Caves of Qud

Devlog

• Feature Friday - August 16, 2019
  August 17, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Reclassified various mushroom-based consumables as fungi rather than plants. Reduced the Ego requirement of Menacing Stare (and thus the Persuasion skill) to 17. Feral lah now get XP for kills made by their pods, unless the pods have found a new party leader. You no longer get a popup message when one of your burgeoned plants dies. If you [redacted] while wielding the amaranthine prism, [redacted]... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - August 10, 2019
  August 10, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  188.0 Note: this update will break save compatibility. Added a new Tactics power: Deft Throwing. We changed how the Backswing power works. Removed the Axe version of the power. New Cudgel version: whenever you make a cudgel attack with your primary hand, there's a 25% chance you make an additional free attack with the same hand. Added a new cooking ingredient: congealed love. Glowpad corpses are... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - August 2, 2019
  August 03, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Added a chance for generated villages to have their own village tinker. Starting villages always have a village tinker. Tinkers now sometimes immigrate to villages during village history generation. Clairvoyance now grants visibility through vantabloom and vantabud's blackout effect. Unpreserved mushrooms are now correctly considered mushrooms. Long blade powers now appear under the Skill category... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - July 27, 2019
  July 27, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.186 You now get a popup message when one of your followers dies, with some exceptions for temporary or swarming followers. Added some conditional dialog to Yurl. Added the framework for certain dialog options to reveal secrets in the Gossip and Lore tab of your journal. Increased the specific heat of all objects. Extremely hot objects now cool off a small percentage of their heat instead of... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - July 19, 2019
  July 20, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Added a new music track to historic sites. Villages can now undergo historic events that cause them to become abandoned. You'll now occasionally come across abandoned villages in your travels. Sheba Hagadias now accepts village history books for trade-in. Added new conditional dialog for Jacobo. Forcefields no longer push other forcefields or holograms. You now get dialog confirmation when using t... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - July 13, 2019
  July 13, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.184.0 We did some work on Grit Gate. Gave new dialog, description, skills, and equipment to Mafeo, Jacobo, Sparafucile, Dardi, Aloysius, Hortensa, Iseppa, Neek, and Shem -1. Gave Ereshkigal new dialog. Added a new piece of jewelry: silver rondure. Added a new item: umber frock. Made the completion of The Earl of Omonporch quest more robust. Removed a duplicate dialog option that appeared in co... Continue reading
• No Patch This Week, Weeklies Resume Next Week
  July 04, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Hello all, Due to a short week (July 4th holiday) and behind-the-scenes feature arc work, we're going to skip the weekly patch this week. Updates will resume with next Friday's patch. Live and drink! Continue reading
• Feature Friday - June 28, 2019
  June 29, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Small patch this week as we work on some bigger feature arcs behind the scenes. Added two new rare items: programmable recoiler and reprogrammable recoiler. Abilities that require a particular weapon type to be equipped are now smarter about which weapon they choose if there are multiple options. Added new descriptions for the following creatures and items: qudzu, irritable tortoise, jilted lover... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - June 22, 2019
  June 22, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.182.0 Updated the dialog and changed the quest turn-in sequence for Decoding the Signal to make more sense narratively. Added new descriptions to one of the arc sconces, glass, tinted glass, urshiib, newfather, chromeling, chain laser, forcefield, and force barrier. Fixed a bug with Time Dilation that caused it to speed up creatures rather than slow them down. Added more information to the Tim... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - June 14, 2019
  June 15, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Added new dialog for ichor merchants, shoemakers, gunsmiths, grenadiers, armorer, and haberdashers. You can no longer use spiral borers on the world map. Changed the stats of leather apron and gave it a new description. Gave a DV penalty to spiked gauntlets but increased their bleed damage and save target. Updated the description for telescopic monocle. It now includes information on its artifa... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - June 7, 2019
  June 08, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.180.0 The 'cook a recipe' popup now displays the effect of the meal, sorts favorites to the top and hides uncookable recipies by default. The console version of the 'cook a recipe' popup got a make-over. The ingredients list in the cooking menu is now sorted alphabetically. You will no longer automatically rifle through trash if that trash is a quest item. Heat resistant NPCs will now avoid h... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - May 31, 2019
  June 01, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.179.0 Added new autoexplore options to ignore enemies based on their distance and your evaluation of their difficulty. Autoexplore will no longer run into immobile friendlies and stop. Autoexplore and pathfinding will now merely avoid campfires, torches, and sconces rather than considering them absolute no-go areas. When you stop autoexploring or autowalking because you see a hostile creature... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - May 25, 2019
  May 25, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.178 Target pickers will no longer snap to the mouse location until the pointer moves. Clicking the window to regain focus with mouse input enabled will no longer walk to the clicked location. Various tasks requiring physical movement which did not previously respect being frozen now do. NPCs who are on fire but cannot actually do anything about it will no longer stop moving or acting because o... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - May 17, 2019
  May 18, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  The inventory screen now allows filtering (Ctrl+F or ,). Filtering from the overlay UI isn't supported yet. Baetyl locations are now recorded in the journal. Beguiling is now put on cooldown when you attempt to beguile and fail. Tractor beams no longer move stairs. Liquid containers now let you toggle whether you want to autocollect the liquids they contain, if they contain pure liquids. Creatures... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - May 10, 2019
  May 11, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.176 When you're looking at something with the Look command, you can now hit space to bring up an interaction menu for the object you're looking at. From there you can target the object, untarget it, or bring up its list of visible status effects. Special follower interactions (rename, give items, attack target) are now accessed through the look interaction menu. Some of them work at a distance... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - May 3, 2019
  May 04, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.175 Added a new book: The Artless Beauty. Added a new energy cell mod: radio-powered. Added reasons for why satellite-sourced radio-power might be occluded: orbital debris, glass storms, flocks of birds, acid rain, drift film, or unidentified anomalies. Added new dialog for hatters, glovers, and chefs. You can now name unnamed locations in your journal (Locations tab > hit 'N'). All villagers... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - Grit Gate, Remodeled
  April 27, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  We remodeled Grit Gate. The whole layout is new. Explore! Added a new music track to Grit Gate. Added a functional power grid to Grit Gate. Power is generated at power stations, conducted through power lines (or, in rarer cases, wirelessly), and consumed by various kinds of artifacts in place of battery power. Added new objects in support of the power grid infrastructure: fusion power station, bro... Continue reading
• Feature Saturday - 'Grit Gate Remodeled' Beta
  April 21, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Hey all, No mainline patch this week. Instead, we've posted a beta of the 'Grit Gate, Remodeled' patch. If you're interested, please help us test it! Specifically, we're looking for folks to run through the Grit Gate quest line, especially the new 'A Call to Arms' sequence. You can fast-forward directly to the start of that sequence by wishing for 'stage5'. (Note: the encounter relies on some UI e... Continue reading
• Feature Friday Will Be Feature Saturday This Week!
  April 20, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Hey all, We're planning to post the 'Grit Gate, Remodeled' patch to the beta branch, but we're not quite ready yet, so Feature Friday will be Feature Saturday this week! See you tomorrow. Continue reading
• Feature Friday - April 12, 2019
  April 13, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Reminder: per our announcement here , there are 6 DAYS LEFT before the price up Caves of Qud bumps up to $14.99! The Barathrumites are still remodeling. Continue staying tuned. Added new item: blood-gradient hand vacuum. We refreshed how turrets work. Turrets now require ammo to fire. You can supply a friendly turret with ammo when you deploy it, via its interaction menu, or via smart use. Turrets... Continue reading
• Caves of Qud price is going up to $14.99 in 10 DAYS (April 18th)
  April 08, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Hey all, The story of Caves of Qud 's development is a long one. Twelve years ago we began work on the project. Four years ago we put it on Steam in Early Access. Since then, we've taken an already substantial game and added art, UI, music, sound effects, deeper systems, and a richer world. For a while we've been saying that we'll be bumping up the price sometime before our 1.0 release. Now, as we... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - April 5, 2019
  April 06, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  The Barathrumites are remodeling. Stay tuned. Tumbling pods are now considered hostile at distances greater than 1. Warden Indrix and Mamon Souldrinker can now use grandfather horns, while goat herders can no longer use them. Effects and items that cause astral burdening and tethering, especially norm cores, now have less of a performance impact on the game. If you inject an NPC with a love tonic... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - March 29, 2019
  March 30, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.171.0 Added a new grenade mod, phase-conjugate, that causes grenades to shift phase right before they explode. Added new dialog for scribes, vintners, shoemakers, and Issachari tribesfolk. Increased feral lah HP and gave them a flabby leaf natural weapon. Increased tumbling pod explosion damage. We fixed some bugs with the Spread Klanq quest. Fixed a bug that caused the Puff Spores ability to... Continue reading
• No Patch This Week, Weeklies Resume Next Week
  March 20, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Hi all, We're at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week, so we won't be posting a patch this Friday. Our weekly patch schedule will resume the following Friday (3/30). Until then, live and drink, friends. Continue reading
• Feature Friday - March 15, 2019
  March 16, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Added new dialog for snapjaws, cannibals, arconauts, apple farmers, pig farmers, apothecaries, beekeepers, bookbinders, kippers, and some other merchants. Hypertractors and phase cannons are once again affected by astral tethering and burdening. The following abilities, items and effects now respect phase: stunning force, blast cannon, disintegration, resonance grenades, electromagnetic pulses, th... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - March 9, 2019
  March 09, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Added new tiles for yuckwheat and yuckwheat stem. The fate of Bey Lah now more closely matches the outcomes described upon completing the quest Kith and Kin. Nests no longer attack you with fists. Creatures and most furniture are no longer converted into item stacks. Sphinx salt injectors no longer use two injectors every time you apply them. Fixed a bug that prevented true kin NPCs from successfu... Continue reading
• Featire Friday - March 1, 2019
  March 02, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.168.0 Tinkering messages are now cleared about which bits you need and which you have, and the list of bits you have is now presented in a consistent order. The game version is now displayed in relevant UI messages such as when a game fails to load. You can now order allies to stay put or follow you (via the Look UI). Staying put only stops them from following you around; they still move to de... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - February 22, 2019
  February 23, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  We refreshed the Putus Templar. Tweaked the stats and gear of Knights Templar. Among other changes, this included lowering their level and HP but giving them fullerite armor and weapons. New creature: Gunner-Knight Templar New creature: Banner-Knight Templar New creature: Knight Commander of the Holy Temple New creature: Wraith-Knight Templar of the Binary Honorum New creature: Templar squire New... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - February 15, 2019
  February 16, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.166.0 We refreshed the banana grove. Changed the stats, behaviors, and descriptions of the following creatures and plants: cyclopean gibbon, red death dacca, gelatinous palms (now called irritable palms), and fruit flies (now called adiyys). Added new tiles for banana trees and bananas. Added a new plant to the banana grove: dicalyptus tree. Added a new disease: ??? Added instructions for the... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - February 8, 2019
  February 09, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.165.0 Most static quests now award reputation when completed. The maps "behind" the Spindle are no longer empty. Slam now costs a turn and goes on cooldown when used on inanimate objects. Quests with level-based rewards, like More Than a Willing Spirit, now indicate that their rewards are level-based in the quest accept dialog and on the quest screen. The asphodelytes now get along a *little*... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - February 1, 2019
  February 02, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Added a new book: Council at Gamma Rock. Sapient plants are now considered to have minds and can be interacted with in all the ways mental interaction is supported (e.g., domination, beguiling, etc). You can now throw things through your own force fields. Haggabah can now be detected by Heightened Hearing and Sense Psychic. Feral lah pods now inherit the attitudes of their parent feral lah plant... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - January 25, 2019
  January 26, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Added a new music track to Bethesda Susa. Added tiles for red death dacca, gelatinous palm, arcwyk, skittering sentry, Rodanis Y, the Alchemist, and Saad Amus. Updated Burgeoning to choose from a much more diverse selection of plants that scales in power with the level of the mutation. Reworked Burgeoning so that each time you cast it, a primary plant is chosen from among the viable plants of the... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - January 18, 2019 - Stratification
  January 19, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  2.0.162.0 We refreshed the underground cave systems, adding new geological strata and several new creatures. Added over 70 new creatures. Added several new related harvestable and butcherable items: equipment, consumables, cooking ingredients, etc. Added several new rock types. Redesigned the geological strata of natural cave systems by adding new rock types, creatures, plants, and terrain approp... Continue reading
• New Stratification Beta Patch
  January 12, 2019 by Freehold Games

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  Hey folks, We posted a new update to the stratification beta that's closer to the final version (fewer bugs, monsters are more fleshed out, geological strata are more refined). If you'd like to help us test, switch to the beta branch, go explore some underground caves, and post your issues here . Stay tuned next week for the full patch release, which will include patch notes. Until then, live and... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - December 15, 2018
  December 15, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Another small update this week as we work on a big upcoming content patch. 2.0.160.0 Added two new music tracks for Bey Lah and Barathrum's study. Village music now plays in the outskirts of villages. Quest items preservables are now considered exotic foods. Creatures no longer sell their natural equipment. Reduced Slog's base move speed to balance against their buffed move speed while moving thro... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - December 7, 2018
  December 08, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Small update this week as we work on a big upcoming content patch. Added the Cloaca Surprise and a chronology entry for eating it. Made some balance adjustments to Slog, including a move speed buff while moving through liquid. Gave slugs feelers instead of antennae. Photosynths now bleed a mixture of blood and sap. Telemetric data now appears in the descriptions of certain artifacts when you have... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - November 30, 2018
  December 01, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  You can now cook with green goo, brown sludge, and black ooze. 'Can' doesn't mean 'should'. Web-spinning creatures are now smart enough to spins webs in combat. Made yondercane much rarer. Reduced the amount of fermented yondercane yielded from preserving yondercane. Reduced the drop chance of voider corpses. Increased the price of urberries. Increased the drop chance of electric snail and snailmo... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - November 16, 2018
  November 17, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  We added furniture to Joppa and Kyakukya. We made Tam, dromad merchant, better able to defend himself. You can now cook with salt, asphalt, and cloning draught. Liquids bought from the alchemist can now be cooked with. Meals cooked from village ovens no longer ever bestow a permanent +1 AV. Cooking recipe names are now more varied (there'll be less names like "Baklava with Smoked Baklava on top of... Continue reading
• Feature "Friday" - October 31, 2018
  November 01, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Added some furniture to Grit Gate and Bethesda Susa. You can now properly equip ape fur gear bought from Svenlainard. The Trip power now more properly respects the anatomy of its target. The following powers and items no longer work when you're out-of-phase or have a different flying status than your targets: Kickback, Shield Slam, and geomagnetic disc. Select Target and Draw a Bead are now smarte... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - October 26, 2018
  October 27, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Added a new item: rocket skates. Added a new music track to generated villages. You may now freely access Argyve's chests once you become his apprentice. NPC companions can now become overburdened. Overburdened is now a visible effect. Bioscanning, techscanning, and structural scanning no longer show incorrect DV values. You can only sell unidentified artifacts for a fraction of their value. Conta... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - October 19, 2018
  October 20, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Hotkey favorites now use the most recent re-binding for commands. Leering stalkers now use their pneumatic pistons again. Hypertractors can no longer move holes in the ground or areas of open air. Closed a loophole with reputation modifying items where the rep bonus gained from dominating a creature and equipping them with a rep-boosting item stuck around after the domination ended. When you domin... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - October 12, 2018
  October 13, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  *We changed the way we calculate AV and DV from equipment across similar body parts. *Previously, creatures always received AV and DV modifiers from equipment equipped on any body part that was part of their original body plan. Body parts added later (e.g., via mutations such as Multiple Legs) were treated differently; equipment equipped on these parts didn't have their AV and DV modifiers factore... Continue reading
• Feature "Friday" - October 4, 2018
  October 05, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  New item: anti-gravity boots. Your clones no longer pass on their inspirations for meal ideas to you. Evil twins no longer spawn during game initialization, resulting in half-formed twins. Villagers who give dynamic quests no longer confusingly wander around their villages. Rehabilitated some jumbled outcomes for the Kith and Kin quest. Corrected the rhyme scheme of the procedural love poem. Dawng... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - September 28, 2018
  September 29, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  We made a bunch of enhancements to the body part system. Made dynamic body part growth and loss much smarter. Example: if a creature loses all their hand-like parts, they also lose the ability to wield missile weapons unless their body plan specifies otherwise. Configured most body parts of the same type in a lateral arrangement and made newly grown body parts respect laterality. This means some b... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - September 21, 2018 [Hindren Patch]
  September 21, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Qud's augurs have read the petals on the wind and agree: the deerfolk who call themselves 'hindren' are real, and their hidden village exists. The hindren patch is now live! Added a new village: Bey Lah, hidden in the flowerfields. Added a new faction: hindren of Bey Lah. Added several new hindren NPCs. Added a chain of quests: Petals on the Wind, Find Eskhind, and Kith and Kin. Added a new signat... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - September 14, 2018
  September 15, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  *Brainless things no longer fall asleep. *Hindren clues should now be more successfully excluded from gossip. *Pressing left on an object in the inventory screen now collapses the whole category. *Pouring liquid on the ground now results in a salt-diluted puddle of the same volume you poured, not twice that volume. *You can no longer avoid attacks by certain sludges on the basis of the attacks ove... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - August 25, 2018
  August 25, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Added new, animated tiles for forcefields. Added a new faction: pariahs. Pariahs now sometimes appear on the Stiltgrounds. You may encounter bands of roving pariahs. Blaze injectors can now be preserved into congealed blaze. Salve injectors can now be preserved into congealed salve. Carbide and fullerite fist implants now count as unarmed attacks. Laser beam and falling rock damage messages now ha... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - August 17, 2018
  August 18, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Added two new creatures: feral lah and tumbling pod. Added a new plant: lahbloom with harvestable lah petals. Added a new cooking ingredient: dried lah petals. Added a new option to the campfire menu: preserve exotic foods. This option is for manually preserving foods that are otherwise consumable and so excluded from bulk preservation. Luminous hoarshrooms now preserve into freeze-dried hoarshroo... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - August 10, 2018
  August 11, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Added a new item: fidget cell. Added new level-up sound effects for both the player and other creatures. You can now pet all village pets. Hyrkhounds are now properly considered dogs. Mental mutation levels granted by equipment and meals now count toward your psychic glimmer. Note that this change applies to true kin, too. Hindren clue items no longer appear as randomly revealed secrets via trash... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - August 3, 2018
  August 04, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Cats and dogs now let you pet them if they like you. Some domesticated cats and dogs will let you pet them if they merely tolerate you. New book: Eta and the Earthling, Canto I. Changed the name of a character in From Entropy to Hierarchy. Energy cells now only stack if they have the same charge level. Two-faced helmets and helping hands no longer prevent body parts other than the ones they're add... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - July 27, 2018
  July 28, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  Added a new village government type: anarchy. When you go to the world map and then immediately return to the local map you were just in, you're now placed in the same tile you left from. Village wardens now attack wild beasts or snapjaws that make their way into villages. Objects traded to merchants are now considered part of their trade stock. Equipped items no longer used as ingredients when yo... Continue reading
• Feature Friday - July 20, 2018
  July 21, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  We added several new historic events that make village histories much more diverse. Examples include trait-based reasons for congregation, regime changes and new types of government, and new culinary developments. Increased the diversity of village populations, particularly for the choice of warden. There's now a menu option to fill empty liquid containers. Fixed an issue with village item placeme... Continue reading
• Caves of Qud Is Now Available on itch.io
  July 10, 2018 by Freehold Games

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  #launch, #caves of qud, #freehold games, #early access, #roguelike, #RPG, #science fantasy

  We're so thrilled to bring Caves of Qud to itch.io in early access. A decade in the making, Caves of Qud is a science fantasy RPG & roguelike epic. It’s set in a far future that’s deeply simulated, richly cultured, and rife with sentient plants. Come inhabit an exotic world with us and chisel through a layer cake of thousand-year-old civilizations. We're pairing this launch with an enormous up... Continue reading