Fungal infections/Guide

The infectious spores of a brooding azurepuff, jadepuff, and rosepuff

Fungi are crucial participants in the peculiar Qud ecosystem, and play a central role in the game's main quest.

Fungi are also a significant hazard to the unprepared player, because of the infections they infamously spread.

To an experienced adventurer, a fungal infection can be an irreplaceable friend that aids in exploration, improves one's combat prowess, or provides a convenient supply of healing tonics and cooking ingredients. Hosting a fungal infection will endear you to fungi across Qud, significantly improving your reputation with the Fungi faction. However, a fungal infection can also be extremely frustrating or inconvenient depending on the body part on which it is contracted.

Common Varieties of Fungal Infection

Fungal infections are spread by the spores of the brooding azurepuff, brooding goldpuff, brooding jadepuff, and brooding rosepuff.

There are four common fungal infections that an adventuring mutant or True Kin should be familiar with. Each infection is spread by a particular color of brooding puff, but the association between puff and infection is randomly determined for each playthrough, so there is no easy way to know which type of infection one will get from a particular brooding puff.

• fickle gill
• glowcrust
• mumble mouth
• waxflab

Benefits and Detriments

There are many benefits to hosting a well-placed fungal infection on your body. However, there also some notable drawbacks.

Benefits

• waxflab acts as a 2d3 unarmed weapon with unlimited strength bonus when it is contracted on a weapon hand.
  • This is the most powerful unarmed damage available to mutants (equivalent to the damage of a carbide hand bones implant).
• mumble mouth provides an endless source of secrets, including rare and sought-after secrets such as the locations of legendary merchants. Hosting multiple mumble mouth infections at once can result in a vast amount of free knowledge for the player, and open up interesting opportunities to explore lairs and ruins.
• glowcrust provides a continuous supply of luminous hoarshrooms. These can be used as tonics, similar to a salve injector, sold for profit due to their high trade value, or preserved into useful ingredients for cooking.
• Significantly improves your reputation with the Fungi faction.
• Grants bonus armor (AV), and in some cases, additional elemental resistances.

Detriments

• Prevents you from equipping items to the infected body part.
  • Often problematic if your main weapon hand gets infected. It's also typically undesirable to get a fungal infection on a body part where useful equipment would otherwise be worn, such as the feet, back, or body.
• Seriously harms your reputation with the Consortium of Phyta faction.
  • Several notable NPCs that you will encounter during the main quest are part of this faction and may become hostile to you if your reputation is too low.
• All fungal infections have a low AV bonus compared to the AV (or DV) bonuses granted by high-tier equipment.
• waxflab has a notable penalty to DV and quickness that is often undesirable.
• fickle gill has no real benefits compared to other fungal infections. It also spreads between the player and their companions or Temporal Fugue clones, which can lead to many infected body parts over time.

Becoming Infected

Fungal infections are obtained by contact with fungal spores.

When a player or creature that has less than 250 reputation with the Fungi faction enters any of the 8 tiles surrounding a brooding puff, the puff will spew forth its infectious spores into the air. The spores act similar to a gas, and will generally linger in the air for around 60-100 turns. Any creature or player that is in the same tile as fungal spores must make a toughness save each turn (difficulty 10) or become afflicted with itchy skin, which eventually lead to the fungal infection.

Fungal Habitats

Fungal grass, dandy caps, and spotted shagspook

Fungi spawn in zones that are randomly generated with a fungus patch, fungus grove, or fungus forest postfix. This is a somewhat uncommon occurrence but fungi can be found in just about any zone that the player enters. It is common for multiple connected zones to each be populated with fungi. Fungal zones have a particularly recognizable type of blue grass that usually gives them away upon entry. They are also filled with dandy caps and spotted shagspook, which, though harmless themselves, can be dangerous for the way that they hide nearby brooding puffs. A player who is trying to avoid getting a fungal infection should tread carefully through a fungal zone, making sure not to walk around tight corners or enter unknown nooks where brooding puffs may lie in wait.

Obtaining Specific Infections

In some cases, a player may wish to obtain specific infections, and perhaps even to infect specific body parts. Doing so is possible, but requires some preparation and patience.

First, make note in your journal of any fungal zone that you find. This allows you to easily return to the area later when you're ready to get started. You'll typically encounter a few fungal zones during normal gameplay, but you can also simply wander around on surface zones to try and find one. Second, obtain a copy of the Corpus Choliys, which contains the randomly generated recipe for a fungal cure in your world. It may also be a good idea to gather the cure ingredients ahead of time - particularly if the cure requires a rare corpse.

When you're ready to infect yourself:

1. Enter a fungus zone that is home to brooding puffs.
2. Become infected by entering the puff's spores. Make sure to note the color of the puff and its spores (both will be the same color).
3. After confirming that you've gained the itchy skin effect, wait 2-3 days nearby, and see what infection you get.
4. If you got a different infection than you wanted, cure the infection and try again with a different-colored brooding puff. Repeat this process until you find the infection(s) you are looking for.
5. To get infections on specific body parts, you can simply infect your entire body with the type of infection you desire, and then cure each body part that you don't want the infection to remain on.

Klanq

Klanq is a unique fungal infection that the player contracts during the game's main questline. As part of the quest, the player is given a choice of which body part they would like to be infected with Klanq. Unlike other fungal infections, Klanq cannot be cured by using the recipe in the Corpus Choliys. It can only be cured by completing its associated quest.

Curing Fungal Infections

If for some reason you cannot obtain the Corpus Choliys or the required ingredients for the cure, you can consider resorting to Voluntary Dismemberment to remove your infection. However, this won't work for non-dismemberable body parts, such as your back.

The Corpus Choliys contains the cure to many known diseases and infections in Qud, including fungal infections. You must find the book in game and read it to learn what is required of you to cure a fungal disease.

The fungal infection cure recipe will be randomized but will always have the same general structure:

1. Eat a raw corpse of a specific worm-like creature.
2. Then, spray a mixture of gel and one other random liquid onto the infection.

Eating the Corpse

To initiate the cure, the player must eat the raw corpse of a worm-like creature. The corpse required will be one of those listed in the following table.

Non-carnivorous creatures will need to wait until they are famished before they will be able to stomach the thought of eating the raw corpse.

Creature	Corpse Drop Chance	Where to Find
electric snail	100%	A somewhat uncommon creature found in the ruins and jungles biomes or underground.
knollworm	10%	Very common in the waterlogged tunnel. Also found in similar low-tier underground areas.
plated knollworm	15%	Very common in the waterlogged tunnel. Also found in similar low-tier underground areas.
leech	25%	Commonly found in hills, jungles, ruins, and the Rust Wells.
bloated leech	100%	Commonly found in hills, jungles, ruins, and the Rust Wells.
segmented mirthworm	50%	Very common in surface and underground zones near Grit Gate. This is a self-replicating "breeder" creature that will multiply into a larger group.
worm of the earth	5%	Found in mid- to high-tier ruins and in the Tomb of the Eaters. This is a self-replicating "breeder" creature that will multiply into a larger group.
seedsprout worm	10%	A rare solitary creature with a low corpse drop rate. Finding a corpse will be difficult. They are most commonly found in levels 1-5 underground beneath non-ruins biomes (such as hills, mountains, salt marshes, flower fields, salt dunes, jungles, and banana groves). Even in these areas they have a very low spawn rate. If you go deeper than strata 5 underground, they are found only in low-tier cave areas, such as the south-western parts of the world map where the player begins the game, so focus your search on strata 1-5 for the best chance of finding them.

When the correct corpse for the cure is eaten while the player has a fungal infection, the player will see a pop-up with the following message:

You feel a little queasy.

At this point, the player has 100 turns to apply the cure to their fungal infection(s).

After those 100 turns have passed, the player will see the following pop-up and will have to consume another corpse to perform any further cures:

The queasiness passes.

Preparing the Liquid

The cure requires a 1:1 mixture of gel and one of the following randomly chosen liquids:

cider	slime	putrescence
honey	acid	asphalt
sap	convalessence	oil
wine	primordial soup	blood

The mixture must be put into a spray bottle so that it can be applied to the infection.

• You can find guaranteed spray bottles for sale at the Six Day Stilt - the southeastern zone of the market loop always includes an apothecary who sells two spray bottles.
• The spray bottles may appear to your character as a weird artifact [empty] if you have not previously identified one.

The Southeastern zone of the Six Day Stilt market loop also is guaranteed to contain an ichor merchant, who will most likely be selling gel and the additional random liquid you need to complete your cure. If for some reason you can't find gel for sale, you can buy a desalination pellet from the ichor merchant, and use it on some slime. For example, a large amount of slime will burst out of a giant amoeba when killed.

Applying the Cure

To actually apply the liquid concoction and cure your fungal infection, do the following:

1. Ensure that the spray bottle is filled with the cure solution.
2. Select the spray bottle from your inventory and choose the "apply" option.
3. A list of items that looks like your inventory will appear. Your fungal infection is included in this list, but you may have to scroll down quite a bit to find it. For example, if you have fickle gill, a "fickle gill" object will appear in this list, and you can select it.

At this point, if you've done everything right, you'll see the following pop-up confirmation that you've been cured:

The infected crust of skin loosens and breaks away.

If the liquid mixture is correct, but you haven't eaten the right corpse (or the 100 turns allowed have already expired), you'll instead see the following pop-up:

Your skin itches furiously.

If the liquid you applied is not correct, you won't see any message at all.

Additional Notes

• If you have multiple infected body parts but only want to cure some of them, you can do the following:
  1. Use the spray bottle to apply a non-cure liquid to each of your fungal infections. This changes their descriptions to be liquid covered (for example: gooey mumble mouth).
  2. Go to the equipment screen and "clean" each of the infections that you want to remove. This restores the target infections to their normal name (for example: mumble mouth).
  3. Load up your spray bottle with the cure solution and choose to "apply" it.
  4. Apply the cure to each fungal infection that is not liquid covered.