User:Kernelmethod/Sandbox:Build Guide
Introduction
Some disclaimers:
- This guide is oriented towards character creation and the early game.
- This guide is primarily written for people playing mutant characters. "Build design" is, of course, just as much a concept for True Kin characters as it is for mutants. However, outside of figuring out a rough stat distribution, most important True Kin build decisions are deferred to the middle- and late-game. In contrast, the decisions that mutant characters make at the start of the game can influence their entire run.
- And finally -- this guide is highly opinionated, and by no means definitive! There is no objectively "best" build; there is barely even a meaningful concept of what a "meta" build might look like in Caves of Qud. The best build is the one that you enjoy playing with. The intent of this guide is not to give specific recommendations, but rather, to provide a framework with which to judge what builds you would enjoy playing.
Additional references
- Build library
- Early Game Checklist
- Affine's advice on buildcrafting
Stats
Primary stats
See the attributes page for more information:
- Strength: strength affects how much damage your melee attacks do by increasing their PV. It also increases your carry capacity. Strength is required for the Axe and Cudgel skill trees, as well as a few others.
- Agility: agility affects the accuracy of your attacks, and improves your DV. It is required for the Pistol, Bow and Rifle, and Short Blade skill trees, as well as a few others.
- Toughness: toughness affects how many hitpoints you gain per level, and it's needed for the Endurance skill tree (which has various useful defensive skills). It's also used for a handful of saving throws, such as saves against being poisoned.
- Intelligence: intelligence affects the number of skill points you gain per level, which in turn impacts how many different skills you can pick up. It is also required for the Wayfaring and Tinkering trees.
- Willpower: willpower reduces the cooldown of your abilities. It increases your MA, and is required for the Self-discipline skill tree.
- Ego: ego improves the level of your mental mutations, and is required for the Persuasion skill tree. It also affects prices of items you buy and sell.
Secondary stats
Beyond the stats listed above, there are also secondary stats that you don't get to adjust directly during character creation. However, these stats may be influenced by gear, cybernetics, and mutations, and are just as important to consider when designing a build:
- AV (Armor Value): AV decreases the number of penetrations of incoming attacks, reducing the damage dealt to you.
- DV (Dodge Value): DV increases the chance of dodging an attack, and is increased by having a high Agility. It is worth knowing that in the early game, AV tends to reduce damage much more than DV -- one point of AV reduces damage roughly as much as 3 points of DV.
- HP (Hitpoints): you die when you hit zero. HP is increased by Toughness.
- MA (Mental Armor): MA decides how well you protect against psychic attacks. In the early game this includes attacks from the notorious
Sunder Mind mutation carried by 
novices of the Sightless Way, which can quickly end runs if you neglect your MA. There are few ways to increase MA, but one of them is by having a high Willpower. - Quickness: Quickness (QN) decides how many actions you can make per turn. You start with 100 base QN, and every additional 100 QN gives you (on average) one additional action per turn.
- Move speed: Move Speed (MS) decides how many movements you can make per turn. Like QN, you start with 100 MS and every 100 additional MS gives you one additional movement per turn, on average. Note that QN also allows you to make additional movements per turn, and in fact QN and MS stack together very well[1]. However, it is easier to increase MS to high values than it is to do the same for QN.
Step 1: True Kin or Mutant?
Step 2: Building a toolkit
Many players will try to classify build types into a few categories; one common breakdown is "melee", "ranged", and "esper". It's fine to think of builds in this way if it helps you, but this perspective can also be quite limiting: there are many builds that fall into several of these categories, or none of them.
An alternative way of viewing builds, which we'll adopt here, is to see them as different sets of tools in a toolbox. What tools does your build have to handle situation X? What weapons will let you fight opponent Y? A toolkit can consist of cybernetics/mutations, skills, items, or anything else that might feasibly be useful for handling a given situation. When selecting these tools, you should think about how they might complement on another. For example, if a mutation that allows you to escape when you're trapped also does a good job of fighting certain classes of opponents, then they may pair nicely with one another.
Let's take a coarse-grained view of these tools by dividing them into two categories: defensive tools and offensive tools.
Defensive toolkit
Every character starts off with the Sprint skill, which can be used to try to run away from difficult situations. However, usually you want to have at least one or two more tricks up your sleeve for when you're in danger.
Factors to consider include (from most to least important for beginning players):
- How well do I absorb damage? Is there a specific kind of damage that I'm vulnerable to?
- How can I escape from large groups of enemies? What will I do when I'm surrounded?
- If all else fails, what is my trump card? What tricks do I have to reliably escape?
- How can I escape from specific types of enemies? (This is especially important if there's a certain enemy type that you've noticed causes you a lot of trouble, like novices of the Sightless Way or
slugsnouts.) - If I accidentally run into an enemy who's much tougher than me, how will I get away from them?
- How can I mitigate certain effects? What will I do if I get poisoned or confused, for instance?
For example, as a mutant, you could choose to build around 
Multiple Legs and 
Two-hearted to solve these problems by beelining your way out of danger. As a True Kin, having 
shade oil injectors can help you in an emergency by simultaneously boosting your DV and phasing you out (just keep in mind that it may be difficult to find these injectors in the early game!).
It's useful to know a bit about game mechanics when answering these questions. For example, normally it's impossible to use a 
recoiler when there are enemies nearby, so you can't just rely on one by itself to teleport away from foes. However, you can recoil if you're surrounded by your own forcefields, so a common strategy for mutants is to grab 
Force Bubble or 
Force Wall so that you can surround yourself and recoil away.
Offensive toolkit
Qud isn't all about running away; sometimes you'll need to stand and fight, too. When designing your build, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- How will I fight large groups of enemies? What is a reliable weapon that I can depend on even after I've defeated twenty enemies in a row?
- How will I fight specific enemies? E.g. how will I defeat enemies with high AV, like tortoises and cragmensch? How will I defeat ranged enemies, like
snapjaw hunters and slugsnouts? - What other effects am I applying to enemies? E.g. can I dismember them, or inflect bleeding on them; and if so, how will these affect the battle?
Other tools
Having strong defensive and offensive toolkits will help you survive in Qud, but throughout the game you'll also run into situations that require a different set of abilities. It's impossible to enumerate every single thing you'll need to consider during a run, but here's a small sample of the scenarios you should at least think about:
- What will I do to trade? How will I get enough water to buy items that I need (and prevent myself from dying of thirst)?
- How I will recruit new followers to my party?
- How will I complete (some specific quest)?
- How will I deal with (some specific environmental obstacle)?
It's not really possible to craft a build that will handle every scenario in a satisfying way, but if you can prioritize scenarios from "things I absolutely need to be able to handle" to "tough situations that I can live with", you'll be able to craft a build that you enjoy.
Defects
If you're a mutant, you'll also need to think about what defect you'll want to take (you don't have to take one, but most builds do). When picking a defect, the three main considerations are
- What new tools will I be able to pick up if I take this defect?
- What new tools will I need to pick up to cover for this defect?
- How will my other tools be affected by this defect?
For example, 
Tonic Allergy (D) is a powerful defect to pick up because it gives you four extra mutation points. However, it partially removes tonics from your arsenal. This may limit your ability to use, say, 
rubbergum injectors to reduce fall damage, or 
blaze injectors to unfreeze you when you're frozen; so you'll need to find different tools to handle those situations.
As another example, 
Amphibious (D) gives you three new mutation points. It is a nice defect in that it is unlikely to negatively impact any offensive or defensive tools, but it introduces a new problem: you now consume water much faster than you would otherwise. As a result, you'll need to find a way to make up for this new problem. For example, you could pick up the Fasting Way skill as soon as possible; alternatively, you could push up your ego so that you can sell items you pick up during your travels for more (and thereby make up for the water you've lost).
Step 3: Choosing your stats
Once you've figured out what your toolkit looks like, you should start picking stats that support your toolkit.
A good rule of thumb is to select initial stats that make your character well-rounded, and then specialize as you level up (however, this rule is very flexible).
Step 4:
Some examples
Footnotes
- ↑ QN and MS stack multiplicatively: the average number of movements you can make per turn is
(QN * MS) / (100 * 100).