Mastering Skills in Caves of Qud: A Beginner’s Guide

In Caves of Qud, whether you’re playing as a Mutant or a True Kin, it’s essential to develop skills in addition to your genetic abilities. The skill tree remains consistent across all playthroughs, providing a reliable foundation for your character’s development.

Skills govern nearly every aspect of gameplay, including crafting, exploration, combat, and survival. However, acquiring skills goes beyond just spending points when you level up; there are alternative ways to navigate the skill system in Qud.

How to Use Skills in Caves of Qud

Learning a new skill grants your character new abilities. These can be either a passive bonus that’s always active or an active ability that you can use from the ability bar at the bottom of your screen.

Some passive skills can be turned on or off using their specific ability, typically without consuming any time. When you activate an ability, you usually need to select a target, like an enemy or a location in range. Activated abilities, whether from skills, Mutations, or Cybernetics, come with a cooldown measured in turns before they can be used again.

How to Use Harvestry, Butchery, and Scavenging

The skills of Harvestry and Butchery from the Cooking & Gathering category, along with Scavenging from Tinkering, enable your character to automatically gather raw materials as you explore. These skills can be toggled on or off, but if your inventory isn’t full, it’s usually better to keep them active.

• Harvestry allows you to pick edible fruits and leaves from plants, like Starapple Trees. Harvested plants usually indicate their status by changing their appearance.
• Butchery enables you to transform an animal carcass into meat suitable for cooking, although only certain animals, such as goats and boars, can be butchered.
• Scavenging offers a chance to find components in trash piles while you walk over them, but this action makes noise that could draw the attention of nearby creatures.

These actions happen automatically as long as they are enabled. If you possess any of these skills, all you need to do is walk over a searchable tile to collect, butcher, or scavenge.

How to Learn New Skills

The primary method for acquiring new skills is to spend the Skill Points (SP) you earn from leveling up. Each character receives four SP for every point in their Intelligence score per level, plus additional SP based on their genotype:

• Mutated Humans earn an extra 10 SP per level.
• True Kin gain an extra 30 SP per level.

SP Gain Per Level by Genotype

You can use your SP to either unlock a new skill set or learn a new skill within a set you’ve unlocked. Costs vary from 50 to 200 SP. Unlocking a skill set does not require prerequisites, but the skills within that set have minimum attribute requirements that you must meet first.

Once you’ve unlocked a skill set, you can acquire the skills in any order. While most skills don’t require prerequisites, a few may need other skills to be learned first. As long as you have the necessary Attributes and SP, you’ll be able to learn them.

Learning Skills Without SP

If you’re playing as a True Kin character, you have the option to learn skills through Skillsoft Cybernetics. These require License Points, but as long as they are equipped, you will know the skill listed on them.

Additionally, you can acquire skills from NPCs by performing the Water Ritual, provided you have a high enough Reputation with their faction. The starting Village typically offers an opportunity to learn a skill associated with its biome, so after finishing your initial quests, consider offering water to the village leader and asking to learn their knowledge.