Warm static chimera rush

This is a route that will allow you to attain moon king status in 30-45 minutes. It’s the route I used in my ultra victory speedrun.

Start as warden in Joppa with starting stats 26/10/18/18/10/18, mutations are Chimera, Corrosive gas, Wings. You can choose to get another mutation with the remaining points but that means one less chimeric limb and one less mumble mouth infection. Probably not important.

Do Argyve’s wire quest to get to level 3, raise Int to 19 and buy Jungle lore. Wings makes rust wells trivial. Buy all the waterskins from Tam. Ritual Warden Yrame for +100 warden rep.

Go to Kyakukya, making sure to find at least one goatfolk village along the way. Ritual Warden Indrix and tell him the village location for +150 warden rep. Buy all the waterskins from Yurl.

Go to Yd Freehold, making sure to find at least two goatfolk villages along the way. Ritual Warden Une and share the village locations for +200 warden rep. Ask him to join you -- and make sure to take his entire inventory immediately afterwards. Now drop in the neighboring parsangs, looking for any svardym that Une will kill. You can just fly to the world map while Une does the killing. You can level up to level 10 ~~easily~~ quickly this way. (I won’t say easily since there are a lot of things that kill you should you get lost or go prone due to wings failing: Warden Une shooting you in the back, svardym eld sunder mind, tongue tyrant, etc) An alternative to this is buying lakes lore and only traveling on the world map to find lairs and villages in the reef / lake to get xp fast.

At level 10, make sure you have level 6 Wings. Invest the rest of the mutation points into Corrosive gas and go to the rainbow forest to fart on the sludges until level 24. This power leveling process takes 5-10 minutes.

Then you fly to the moon stair to get dilute warm static. Wings make this extremely safe. If you see a leering stalking or chrome pyramid just fly to the world map + recoil, but they are rare anyways. You will probably meet a zero jell before you find pools of dilute warm static, so you can just kill it with corrosive gas. Get all the dilute warm static you can, and recoil to Joppa.

Now you need at least 41 desalination pellets, for 40 drams of warm static and 1 for the fungal cure. Buy more waterskins from Tam and Yurl and fill them with 8 drams of dilute warm static each. Now buy desalination pellets from the guaranteed ichor merchant at the Stilt, trading the 8 dram waterskins. Restock the merchant by running back and forth on the salt dunes. Also be sure to donate the cybernetics you got from Une into the sacred well to gain Mechanimist favor. Finally, you need to restock and check Tilli for a crysteel axe and optionally a zetachrome weapon at this point, since later on you will be covered in fungus and be forced to do Chavah for zetachrome.

Once you have the pellets it’s time to go breaking bad and turn your dilute warm static into pure warm static. Here is one way to do so:

1. Pour 2 drams of fresh water out. It turns into 2 drams salty water.
2. Drop a desalination pellet on the puddle. It turns into 1 dram of fresh water.
3. Pour 2 drams of dilute warm static onto the fresh water. It turns into 3 drams of entropic water.
4. Wait until the water evaporates and you will end up with 1 dram warm static.

Now you just chug your 40 drams of warm static. Make sure that you DO NOT BUY skills or mutations with your newly acquired power until you have chugged ALL your warm static. This is so you can decide what your final form will look like.

Keep on buying new mutations with your 120 mutation points, choosing the mutation that gives you a chimeric limb every time, except when it would be Regeneration. This is so you can do mumblemouth divining.

Now you should still have a ton of points left over. So you should level up the following mutations to the maximum: Wings, Multiple Legs, Double Muscled, Two Hearted, Heightened Quickness. If you still have points left over I recommend improving Carapace, Triple Jointed, and Horns, in that order.

As for skills, make sure you get Single Weapon Fighting, plus all the axe skills EXCEPT for Dismember. I tried getting Dismember, thinking the 3% chance wouldn’t proc and end my Hook and Drag early, but it DID, and I died to Ehalcodon’s Quantum Fugue because I couldn’t refresh Hook and Drag in time.

This build guarantees that you can just run up to the girsh nephilim and hook and drag them to death. You don’t even need a high-tier axe. A crysteel axe works fine. In addition, I found that you don’t actually need rocket skates with this build, as Two Hearted takes care of the sprinting time.

You now have moon king status, and can proceed the main quest. I recommend the following:

1. Go first to Golgotha to get a waydroid and continue on to kill Agolgot.
2. Turn in the waydroid quest and start the Bethesda quest. Make sure to kill the Alchemist on strata 9 for the two neutron flux phials, and kill the Sky Bear for the Flume Flier. Continue on to kill Bethesaida.
3. After you turn in the Bethesda quest, it's now time to get mumble mouth on all your limbs. I recommend going to the Rainbow wood, and running around on the world map in the Palladium reef to quickly get the mumble mouth infection grown and also look for Rermadon at the same time.
4. After you have mumble mouth on all your limbs, do a fungal cure to clear your back, face, and one of your hand slots, so you can equip the Flume Flier, Klanq/Kesil face, and wield an axe. You should already have found and killed Rermadon by now.
5. Now you finish the Earl quest and Call to Arms. After getting Klanq to puff on your face, I recommend just cutting it off for the Golem and regenerating it in Yd freehold so you can wear the Kesil face.
6. For the Tomb of Eaters, your goal is to reach the Kesil face as soon as possible. I recommend tattooing yourself immediately with the Mark of Death. But don't enter the Gate of Death as you would normally. Simply go to the zone east of the gates, phase, and flume fly directly into the corridor that takes you up to the crematorium. Once you go into the crematorium, simply phase, and flume fly directly west to skip the fire traps and hydraulic presses. For the Lower Crypts I like to flume fly around until I see a stairwell teleporter. For the Upper Crypts, the upstairs are always in the bottom left corner of the south western zone.
7. After the tomb of the eaters quest, it's time to build the golem. Use the polygel quest reward to get a third phial of neutron flux. If you don't have a zetachrome weapon by this point, you will have to do Chavah for that guaranteed zetachrome dagger that Aoyg carries.
8. Once the golem has been built, it's time to grind out mumble mouth secrets to divine the locations of Shug and Qas/Qon. Go to the desert, turn on phasing, and dash with the Flume Flier. This process should take around 15 minutes.
9. After you have killed Shug and Qas/Qon, the only thing left to do is collect your golem and go kill Ehalcodon. The fight with Ehalcodon should be quite simple, just Hook and Drag like the others. It's also a good idea to wear the Kesil face and the chords of Qas and Qon to get your quickness up. BUT if at any chance you fuck up, for example you accidentally bump attack a tree instead of continuing your sprint + Hook and Drag, Ehalcodon WILL use Quantum Fugue, and each of the clones will be flying. The sprint bonus DOES NOT work when you are flying! So unfortunately if you get to this point you are shit out of luck and will need to reset the run.

sudo_rm_rf_root

Caves of Qud

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Number of turns given by the end screen, for posterity's sake

Turn Count

Caves of Qud 1.0 launches **TOMORROW,** 2024-12-05! The publisher, Kitfox Games, is running a speedrunning contest, going from **December 5th** to **December 13th**, where they're awarding great Caves of Qud prize packs to each of the top runners in four categories over that week. All of that info i

Caves of Qud 1.0 Launch and Speedrunning Contest

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