Early Game Checklist: Difference between revisions

The early game is where many people struggle against, and causes them to get very weary of Red Rock very, very fast, forcing them to stop playing before they can see the rest of what Qud has to offer. This is going to be a non exhaustive guide on preparing for the challenges ahead!

This is not the guide to making proper builds, only what you do with them. Because of the nature of this guide, it's going to be spoilery.

Six or greater AV is likely the most important thing to reach in the early game. This is because that when an item's [[PV]] is higher than [[AV]], the damage is multiplicative, as in get additional attacks in, causing unprotected bodies to get eviscerated. Critical hits are guaranteed to hit once, so even high dodge builds need some AV to prevent lucky one shots.

Lead slugs are ammunition for a lot of powerful missile weapons, all of which will likely be the hardest hitting weapon in your arsenal for most of the early game. Missile weapons have static PV, meaning that it does not depend on your character's strength. At point blank range, it's hard to miss too. This is important because this means that with a good missile weapon, near every character can survive the early game given enough ammunition.

Getting lead slugs is the easy part. The village merchant will always sell about 30-60 of them. Be sure to conserve them for enemies with high AV that you couldn't kill otherwise, because it will be hard to get more. The early game is the only time where finding ammunition is difficult. Once your character is able to take on turrets safely or reaches Grit Gate, ammo will be a nonissue.

Some castes/callings start with missile weapons already, making this a non issue. These starts are the Warden, Gunslinger, and Praetorian. If you didn't start as one of these, you can sneak into the desert and take one off of a Issachari rifle. You'll know when the Issachari has a red rifle in their sprite. They only have 4 or so bullets, so stay far away to cause them to miss ([[Spry]] and [[Acrobatics]] help here) and melee them once they run out. The desert rifle is a very powerful gun and can hold 6 shots before requiring a reload.  

Characters only start out at about 14-20 HP, and enemies can dish out much more than that, especially over extended periods of combat without time to heal in between. This is where Joppa starts and Saltmarsh starts shine again. Both of these starts teach [[Harvestry]], which allows you to harvest [[Witchwood bark]] from bright red [[witchwood tree]]s. Witchwood bark heals you to full right now, but will cause confusion if your character has low Willpower. Confusion is manageable if you memorize the map before hand and where the stairs are. Eat a bark and run back upstairs and wait until the confusion wears off.  

If you don't have harvestry, making your way to the [[Six Day Stilt]] has [[apothecary|apothecaries]] that sell them extremely cheaply. If you have the ego, salve injectors are sold there too.

If you have the ego and start in Joppa, you can buy Warden Ualraig's guaranteed glowsphere. It has twice the radius as your torch allowing you to see even farther underground and at night.  

If you lack the funds or did not start in Joppa, you have to look elsewhere. It is a somewhat rare drop to find, and village merchants stock them rarely.  

Special mentions go to the symbiotic firefly and the electrobow that characters can randomly spawn in with. Both have the same light radius as the torch, but are in a slot other than the hand, freeing up a space. They are also really good items (symbiotic firefly gives +400 insect rep, electrobow is a highly accurate low power missile weapon)