The Caves of Qud release roadmap plots the path from our Early Access launch in July 2015 to our full release. As we finish each feature arc, we move it from the Coming Feature Arcs list to the Completed Feature Arcs one. Arcs and arc descriptions may change as we refine each set of features.
Completed Feature Arcs
- Final Region: The Moon Stair
- We’ll add the final late-game region, the psionic crystalscape called the Moon Stair. It’ll include the site of Eyn Roj, where the sentient tree-city called Chavvah takes root.
- New Regions: Deep Jungle and Baroque Ruins
- We’ll diversify Qud’s vine-swathed ruins by replacing the eastern jungle with two minor late-game regions: the deep jungle and baroque ruins.
- The Sultans of Qud: Part II
- In the first Sultans of Qud feature arc, we added generated histories for the Six Great Sultans, including historic sites, cults, relics, shrines, and artwork that told their stories. In Part II, we’ll add the rest of the mid-to-late game historic sites, tying together the events of the sultans’ lives so you can retrace their paths through Qud.
- Better Character Creation and Preset Builds
- We’ll revamp the character creation sequence to be more sensible and parseable by new players, and we’ll add preset builds to get you quickly situated in the world and exploring. Once you get comfortable, you can customize the presets or create a fully expressive character from scratch.
- New Game Modes
- There’s already a community of folks who play Caves of Qud as an RPG, with the debug option to save and load enabled. We encourage this and other modes of play, and so we’ll be adding official support for new game modes. Classic will remain the same – a roguelike with permadeath. Roleplay will enable saving and loading at checkpoints in settlements. Wander will enable checkpointing but also make most creatures in the game neutral to you, allowing you to wander the world without constant concern for combat.
- New Regions: Lake Hinnom and the Palladium Reef
- We’ll add two major late-game regions: the algal-blooming Lake Hinnom and Qud’s prime site for biodiversity, the Palladium Reef. The Reef will include two new settlements, the Yd Freehold and the Hydropon, and a new side quest. This update will also involve a significant overhaul of the worldmap.
- Mutation Overhaul
- Caves of Qud has over 70 mutations and all their interactions produce a wild set of dynamics. While our goal will never be airtight balance, it’s important to us that there are many, many viable and expressive builds. To that end, we’ll be doing a balance pass on mutations. This’ll include a couple new mechanics to bring the power of physical mutants more in line with mental mutants: rapid advancement for physical mutations and limb-sprouting for chimeras. We’ll also be adding new defects.
- Main Quest: Tomb of the Eaters
- We’ll vastly expand the archaeological and historical record of the sultanate with the next leg of the main quest, Tomb of the Eaters. This update will feature a gigantic tomb complex built around the Spindle at Omonporch. It’ll be twelve stories tall, contain several historically striated sections, and include over 100 individual maps, making it the largest structure in all of Qud.
- The Tomb will have its own archaeological and cultural outgrowths, too, including an outer wall of caryatids, tomb murals, the twin Life and Death Gates, the ancient village of Ezra, and a new species of burrowing credoists called the mopango.
- Generated Villages and Alternate Starts
- Right now you begin every game of Qud in Joppa, a starting village with handcrafted architecture, history, customs, NPCs, and player quests. Joppa’s consistency helps new players acclimatize to the strange world of Qud, both its unfamiliar, far-future setting and its hybrid handcrafted / generated approach to worldbuilding. But for veterans who’ve started dozens+ games of Caves of Qud, the opening can feel repetitive. So, as an alternative to Joppa, we’ll be providing procedurally generated villages to start the game in. They’ll have their own generated quests that’ll take you through the early game and link you back up to the trunk of the main quest. Or you can you use them as a launching point to explore the world on your own terms.
- Though the main goal of generated villages is to increase variety in the early game, we’ll be adding these villages across all of Qud. Each village will have its own generated faction, history, architecture, relationship with local resources, storytelling tradition, proverb, signature dish, signature skill, named & unnamed NPCs, and quests. In sum, generated villages will be a culmination of all our generative work up until this point.
- Cooking and a Better Hunger System
- Roguelikes have a tradition of using survival mechanics like hunger and thirst to egg the player onward. The cultural importance of water in Qud makes thirst an interesting mechanic, but our current hunger mechanic doesn’t quite meet our standards. We’ll redesign the hunger system and add a procedurally-driven cooking system. Our goal is to evoke the unique cultural role food plays in civilization and how that role is manifested in the strange and biodiverse world of Qud.
- More Interesting True Kin
- There are two playable genotypes in Caves of Qud: mutants and true kin. Both character types have advantages, but mutants get access to seventy+ mutations, allowing for near-infinite character variety and customization. We’ll narrow the gap by making true kin more interesting. In particular, we’ll expand the cybernetics system that’s only available to true kin characters.
- Reputation Enhancements & the Water Ritual
- The reputation system lets you befriend any of Qud’s sixty plus factions by treating with or slaying faction leaders. We’ll expand the rewards for earning high reputation with a faction and give more cultural texture to the Water Ritual, which is the practice of sharing precious fresh water with a faction leader to secure a bond with their kinfolk. When you engage in the Water Ritual with a faction leader, you’ll be able to spend reputation to learn secrets, recruit the leader to your party, or gain other benefits.
- The Journal, Observations, & Secrets
- As you play Caves of Qud, you accumulate a bounty of knowledge. We’ll add a journal that tracks your character’s chronology, historical snippets you learn about ancient sultans, and useful locations you discover. You’ll be able to add your own notes to the journal and keep track of interesting places on the world map.
- Moreover, observations you make and secrets you uncover will unlock access to hidden pieces of the world. These may take the form of bonus dialog choices or unrevealed locations.
- The Sultans of Qud: Part I
- Qud is a layer cake of fallen civilizations. In his influential history book, “Frivolous Lives”, the Baccata Yewtarch explains how the past 1,000 years have been dominated by petty humanoid kings and interregna. Before that was the Age of the Eaters, when the mysterious progenitors ruled from lofty spires now buried under shale. The lives of five great sultans have been preserved through cultural artifacts and oral tradition.
- We’ll add generated histories for the Five Great Sultans, and shrines, paintings, and engravings that reveal pieces of their histories. Additionally, we’ll add to the world map four generated historic sites whose names, descriptions, contents, historical significance, and look & feel are based on the generated histories. If any artifacts are created during history generation, we’ll place them in the game world. Looking at shrines, painted items, and engraved items will occasionally give you procedurally-generated quests to visit historic sites or recover relics.
- Additionally, historic sites will be populated by procedurally-generated cults that worship a particular sultan. These cults will be fully fleshed-out factions in the game world, meaning you can increase your reputation with them.
- Steam Leaderboards
- To share daily and weekly challenges results with the community, we’ll add support for Steam Leaderboards.
- Daily & Weekly Challenges
- We’ll add daily and weekly challenge characters and world seeds. When your challenge character dies, your ranking for that day or week will appear on the death screen.
- New Areas: The Rainbow Wood
- We’ll add a new mid-game region to Qud, a prismatic fungal jungle that’s home to various kinds of mushrooms, liquid-weeping lichen, and a new liquid: primordial soup. Primordial soup can be catalyzed by other liquids to produce soup sludges with abilities based on the liquids that formed them.
- Main Quest: The Earl of Omonporch
- We’ll replace Ripe for the Conflagrating with a much more interesting quest, The Earl of Omonporch, that’ll hook into the new reputation system.
- Main Quest: Pax Klanq, I Presume?
- We’ll add the next leg of the main quest, Pax Klanq, I Presume?.
- Fungal Infections
- Qud is biologically rich. That richness goes beyond typical life to include diseases, parasites, and symbiotes. Diseases already exist in game, so we’ll be adding symbiotic fungal infections to complement them. You’ll contract fungal infections on your various body parts, and they’ll act as unremovable pieces of equipment that each bestow some type of benefit and some type of hindrance. You’ll be able to cure them, but the cures will be procedurally-generated, just like the cures for diseases.
- Biomes
- Qud is a hybrid handcrafted world with procedurally-generated details. We’ll add more variety to the handcrafted areas by introducing biomes, which’ll be overlaid onto the world map each game via a random noise function. Biomes will alter an area’s flora and fauna.
- For example, the slime biome will add scumgrass and slime pools to the area. If an area’s slime value exceeds a certain threshold, creatures populating that area will have a chance to spawn with webbed toes. If it exceeds a further threshold, creatures will have a chance to spawn with the slime-spitting mutation. Types of biomes will include slimy, tarry, rusty, and fungus-infested. Each biome will be likely to harbor certain oddities and treasures, such as tar-encrusted fossils.
- Better Death Screen & Chronologies
- Death screens are a tradition in roguelikes. Because your characters are mortal, they serve as memorials by summarizing accomplishments, revealing unidentified items, and showcasing final moments. We’ll expand the Caves of Qud death screen and let you export it to a text file. We’ll also add a chronology that narrativizes the events of your character’s life.
- Tinkerable Item Modifications
- Right now the tinkering system lets you build items from schematics that you learn by accessing data disks. We’ll expand the system to let you learn the schematics for item modifications (e.g., ‘flaming’, ‘scoped’, ‘spring-loaded’, etc) and mod your items.
- Mods & Steam Workshop Support
- We’ll make Caves of Qud moddable so you can add your own creatures, items, tiles, sounds, quests, and more. Then we’ll add Steam Workshop support so you can share your mods with the community or augment Qud with other players’ mods.
- Procedurally-Generated Books
- Qud is wild and untamed, but scholarship plays an important role in nurturing civilization back from the seeds of the past. There are already several handwritten books: parables, journals, sacred texts, historical accounts, mathematical treatises, etc. We’ll add procedurally-generated books from across the ages of Qud (and beyond). Though they’ll be cryptic and only semi-decipherable, they’ll contain secrets that you can act on in the game world.
- The Six Day Stilt
- Deep in the northern flats of Moghra’yi, inside the husk of a petrified salt kraken, the Mechanimists are erecting a cathedral of unrivaled splendor. There, and throughout the surrounding Great Bazaar, more folks are gathered than at any other location in Qud.
- We’ll add a new city, the Six Day Stilt, temple-home to the Mechanimists. There will be statues of the Argent Fathers, a hologram of Shekhinah, marble reliefs depicting the sacred events, a Mechanimist graveyard, and a librarian collecting books for the cathedral library (in exchange for XP). Surrounding the cathedral will be the Stiltgrounds, a great merchant bazaar and gathering place with procedurally-generated merchant tents.
- World Seeds
- We’ll refactor world generation and expose world seeds that’ll let you replay or share a specific world-instance of Qud.
- Character Build Library
- We’ll add a character build library so that you can save, name, and share your favorite character builds.
- Skill Refreshes
- We’ll refresh many of Qud’s stale skills and powers, paying special attention to the character-shaping weapon skills.
- Factions and Reputation
- To build out Qud’s vibrant ecosystem, we’ll add creature factions and faction relationships that dictate how each creature reacts to every other creature in the world. As a result of the faction system, each region’s flora and fauna will have their own dynamic. For example, while trekking through the jungle you might stumble upon a chitinous puma stalking a herd of fork-horned gnu, or a goatfolk war party assailing a chrome idol and its worshippers.
- On top of the faction system, we’ll build a reputation system that represents your standing with each of Qud’s factions. You’ll be able to increase your faction by offering gifts and sharing water with faction leaders. Conversely, slaying faction leaders will lower your reputation with their faction. If you’re able to sufficiently increase your reputation with a hostile faction, they’ll stop attacking you. And if you gain enough favor, they’ll become friendly toward you, helping you in battle and welcoming you into their holy places.
Coming Feature Arcs
- A Brand New UI (in progress)
- For a roguelike, our user interface is robust. But we’d like to bring Caves of Qud into the modern era of good RPG interface design. That’ll include a totally re-imagined UI, full mouse and gamepad support, hotkeys for abilities, and more. The traditional UI will remain available for the main gameplay screens, too.
- Better Accessibility
- Caves of Qud is neutron-star-level dense. It’s a puzzle box that’s meant to be unlocked over time, but we don’t intend it to be unnecessarily obfuscated. So, building on our character creation revamp, preset builds, and game modes, we’ll add some sort of new player funnel that’ll help situate you in the world.
- Main Quest: ?????
- We’ll add the penultimate leg of the main quest.
- Main Quest: ?????
- We’ll add the final leg of the main quest, including multiple endings.
- Sound and Music (in progress)
- Our fantastic composers Craig Hamilton and Brandon Tanner will continue work on their atmospheric, original soundtrack for Caves of Qud. We’ll continue adding sound effects, too.
- Steam Achievements (in progress)
- Expect a whole slew of achievements that encourage you to explore every nook and cranny of Qud. Examples: Slay a pentasludge. Become a goat. Wear your own severed face on your face.
- Coloring in the Lines (in progress)
- For all the systems and features that already exist, we’ll continually add more content. That means new items, creatures, cybernetic implants, furniture, cooking ingredients, tile art, and more.