Hello friends!

We are excited to announce that the Spring Molting update is live now in beta. We'll be testing for a few weeks and then releasing the update on the main branch June 6th. Full patch notes can be found at the end of this post, but here is a summary:

- 🚨ALL NEW INTERFACE🚨 Our transformational UI redesign is complete! Fully mouseable, fully gamepaddable, and much prettier, but all carefully designed to maintain the essence of what makes Qud Qud. More polish is coming, but everything functional is in.
- Support for Steam Cloud saves. Play between PCs or between Steam Deck and PC, at your leisure
- a refresh of the starting town of Joppa, with the same lived-in texture as the rest of the world
- hundreds of new sound and visual effects
- several new narrative touches, big bug fixes, & performance improvements

To access the beta, select Caves of Qud in your Steam library> Preferences> Betas> Beta Branch. No password required. For bugs and feedback, please post here.

If you'd like to watch some gameplay before diving into the update yourself, you can watch snapjaw V-Tuber Gra on Youtube. Here is the VOD from yesterday's Ludonarracon Stream.

And if you want to get your friends in on Qud, there is a free demo available from now till May 13th. Access it from the Caves of Qud Steam store page.

Live and drink!

-Freehold + Kitfox


We added an entire new UI. (ie, we completed work on the modern UI, for folks who've been following our progress). More polish will be coming over the next several weeks, but all the functionality is there.

• There are too many changes to fully document, but here's a partial list of new screens: trade, quests, message log, character sheet, skills, equipment & inventory, tinkering, game summary, every journal tab, status effects, reputation, world generation, interact nearby, books, in-game terminals.
  
• The new UI has full keyboard, mouse, and controller support.
  
• The new UI plays natively on handhelds like Steam Deck.
  
• Added a search bar to relevant screens.

• Added full support for Steam Cloud saves.
  
• Vastly improved the performance of saves and loads.
  
• Greatly reduced the number of files per save.
  
• Greatly reduced save size.
  
• Saves are now more resilient towards breakage, from mods or otherwise.
  
• Saves now kept in the \Synced subdirectory, and unsynced files are kept in \Local.

• We refreshed the starting village of Joppa.
  
  • Added a new apothecary: Nima Ruda.
    
  • Replaced Warden Ualraig with a more fleshed-out version: Warden Yrame.
    
  • Gave all major NPCS new dialog and new descriptions.
    
  • Widened the range of artifacts that can be turned in to Argyve. Concurrently, we gave some true kin castes fewer starting trinkets.
    
  • Made some significant changes to O Glorious Shekhinah! These changes carry through to the generated village starts, and in fact are slightly different in each village type.
    
  • Gave the village a makeover, with several new walls, pieces of furniture, and monuments.
    
  • Joppa NPCs now point you to questgivers, like the villagers of dynamic villages do.
• We refreshed the Naphtaali faction and culture.
  
  • Replaced or renamed several Naphtaali. Here's the new roster of creatures: Naphtaali forager, Naphtaali tinker, Naphtaali nimrod, Naphtaali jeer, and Naphtaali sap.
    
  • Replaced chrome idols with unplanished godheds, and their legendary counterparts, planished godheds.
    
  • Refreshed woodsprogs and added them to jungle populations.
    
  • Added Erah the ciderer to Kyakukya.

• Strong feelings creatures have due to actions you take (such as attacking them) now weaken over time instead of reverting suddenly when a map is unloaded.
  
• Creatures belonging to multiple factions now take your reputation with all those factions into account when determining their attitude toward you.
  
• Creatures no longer ignore changes to your faction reputation if they have a personal opinion of you.
  
• Companions no longer revert to their base attitude when they lose track of their leader.
  
• Creatures now get mad at you if you tell your companions to attack them.
  
• Added a new piece of furniture: electric generator.
  
• Tables randomly have items. on them more often.

• COMING SOON THIS BETA: 40 new achievements
  
• Added many, many new visual and sound effects.
  
• Looping music tracks now play seamlessly.
  
• Made some alterations to the track that plays during Reclamation.
  
• Made some tweaks to hindren and mopango dialog.
  
• Refreshed and polished the dynamic wall generation system used for villages (e.g., "dragonfly chitin tent")
  
• Refreshed and polished the display names, tiles, and descriptions of uindentified artifacts and partially identified artifacts.
  
• Added some new trinkets: Added bubble level, spiral iron, and salt mill.
  
• Added a wrench and a pestle.
  
• Reduced memory fragmentation over long play sessions.
  
• Improved turn-by-turn performance.
  
• Improved lightray casting performance during the day.
  
• Changed Issachari renderstring to 'h'.

• We made many, many fixes to long-standing issues around creature attitudes, including creatures losing their
  
• Fixed Asphodel's followerss being limited to 8.
  
• Fixed nonspecific gender verb conjugation.
  
• Fixed several cases of messages referring to a *PooledObject.
  
• Fixed the performance impact when many creatures had died or objects had been destroyed.
  
• Fixed non-human village tinkers and apothecaries not having tier-appropriate stock.
  
• Fixed many other small issues.

• [modding] Creatures now have action-specific opinions of others. For example, being attacked by someone's ally now garners the OpinionAttackAlly opinion.
  
• [modding] Creatures now maintain a history of allegiance. For example: "On the 3rd of Ut yara Ux, <creature> was constructed by a turret tinker." and "On the 12th of Tuum Ut, <creature> was proselytized by you."
  
• [modding] Many invalid components are now removed gracefully when loading a saved game, making it possible to remove a mod from a saved game and continue playing.
  
• [modding] Made the Leader part more general and functional. Use it to generate a creature with companions.
  
• [modding] MinEvents now support registration with prioritized execution and optional serialization.
  
• [modding] Any class can now register for a MinEvent by implementing the IEventHandler interface.
  
• [modding] Event handlers now use event registrars to handle both registration and unregistration with a single method implementation.
  
• [modding] Some events are now sent and can be listened for on the global game level, such as AfterPlayerBodyChangeEvent.
  
• [modding] Added ModSingletonEvent, ModPooledEvent and IModEventHandler, which allow creating modded events with native performance. See XML docs for examples.
  
• [modding] Object instances can now tokenize themselves for the serializer by implementing the ITokenized interface.
  
• [modding] IParts can now define a priority which determines their order within the parent object's list. This has an effect on the orders of event processing and serialization.
  
• [modding] Inert parts with no functionality, such as those gained from some skills, can now define a skip priority that excludes them from event processing, for a minor performance benefit.
  
• [modding] Ported blueprint builders to be IObjectBuilders, which are singletons that can process many game objects without creating garbage or polluting the object's parts.
  
• [modding] Text variable replacers, such as "=verb:shloop=" or "=player.waterRitualLiquid|capitalize=", are now moddable by decorating a class and method with the related attributes.
  
• [modding] Complex and/or custom text variable operations can now use the Text.StartReplace() builder to do every replacement in a single pass.
  
• [modding] Abilities can now set IsWorldMapUsable to allow activation on the world map.
  
• [debug] Added a 'show attitude' action to creatures when debug information on object internals is enabled.

Freehold Games' resident snapjaw v-tuber Gra is streaming live right here on Steam! She will be playing the beta for the Spring Molting update, which will be out tomorrow on the public beta branch.

Caves of Qud is also part of the official selection for this year's Ludonarracon, check out the entire event over here.

Love Qud but want to get your friends in on the action too? You're in luck because there is a free demo available from now till May 13th. You can access the demo from the Caves of Qud Steam store page

Subscribe to Gra on Twitch to see more of her streams: http://twitch.tv/grastreams

-Alexandra

206.77

• Flaming tar pits are once again flaming.
  
• Terrified creatures no longer charge.
  
• Tumbling pods that are cult leaders now grant XP if they explode during combat.
  
• You can now select stacks of items when donating books to Sheba or throwing artifacts down the Sacred Well.
  
• You can now rename yourself in your original body or one your mind is stranded within.
  
• The name for your saved game is now updated when you take a new name via stranded mind or otherwise.
  
• Stilt Day Stilt pigs no longer open their pens.
  
• Conjoined girshlings are now considered plural.
  
• If you're standing next to friendly creature, you can use their culture when renaming your companions.
  
• Clarified the popup message when you can't autoexplore the full map due to unusually dark darkness.
  
• Goggles are now referred to in "pairs" rather than sets".
  
• Gave thistle pitches a sell value.
  
• Made Asphodel's description respect dynamic pronouns.
  
• Added info about using the Alt overlay to the manual.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused a popup message when one of your companions incurred extradimensional disappointment.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused intact cryochambers to spawn on stair landings.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused Neelahind to say the well has been poisoned by a previous accusation when the evidence did not match the culprit.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the 'Jeweled Dusk' achievement to unlock when you were not the target of the gemming attack.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the waking dreamers to always start one experience point away from leveling up.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused temporary merchants to drop non-temporary wares on death.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused 'Petals on the Wind' to be unfinishable if you had already started 'Find Eskhind'.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused 'The Earl of Omonporch' delegates to spawn with and leave behind companions.

Hey there,
Here's an update on last week's Feature Friday plus some other news. Since it's already Thursday, we've decided to just wait and post Feature Friday along with this week's patch tomorrow. Then, we'll be skipping Feature Friday next week, because: the following week we're posting the Spring Molting beta!

So the schedule is

• Friday, April 26th: Feature Friday
  
• Friday, May 3rd: no Feature Friday; patch skipped
  
• Sometime between May 6th - May 10th: Spring Molting beta

You can read about Spring Molting and our roadmap for 1.0 and beyond here.

Live and drink, friends.

Hey all,
Got some team tech issues so we'll be posting this week's patch a few days late, likely some time this weekend.

Until then, live and drink.

206.75

• The salt desert is once again populated with scorpiocks.
  
• Credit lockboxes are now made out of metal, as claimed.
  
• Gigantic tonics now indicate they contain double dosage.
  
• Flowers are no longer breakable.
  
• Symbiotic fireflies are now treated as live animals.
  
• Legendary animated objects now have "animated" in their display names, where appropriate.
  
• Added plants and farmable plants to Mountains population tables.
  
• Motorized treads and gun racks can no longer be dismembered.
  
• Made Spinnerets' web stickiness scale better with mutation rank.
  
• Clarified in Spinnerets' description that you are immune to getting stuck.
  
• When you have Dystechnia, tinkers now give the right message when you ask them to identify an artifact.
  
• Light chords no longer display their blank armor stats.
  
• Stalagmites now render above liquid pools.
  
• Creatures are now less prone to walking over catch basins and polluting their contents.
  
• Opening yourself when you are an animated container (for ex. a table) will now open your inventory rather than saying "You have nothing to trade."
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some spiders not to weave webs.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the AI to toggle many toggleable AI abilities on and off again repeatedly.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the sacred well to prompt you twice about important items.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused limbs dismembered from creatures implanted with a phase harmonic modulator to stay omniphase indefinitely.
  
• Fixed a color issue with mumblemouth.
  
• [modding] Fixed a bug that caused IPlayerParts to be deep copied.

Hey quddites!

As you probably know, we announced that Caves of Qud is finally releasing on Steam in its full glory later this year, after more than 15 years of work. But we haven’t talked a ton about how we get there and what’s left to do. So let’s get to it!


We’ve decided to put out one last pre-release feature arc on our Journey to 1.0. This update is already in private beta, coming to Patreon supporters extremely soon, and then going to open beta in early May & releasing a few weeks after that. Here’s what’s included:

- 🚨ALL NEW INTERFACE🚨 The much-touted, transformational UI redesign is complete! Fully mouseable, fully gamepaddable, and gorgeous, but all carefully designed to maintain the essence of what makes Qud Qud.
- a refresh of the starting town of Joppa, with as much texture & lived-in feeling as the rest of the world
- hundreds of new sound and visual effects
- 40 new achievements
- several new narrative touches, big bug fixes, & performance improvements

Gallery of the gorgeous new interface: https://imgur.com/a/slSlWbh


We don’t want to spoil everything, but throughout summer and fall our central project will be to finish the main quest, and then add something to satisfy those who complete the entire narrative arc of Caves of Qud. We’ll add a more hands-on tutorial, too.

There’s also always tons of t’s to cross and i’s to dot when finishing a game: those last achievements, missing sounds and visual effects, more bugfixes, etc. All of these things will need to be built and tested behind closed doors, and they’ll keep us busy.


No, we don’t have a date, as it’s still awhile away and we don’t want to be up against the marketing budget of the next Assassin’s Cry: Breath of the Duty (trademark pending).

Part of the lead-up to launch is preparing the game architecture so we can properly handle big meaty updates post-launch. Which begs the question…


Yep! We’re going to keep updating the game! Major content and system releases. Of course how many exactly does depend on the financial realities of sales, but no matter what, we have two big DLCs planned already. We honestly don’t know yet if they’ll be paid purchases or free upgrades, but we’re thinking about the right approach.

We’re also considering how to best support other platforms. It’s not urgent or pressing, but we want to make sure we don’t code ourselves into a corner if/when the time comes to maintain several control schemes, hardware, etc.


Those are all the updates for now. We’ll shout-n-video when we have Spring Molting up on Steam for you, but hopefully this clears up any lingering confusion about what comes next. Feel free to keep asking us questions on the Discord; we’re watching out for ‘em.

Live and drink,

Tanya, Alexandra, Jason, and Brian

206.74

• Bundles of noisegrass are now more appropriately priced.
  
• Added ability icons to the gas breath mutations of breathing lizards.
  
• Fungus-ridden robots now actually host fungi.
  
• Spacetime vortices now remain stationary for the first round they appear, giving you a window to step outside their range.
  
• Cragmensch and glittermensch are now harder to set on fire.
  
• High-powdered magnets now indicate when they are destroyed due to application.
  
• Your DV is now set to zero while you are dominating.
  
• Stasis now freezes the timer on bombs.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused interact nearby, the nearby objects list, and the looker object list to consider objects inside solids differently from one another.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the direction of the current local map to be displayed incorrectly when choosing a local map to travel to from the world map.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the item description in power switch abilities to be wrong.
  
• Fixed a typo in murals describing the historic liberation of cities.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused dynamic turret tinkers controlled by you to be unable to place turrets.
  
• Fixed a bug in the ability text of turret tinkers that displayed the internal blueprint or table name it was using.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the target details text of a hidden sidebar to be clipped when using bio-scanning bracelet.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused cleave to indicate a target was cleaved even when it was immune to effects.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused zones below strata 50 of Eyn Roj to be devoid of creatures.
  
• [modding] Fixed a bug that caused population items that did not specify a load strategy to be skipped.
  
• [modding] Fixed a bug that caused load strategies on population groups to be ineffectual.
  
• [modding] The full file path is now displayed when a conversation part referenced in XML cannot be resolved.

206.72

• Extradimensional psychic assassin weeps are no longer noted in your journal on sight.
  
• You are now allowed to pick your target when there are multiple creatures available to beguile or proselytize in a cell.
  
• Flying objects that become stuck (for ex. in webs) will now stop flying and fall.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some golems to retain their mental shield.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some golems to drop a corpse or their inventory on death.
  
• Fixed a bug that rarely caused several webs to spawn stacked in a single square.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused phase webs to break immediately.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused phasing from phase webs to wear off immediately.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented the phased VFX from rendering.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused frost webs to behave differently for player and NPC use.
  
• Fixed a bug that rarely caused fixed settlement ovens to appear in random encounters.
  
• [modding] Added support for removing any blueprint tag by prefixing them with remove: e.g. removetag, removebuilder, removestat, etc.
  
• [modding] Buttons in Options.xml can now declare an OnClick method.
  
• [debug] We made some changes to modding population tables.
  
  • Populations and their groups with the same IDs are now merged by default, specify Load="Replace" to replace them.
    
  • Objects and tables can now be merged by explicitly specifying Load="Merge".
    
  • Any population item can now be removed by specifying Load="Remove".