Rampant greenspread canopies a starburst of the Eaters' richest works. The jungle is torn at the corners, where crysteel balustrades and star orchid lancets peek through... [203.18. Note: This update will invalidate existing saves. If you want to keep playing your current character, switch back to a previous branch. (Steam > Caves of Qud > Properties > Betas > select branch].

DEEP JUNGLE AND BAROQUE RUINS

• We added two minor late-game regions, the deep jungle and baroque ruins.
  • Made significant changes to the worldmap to accommodate the new regions.
  • Added new creatures: deep slumberling, purple jell, trash abbot, and goatfolk qlippoth.
  • Added new flora: nachash tree and nimbus beam.
  • Added rare urberry bushes.
  • Added new items: ogre fur hat, ogre fur gloves, and ogre fur cloak.

LATE-GAME HISTORIC SITES

• We added historic sites for the period 1, 2, and 3 sultans. The base number of historic sites per game now follows this pattern:
  • Period 5 sultan: 2 sites
  • Period 4 sultan: 2 sites
  • Period 3 sultan: 2 sites
  • Period 2 sultan: 1 site
  • Period 1 sultan: 1 site
• The world now properly generates all historic sites that, according to gospels and quests, contain relics. This means that occasionally some additional historic sites are generated.
• We made mid and late-game historic sites have fewer levels. They now max out at around depth 7.

NEW ACHIEVEMENTS

• Added 48 new achievements.
  • Mechanimist Reformer; Aaaaaaaaargh!; Feast Upon the Goat Hearts! *cheers*; Rocket Bear; Two Cats Are Better Than One; Me, Myself, and I; Clonal Colony; The Woe of Apes; Close the Loop; Tourist; Sight Older Than Sight; What Are Directions on a Space That Cannot Be Ordered?; Star-Eye Esper; The Quasar Mind; There Can Be Only One; Glimmer of Truth; Sultan of Salt; Absolute Unit; Non-Locally Sourced; Surprise!; From Thyn Heres Shaken the Wet and Olde Lif; All Those Who Wander; The Recitation of the Drowning of Eudoxia by the Witches of Moonhearth; A Clammy Reception; What's Eating the Watervine?; Byevalve; You Recame; Dayenu; Belong, Friends; Token of Gratitude; The Laws of Physics Are Mere Suggestions, Vol. 2; Aetalag; I-; *gulp*; Jeweled Dusk; The Narrowing Sky; Dawnglider; Was It Something I Said?; Lottery Winner; The Psychal Chorus; Become as Gods; Live and Ink; tsk tsk; Raisins in the Layer Cake; May the Ground Shake But the Six Day Stilt Never Tumble; Red Rock Hazing Ritual; Mumblecore; Open Your Mind

RED ROCK

• We gave Red Rock a big makeover. It's now much more cavern-like, includes unique encounters, and is home to a snapjaw settlement.

RUST WELLS

• The Rust Wells have been entirely revamped. The dungeons are now based on fulcrete wells that are dug into the earth.
• Added a mechanism to allow flight in strata beneath the surface when there is sufficient open sky above you.

BETTER RUINS

• We revamped ruin generation and population in several sites.
  • Sites include ruin worldmap tiles (extending 30 strata down), baroque ruin worldmap tiles (also extending 30 strata down), unnamed ruins found in the jungle of deep jungle, and some named ruins.
  • Revamped ruined structures tend to be a little more complex than they were previously.
  • Ruin creature and loot population is much improved.
• We added a rare chance for power grid, hydraulic, and mechanical infrastructure to appear in various sites.
  • Possible sites include ruin worldmap tiles (extending 30 strata down), baroque ruin worldmap tiles (also extending 30 strata down), unnamed ruins found in the jungle or deep jungle, Bethesda Susa, and some villages.
  • Infrastructure and the equipment it powers will be found in various states of disrepair.
  • Infrastructure equipment may or may not have a use.
  • Added moon, sun, fool, milk, and secant gates.
  • Added -- or made dynamically generatable -- some other new furniture of varying technological sophistication.
  • Glass pipes now change color depending on what liquid is inside.
  • Removed metal and plastic hydraulic pipes.
• Also improved the quality of random cave encounters.

GAMEPLAY

• We made a bunch of changes to starting equipment.
  • All castes and callings now start with at least 3-4 witchwood bark. Correspondingly, starting village apothecaries now stock only a token amount witchwood bark.
  • Reduced the number of starting torches to a more reasonable amount.
  • All starting food -- crusty loaf, food cube, Ekuemekiyyen greens, and salthopper chips -- can now be cooked with. Smoldered mushrooms still preserve into pickled mushrooms.
  • Made a bunch of tweaks to true kin starting gear. As a result, they now start with more tonics than they had been in the beta, but not as many as they were capable of starting with on mainline.
  • Scholars now have a chance to start with a couple books.
  • Pilgrims now start with at least one book and a wineskin.
  • Apostles now start with a honeyskin.
  • Consuls now start with a wineskin.
  • Watervine farmers now start with some random ingredients and a cookbook.
  • Arconauts now start with some canned Have-It-All instead of mystery meat.
  • Fuming God Child's ash-stained robes now grant +1 AV.
  • Greybeards now start with furs and a short bow.
  • Horticulturists and Priests of All Suns now start with a short bow.
  • Priests of All Moons now start with a compound bow.
  • Castes and callings that start with missile weapons now have more ammo.
• If you have Gadget Inspector, you can now deploy wire.
  • 1" of wire extends across one tile.
  • You can deploy up to 10' at a time.
  • Deployed wire can be used to connect components across a working power grid.
  • Wire objects now merge into a single coil that weight 1lb per 25'.
• Witchwood bark now heals a slightly reduced amount.
• Witchwood bark now heals over three turns in descending amounts (12-14 on turn 1, 6-7 on turn 2, 3 on turn 3).
• If you have the Hooks for Feet defect, your dismembered hooks now regrow.
• We reduced the defensive buffs from cooking with the preserved gland paste of the various bearded lizards.
  • Sleetbeard gland paste and concentrated sleetbeard gland paste now bestow +10 and +20 cold resist, respectively, instead of +100.
  • Flamebeard gland paste and concentrated flamebeard gland paste now bestow +10 and +20 heat resist, respectively, instead of +100.
  • Tartbeard gland paste and concentrated tartbeard gland paste now bestow +10 and +20 acid resist, respectively, instead of +100.
  • The gland paste and concentrated gland paste of nullbeards, gallbeards, dreambeards, stunbeards, and maze beards no longer offer any defensive bonuses.
• Added two new shields: crysteel aegis and flawless crysteel aegis.
• You can now butcher ape fur hats and ape fur gloves from albino ape corpses. The descriptions of these items were changed to make this more sensible.
• Relic curios that summon friendly creatures now typically summon higher-level creatures.
• Relic tonics now provide two attribute/mutation points instead of one (or boost an attribute by two instead of one).
• Relic melee weapons are now sometimes two-handed.
• Widened the range of possibilities for relic missile weapons.
• Removed short swords from the game because their stats were extraneous and identical to daggers. If they do come back, they'll likely be revamped.
• You now fall in love with statues and figurines depicting creatures you would normally fall in love with.
• The life drain effect of bloody soup sludges no longer triggers on all weapon hits, instead restricted to a hit from their bloody pseudopod.
• Rocks falling from the ceiling now respect phase.
• On Roleplay and Wander modes, Gyl is now a checkpoint location.
• Creatures no longer spawn inside the [redacted] at Gyl.
• You can now ask Pax Klanq to puff on you again if you lose your Klanq infection prior to finishing the quest to spread it.
• Snapjaw lairs are now populated with a variety of snapjaws.
• Sleeping waydroids in the Grit Gate enclave are now friendly to Barathrumites.
• Pathfinding now slightly prefers to avoid tiles next to pits, shafts, and open air.
• Industrial fans now blow gases around.
• Fixed some punctuation in messages about being blown around by industrial fans.
• Adjusted the tier of Bethesda Susa and Asphalt Mines subterranean levels.
• Increased the item tier of liquid-cells and nuclear cell.
• Adjusted the tiers of some missile weapons.
• Made a small adjustment to the creature tier calculation.

UI

• We added a brand new Control Mapping screen with new functionality.
  • It's enabled when modern UI elements or the prerelease input manager is enabled.
  • Added support for multiple input devices.
  • You can now choose the control mapping scheme if you have multiple input devices connected.
  • Removed the Key Mappings option from the Esc menu. You can still access the Control Mapping screen via Options > Controls > Control Mapping.
  • Fixed several bugs with default prerelease control bindings.
• When the prerelease input manager is used with a gamepad, gamepad buttons are now shown in hotkey prompts.
• Added better keyboard button icons in the Control Mapping screen and character creation sequence.
• We added full Steam Deck support.
  • Launching on Steam Deck defaults to 1.25x.
  • Launching on Steam Deck defaults to gamepad input.
  • Launching on Steam defaults to the prerelease input manager.
  • Updated Steamworks SDK to 1.53a.
• Text input fields now display an overlay keyboard if one is available on the device.
• Added a brand new UI for the Continue screen and removed the stand-in overlay one.
• Mouse input is now enabled by default.
• Added a new force attack binding to the prerelease input manager which will force attack in the currently selected direction. (defaults to alt+L1)
• Added new tiles for the following objects: canned Have-It-All, canned mystery meat, bandage, desalination pellet, knollworm skull, blood-stained neck ring, miner's helmet, fire ant gaster, steel buckler, steel shield, carbide shield, bronze ingot, qudzu stem, rubber tree seed, fullerite aegis, hunk of cheese, Yd Freehold workshop sign, jeweler sign, some books, tokens, timecube, relic curios, gentling cone, eyeless crab legs, crimson hood, mirrorshades, telemetric visor, chrome mantle, mercurial cloak, rainboweave cloak, worn burnoose, Praetorian's cloak, leather scraps, panther's cloak, furs, point-defense lasor, precinct navigator, wrist calc, force bracelet, structural scanning bracelet, life loop, snakeskin armlet, chain gauntlets, elastyne gloves, plastifer gloves, carbide boots, fullerite boots, anti-gravity boots, bounding boots, brinestalk gate, small sphere of negative weight, data disk, waterskin, camel bladder, robot limbs, organic limbs, trash, security cards, spiral borer, Klanq infection, ganglionic teleprojector, forge, anvil, fused security door, geomagnetic disc, luminous mote, quantum mote, palladium electrodeposits, crumpled piece of paper, torn sheet of graph paper, Templar phylactery, chrome platform, pocketed vest, plasifer chem vest, puma chitin vest, fullerite flake armor, rubber suit, flexivest, nanoweave vest, all grenades, and all energy cells.
• Added new animated tiles for hydraulic press, hydraulic irrigator, pumping stations, and solar power stations.
• Broken wire now looks broken.
• Previously chosen conversation options are now more consistently recolored.
• Witchwood bark is now classified as a med instead of food.
• Shale that is adjacent to large pools of water now has its tile detail color altered to indicate vine growth.
• Tweaked seed-spitting vine's tile and ASCII colors.
• Tweaked dreadroot's ASCII and tile colors.
• Changed the ASCII and tile colors of various other objects.

POPULATION REFACTOR

• We refactored our systems for populating maps and creature inventories. Creature and equipment distributions may have changed somewhat (but not drastically).
• Humanoid creatures, particularly snapjaws and goatfolk, now spawn with a wider range of equipment.
• Snapjaw scavengers now occasionally spawn without equipment.
• Tweaked several artifact and junk population tables.

MISCELLANEOUS AND BUGFIXES

• Added a new music track to deep caves.
• Added a new music track to [redacted].
• Made adjustments to the Palladium Reef / Lake Hinnom music track.
• Renamed "desert rifle"" to "Isaachar rifle"".
• Renamed "borderlands revolver" to "chrome revolver".
• Historic sites are now built from a more sensible set of wall types, which includes gilded marble from the appropriate sultanate period.
• Added new descriptions for low and mid tier daggers, cudgels, axes, and swords.
• Added new descriptions for the following guns and ammo: Issachar rifle, carbine, sniper rifle, musket, chain laser, linear cannon, freeze ray, blood-gradient hand vacuum, chaingun, chrome revolver, semi-automatic pistol, chain pistol, pump shotgun, combat shotgun, lead slug, electrobow, grenade launcher, missile launcher, HE missile, phase cannon, nullray pistol, short bow, compound bow, and flamethrower.
• Added new descriptions for the following items: nanoweave vest and rainboweave cloak.
• Tweaked the details and added several new descriptions for relic base items.
• Gave witchwood bark a new description.
• Added signs for gutsmongers' shops.
• Warden Une is now officially true kin and can install cybernetic implants.
• Cloneling clones now count toward the achievements "Me, Myself, and I" and "Clonal Colony".
• Added iron gates.
• Replaced some doors with gates in zone generation where appropriate.
• Historic sites no longer have erroneous "unknown"s in their descriptions.
• Objects with fractional weight, like wire strands, no longer count as 0 weight items for the autoget option "Auto-pickup 0 weight items".
• Objects with negative weight are now picked up when "Auto-pickup 0 weight items" is enabled.
• Added better lighting to Grit Gate.
• Fixed a bug that caused the razed goatfolk village to fail to build.
• Fixed a bug that caused read books to count multiple times for achievements.
• Fixed a bug that caused the achievement for traveling to the Six Day Stilt not to unlock if you had accepted the quest O Glorious Shekhinah!
• Fixed a bug that caused the "Hole Like a Head" achievement to not unlock if you had multiple heads.
• Fixed a bug that caused the game to freeze if you were dominating an object requiring fungal vision as the shimmering effect expired.
• Fixed a bug that caused the shimmering screen effect from consuming Eater's flesh to persist when dominating another creature.
• Fixed a bug that caused part of the upper Tomb of Eaters not to be flagged as an interior space.
• Fixed a bug that caused the main quest to skip ahead to "The Earl of Omonporch" if Asphodel died early.
• Fixed a bug that caused objects that were immobile for any reason to become immune to the effects of time dilation.
• Fixed a bug that caused one of the four children of the Tomb to occasionally not spawn.
• Fixed a bug that caused svardym storms to roll over to protected zones like the Yd Freehold if the storm started outside of it.
• Fixed a bug that caused lithofexes to refract their own lithifying gaze if equipped with refractive gear.
• Fixed a bug that caused high explosives (including sowers seeds) to occasionaly explode forever.
• Fixed some cooking effects not serializing properly.
• Fixed a bug that caused the game to occasionally crash when you accessed a book.
• Fixed a bug that caused some relics to generate with place names.
• Fixed a bug that caused artifacts providing additional carry capacity to function when improperly equipped.
• Fixed a bug that caused the hooks from Hooks for Feet to be placed in your inventory when buying new mutations.
• Fixed a bug that caused popups about extradimensional psychic hunters to continue appearing after you left [redacted].
• Fixed a bug that caused the Puff Spores ability to persist permanently if the Klanq infected limb was dismembered.
• Fixed a bug that caused the Grit Gate communications panel to disable trading permanently.
• Fixed a bug that caused Otho not to admit you to Grit Gate if your level was too high when returning from "More Than a Willing Spirit".
• Fixed a bug that caused Neelahind to end the conversation if, during "Kith and Kin", you accused a kendren in prosperous circumstances without having finished "Love and Fear".
• Fixed a bug that caused the dialogue of Bey Lah's residents to not immediately update after "Kith and Kin".
• Fixed an exception when a liquid fell through a pit.
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to swipe and lunge on the world map using a long sword.
• Fixed a bug that caused the text for buying additional tinkering recipes in the water ritual to not update until revisited.
• Fixed a bug that let you trade non-gossips secrets as gossip.
• Fixed a bug that made broken wire attached to a live power grid fail to emit sparks.
• Fixed some bugs that sometimes made power grids behave strangely.
• Fixed a typo in Goek's dialog.

DEBUG AND MODDING

• We revamped the conversation system to be much more dynamic and moddable.
  • See the wiki for full details.
  • Conversations now merge their contents together by default.
  • Conversations and elements can now inherit their properties from one or multiple elements.
  • Conversations and elements can now have custom logic defined with C# parts.
  • Custom predicates and actions like IfHaveQuest or GiveItem can be added for use in XML.
  • Elements can now be distributed to other elements. For example, a choice can be distributed to every start node within the conversation.
  • Nodes and choices can now have multiple text elements.
  • Any element can now have predicates, including individual text elements.
  • The logic for the water ritual and dialogue-heavy quests such as "Landing Pads" has moved into Conversations.xml.
  • Added the IfTime, IfLedBy, and IfZoneName conversation predicates.
• We retired encounter tables (EncounterTables.xml) in favor of the much more flexible population tables (PopulationTables.xml). This may affect existing mods.
• Creatures that were previously equipped via encounter table equipment builders are now implemented as multiple creature objects with the AggregateWith tag (ex: Snapjaw Scavenger).
• Added extensive semantic tagging to several objects for power grid, hydraulic, and mechanical infrastructure.
• Added a new debug option, ""Draw zone semantics", that indicates the inside/outside areas of zones using the newest ruins builder.
• Added an option to disable achievement progress (Debug > disable achievements).