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 We reenter the tomb.  We pass by the hallway where we fought the fulcrete catapults, and stop in a resting place long enough for the bell to toll.   There's another hostile graverobber to the north. This one had a high explosive grenade mk III. They're no joke, and our force bracelet doesn't help protect against it at all. Thankfully he only had the one.  Just past that we catch a glimpse of a legendary turret. Looks like we found the mopango settlement.      Sheba's pretty nice too, but I guess that's still just two friendly turrets vs dozens of hostile ones.      Past Vivira is the settlement itself. It's pretty small compared to most settlements in the game, but it still has a couple NPCs to talk to.   Unfortunately, giving the repulsive device to Dagasha seems to have locked us out of most of their dialogue trees. But if they were willing to introduce themselves to us, it would probably go something like this:  : Greetings, wanderer. Thou art welcome here. An thou hast any questions, I would fain answer them. : Greetings. I am Louis Cypher. Who are you?: I am Agyra, a watcher of the tomb.: Are you in charge here?: No one leadeth us. We mopango hold little regard for hierarchy, and our shared decisions are made through discussion, quiet consideration, and consensus. Shouldst be otherwise? : I suppose not: *Agyra smiles at you, glowing softly.*: It's a cozy home you have here.: I hope it is not overly crowded for thee. We mopango are most comfortable in close quarters, but I acknowledge that not all creatures adore the close embrace of the depths as we do. Regardless, thou'rt welcome to stay and sup, and ask of me any questions thou mayest have. : What do you know about the Tomb?: The Tomb of the Eaters consisteth of twelve strata, or ten, once thou accounteth for transitional levels: the Folk Catacombs (in which thou currently standeth), the Crematory and Columbarium, the Two Crypts, and the Six Tombs of Qud's Sultans above. An thou seekest fortune here, gird thyself for disappointment. The tomb playeth host to objects wondrous and profane alike, but little of what surface-dwellers considereth treasure. : 'Wondrous and profane?' Now I'm curious.: I admire thy curiosity and hope thy prudence informeth it. I have an example at hand. Mere days ago, one of our coterie named Lebah happened upon a repulsive device. Ey was so shaken after attempting communion with the object that ey hath spent less time away from eir nook than ever. : Where may I find Lebah? I wish to know more.: Our little sanctuary here hath a fissure in its inner walls. Find that gap and thou wilt find Lebah. Please be gentle. Ey hath ever been the most insightful reader among us, but beareth the weight of an anxious mind. : May I know more about the mopango?: We are mopango: witnesses of the past and shepherds of the future. The Sacred Light of the Kasaphesence shineth within us, and we commune with relics of antiquity to maintain our humility and grow our wisdom. We believe that one day, with enough knowledge, anyone who seeketh the Light shalt find it within emself. In the meantime, we work to become better and brighter as each one of us findeth a personal credo by which to live. : Credo?: Aye. One's own credo shouldst inspire reflection and thought, with no clear-cut meaning but meaning nonetheless. Some of our coterie yet seeketh theirs, but an experienced watcher no doubt hath one. Any mopango who hath a credo wilt share it with thee, an thou requesteth it. My credo is: "Malice alone staineth the sanctity of questioning." : What does that mean?: I cannot simply explain my credo to thee. A credo informeth and confoundeth at once, and must be reflected upon by the listener. Thou art inexperienced in our ways, so please bear my words in the kind spirit they are meant: to ask a mopango to explain eir credo is to commit one of our few taboo acts. Be advised. : Thank you. Live and drink.   : What have we here? Approach, wanderer, and be known.: I am Louis Cypher. Who are you?: Louis Cypher. Greetings. I am called Yona. Thou seemest unlike most other climbers. I wonder why.: Have you a credo?: Yes. "Anyone may strike a slumberling once.": What does that mean?: Only a fool asketh after the meaning of a credo.And tucked away in the wall we can find the last NPC, Lebah. Unlike the others she still has most of her dialogue available.        Ordinarily Lebah is the one who would tell you about the repulsive device, and they'd all have additional dialogue once you found it explaining how to use it. One last thing before we go:   Dardi did ask, after all.  We wait around until the bell rings, then head back out.  In the southeast is one of the stairwell teleporters we passed by earlier. There's nothing left for us on this floor, so we use it this time.  It drops us out right next to the stairs.  So far we've been in the folk catacombs of the tomb, where the regular folk of the Eaters are entombed. It's finally time to move up to the next area.    The surface level is just a narrow hallway leading to another set of stairs.   Above that is the crematory. AKA the place where followers will die unless you micromanage them very carefully.  A lot of strip flies like to hang around on this floor. They don't attack directly, but they will grab items off of you and be a big nuisance. Presumably they were originally here to strip the bodies in preparation for cremation. Fortunately they can't do anything when our force bracelet is on.  We can see the conveyor belts continuing to the west, but right now we actually want to head north one screen.  The tomb occupies the whole 3x3 set of maps on this tile. There are two sets of stairs leading up to the crematorium, one in the upper right and one in the lower right. If you head to the screen in between, you can find the origin point for all the conveyors.   And past that, what appears to be a small overseer's office.  The Eaters were truly advanced.  The real reason to stop by is to grab the credit wedges, of course.   We head north on our way out. This is purely arbitrary though, there's no reason to prefer the norther or southern path.  We wait until the bell rings, then start heading west. Unlike on the first floor, the only place of rest here is the arrival area on the east here, and our final destination on the west. We'll have to make good time to cross the area before the bell rings.   This first area has lots of flame vents.   Our force bracelet won't protect against them, and we don't have the time to wait for the perfect opening, so we just rush through on the conveyors and eat the damage. They don't hurt too much by this point in the run.  The next screen is where the traps start getting dangerous.  Machine presses will sit idle for a little while...  Then start flashing arrows as warning...  Then slam shut. You don't want to be between them when they close. But you do want to be on the conveyor belts for the extra move speed, since you're on a time limit to reach the end.  It's a great time for some extra movespeed.  We can see that we have a more or less straight shot to the end, as long as we can avoid the presses along the way.  The spaced out ones like this are fine - it's easy to just duck aside before the come together. It's the long stretches without gaps that can get scary.  We've got a big block up ahead. Can we make it?   The presses start flashing while we're still a couple spaces out from the end. But, we still have a trick up our sleeve.  Jumping! Usually you can only jump over a single tile, but our pistons we installed boost the range by 4, and our rocket boots give another 4, letting us jump a massive distance in a single turn.  Up, up, and away!  We, uh, don't stick the landing though.   And with some really solid comedic timing, the conveyor belt slides us forward into a press just before we can stand up. Ow.  We can't wait around to heal up, so we burn one of our salve injectors to heal.  We're almost to the end, but there's another long stretch of presses and we can't wait for rocket jump to come off cooldown. We'll just have to run for it.    Ow.    But with that, we made it though. The conveyor belt deposits us in a pile of bone and ash just before the bell rings.   One of the other creatures we could have given the repulsive device to is here, but without the device there's not much we can do.   We head to the doorway and find what looks like a dead end...  But it's actually just a discrete service entrance, hidden by a holographic wall.  On the other side is a much nicer area than we've seen so far, with statues, pools of water, and a well maintained garden. Urn dusting robots dart between the shelves, but ignore our presence.   This is a safe area, so we can stop and catch our breath here.  We're about halfway through the tomb now. Next time we'll continue our ascent through the graves of the Eaters' high society.
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Jul 29, 2023 21:05
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If you look at the shafts, you can assume this place had elevators at some point which would have avoided all the shenanigans of the crematorium. Also my personal thoughts on this given that the Spindle is a space elevator, is that this was originally a space port that was then converted into a tomb by the first sultan. The crematoria itself is the baggage handling area turned into a corpse handling area.
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Jul 29, 2023 21:18
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AtomikKrab posted:If you look at the shafts, you can assume this place had elevators at some point which would have avoided all the shenanigans of the crematorium. That makes so much sense 
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Jul 30, 2023 03:49
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It's time to explore the upper reaches of the tomb.     Our current area is quiet, with nothing moving except the occasional urn-duster dusting the urns.  There's another Mopango in the southern hallway. We chat for a bit.    I love how you can ask every single mopango to explain their credo.   The screen to the south has more urns, but also the stairs up to the next floor.   We find one painted with a relevant chapter of history, wait for the bell to toll, then head up to the next floor.   The lower crypts are significantly more open, with large gardens and winding paths surrounding the freestanding crypts and burial sites.  We activate our force bracelet, pushing away the nearby cupola before it can engulf us, and gun down the nearby enemies.   The rest areas here are the crypts dotting the area. Each one is guarded by a crypt sitter, a robot with powerful melee and ranged attacks. By default the crypt sitters are neutral, so you're free to duck into a crypt and wait out the bell of rest.  If someone opens the reliquary in the crypt, however, the sitter will enter Murder Mode, and try to kill anything nearby. Just opening the reliquary is enough, they won't spare you just because you didn't take anything.  But as a truekin, we can just rebuke them to turn them neutral. This doesn't stop them from entering Murder Mode once we open the chest, but it does mean that they'll ignore us and target other creatures in the area instead. Rebuke has a pretty high success rate thanks to our ego, and we can even rebuke them preemptively and then only open the chest if it succeeds. We can barely hold anything right now, but we can still disassemble stuff for bits (which are weightless), so we'll rob some graves when we get the chance.   The crypt sitter wanders free, and we head to the left side of the map, where a crypt ferret fights some ickslugs.  Crypt ferrets aren't dangerous on their own, but they can be pretty troublesome. They have extremely high DV, so most of your attacks miss. They can grab on to you in melee so you can't move away. And they like to enter crypts and swipe items from the chests, which provokes the crypt sitters. We're well equipped to handle them, though. The freeze ray can freeze them solid pretty reliably, and once they're frozen they can't dodge attacks anymore, which makes them easy to finish off with our light rails.   We shoot both icklugs and ferrets, and head north. Like the folk catacombs where we entered, we're just wandering around looking for the stairs.   There's another graverobber waiting around on the next screen.   We save a mopango from some crypt ferrets and head for the center of the map when the bell of rest rings.     There's a nice pistol in the crypt we arrive in, but what we really want is that delicious 7 bit in it, so we disassemble it.   Either there's been an issue with the plumbing, or the Yadohkt Kith really loved water.   A little past the lake, we find the stairs up! Unfortunately we're stuck. That's not our force bubble, someone else used force wall to trap us in place. We can't shoot out, or move, or even see who did it to us.  But step 2 of their plan appears to be to take potshots with a shotgun from across the room, so we're not in any immediate danger.  Time for the attack of the clones.   Chaos erupts, as is traditional. There's a mechanimist preacher (who's probably the one who trapped us) and also a Rhinox for some reason. A lot of spores are released, a lot of grenades are thrown. We can't help, but the clones seem to have things under control.  The force wall fades, but we're actually just overburdened - we got hit by a friendly EMP grenade, which took out our sphere of negative weight, flipping it from -10 to +10 pounds. Since there's no enemies left we can just wait for it to come back on.     We reach the upper crypts.  The panhumor is actually neutral to us. Up here we'll occasionally find members of Resheph's cult, making a pilgramage to his tomb.    The screen to the east has a lot of grave moss growing. It's just a decoration for now, but if blood ever falls on grave moss it 'wakes up' and becomes a fairly strong enemy. Since fighting tends to cause blood to spatter around you can sometimes end up with big groups coming to life. Fortunately our lasers reduce enemies to ash, so we won't be spilling any blood ourselves, but there's still the risk that enemy infighting could trigger some groups.   We stop by one of the nearby tombs and are so successful at rebuking the crypt sitter that it decides to join us instead.  We can't carry anything from its chest, though.    Our crypt sitter friend didn't last long, since a ferret woke up a rival crypt sitter, but we made it through ourselves without issue.  The next screen has an infestation of Snail mothers. We take them out just in time for the bell of rest to ring.   Outside of our next crypt is a neutral Putus templar and Resheph cultist. I'm not sure if she left the order to do this or if they're cool with the Resheph stuff, but either way she's not attacking.  Templar legendaries tend to sell credit wedges, so we're happy to lose some weight and pick it up.   We keep heading east and find that we've made a full loop, arriving back at the stairs we took to get here.  We head to a different screen. There's a cool looking goatfolk here, and we've got an open slot, so...  We make a new friend.  Haha you too buddy   We take a look at the hedge maze to the south when we're suddenly frozen - there's a hostile Putus squire somewhere around the corner.   We back off so we can gun down the enemies in sight, but that gives the squire time to activate his phylactery. The knight near us is an invincible hologram and can walk through our force bubble, so we'll have to just tank the hits until we can find the squire.  Ah, he's cleverly hiding behind a statue. Let's just cut down some of these bushes, and...   Oops, there was an ooze on the other side. We're engulfed now, so we have to try and melee our way out.   Hmm. We're winning overall, but it's not a fast fight. If we keep going much longer the cupola will melt through the floor. Best case scenario that's an inconvenience that forces us to find the stairs again. Worst case scenario, we fall into a pit or somewhere with dangerous enemies around and are in real danger of dying.    Let's not roll the dice. We eat some yondercane and teleport out of the ooze.   Instead of poking around in the bushes up close, we just gun everything down from here. The squire dies and the hologram cuts off.  And we dismantle his phylactery for good measure.  We shoot another crypt ferret, level up...  And then our goat friend phases through a wall and dies, I guess? Thanks for nothing, Pauli.  We're recalled to another resting place. The crypt sitter here decides to join us as well.  There are some fun shoes in the reliquary - when activated they cause walls of plant matter to appear behind you as you walk.   North from there we find a stairwell teleporter! We're close to the finish now.   A fight between a crypt ferret and a mopango woke up some gorged growths, and there's probably more on the way as they fight the mopango. Whatever, not our problem. Into the teleporter we go.  It turns out we passed pretty close to the stairs earlier, but happened to explore in the wrong direction. Oh well.     Unlike the chaos of the upper crypts, the liminal floor is completely empty. Above us lie the tombs of the sultans themselves. What waits for us there?
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Jul 31, 2023 05:36
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Haha yes yes yes yes, here comes the best part 
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Jul 31, 2023 11:35
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If you take the time to look at the architecture and notice the multiple layers of wall you can see the original spaceport (functional, but bland) versus the additions of the sultanates. If you look very closely you can see that the carved stone of each sultan encases that of the previous, literally growing the tomb with each sultan who rose to power. There are also of course windows to gaze at the spindle and the innards of the space elevator, because of course you have those at any port of travel whether air or space. The liminal way we just went through was likely an access corridor to the roof of the original spaceport Indeed also, WE REACH THE GOOD PART AtomikKrab fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jul 31, 2023 |
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Jul 31, 2023 19:27
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If we decide to leave and come back is there a way to skip floors we've already conquered? Or do we have to do the whole thing in one pass?
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Jul 31, 2023 21:55
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DGM_2 posted:If we decide to leave and come back is there a way to skip floors we've already conquered? Or do we have to do the whole thing in one pass? Whole thing in one pass. Since the enemies stay dead and we still know where the stairs are the middle section would be the only tricky part, but you’ll generally want to clear it in one go if you can. It’s possible to find or craft programmable recoilers, which you can use like mark and recall to teleport back somewhere you’ve been, but that works on everything, not just this dungeon. We haven’t seen any and don’t know the recipe, so it’s a moot point for this run.
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Jul 31, 2023 22:08
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Programmable recoilers are ridiculously good if you're doing a ton of bartering and have been buying ad flyers or trading a lot of secrets. Just build up a library of different legendary merchant lairs and ping between them all every once in a while. Make sure to attune a Six-Day Stilt recoiler too, obviously. Oh and you might as well make one for that site with all those giant weeps in case you ever need to make a quick buck selling a shitload of cider and honey, oh and one for the Asphalt Mines so you can refill your oil supply with minimal fuss, oh and-
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Jul 31, 2023 22:53
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVy1C4WS9W8&t=4296s  We head upstairs. The sultan tombs are protected by a permanent, passive normality field, so if we have to fight something here, both our force bubble and fugue clones will be unreliable.   The area is massive, ostentatious, and completely empty. Holograms of ancient eaters stare silently as we walk past.  In the center of the floor is the tomb of Bahim I, the oldest of the sultans we've been finding history for.    The walls are covered with murals depicting the history of Bahim's life. The events themselves are the same as in the sultan histories we've seen around Qud, but the telling is not always the same.  The sultan histories section of your journal orders everything in chronological order, so the tomb engravings will end up next to the public version of events, if you ever want to compare.   Much like the smaller crypts we saw on the upper floors, the tomb contains a sarcophagus and a reliquary.  The sarcophagus is shut tight. No sultan bones for us.  The reliquary can be opened, and has a pretty amazing piece of equipment in it.  The non-Resheph sultans are all randomly generated, and the exact effects of the Kesil Face will vary depending on the history of the sultan it's associated with. It could give boosts to different stats, or give a different mutation, or have other unique passives. But it's always going to be pretty much the best piece of equipment you'll ever find.  Of course, we can't just take it and run. You can open the reliquary up and look around, but actually taking anything out requires you to first kill all the cherubim guarding it.   There's four cherubs guarding the mask. Just like the mask itself, the specific cherub guarding the site will vary depending on the history of the relevant sultan - they'll generally be from a faction that was friendly with the sultan, and will have a caste based on the sultan's interests. The Cherubs can only attack in melee, but they hit extremely hard - we'd probably die in 2 or 3 hits, assuming that we don't just get transmuted into gems for an irresistible instant kill. The normality effect means we can't hold them off with our force bracelet, and that "reflectively shielded" on their status means that all of our lasers will bounce off harmlessly. We could try to disable the shield with EMP grenades, but if they land too close they'll take out our guns too, and these guys all have a bunch of health so we'd have to shoot at them for a while to take one down. Alone, in a straight fight, it's almost impossible for us to win.    So we'll just move on for now. We have a job to do.      The next floor up is the tomb of Bahim II, successor to Bahim I. The walls are a different color but the layout is the same.     Wow, brutal.  Of course, some stories say that the "trapped in a block of ice" thing was an exaggeration.    Sometimes the sultan will have an additional relic in the reliquary along with their mask, but these are just normal randomly generated relic, and won't be on par with the mask itself.  And on that note, the Shemesh face is also pretty amazing compared to any normal face slot item. It has a smaller stat bonus and doesn't give the extra license points, but it does make its wearer pretty much immune to ice.   It's guarded by three cherubim - two urchin and a frog. Ice cherubim are, relatively speaking, one of the easier types, since we're not using cold damage and we can cook for cold resist. But we still don't have a good way to kill them, and they could still kill us pretty quickly.    We keep ascending.    Next is the tomb of Sudokht I.     There are some great example of the difference between the official and unofficial versions of history here.    Sudokht's mask is the Earth Face. The DV bonus is smaller, and it has some negative rep, but more temporal fugue is always a strong bonus.  And speaking of temporal fugue, it's guarded by a pair of time slugs. There's only two of them, but time cherubim are probably one of the most dangerous types.  The ego build shows its strength, as we convince one of them that it would be better off following us than sitting around in some dusty tomb forever. Note that taking a mask requires the cherubim guarding it to be dead. Recruiting them, or getting them to move offscreen, is not enough. We could cheese it here if we wanted - allies will ignore any amount of friendly fire, so we could recruit these two and then spend dozens of turns each chopping them down with our vibrokhopesh. But I'd rather just keep this guy around for now, I think it's appropriate for us to be accompanied by a sultan's bodyguard as we pass through the tombs. We could recruit the second one too but that would kick out Slog, and Slog already earned his slot on the team by soloing Saad Amus.     We ascend once more, and reach the tomb of Sudokht II. Resheph's tomb isn't far off now.    If you can't trust cannibals, who can you trust?  The Levant Face is still great compared to most face slot items, but it continues the trend of each mask being a bit weaker than the one before it.   It's guarded by mechanical cherubs, rather than the original cherubs we saw before. They're a bit weaker (notice the difficulty level of "average", rather than "tough"). The reflective shielding still makes them tough for us to fight, but we might be able to manage with our new slug friend backing us. We won't fight them, though. We have things to do.    Yaxertafa's tomb should be the last one before Resheph's.  Oh hey, he's the one who made that stat boosting tonic. Not sure I'd call it a 'feast' but it was a pretty great find.    The Olive Face is the weakest mask yet, not even giving +1 to all stats. "Only" +6 stat points is still amazing for a face item, of course.   There's a lot of tortoises guarding the sultan masks this run.    We go up the stairs one last time, and arrive in an unfinished tomb.   The walls lack the extravagance of the earlier stratum, and the hallway is rough and unfinished.  In part of the hall the roof has caved in, letting rainwater and birds in.  The tomb is bare, with no murals on the wall and no cherubs guarding the reliquary.  The sultanate is broken.  There's nothing past this tomb - this is the highest point we can reach.  There's no cherubs guarding the tomb, but there's a small robot we can talk to.       There's a bit of a mercy here - if you managed to make it this far without the mark, you can learn it now instead of needing to leave and come all the way back up.   We'll pause here for a moment. Herododicus is probably our only shot at getting to Brightsheol, but I think we have some unfinished business first.  We run all the way back down to the first tomb. (We left the slug back in Resheph's tomb). I think that Kesil Face would look great on us. It's true that, in a straight fight, we don't really have any way to take out all these Cherubim. But who says it has to be a fair fight? Checkov's Gun has been sitting in our backpack all game, and I think this is the perfect time to finally use it.  We open with a sphynx salt, just in case.  We recently spent some skill points on the tinkering skill to set grenades as landmines or timebombs.   10 turns until detonation. The other skill we bought was juicer, which makes it so that we can use two tonics at the same time.  So we'll be able to use this shade oil injector to phase out, while also using the sphynx salt as insurance in case anything goes wrong.   We inject the tonic, then wait a few turns - since the phase duration is anywhere from 7 to 9 turns we want to make sure it won't wear off too soon.  We phase out. 5 turns until detonation. Now all we need to do is wait.   Oh. I, uh, forgot that the normality field here also has a chance to force you back in phase every turn. We would need another shade oil to phase back out, but we only had the one.  Yes please.   We have a brief vision of nuclear hellfire before snapping back.  Okay, let's try that again, but this time phase out right before the bomb goes off. We inject the tonic. 3 turns left. We pass turn twice, phase out, and then...  Success! The Sultan's sarcophagus is shattered, but the reliquary remains intact, and the Kesil face is unguarded.  Whenever you pick up any of the masks, the others all disappear permanently - this includes the null face. You can only get one per playthrough. The masks are also one of the few items that can't be duplicated with polygel, so no wearing 5 copies as a chimera or giving a matching set to all your friends.   I think it looks pretty good on us.  Nah, we'll keep this one.  We run back up and speak with Herododicus. It's time.         Herododicus walks over to one of the blank walls.    He spends a couple turns gradually chipping away, and a new mural is engraved.  A mural about the life of the sultan Louis Cypher.  He keeps going around the room, filling in all the blank walls.     There are a number of murals about all the time we spent   There are some about the friends we made along the way.   There's a pair about the time we  There's a mural dedicated to our beautiful Phase Harmonic Modulator,  There's one about the book we  There's one for the village we  There's even one for the time we  And there's one final mural, for the time we... uh...  Hmm.  Well, the other murals aren't too accurate either. It's probably fine.  The sarcophagus has opened.   A warning like this shows up in exactly one other place in the game. If you choose to abandon your current run, ending the playthrough and deleting the save files permanently, the game will make you type "ABANDON" into the textbox. It's a reasonable precaution to make sure nobody kills their character by accident.    The game pauses for a moment here. Then there's a click, and a small screenshake.   Oh. I guess that's that! Maybe we'll figure it out next run.
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Aug 1, 2023 04:12
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peace to the cypher, sultan of qud veeeeeeeeery slick of you lmao
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Aug 1, 2023 04:54
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Oh my god I forgot about the nuke lmao
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Aug 1, 2023 05:13
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Hmm, funny that "nuked the goddamn spindle, you psychopath" didn't make it into these particular annals...
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Aug 1, 2023 05:24
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There are times when the Shemesh Face is the better pick than the Kesil Face, although most of the time the latter is the better option. There's extremely few reasons to grab the later faces unless they have a mutation boost on them you really, really want.
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Aug 1, 2023 06:04
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You mad genius. All hail the Sultan! May the passage into Brightsheol be gentle.
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Aug 1, 2023 07:53
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Absolutely fantastic. Now you state the roof caved in, my thoughts are more simple, there was never a roof there to begin with, the tomb is unfinished. None of these tombs are in my thoughts original construction of the space port. Each sultan covered up the Spindle in their tomb building on the roof of the space port and its bracing. Notice the sultan tombs all have a nice pretty window to look on the light of the spindle for their sarcophagus. Heavy spoilers ahead and my thoughts each tomb is the north section of the parsang for the sultan's level. If you dig around on the western or eastern sides to the spindle you can find smaller windows covered over in fulcrete, this heavily implies that the tombs are not merely repurposing existing space, but direct additions to the top. If you dig around to the south side (the stairs are always SW and SE alternating as you climb) and get a good view, there is an even bigger window to the innards of the spindle channel that the eaters would have used to gaze upon the earth as they ascended. So, for design SSSSSSWWWWWWSSSSSS W________________________W S_________________________S W________________________W S_________________________S W________________________W S_________________________S W________________________W S_________________________S SSWWWWWWWWWWWSS S being the spindle structure, W being windows Seats would have faced the main window, with opportunities for those in the elevator channel to gaze in other directions if they really wanted back when the elevator worked.
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Aug 1, 2023 12:38
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I wanted to unlurk and thank verbal enema and Snake Maze for the LP. I bought the game back in 2020 but get serious Skyrim Syndrome from it, meaning I keep making new characters before the old one has died. Seeing the cool late game stuff I'm missing is hopefully going to get me to stick to the supersonic shrub chimera I just made (Chimera, Heightened Quickness, Multiple Legs, Photosynthetic and Amphibious to afford it)
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Aug 1, 2023 18:55
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Of all the tiles I’ve done, Herododicus might be my favorite.
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Aug 1, 2023 19:52
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I like how blatant Herododicus is about stylizing your life story. Really makes you question all the prior sultan histories, and especially Resheph's. I guess that partly depends on how old Herododicus is, though...
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Aug 1, 2023 20:34
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Also for those who are paying attention, each face represents the territory that the Sultan's held reign over, each face shows a loss of power and control , at the end of things Resheph ruled over nothing.
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Aug 1, 2023 22:03
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Is it hinted anywhere about how long ago Reseph's reign was? I wonder how dilapidated everything was in his time, or how much of a mystery the eaters' actions/extent of their influence was for even them.
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Aug 1, 2023 22:28
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I get to finally see a bunch of the poo poo I've only ever seen on Unormal's twitter lmao
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Aug 1, 2023 22:29
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MuffinsAndPie posted:Is it hinted anywhere about how long ago Reseph's reign was? I wonder how dilapidated everything was in his time, or how much of a mystery the eaters' actions/extent of their influence was for even them. Actually yeah, this is one of the things we can be fairly confident about. The date system generally used in Qud is divided into BR and AR - Before Resheph and After Resheph.  Specifically, the 0 date is when Resheph dissolved the sultanate - he became sultan in 139 BR and died in 11 AR, so he had a long reign before that.  The earliest engraving we found about Bahim I takes place in 6290 BR, so there's a huge window between the first sultan in the tomb and the last. (And it seems like there were other sultans we didn't hear about in between the ones we know) Our own adventures started in 1001 AR and have gone on long enough that it's currently 1002 AR (you can see the date in some of our own engravings), so it's been almost exactly 1,000 years since then*. *Assuming there hasn't been any fuckery with the calendar or time itself in the interim. Which, granted, not guaranteed in Qud, but there's nothing to suggest it.
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Aug 1, 2023 23:05
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megane posted:Of all the tiles I’ve done, Herododicus might be my favorite. Your tilework is simply amazing and is such a huge part of why I enjoy this game Also thank you again for the custom tile
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Aug 2, 2023 00:02
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Well that's not the ending I was expecting for this update. 
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Aug 2, 2023 00:03
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Evil Fluffy posted:Well that's not the ending I was expecting for this update. You gotta do what you gotta do 
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Aug 2, 2023 00:17
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What happens if you have precognition running when you get entombed?
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Aug 2, 2023 00:23
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Rogue AI Goddess posted:What happens if you have precognition running when you get entombed? Follow up question, can you entomb yourself in front of your evil twin?
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Aug 2, 2023 00:25
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Rogue AI Goddess posted:What happens if you have precognition running when you get entombed? Nothing in particular, it works the same as without precognition Breadmaster posted:Follow up question, can you entomb yourself in front of your evil twin? I think actually no, not without kiting them up through all the sultan tombs. The normality field in the tomb also prevents being attacked by invading espers and extradimensional attackers, which I believe includes your evil twin.
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Aug 2, 2023 00:44
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Last time in Caves of Qud: we died! It's a shame, but that's roguelikes for you. A good reminder not to let your guard down just because there are no enemies around. We'll see if we can figure out the trick next time, but it'll be a while until we get back, since we need to start a new character and go through the game again. On that note, let's get to it. I'll just hit escape and go back to the title screen.  Oh, weird, it didn't work. The game updates every friday so I guess things are bound to break eventually. I'll just hit escape a couple more times to see if it helps.     Welcome to Brightsheol.  Well, the Garden at the Gate to Brightsheol, anyway. It gets a special time of day icon, since I guess regular time is not really applicable.  The gate itself resembles the Life Gate we saw outside.  There's someone waiting to greet us.       : Saad, yis.              We wake up in a small chamber, lined with the engraved marble of the sultanate at its peak.    We're naked and empty handed, but our body feels better than ever.      The reliquary contains everything we had with us when we were entombed. We take it all and equip our gear.   Outside, we're greeted with the peaceful sight of Lake Hinom. I love this sequence. The leap of faith hits really hard, especially when you're playing blind and gambling with your best character ever. It's the perfect capstone to all your adventures up to this point. That choice at the end is a real one, too. Crossing into Brightsheol ends your run, but it's counted as a win. For a while this was the end of the main quest, but we're living in the future so we still have more to do. Let's head back to Grit Gate and tell them the good news.       Fine, fine, you're no fun      Another polygel is always welcome. We still have a rooticus left to duplicate.  Let's see what the next quest is like.     This sounds a bit different than the climber I was envisioning. Let's get some more details.       Yep, it's time to build a mech.  Let's see what Klanq has to say about things.   He can give us a detailed breakdown of what we need for the mech, but first let's go check in with the rest of the Barathrumites.    We can't tell Dardi about the Bone Bakba recipe we got                Looks like they're all doing well.  Anyway, time for the quest details. It's not hard, overall - it's mostly a bit of downtime after the gauntlet and story climax of the tomb. It's a pretty fun one though, and it's a great excuse to revisit Qud with your powerful endgame character.  There's a lot of stuff we need, so we'll just go down the list in order.         I'll go over these in more detail when we're done talking with Klanq. Let's see what else he has to say about how this will work.      That's a lot of words, but the golem-building is pretty simple in practice. There's a pile of clay in front of Klanq (you can't see if because the pope is standing on it) and when you interact with it it brings up this menu:  And from there you just choose what you want for each category.  Body is the most imporant one. Do we want a slug golem? A dog golem? A robot golem? Something else? I'll put this one up to a vote when the time comes.  The catalyst is 3 drams of any liquid. Each one has a different effect, so we'll want to pick some up to see all our options.  The atzmus is a severed limb. Different ones will have different effects, but we probably won't be able to get too many different choices with this character unless we can hit tinker 3 for nanon guns.  The armament is a zetachrome weapon, the strongest melee weapons in the game. Your golem will be a master at the weapon type of the provided weapon. Usually Tilly will sell one sooner or later, but if we can't get back on good terms with the consortium of phyta, our next best shot will be exploring lategame historic sites or the deep underground.  The incantation is any one entry from our journal. We have a lot to choose from, but the bonuses themselves fall into different categories depending on what type of journal entry it is.  The hamsa is any one item that weighs less than 5 pounds. Cybernetic implants can be a good choice, since the golem will start with it installed, but there are lots of other fun effects you can get as well.  And the power source only has two choices available. We can hang out around the ichor merchants until we get 3 drams of neutron flux, or we can head into the Moon Stair and find the Tree of Life, and see if we can convince it to power the golem.  We have a lot of choices for what to do next. In addition to all the golem parts, we also still need to cure our own Klanq growth, and we have a ton of uncleared historic sites we can take on as well. This phase of the game is pretty open, and it can be fast or slow depending on how much effort you want to put into the golem, but it's a cool quest and a great chance to catch your breath after the tomb.
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Aug 2, 2023 02:19
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OT: I had a bunch of music assembled that feels with the vibe of qud (homeworld/highfleet stuff) and the second time I attempted the tomb this was playing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPbcV6bYN10 absurdly proper Snake Maze posted:Actually yeah, this is one of the things we can be fairly confident about. The date system generally used in Qud is divided into BR and AR - Before Resheph and After Resheph. Since Resheph simply dismantled the Sultanate, there isn't an "official account" to check against, which seems to me that his story has a greater level of confidence to talk about as it is a pollinated myth, so to speak. Also, I don't know if that is the case for certain or if it happens randomly, but isn't there a gap before Resheph comes along? Things have been falling apart for a while, then he comes along and gets to learn some poo poo which appears to be a huge deal of why he dismantled the sultanate. That's very neat: instead of leading to a restoration, he ends it for real. Kinda reminds me of the endings for Dark Souls where the flame isn't rekindled
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Aug 2, 2023 02:26
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Klanq reformed with you! I wonder what that bit of Klanq thought of the trip to Brightsheol, or if it was even able to experience it in any way.
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Aug 2, 2023 02:51
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Imagine if you could puff on Rainwater Shomer. Infect cyber-heaven with the mad science fungus. What could possibly go wrong e: what happens if you use the funerary mask as the hamsa? Angry Diplomat fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 02:58
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I don't have the name handy, but when talking to the brightsheol person, there's a dialogue path where they reveal what they used to call Qud and you get an entry in the journal noting it down. I don't think there's any real significance to that but I found it neat.Snake Maze posted:Actually yeah, this is one of the things we can be fairly confident about. The date system generally used in Qud is divided into BR and AR - Before Resheph and After Resheph. 6000 years is easily enough time for things to become unrecognizable. It's surprising how long they clung to power while in decline. Although I guess it's all really jerry rigged together anyways, especially if a random adventurer can kick down the door and demand to undergo a sultan death ritual and be given sultan engravings and get their very own imperial sarcophagus.
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Aug 2, 2023 02:58
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They got that: Salum I suppose making a Neutron Flux powered golem with a Neutron power source is a bad idea? Also can we Sphinx Salt the form selection to see what comes out? By default I want a tripod robot but if we could make a turret work...
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Aug 2, 2023 03:07
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guys first post says no spoilers
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Aug 2, 2023 03:10
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SLOG GOLEM
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Aug 2, 2023 03:11
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dead gay comedy forums posted:guys That is no longer relevant lol
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Aug 2, 2023 03:11
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habituallyred posted:Also can we Sphinx Salt the form selection to see what comes out? By default I want a tripod robot but if we could make a turret work... Nope, it takes multiple ingame days to build the golem, so you can’t use precognition to peek at what you’ll get.
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Aug 2, 2023 03:13
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verbal enema posted:That is no longer relevant lol lmao alright
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Aug 2, 2023 03:13
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