mid-fight. Isner is still decent, and has a situational niche as a strong pistol that's not vulnerable to emp or light reflection, or a source of extra ego, but it's not usually worth the trouble to hunt down.     Stopsvalin, on the other hand, is amazing and makes most other shields obsolete. It's a buckler, so it can go in an arm slot instead of the more valuable hand slot, it has no DV penalty, and it can even be activated to create a force wall in 3 tiles ahead of you, like a lesser version of the force bracelet. If you ask the Barathrumites for secrets they'll often tell you where to find Stopsvalin. It's not completely guaranteed, but between Otho, Q Girl, and Barathrum the odds are pretty good you'll be able to find it if you want it.   And in our case it came with one of the best energy cells as a bonus. Biodynamic cells use blood to power your gear, and blood tends to be easy to come by in this line of work. They're surprisingly efficient too, 1 dram of blood in a biodynamic cell gives a lot more power than 1 dram of oil, acid, or lava would in their respective cells.   We've found the treasure, but since we're here lets pay a visit to Bey Lah for the first time this run.   Great news about that.      Turning in Kendrish gets us a ton of reputation, and the force bracelet would be a great reward if we didn't already have one.    The rest of the quest plays out the same as usual, without anyone acknowledging that Kendrish has already been found.      We search the town and find the clues, ending up with a slightly different set than last time.   It's obvious. Kesehind sold Kindrish to buy some new armor!  I must have misspoke. What I mean was,   Kendren stole Kindrish to pay for their medicine!    We get a variety of salves for our trouble.     The people aren't as happy with this outcome, but what can you do   The representatives have arrived for the Council. We have Mechanimists, Wardens, Villagers of Amrimrod, and the Hindren of Bey Lah (who got here very fast!). We've found Heirlooms of Qud this run so we know what everyone is offering - Bey Lah has axes, Wardens have cloaks, Amrimrod have gloves, and Mechanimists have shoes. We don't use axes and we can't wear cloaks with our gun rack, so that leaves Amrimrod and the Mechanimists. But we don't need to leave it up to luck to see if we can get something good.      Hmm. Another piece of fugue gear is interesting. Fullerite boots aren't too great, though, and neither Minmo nor Slog have any feet, so we're the only ones who could wear it. I guess we could wear the shoes and give Slog the knife?  Let's see the other option.    Oh, these are terrible. Screw it.    Louis Cypher is an agent of C.H.A.O.S.               Asphodel and all his followers now turn hostile. The chaos spiel will almost never actually help the player. Your accusations can make you gain or lose reputation with any of the present factions, as well as the consortium of phyta, flowers, and highly entropic beings, but since you're already guaranteed to be friendly with all or most of them you have a lot more to lose than to gain. But it is very funny.   Asphodelites all have electrical generation and teleportation, so they're able to do a lot of burst damage to us, but once they've used their discharge they're fairly harmless until it charges back up. Our force bracelet dies at a bad time and our health gets pretty low, but we're able to swap in a new battery and use a salve injector after the first wave of attacks.  While we shoot the lesser asphodelites, Minmo secures the kill on the earl himself.  But, we did share our water with them, and that's not a bond that can be broken lightly. Even if it's in self defense, violating the water ritual makes you lose rep with every single faction in the game.  At this point their discharge is spent and our bracelet has fresh batteries, so the fight is pretty much over.  I think that went well!  Okay, sure - the Consortium of Phyta hates our guts, and Sixshrew and Tilli will attempt to kill us on sight. That's not ideal. But we still have the three bookbinders in the stilt, so, maybe we can get enough Schroedinger's pages to patch things up? We're strong enough to kill them if need be, but obviously we'd rather avoid that - they can't restock if they're dead.  And the representative for the wardens, who was tragically killed in the crossfire, was carrying a pretty sweet gun. So there's a silver lining. At this point, we could go straight back to Grit Gate. But we know what's coming next: the Grit Gate defense, and then the Rainbow Woods. We might be a water-ritual-violating scumbag but we still have a silver tongue and a social coprocessor, so let's put them to use and assemble the best drat team Qud has ever seen.  The Pope,  The Antipope, I'm going to need you two to put your differences aside for now.   Final Fantasy 1, you never liked Asphodel anyway, right?   Warden Une, I doubt you need much convincing to defend innocents from the Putus Templar.  Esthers, I'm sure the stilt will be fine without you.    The troll squad, you guys come too. Bring your foals? Sure, the more the merrier.   Time to tell Otho the good news!
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Jul 21, 2023 05:43
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I was worried about "despised by oozes" but I guess Minmo's still with you. Would she immediately turn hostile if you proselytized someone else?
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Jul 21, 2023 06:08
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Speaking of power creep, when're we gonna get zetachrome hand bones and massive hands? It's as was written, the hands must grow.
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Jul 21, 2023 06:12
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silentsnack posted:I don't think there's a unique saadclone, they spawn rarely in underground ruins so you can theoretically find multiple clones in a run There's actually a very interesting distinction between Saad Amus and his Clones, which are otherwise completely identical minus the Flume-Flier: Saad Amus himself counts a True Kin, so you can put cybernetics in him if you dominate him. Saad Amus Clones are Mutated Humans, so they can get mutations. I did a full playthrough after dominating Saad Amus permanently back before the True Kin change happened, and it's pretty difficult to get a reasonable amount of mutation points on him since he's level 35, so the True Kin version is more effective since credits wedges are easier to get at that point than injectors (or, well, leveling up.) But it is neat that both options are available.
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Jul 21, 2023 06:33
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Pigbuster posted:I was worried about "despised by oozes" but I guess Minmo's still with you. Would she immediately turn hostile if you proselytized someone else? Proselytized allies stay friendly even after they’re kicked out - you can see it way back when we recruited Slog, the slugsnout stayed friendly even though boars in general are hostile. So even if we accidentally dismissed Minmo somehow she wouldn’t immediately rend us limb from limb. If we left the area and returned later I believe former allies would reset to the faction default, so we’d want to avoid her new home from then on.
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Jul 21, 2023 07:12
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That is the absolute funniest way the Council could have gone I especially love the Hindren going "oh man thanks for the heads up, we didn't know that" followed immediately by "hey what the gently caress"
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Jul 21, 2023 11:28
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hahahahaha, yes! yes! GamemasterAnthony those fuckers!!! YES!
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Jul 21, 2023 14:30
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oh, chaos rules, actually (for the comedy value anyway)
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Jul 21, 2023 17:48
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That's a much better method than turrets plus mines and hoping they don't get EMP'd right off the bat (they always are)
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Jul 21, 2023 17:56
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MuffinsAndPie posted:That's a much better method than turrets plus mines and hoping they don't get EMP'd right off the bat (they always are) You can just go nuts spamming shortbow turrets and flashbang/stungas/etc mines to flood the area with distractions. Every turn the templar waste smashing harmless turrets is a turn they're not killing bears
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Jul 21, 2023 18:31
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