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Based on absolutely zero evidence id always assumed the signal/ "being" at the top of the spindle was an imprisoned Ptoh Definitely just my head canon. I'm sure there's plenty of evidence to refute it in this amazingly large and wonderful game.
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Aug 3, 2023 15:47
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I genuinely cannot overstate how much I want to play this again
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Aug 3, 2023 15:53
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Duderclese posted:Based on absolutely zero evidence id always assumed the signal/ "being" at the top of the spindle was an imprisoned Ptoh it's probably not Ptoh -- there's a lore suggesting his prison (and the great bulk of the Seekers of the Sightless Way) are hidden deep underground somewhere in Qud itself that said one of my long-held suspicions is that Resheph was someone's trojan horse, a way to sabotage the remnants of the Sultanate and/or the surviving Eater infrastructure, and Ptoh is the most likely candidate for someone who could mastermind a plot like that -- immortal, patient, capable of mind control, particularly famous for corrupting kings and rulers, has a very strong motive to hate the Eaters and all their descendants regardless of how far they've fallen in stature or tech level, and also there are some hints of a connection between the Mechanimists (who worship Resheph, albeit as a minor figure) and the Seekers of the Sightless Way, like the one just chilling out in a private room of their own on the final floor of Bethesda Susa
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Aug 3, 2023 15:58
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also -- while this undermines some of my theories lol -- some very recent additions to the game kind of shy away from casting Ptoh as this unimaginably evil Satan figure and more as just amoral and predatory, but no more so than, say, the player character -- especially considering its imprisonment and that e.g. the Seekers hunting psychics is more of a callous means to an end (gathering psychic power to break it bonds and escape to freedom) than an act of purely selfish murder still very dangerous and hostile but in a way that doesn't quite suggest the same "final boss" vibes
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Aug 3, 2023 16:06
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Ptoh is imprisoned in a certain gem that a certain goatfolk was holding,
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Aug 3, 2023 16:10
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in my quiet moments where i feel a little lost, i like to boot up qud, enjoy joppa, journey to the stilts, explore what's been eating the watervine, never ever go to rust well (sincerely, gently caress the rust well) qud is really good, and it is a cozy home to trust my brain with for a few evenings.
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Aug 3, 2023 16:13
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AtomikKrab posted:Ptoh is imprisoned in a certain gem that a certain goatfolk was holding, Oh snap. I like this line of thought a lot. I'd love to know how that occurred. Cause, y'know, Ptoh.
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Aug 3, 2023 16:14
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AtomikKrab posted:Ptoh is imprisoned in a certain gem that a certain goatfolk was holding, Unlikely, the Prism's own description contradicts this in multiple places. It came with Ptoh to Qud by accident and Ptoh gave it away to one of its jailers -- the Prism might be a key, or just a way of supercharging a psychic before eventually devouring them, but it's not the prison itself.
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Aug 3, 2023 16:15
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Yeah Ptoh is definitely presented as an "alien morality" horror-from-beyond type of thing, rather than some moustache-twirling sadistic evildoer. It's still incredibly funny to me that you can troll it by equipping the Prism during precognition and then reverting back to the start of your vision. Even incomprehensible star-dwelling mind beings are not immune to petty annoyance e: I feel that its prison is probably not physical in nature. Like it's probably trapped between conflicting perceptions in the contradictory accounts of Qud's history or some crazy poo poo like that
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Aug 3, 2023 16:15
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The real Ptoh was the friends we made along the way. 
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Aug 3, 2023 16:27
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Angry Diplomat posted:Even incomprehensible star-dwelling mind beings are not immune to petty annoyance which is why I made a point of putting that in my effortpost because it is one of the best reactions in the game just a massive "oh c'mon reaaaally" from the cosmos beamed straight at you Tuxedo Catfish posted:Unlikely, the Prism's own description contradicts this in multiple places. It came with Ptoh to Qud by accident and Ptoh gave it away to one of its jailers -- the Prism might be a key, or just a way of supercharging a psychic before eventually devouring them, but it's not the prison itself. this Also, while this does fit the whole abrahamic motif going on, the scarce nuggets of lore are suggestive in a way that the stellar injunction has to do with the Eaters and Ptoh. I think that's too straightforward when Qud does ambiguity so well, so it seems to me that there are more interesting possibilities there
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Aug 3, 2023 16:34
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dead gay comedy forums posted:Also, while this does fit the whole abrahamic motif going on, the scarce nuggets of lore are suggestive in a way that the stellar injunction has to do with the Eaters and Ptoh. I think that's too straightforward when Qud does ambiguity so well, so it seems to me that there are more interesting possibilities there My own theory is that Ptoh is unrelated, and the injunction happened because the Eaters were messing with the Dark Calculus after everyone promised not to. (And I think the Moon Stair region is basically fallout from the Dark Calculus, but that's even further into baseless speculation)
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Aug 3, 2023 16:47
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How long is a single turn in game time? Like 5 minutes? Only wondering cuz I dont think I've had a character "live" a full in game year I know that Worldmap travel is like a day each tile I think? Maybe I have had someone last that long
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Aug 3, 2023 16:53
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An in-game day is 24 hours and 50 ticks per hour, so a turn for a 100 QN character is a little over a minute. A year is 13 months, which are 30 days each except for the five-day festival month of Ut yara Ux, for a 365-day year.
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Aug 3, 2023 16:57
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:An in-game day is 24 hours and 50 ticks per hour, so a turn for a 100 QN character is a little over a minute. Some of those turbo fights you can have have a different meaning when you realize you've been trying to beat a turtle to death for half an hour
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Aug 3, 2023 16:58
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:An in-game day is 24 hours and 50 ticks per hour, so a turn for a 100 QN character is a little over a minute. The calendar is one part of this game that simply hasn't clicked for me in ~400hrs of play. This post makes so much sense. Thank you!
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Aug 3, 2023 17:07
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:
How do you know this
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Aug 3, 2023 17:09
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verbal enema posted:How do you know this In this case I'm almost directly quoting from the wiki, although ages ago when the wiki didn't exist I figured out some of the ticks-per-day stuff firsthand (so I could play a photosynthesizer more effectively). e: i think the current day and month shows up SOMEWHERE in the UI, and i know the "festival of Ut yara Ux" is a phrase that crops up in Sultan histories, if you're curious how the wiki knew
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Aug 3, 2023 17:10
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Calibration is cool and good and we should do it in the real world, none of this 30/31/28(sometimes 29) bullshit.
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Aug 3, 2023 17:12
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Also having a month where the whole world has a week long party would rule
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Aug 3, 2023 17:14
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It would be really neat if that 5-day period was respected as an armistice by many factions, so if you ran into normally-hostile members they wouldn't initiate violence outside of holy sites (and attacking them would bring up an "are you sure you want to ruin the festival of Ut Yara Ux?" prompt, possibly resulting in reputation loss with that faction if the player chose Yes) It would also almost definitely cause some folks to torture themselves with bizarre Hypothetical Optimal Man strategies involving 360 days of sleeping next to a giant water weep followed by insane 5-day speedruns, though, so...
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Aug 3, 2023 17:20
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:it's probably not Ptoh -- there's a lore suggesting his prison (and the great bulk of the Seekers of the Sightless Way) are hidden deep underground somewhere in Qud itself I don't think this is the case, but I can absolutely see how one might arrive at that conclusion given the (intentionally) unreliable narration of Qud's history. I get the sense that that Ptoh is tapestry to the setting of Qud, but isn't a main character, no more than Saad Amus is. Ptoh is certainly a reason for or a part of the psychic background of Qud, but not the ultimate bad guy. More specifically, the idea of a singular villainous "bad guy / final boss" seems pretty antithetical to the way the setting and lore is structured. If there is a final boss, I would expect it to be something cosmic, effusive, or intangible; but then again we don't know the end yet! Theorycrafting below: I personally think that the entity atop the spindle is Resheph themselves. Resheph did indeed dissolve the sultanate, but their sarcophagus is empty even if the "written" record is that they passed into Brightsheol. The thematic ideal that you lay your body in a Tron-style cybernetic device to roam the Thin World makes total sense; however the other sarcophagi seem to be sealed with something within them. We can't know for sure but the unfinished tomb seems like an outlier rather than the norm. We already know that Eaters - and certainly Sultans - can recome into flesh form, just like we have. We also know that Resheph specifically tried to rebuild anew a Starfarer's Quay, in order to welcome back the coven and civilizations from the stars once more. To me, it follows that either Resheph never really went to Brightsheol - especially given the unfinished tomb - or they returned from the Thin World to finish the ultimate work: returning Qud to the stars once more. The signal is Resheph finishing the job they started more than 1000 years ago. The fun part of this outcome that seems to resonate with the rest of Qud narrative is that even if Respeph succeeds in opening the world once more, you have no idea who else will answer the signal from offworld. Ascending the spire via your golem, fending off the hordes of Templar determined to keep the world in its calcified state, confronting the last sultan, and finding out that the signal succeeded but in reality drew much worse foes to Qud feels perfectly in line with the setting of the game so far.  edit: 100% echoing this dead gay comedy forums posted:Also, while this does fit the whole abrahamic motif going on, the scarce nuggets of lore are suggestive in a way that the stellar injunction has to do with the Eaters and Ptoh. I think that's too straightforward when Qud does ambiguity so well, so it seems to me that there are more interesting possibilities there theysayheygreg fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 17:21
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The injunction was put into place because the Eater's sheer voracious overconsumption and decadence was causing a galaxy wide shortage of Canned Have-It-All, and everyone else was sick of their poo poo. I'm just amused by the idea that something so cataclysmic (for Earth/Qud) could have come about as an off handed "I can't take it any more I'm going no contact, also enjoy these 7 plagues to make sure you stay out of my life" from the greater galactic community, who hardly noticed the absence of Earth. Arrath fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Aug 3, 2023 |
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Aug 3, 2023 18:00
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  Still hanging out in Grit Gate, we tinker up a geomagnetic disk. We're getting to the point where fugue summons a lot of clones, and while grenades are fun they also lead to a lot of friendly fire.   We also use up our polygel for 4 extra attribute points, and put them all into int. We're just 1 point away from affording tinker III, which is probably not the optimal thing to do with all these points, but it should be a fun one. Tinker III is usually a skill that you need to aim for specifically at character generation to get, but we've been able to force it with the tonics.   We also have a lot of credits saved up, plus the 6 free license points from the Kesil Face.   We go ahead and install the optical multiscanner, which is fun but usually too much of a luxury to be worth the 8 points. It's bioscanning + tech scanning + structural scanning, with automatic stair location added in on top.  We can now see exactly how hard to kill our Time Slug friend is. (His current health is over his max because of our inspiring presence, which gives extra hp to our followers based on our ego).  As mentioned we have a lot of things we can do, but I think our first goal should be to cure our Klanq growth, since it doesn't work well with having multiple (organic) allies. We know that there are succulents in the Six Day Stilt, and we want to do some shopping as well, so let's head there first.   We head up next to the aloe pyra someone summoned during a fight. Our spore cloud will aggro people if it hits them, so we want to puff and run.   One down!   We run to the north, but some poor chef took offense and followed us. The Time Slug reduced him to a bloody paste before we could blink.  The ichor merchant doesn't have any of the fun liquids, but we buy a sampler pack of the regular ones so we have more options for the golem.  We also use up our cloning draught to get a second ichor merchant. Hopefully that will mean more cloning draught and neutron flux in the future.   On the west side of the Stilt is a grenadier selling three unidentified grenades. Hopefully one of them is the sleep gas grenade Mk II we need. Klanq can be so picky  Nice!  And there's a clay pitcher right outside, with nobody nearby to get mad, so we can get two birds with one puff.    For the last one we can just go visit Golgotha, so all the random stuff is done with.  We say hi to the trolls on our way out. We could bring one back to Grit Gate if we wanted a Troll Golem (Trolem), but unless and until that happens they're not allowed back in any friendly settlements. Too many troll foal incidents.      We get our arm slot back, we don't need to worry about infecting our friends, and the Consortium of Phyta hates us less!  They still want to kill us on sight, but, you know, one step at a time.  With the fungus gone, Slog is welcome to come along with us again. I'll leave the rest of the gang here for now, though.  We check out one of the historic sites we haven't visited yet. It's a rainbow woods historic site, but thankfully it's right on the edge so getting in doesn't require traveling on foot.  Ickslugs   We can recognize the style of stonework from the tomb.    The stairs are right nearby. There are goatfolk legendaries in here, which is nice for getting a bit more rep, although we don't get it with any particularly exciting factions.  A random chest on the second floor has a very heavy pair of shoes that give temporal fugue.  Sure, why not. The crypt sitter gets to summon fugue clones too.    It's a pretty easy dungeon crawl. The enemies here are all half our level, so the teleporting Time Slug kills most stuff before or shortly after we see it.   The next floor down drops us into a slightly scary situation. Enigma snails are slow but they can permanently drain your willpower in melee, and they're tough enough that you can't just kill them in one hit. Well, we can't, but the Time Slug can. Also we have a force bracelet, and we can freeze it with out freeze ray too, so we have a couple levels of insurance.  It's nice being able to see the stairs right away.  (Even if I still fully explore the floor for books)   On the final floor we find four credits and another of those friend-summoning boxes.    Back in Grit Gate we cash in our credits.   Stabilizer arm locks give a pretty good accuracy boost when firing guns, and only take two license points to install, so they're good filler when you have some spare license points you're not using.   Downstairs, we make another friend.   I'm pretty sure Slynth didn't exist in the time of the sultanate, but finding one of these guys is actually pretty convenient so I won't complain.      This gives us the location of the hydropon, a village with a quest in the middle of Lake Hinom. We'll leave him here to talk through the existential conundrum that is his life and memories with Barathrum.  Having him here does add the option to make a slynth golem to the rest of our choices.  On our way back to the Stilt I remember the legendary ichor merchant we found. I probably should have cloned her instead.   Oh well, the stilt merchant still has a better location. She's selling some neutron flux, sunslag, and warm static, so we buy them all.  Donating our books gets us up to level 34, just two away from getting the stats for tinker III. Sadly, the guy out front who trades Resheph lore for exp seems to have died in the crossfire of The Great Troll Foal War.  We also pick up a point defense drone from a dromad trader, so now grenades should be less of a threat.  We head back east to take a look at the Hydropon. It ended up right next to Yd in this run, so it's a short trip.   There's not much in the way of building or structures, but we do find one familiar looking room near the center of the area.      We help ourselves to the credits and the sunslag.   Most of the slynth aren't much for talking, but there was one in particular that our friend told us to find who has more to say.     Hypothetically, if someone took the sunslag from that cradle, that would be fine, right? Asking for a friend         We get another quest for the pile. Our reputation overall might have suffered from the water ritual killings, but we should still be able to find enough places willing to shelter the Slynth to get by. Next time we'll take care of that, and maybe see if we can finally do something to calm down the Consortium.
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Aug 4, 2023 01:56
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BURN THE CONSORTIUM
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Aug 4, 2023 02:40
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Landing Pads is such a neat quest. Just totally open-ended political negotiation that gives all that reputation you've been accruing a meaningful purpose. Also, I like finding homes for the lil plant people; the outright benevolence of it is a refreshing contrast to the endless violence of life in Qud 
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Aug 4, 2023 02:41
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The recoming nook inadvertently giving rise to a new people is so cool. Hope you didn't just casually genocide them by taking that slag
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Aug 4, 2023 06:26
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I've only managed to get the full rewards off Landing Pads once, and it was on a run with a lot of bookbinders and a number of legendary baboon lairs.
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Aug 4, 2023 07:32
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You return that slag RIGHT NOW Given time another bit of sunslag might fill up the nook, but that would slow down the birth of this new life form, or some slynth would have to go get more. I've done the full landing pads once, mostly with cloning draught shenanigans and some legendary goatfolk lairs.
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Aug 4, 2023 12:05
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Last time we played we promised to help the Slynth find a new home, but there was a personal problem we want to deal with too: The Consortium of Phyta want to kill us on sight, which makes it very hard to buy things from them. We'll try to address both issues this update. First, the consortium. We've been checking the bookbinders in the stilt regularly in hopes that one of them will stock a chapter unspecified Schrodinger page, but we haven't had any luck so far. But what if there was an easier way? I remembered something from younger, more innocent times, back before the Earl of Asphodel cruelly betrayed xyr water-sib.  During the water ritual we asked for secrets, in hopes of learning where a legendary gutsmonger was. We didn't learn about any, but xe did tell us about someone else, a secluded consortium merchant in the salt marshes. If we can water ritual with them, that should be enough to bring the consortium back to neutrality.  We make a pitstop at Joppa. The merchant is going to try to kill us on sight, and we don't want anyone to self-defense them to death before we get a chance to talk.  We tell Slog, the crypt sitter. and, um,   Kushruyumut to wait here.   A few tiles away is the merchant's home.  We unequip our vibrokhopesh and dagger, and wield a love injector instead.  The merchant's lair looks like a normal salt marsh tile, so we need to wander around a bit to try and locate them.  Not that one...  Not that one...    Oops, walked past some tall reeds a little too fast and accidentally used a love injector on a random glowpad. Fortunately we have more.  There we go!   Stabbing someone with a love injector recruits them as an ally temporarily. It has a 4% chance to fail for each level higher than you they are, so you can't get too crazy, but it's a great option for dealing with out of depth enemies or water ritualling with hostile factions. We could also try proselytizing them, but that would kick out either Slog or Kushruyumut, so the love injector's easier.      We can finally buy things again! It's a shame Sixshrew didn't live to see it, but at least Tilli and Tilli 2 will open up.  We pick up the gang and head out. Our next goal is to find three settlements that are willing to take in the Slynth. This is a big favor, so a settlement will only be willing to do it if you're beloved by them, with 600 rep or more. This is pretty hard to hit, because reputation isn't something you can just grind infinitely. You have the water ritual itself, for 250 rep per legendary (+100 for the ritual, +25 for customs and folklore, +25 for social coprocessor, +100 for telling them two secrets), and whatever quest the village has, but beyond that you have to hope you run across another legendary that they love or hate for you to befriend or kill, or find a Schrodinger's page. Since most villages only have their one mayor to ritual with, this can make earning the required rep pretty difficult. Most settlements are nowhere near the required rep, but we do have three good options.  The Barathrumies are a freebie due to all the rep you get for progressing the main quest. Unless you betrayed them at the negotiation for the spindle it's pretty much impossible not to have enough rep with them, and since Otho, Q Girl, and Barathrum are all guaranteed legendaries you can even get away with that if you work at it.  The Mechanimists are another freebie, because you can always toss stuff down the well until they love you. Lategame artifacts give tons of rep, so by this point in the run it's trivial to hit the 600 rep we need.  And finally, Bey Lah is usually a very difficult village to hit 600 rep with, but returning Kindrish has brought it down into water ritual range.  Our starting village is the only other settlement above 100. It's still a fair bit away from the threshold, and we've already water ritualed and shared secrets and everything there, but if we get a lucky rep boost it could become a fourth candidate. Since your starting village generates with two quests rather than one it's usually a bit easier to qualify with than other random villages. We'll start by visiting the Stilt.    Would this change your mind?    Aw, not quite. We tinker and toss in a couple acid gas grenades.  There we go.  One down, two to go.  Next we head to Grit Gate. We check what data disks Sparafucile and Jacobo are selling while we're here.  We don't buy this one (we already know how to craft Spray-A-Brain), but I love the peek into Eater society you get from the description.      That's two down! Let's head to Bey Lah to finish things up.   Hmm, the fields seem considerably more... on fire, than I remember.   There's also more corpses, and fewer people. ...Maybe Eskhind knows what happened?    I noticed there's a lot of vacant houses in town, do you think...? No, I guess now's not the time  There's a couple different outcomes for Bey Lah depending on how the quest goes, and we got the one where they ended up fighting with the Kendren and getting wiped out. Unfortunately that means there's nobody to talk to about moving the Slynth in, so we won't be able to use it as a settlement.  We stop by Amrimrod, just to double check.    But no. What if the Slynth are too horny? They just can't take that risk. So unfortunately helping the Slynth will have to go on the back burner until we find a way to get more rep with a settlement.  I guess let's check in with Lulihart about the Bey Lah situation.  So, good news and bad news about that status quo.   I completely forgot that Pariahs are an option. We're at 0 rep with them, but unlike villages it's possible to find random Pariahs in the wild. We can ritual with Lulihart for 250 rep, so we'd need to find two more legendary pariahs, or one + a Schrodinger's page, in order to get enough rep. Not impossible, but not something we can easily force, either.  Well, for now, let's just move on. Back in Yd we can finally check back in with the Tillies.    And they don't disappoint! The armor is both stronger than what we're currently using and 20 pounds lighter, which is actually pretty significant with our current weight issues, and a zetachrome dagger gives us our first armament option for the golem. We happily buy them both.   We stop in to say hi to Many Eyes while we're in the area.    I see. (Both choices give the same dialogue)  We'll wrap up by visiting another uncleared historic site, this time in the deep jungle.    No gilded marble this time. What enemies will we find?   Enigma snails, for one. They're annoying but not dangerous, with our force bracelet.    We find a dynamic turret tinker a bit past that, but they're not actually part of the sultan cult so it's just a one off.   Downstairs we see everybody's favorite creature, a sap. Saps can permanently drain a stat in melee - this is a life sap, which drains max hp, but you can find saps for all your main stats as well. Unlike enigma snails they can move at full speed, but that's about the only thing going for them. They have virtually no health, armor, or dodge value, so they're pretty trivial to kill - they're only really dangerous if there are other enemies around who can stun you. This one is also not a cult member, so it's another one off.  But past that is someone who is a cult member, and who we'll be fighting a whole bunch in this site: Goatfolk Qlippoth.  Qlippoth have both phasing and syphon vim. This could be a pretty dangerous combo if they ran up, started life draining, then phased out so you couldn't interrupt them, especially with all the Enigma snails to back them up with AOE confusion. Fortunately for us, they usually do things in the opposite order, phasing out, standing around next to us while phased for a bit, then phasing in and trying to life drain before getting killed.  They also drop tons of crysteel and flawless crysteel gear. Slog gets some upgrades, and there's so much lying around that we should be set for money for the rest of the playthrough.    Amusingly enough, we can still terrify the Qlippoth while they're phased out. Half the time this ends with them running into a wall and dying instantly when they phase in.   We keep descending.  Interestingly, the Qlippoth leave behind amaranthine ashes rather than corpses when they die.   In addition to the Qlippoth and Enigma Snails, we also see a lot of Snailmothers, and by extension ickslugs. Most of the hallways are too narrow for them to be anything but a nuisance, but we want to watch out for open spaces to make sure we don't have any repeats of what happened to Minmo.    The next floor looks like buisness as usual at first, until we peek around the corner.   Turns out there's a salt kraken in the cult. Salt kraken are melee fighters, but they don't attack normally. Instead, they spend two turns on their attacks. On the first turn a warning indicator highlights where they're planning to move. On the second turn they move into the tile, consuming and instantly killing anyone in it. Considering Slog and Kushruyumut are both melee fighters, this is very dangerous. Especially because salt kraken are also one of the toughest creatures in the game - 17 AV is a lot, and 1,800 HP is absurd.   They don't have any cold resistance, so we can still freeze them, but we'll never be able to kill it on our own. Our guns just don't hit hard enough to punch through its armor.   But, teamwork saves the day once again. Kushruyumut would normally just get eaten in melee, but with the kraken frozen he can attack freely, and unlike us he can actually do a lot of damage, over 100 per hit.  Some snailmothers and ickslugs show up to harass us while we're at it, and we can't stop shooting and risk letting the kraken thaw out, but Slog is able to intercept them and let us focus on the kraken.   In the end, not even a two story tall sandworm can stand up against the power of friendship.  Our reward in a nearby chest are some transkinetic cuffs. They're a very rare artifact (note the 8 bit, the highest tier of them all).   When worn on the arm, the cuffs let you set a target temperature and will very rapidly draw your current temperature back towards it. They can make us effectively immune to freezing and burning.  We have an open arm slot now that Klanq is gone, so I make them jacked for 24/7 personal air conditioning.    We find a couple more toys as we keep descending. Enigma cones are torso armor that you can occasionally butcher from enigma snails. They have with decent but not amazing defense, but give you the same AOE confusion mutation that enigma snails know. VISAGE takes a face and arm slot in exchange for tech, bio, and structural scanning. It's nice, but inferior to the optical bioscanner we have installed.   There's a big open room with a lot of enigma snails and qlippoth on this floor. We summon the clones for the first time in a while and let the geomagnetic disks fly.    Another floor down. We're getting hungry so we stop to cook a tasty meal, using some wild rice and canned have-it-all for a couple random effects.   The flavor is perhaps a little too intense.    We arrive on the final floor and take out some more snailmothers.   In the south is the site's first legendary and the relic chest. We leave the boss to our slugs and head for the chest.   The reward is an artifact bracelet. It has pretty great defensive stats for arm gear, but since the stats are averaged (and rounded down) between arm slots we'd need to polygel it to really benefit. It's not worth giving up the force bracelet for that, but it might be worth using over the transkinetic cuffs. With the dungeon clear, we stop by Yd to offload some of our mountain of crysteel gear.  Tilli is selling another Zetachrome weapon, so we get a second choice for our golem's armaments.  We have most of the pieces for the golem now - next time we'll head into the Moon Stair and see if we can't get the power supply sorted out.
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Aug 9, 2023 06:05
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Pretty funny to think about offering Pariahs as a sanctuary. "Actually I think wandering around friendless is the way to go."
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Aug 9, 2023 07:46
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Are we going to, well, miss our tongue?
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Aug 9, 2023 11:07
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Subjunctive posted:Are we going to, well, miss our tongue? It comes back once the food effect expires I think
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Aug 9, 2023 11:22
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That meal effect actually only gives you a sore throat, which eventually leads to glotrot and tongue rotting if you fail your toughness save enough times but doesn’t do anything on its own. Our toughness is high enough by this point in the run that we made the save to fight it off without doing anything special, but worst case we could have just cooked another of those “one of your negative conditions is removed at random” meals to get rid of it.
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Aug 9, 2023 12:26
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Bey Lah, noooooooo
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Aug 9, 2023 12:44
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  We stop by Yd on our way to the Moon Stair. The Kaleidoslugs are hostile to us, so Kushruyumet slaughters them all and we make a cool cape from their corpses. Fortunately the freehold doesn't believe in personal property, so Rokhas can't complain about us killing his herd.  We can't wear it ourselves thanks to our gun rack, so Slog gets to look pretty.  The Moon Stair occupies the eastern edge of the map, surrounded by mountains and spilling out into the jungle.  Our goal is Eyn Roj, home of the Tree of Life - we need to see if we can convince it to provide the energy to power our golem.  Of course, it's probably not too surprising to learn that we can't just walk straight there. We'll have to travel on foot.  It's a long trip from the jungles south, if you go the whole way on foot. If we only had to make the trip once it would be fine, but we actually have two historic sites right next to the tree on our run, so it's probably worth taking the effort to make a shortcut through the mountains.  Mountains are a pretty low level biome, regardless of where on the map they are, so we're mostly facing harmless goats and leeches.  There's also a Qudzu symbiote dromad merchants. Qudzu symbiotes use the qudzu's faction and not the host's, so they're hostile to us.  We self-defense them down and continue on our way.  We can't reach the far side of the map, but that's expected for mountain tiles like this.  As Sultan, it's only fair that we invest in infrastructure. A road to the Tree of Life is just what the Yd Freehold needs to help them get back on their feet after the recent slump in kaleidoslug ranching!  So we dig,  and dig,  and dig some more.   Partway through we find a legendary deep slumberling napping in the middle of the (future) road. Hated by mopango, huh?  The mopango are another potential home for the Slynth. It's a long shot, but since bears hate us anyway we might as well bring them a little closer to supporting us.  The slumberling was rated as "impossible", but the difficulty rating is purely a comparison between levels, so it breaks down in the lategame like this. He has absolutely no response to the freeze ray + light rail combo, even before you consider our slug friends.   If we keep picking up rep with different villages we're bound to hit 600 with one of them sooner or later.  We dig a little more, and finally reach the end of the mountains. One more step and we'll be in the Moon Stair. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4F-oo0UMcY  The Moon Stair is a completely new biome, with no creatures or terrain shared with the places we've been so far.   It has some interesting plants, but the most striking feature of all is the terrain. The walls jut upward in bizarre, unnatural angles, defying all reasonable geometry.   Hexagonal tiles??  Unlike the rainbow woods we can still peek at the world map to get our bearings, we just can't walk on it. The Tree of Life should be about seven screens to the northeast.   Despite being such a late game area, the Moon Stair is actually a pretty quiet place. Most screens don't have any creatures at all in them, leaving us to weave our way through the crystals in silence.   A couple screens into the trip we encounter our first creatures, as well as the other big environmental feature in the stairs.  Unimax will usually be neutral to the player, but we've angered grazing hedonists enough in our run that they want to kill us instead. They can hit hard in melee, but overall they're the most normal creatures here, so we don't have any issue taking them down with our usual strategies.  Dilute warm static shows up in pools in the moon stair rather than water. It's not as powerful or as valuable as the pure warm static we've bought in the past, but you'll want to respect it all the same. Getting dilute static on you will cause you to start glitching, which can give you any active effect in the game. Any effect. A lot of them are harmless or even beneficial, but there can be some really bad ones too, so generally you'll want to try and avoid touching it.   The fight itself is pretty simple. We fire our freeze ray enough that the nearby tiles starting getting frozen just from the ambient cold, but luckily it turns out our cherub friend has countermeasures for that.   We head north after that, but it looks like we got some warm static splashed on us. We get off pretty lightly - we fall asleep and scintillate a bit. Slog got covered in spores, but thankfully they didn't lead to any itchy skin or fungal infections.  It's a dead end up ahead, so we'll have to dig our way through.   The crystals break hex by hex rather than tile by tile, and they're fairly brittle, so it's a lot easier to dig a direct path through to your destination here than it was back in the mountains. You'll want to avoid breaking more crystals than you need to, though - there's a very small chance each time you do it that it creates some hostiles reflections of you, and unlike the clonelings in Bethesda Susa they'll be fully equipped. Like most creatures in Qud, we don't really have a great way to deal with someone behind a force bubble firing a freeze ray + light rails at us.  We find a zero jell up ahead. They're not too dangerous, except they're made of dilute warm static, so every time they attack they can cause a random effect, and on death they'll leave a pool of it behind.   We can freeze them and keep them from getting any attacks off in the fight, but that doesn't protect Kushruyumet from getting splashed once it pops. That little oval in the middle is a container with 1 dram of pure warm static - the zero jells will occasionally drop one when they die. We'd like to pick it up, but there's a big problem.  One of time clones got splashed with warm static, glitched into the love injector effect, fell in love with the dying zero jell, and turned against the party. It's the one right next to us, too.  We try to jump back to get some distance, but we miss the landing and go prone. The clone runs up to attack, and then...!  We're suddenly unharmed at the other end of the map. Remember that relic we found last time, with the 11% chance to blink away instead of taking damage? It just paid off. We're right by the edge of the screen now, and there's no way for the clone to get anywhere near us. It's a bit of a shame leaving the warm static behind, but we can always come back for it later.  There's another new plant nearby too - noisegrass is rarer than the others, but you can sometimes harvest wild rice from it when you find it.    We get another quiet screen as we pass by a field of crystal flowers.   Past that is another zero jell, but this time we're able to gun it down from afar so nobody gets splashed.   We're almost to our destination now. On the next screen we pass by a tree and find ourself face to face with another new enemy, but I don't even have time to take a screenshot before we blink away.   Our friends are still down in the southeast. Glow Wight apotheotes spawn with a random physical mutation, so you have to approach each one individually. This one has electrical generation, which can be a powerful burst of damage, but it spent its charge on us only for us to blink away instead of taking any damage, leaving it spent and surrounded by angry slugs.  After a couple steps we get some exp and a corpse shows up in our distant view of the map. Looks like the situation's under control.  We keep heading to the east.   On the next screen we get interrupted by a warning highlighting where a creature is about to attack. It's a dreamcrungle, and it's focusing its crungling gaze! Dreamcrungles are a very interesting creature, and their crungling gaze probably deserves its own dedicated update. For right now, though, we're on a mission. Crungling will have to wait.    We finally arrive at Chavvah, the Tree of Life.   Leaves and fallen branches surround the tree, as well as a moat of warm static.    I cleverly rocket jump over the static, avoiding any negative effects. (I forgot to tell our friends to stop following, so they're just going to walk through the pool and track static in here after us)    Inside the tree is a chiming rock. It's impressive how otherworldly the slight glow effect looks after a long playthrough where every other effect in the game has chunky pixels, a limited pallet, and fits neatly into individual tiles.  There's nothing else in here except for a locked staircase leading downward. We'll have to investigate the crystal.       We found the tree, or at least the physical structure of it, but it looks like we're not done yet. We'll have to travel to the keter in order to talk.  Peeking at the world map, we can see that our next destination is another four tiles to the south.  We head on our way, passing by another dreamcrungle, when suddenly the dilute static we stepped in kicks in.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K9azUz4mtU Suddenly, everything stops. This message is what you see when you activate a timecube, the rarest artifact in the game. It freezes time for 25-50 turns, letting us act freely while the rest of the world is immobilized. I did say static could give any active effect. The effect is completely wasted against this random dreamcrungle, of course, but it's cool to see it at all.    Time resumes, and we continue our journey south.  The next screen is a bit more open, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G1HLwv3W4w Wait, did the music just change? Is this  Is there a village here?  Yeah, there is.      The town is also a psychic graveyard, which means it's not just full of terrifying death robots - it's full of terrifying death robots who can also sunder your mind. We'll be on our best behavior here, we don't want any trouble.  There's a chrome pyramid watching over the orchard of N-ary trees  And someone has a little nook with a bed tucked into some crystals.  There's a glow wight apotheote hanging out in the corner, if you wanted to see what they look like.   And a starshell to the east. Starshell are pretty cool - they're usually friendly, and their shells map out other dimensions, which means every time you look at one:  You learn a secret about its existence. This doesn't do much for you but it's very cool flavor.  The village tinker is selling a data disk for timecubes. They're very expensive to craft, but we'll pick it up just in case. We're one level away from learning tinker III, so we should be able to make one (and maybe use it for the golem? I don't know what effect timecubes give but it sounds cool).   Autoexplore gives up before we finish exploring. The villagers here are growing a field of vantablooms, flowers which create a bubble of darkness around them which out glowsphere can't light up.  That's fine though, let's just find the questgiver.   Oh, it's right here, just hidden by the darkness. That's convenient.   Good to see that even inscrutable, animate algebra is capable of having a favorite waterskin.  The place they want us to go is to the south some more, in the jungles right next to the moon stair. We'll see if we can pick up up later, but it's not worth the detour right now.    We check in with the village oracle while we're here, but it's unlikely we'll get their rep up high enough for the Slynth.  We pass through the outskirts and continue heading towards the keter. It's rare to get an open shot of the Moon Stair's ground like this, but I love how it looks. In the southwest outskirt there's actually another village legendary. Since they're not hated by anyone we care about (and are actually liked by Kyakukya) we go ahead and share our water.  Or, our blood, rather.    Stepping southwest from town puts us on the same tile as the keter. The trip was made a lot easier with the village right along our path. Since we're standing on the same tile we can take a little bit of a shortcut for the last stretch here.  We can't walk to different tiles, but we can still go to the world map and then go back down to a different screen on the current tile.   We arrive in a grove of trees on the east side of the map, cut off from the keter itself. We'll have to break some more crystals to get through.   We run into another starshell along the way.   We find the trunk of the keter, but we can't quite get in yet.   But a few more broken crystals is enough to get us there. The layout is similar to the trunk we saw earlier, but there's a staircase going up instead of down.   Upstairs we can step out on the branches of the tree, with the layout of the ground visible beneath us.   A dream wren hangs out in the branches next to the tree's first... inhabitant? Manifestation? It's a little fuzzy.  They seem friendly enough, at any rate.          We get the key to the stairs back at the physical tree.  Let's see about what we came here for.     We'll be learning more about the gyredream as we talk with the other chimes. The details are vague, but it seems to involve our own ascent of the spindle, and its aftermath.   Fair enough. I doubt there's much else we could offer them in return that they would be interested in.   We water ritual with Dyvvrach as well. Chavvah is another potential home for the Slynth, so we'll see how much rep we can earn. You can ritual with all of the chimes here, but individually they all give much smaller reputation boosts than normal.  In the northwest there's another chime.      War west of Chavvah, probably at the Spindle, and what sounds like a spaceship taking off?   That's all Thicksalt has for us.  In the water ritual, Thicksalt is able to teach us the crystal delight. This is a special recipe that permanently transforms your character's body when you eat it, letting you become a crystalline being yourself. It doesn't work on truekin, though, so we'll let him keep his secrets.    We head upstairs to the second layer of branches. In the southwest we find Tzedech - they blend in with the leaves, so they can be easy to miss.    You can only do this part of the conversation tree once - no going back to see the other options. (Well, okay, you can probably use precognition if you really want to)       Some more interesting foreshadowing about our trip to the spindle here. Not a lot of concrete details, but it sounds like it'll end up being a pretty pivotal moment for Qud.   In the northwest we find the only NPC who isn't a chime - Santalalotze, a mistletoe plant who set up shop in the branches of Chavvah.        We don't buy anything, so I guess we'll have to stick with 'animal'. Sant is another high tier merchant. I'm not sure if xe actually stocks better stuff than Tilli on average, but xyr location is certainly a lot less convenient.  Northeast is another of the chimes.  Always nice to meet a fan.     No info on the gyredream here.   Looks like that's all we're getting. Just like Tzedech said, Tikva is turning its eyes away.    We ascend again to the highest level of the tree. In the southeast we find a silent chime lying on the ground.   This is Tau's chime. We pick it up and take it with us. We can't talk with her, but we can look around her room to get some idea of who she is.  There are sculptures,  paintings,  and a chest full of credit wedges. I'm sure Tau would want them to be used and appreciated rather than waste away in some chest.   Southwest is a more talkative chime.      Everyone seems pretty broken up about Tau leaving.    All life on Earth may or may not be about to die. No pressure.     Northeast we find our penultimate chime.   Moon king?    Hmm. Let's try that again.      Probably our vaguest bit of info, but there are some interesting implications here.  Finally, in the northwest we meet _, the chime who originally saw the gyredream. Let's see if they can clear things up for us.   We're off to a great start.     Ominous.   That's all we're getting.    We've been water ritualling with all the chimes, so we're up to 400 now. We might be able to get them to accept the Slynth, if we can find some secrets they like to go with the quest. _ can teach tomorrowful in the water ritual, which is a unique skill not possible to learn on your own. It doubles the duration of precognitive effects, so our sphynx salts would last twice as long. It's a good effect, but we'll hold off in hopes of finding a home for the Slynth here.    We're not there yet, though.  Next time we'll deliver Tau's chime, complete the ritual of -elseing, and see if we can finally secure a power source for the golem.
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Aug 13, 2023 06:14
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Interesting weird note: You can wear the Still Crystal Chime as armor. It's 7 AV and -4 DV and provides some small bonuses, so it's like a sidegrade to Flawless Crysteel Shardmail. Of course, the downside to this is that it can get damaged and even get destroyed in the right circumstances, so I recommend against wearing Tau as your clothes. She probably deserves better than that.
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Aug 13, 2023 10:19
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Huh. I wonder if getting the Chime destroyed opens up any resultant dialogue in Chavvah. I'm guessing they wouldn't be super impressed.
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Aug 13, 2023 11:38
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You can come here before going to the Tomb of course, there will be differences in dialogue due to not having done the Gyredream. You can still do everything else including taking the Tau quest. Also a timecube is another option for doing Grit Gate with, Templar can't kill the bears if you execute them while in Za Warudo mode In addition if you look at the dialogue for the chimes there is a good bit of computer nerd stuff in there, notably if-then-else as mentioned by Tammuz... which raises questions as to the nature of Chavvah AtomikKrab fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Aug 13, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2023 11:48
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| # ? May 8, 2024 02:32 |
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holy poo poo the moon stair rules and the chimes also rule
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Aug 13, 2023 17:36
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