kdrnic's Caves of Qud beginner notes

coq.md

kdrnic's Caves of Qud beginner notes

The guide below I wrote mostly for myself as a "notebook" of info I found, but then slightly expanded it with stuff that may be useful to others.

As of finishing writing, I have 16 hours of CoQ playtime and have a level 20 character, definitelly still a beginner as well, perhaps a slightly seasoned beginner.

My previous roguelike experience included beating DCSS with a minotaur berserker and playing a good amount of POWDER on my celphone.

Justification

The game is a tad opaque. As this Qud denizen explains (I don't agree with his overall opinion):

The balance, pacing, and progression all feel especially bad, I feel like I'm playing IVAN, and that game is built to be intentionally unfair. The game feels so utterly reliant on you having prior knowledge of how to play it and cheese it, especially earlygame. The earlygame is so slow, and tedious, and utterly dependent on luck. It feels like it wants me to either immediately start grinding for levels as slowly and cautiously as I can, which is totally unfun, or it wants me to start with a very specific set of skills and mutations, at which point the character creation and building feels redundant. All of this would be a bit better if there was a decent way to figure out the general power of an enemy before fighting them, but for the most part all looking at an enemy does is give you some flavor text. I feel utterly starved of information about what things are and what they do. Of course, something like ADOM can also be like this, but adom is VERY clear about the danger of certain areas and level of danger scales up quite smoothly from the earlygame, you're not going to just run into an inescapable enemy that can oneshot you in the first few levels, in qud you will repeatedly. I'm a longtime veteran of roguelikes and I've never felt so frustrated at one, it feels like it doesn't want me to play the game how I want despite giving me so many character creation options, I feel like it wants me to either use some cheese tactic or a very specific build to progress at all.

Therefore, a bit of spoiling can save a lot of frustration starting out.

Wiki

The real wiki, not the since abandoned Wikia shit, is here.

Setting up

1. Optionally install The Qud Survival Guide and QudUX mods
2. Enable modern UI elements
3. Allow map to be zoomed and panned
4. Automatically douse and light torches
5. Automatically disassemble scrap
6. Ignore enemies less than easy
7. Autopickup books
8. HP warning threshold 60%
9. Always highlight stairs
10. Add a line separator at the end of each turn during combat
11. Enable mods
12. Enable scripting mods
13. Enable The Qud Survival Guid and QudUX on the mods menu

Character creation

True Kin is universally suggested as more beginner friendly.

The video series 2 suggests the following values

STAT	VALUE
STRENGTH	18
AGILTIY	22
TOUGHNESS	18
INTELLIGENCE	18
WILLPOWER	18
EGO	12
Arcology	"Child of the wheel"
Cybernetic implant	"translucent skin (back)"

Pinback's Qud guide 1 suggests instead a huge focus on strength and toughness, and the Praetorian arcology.

Then choose your big dumb fighter stats. This means put most of your attribute points into STRENGTH ("Hulk smash!") and TOUGHNESS ("Hulk not get smashed!") We're just looking for a lumbering oaf with a big sword who can walk around bashing things and not running out of hit points. That's it. On the next and final screen, choose a caste that looks good to you. "Praetorian" offers more bonuses to strength and toughness, and makes you good with swords. Doesn't get much bigger, dumber, or fighterer than that.

Meanwhile, a reddit commentor 3 suggested differently:

Truekin: pick night vision and start with any caste that lets you hit at least 22/18/24/14/16/12. You'll get skill point totals that are multiples of 50 at level 6 and 11 if starting from 14 int (you generally spend 50's at a time), which by level 6, will have risen to 15 int, the first int requirement any skills have. The same goes for willpower jumping from 16 to 17, and it's good to have for ability cooldown. Ego you don't really need without mental mutations: rebuke robot will suck either way if your character level itself is too low. What you need is no more than 22 strength for steel weapons (truekin mostly start with these), then as much agility as can be bought for cheap and then the rest on toughness, or maybe shuffle between those. But, stuff like the praetorian's rifle skills will make your accuracy a good 4 agility better, and marking your targets with the other skill you get will add 2 more, so that's 22 and 24 where it counts and therefore still pretty proportionate. Oh yeah, also: gun.

This seems a very thought-out-in-depth advice. Given the praetorian bonuses, we get this table for attributes:

STAT	VALUE
STRENGTH	20
AGILTIY	18
TOUGHNESS	23
INTELLIGENCE	15
WILLPOWER	15
EGO	12
Arcology	"Praetorian"

Note this gets INT 1 higher than the target value, this is so you understand folding chairs, plus INT is useful for many must-have skills.

Which cybernetic implant to get is widely debated. I have preferred stabilizer arm locks as a cyber implant. Night vision is very useful.

Joppa is universally indicated for starting location.

Joppa

Things to do first, at Joppa

1. Buy bandage(s) and plenty witchwood barks from Irudad and/or dromad merchant
2. Get trinket quest from Argyve
3. Get another trinkest quest from Argyve
4. Get wire quest from Argyve
5. Get Red Rock corpse quest from Mehmet
6. Get Sultan lore from statue north of Joppa
7. Steal from chests, remembering to close the door first
8. Pick up a foldable chair, if available, to sit at while examining items, for a bonus
9. Get visit six day stilt quest from the mechanimist, then murder him for XP

Tip: It seems it is often possible to finish the Argyve quests by giving him stolen artifacts from chests, and it is possible to finish the wire quest without going down the stairs at all, only collecting the wire at the surface.

Afterwards

Order of operations is not too important.

1. Visit the rust wells to pick up artifacts to give Argyve and a sufficient amount of wire
2. Then, descend Red Rock, to kill a girshling and get his corpse. Be careful with the Glow-wight Cultist of Agolgut, look at him, he is likely to have glotrot, if so, kill him from afar and do not enter melee, to avoid contagion
3. Within the red rock dungeon, there is an underground tunnel, which you can follow back to Joppa, midway through the river (3 screens down from red rock or 3 screens north of Joppa) there will be a white corpse called ancient bones, which also has a miner's helmet. Pick up this miner's helmet for a light source and 1 AV. There will also be a pickaxe, which when equipped, enables digging ability which can be used to cut through walls.
4. Visit the rusted archway. There are locked doors, but if you equip the pickaxe, the walls can be dug through, even autoexplore will do it for you. Good loot can be found inside the locked rooms.
5. Down there, a becoming nook will be found, which will let you install cybernetic implants, which are very powerful. Be sure to check out the cybernetics rack found by the side of it. See cybernetics guide.
6. Visit Six day stilt to complete the quest and get XP. See the danger level map and pick a route, through the canyons is a good route to avoid slightly more dangerous desert.
7. While there, give books to the librarian for XP
8. While there, give Resheph secrets to the guy at the entrance for more XP
9. While there, travel in a circle around the six day stilt, check out the merchants, add journal notes for each merchant found for convenience
10. While there, at the SouthEast screen, buy one of two weird artifacts sold by the apothecary, which will be a spray bottle necessary to cure certain illnesses
11. While there, may also acquire either gel or a desalination pellet, which will be a component of such cures. The pellet is used to turn slime into gel.
12. If any Historical sites have been found nearby, descending them can net cybernetics and surely will net cybernetic credits, which may be useful before venturing further
13. By now, depending on how many books one was lucky to find, player level will be something between 10 to 20.
14. The next stop is at the Grit gate and Kyakukya. At the latter, one must buy the Corpus Choliys book of cures from the mayor.
15. Whatever else is done next is at the player's discretion.

Mid-to-late-game notes

Quoted from 8. I have excised the bits regarding mutants, since here we focus on true kin chars.

Spoiler warning

First, the things that I'd call important that "gate" things to unlock:

1. Tinker I and Disassemble. This lets one learn data disks, craft and recharge energy cells and put mods on weapons. There are a few ways in which one can learn to craft things beyond one's Tinker level (I recall being rewarded with crafting knowledge of negative-weight spheres as a random quest reward, and once you're tough enough to make it to the upper-right corner of the map and Ezra, you've a supply of bananas, which can be cooked to give you low-level Psychometry, which lets you learn to build low-tier items that you can obtain an instance of). But you can't learn to mod items other than through data disks, and not being able to mod items is a great disadvantage. Reverse Engineer does not appear to let you exceed items that you could normally learn to build with your Tinker skill level
2. Tinker II. This is not a hard requirement to craft programmable recoilers, as mentioned above, but it's helpful and doing that makes obtaining unlimited water a lot easier. I also find the radio-powered item mod to be convenient on energy cells.
3. Tactful and Trash Divining. These are not absolutely hard gates, but in my experience, faction relations are more-difficult to build up than most other things. Trash Divining gives you an immense "income" of secrets as you adventure, which you can share to build faction relations. Faction relations are tremendously powerful; few other things that a character can build will make them more-survivable, since simply not having a hostile enemy or being able to pick off enemies one at a time eliminates a lot of risk.
4. For axe builds, Dismember and Decapitate. Once you have that, you've a small chance of an instakill. As long as you can survive approaching and escaping an enemy, that makes you able to kill just about any enemy given time.
5. Meal Preparation. This lets one cook drops of nectar and neutron flux.
6. A source of normality gas, preferably a normality gas pump. One of the better ways to deal with certain enemies, including astral tabbies and chrome pyramids.

Other notes

• At least some unique items can be destroyed. I'm not sure exactly what determines whether an item can be destroyed or not; non-unique zetachrome gear seems to me to be pretty much immune to harm from lava. However, I had Slog's annunclus burn up (though in this particular run, I was ludicrously lucky and had k-Goninon wind up carrying a second Slog's corpse). In the future, I think I'd wait to wear it around until I've used at least two metamorphic polygels on Slog's annunculus before wearing it around (the first two to get to 100% poison resistance, and the third to leave back at base as a backup to clone from again).
• If you want to befriend and water-ritual a legendary creature rather than killing it, use a love injector. You can equip a love injector in your hand and attack, and unless the creature is a robot, a penetrating hit will cause the creature to fall in love with you. If you look at the relations that a legendary creature has with factions, then you can either kill it or water ritual it, depending upon which way you want relations to slide. I had not known about the love-injector-as-a-melee-weapon use prior to this run.
• Water becomes more-or-less meaningless late game. It's pretty easy to get water just by adventuring deep underground, which you can do once you're tough enough. Zetachrome gear alone sells for a lot and is all over once one gets below about 30 strata deep (I can't recall exactly how deep, but there seems to me to be a difficulty "cap" on depth, where things stop getting tougher and rewards better...maybe it's 40 strata). Glittermensch leave a ton of gems beneath their large boulders; pick them up and move them and you can get at the gems. You can see the gems in the list of "nearby items" as you walk by the boulder. Once you have a programmable recoiler to a place next to a merchant (preferably with high-priced gear), you can grab any salt kraken corpses or great saltback corpses, and while it's too-heavy to carry other than by picking it up, dropping it, moving a step, repeat, they're very valuable and are worth more than what the merchant's entire inventory is worth.
• Bits become more-or-less meaningless late game. Once one gets down to antimatter cells regularly showing up 30 strata deep or so to get "8" bits, there isn't I found that I could use.
• Skill points become more-or-less meaningless late game. There just aren't that many really important things to put skill points into. A lot of skill points go into weapons branches, and you only really need to do one of those. A baetyl or two granting skill points and you get most of the important stuff.
• Infinite merchants can be obtained. Once you obtain cloning draught -- infrequently available from ichor merchants and almost always from legendary ichor merchants -- you can clone up more merchants. I got lucky and ran into a legendary ichor merchant in my early game, so it was easy to produce more cloning draught. Once you do this, you don't need to worry about finding rare items with merchants, because if you have nine clones of a merchant, every visit to the merchant is equivalent to visiting and then waiting a week or so for them to restock, ten times over.
• Infinite intrinsic AV (armor) can be obtained with water for all characters other than chimeras. One either needs sphinx salt injectors (for True Kin) or Precognition (as a mutant with access to mental mutations). Cooking neutron flux, available from kippers/chefs/ichor merchants, has a 10% chance of killing you, and a 90% chance of giving an additional point of innate AV. Precognition lets you effectively "roll back" if you get the instant death.
• Infinite experience can be obtained from water. Use book merchants, purchase books with water, and then donate books to the librarian at the Six Day Stilt. This does slow down a great deal later in the game, as book experience doesn't scale up with level.
• Infinite brain brine can be obtained. I don't know of a reliable source in the world of brain brine, but the alchemist in Bethesda Susa is guaranteed to have a dram, and once you have that and a metamorphic polygel, I believe that waterskins containing brain brine can be cloned with metamorphic polygel to double the supply each time. In all honesty, I'm not sure how much use this is, as skills and skill points don't seem to be all that useful relative to Ego points, even for a chimera, and his lack of ability to use Ego to empower mental mutations. There's no need to manage glimmer on a chimera, since they won't get psychic assassins, so high Ego isn't really bad in any way. Willpower and Intelligence might be a bit more worthwhile, but given that Intelligence translates to artifact identification (not that hard), skill points (which become available in abundance), and gated access to certain skills (of which Tinker II is probably the last really significant skill), Intelligence isn't that big a deal. As for Willpower, a late-game many-armed serrated axe-wielding character doesn't seem to benefit that much from physical ability cooldown, since just the regular attacks hit pretty hard.
• Infinite zetachrome items can be obtained by diving down. Once you get down to about strata 30+ and just explore around, you'll pick up a fair bit.
• Resistance to temperature is hard to get
• Metamorphic polygel does not let one exceed the mod cap on items.
• DV is harder to get than AV. I don't know of a great source of infinite DV -- I suppose that one could keep ramping up Agility, but that's pretty slow. Because Caves of Qud gives the abilities granted by worn items additively except for DV and AV, where they are averaged across all similar body parts.
• Go with night vision goggles for vision, once you can get it. There are several sources of knowing what's going on. There's just carrying a light source, which is pretty good, but has a finite range (though for the better equipment, this is a pretty big radius) and illuminates you, so things in the darkness can be hitting you with ranged attacks when you can't see them. The Night Vision mutation -- not the night vision goggles -- have a limited range that cannot be increased. Heightened Hearing is pretty good. It lets you see through walls, and I don't know of anything that "disables" it though it doesn't give you the ability to look at things -- just see their silhouette -- and is immune to vantabloom-induced darkness. However, it also doesn't let you target things -- particularly not good for a ranged character -- and requires some mutation points to be invested to get a good radius. Clairvoyance is also pretty good if available, but is only available to characters that can have mental mutations and requires some active management. Aside from the fact that night vision goggles can't see through walls, there's only one major drawback -- they render the world in monochrome green. This is nice from a theme standpoint, somewhat-limits the information one gets (since you can't see at a glance what's hostile or friendly), and is incredibly obnoxious in terms of aesthetics, since trying to look at the whole world drowning in pea soup is just miserable from a gameplay standpoint. However, if one turns off full-screen color effects, the monochrome effect goes away.
• I don't see much value in Spicer and Carbide Chef. I recall Carbide Chef being recommended for its ability to generate a recipe with the drop-of-nectar effect using Canned Have-It-All in the past, but this was patched out some time back. Unlocking Cooking unlocks the ability to cook neutron flux and the drop of nectar, which is a big gate to removing limits on a character. Spicer permits for triggered effects; I'm generally not that amazed by them, and they're randomized. Carbide Chef makes Spicer's randomization reliably useful, but there just isn't much that seems to overwhelm me. The only item I saw in the Recipe Library that really looked like a big deal was "Whenever you perform a critical hit, you have a 50% chance to Dismember or Slam your opponent.".
• Movement speed-increasing footwear is helpful. The ability to run away from or run down an enemy provides the initiative -- one can normally choose to fight or not to fight an enemy, so it lets one pick one's fights.

Skills

First, consider this list of skills learnable through water rituals as an alternative to spending skill points. Tinker I and Harvestry are both certainly easily acquirable so, and thus can save skill points.

Below is a comparison of skill priorities. Sourced from this reddit thread 4

Skill tiers

Tier 0: "Buy ASAP"

• Acrobatics/Swift Reflexes (cats)
• Spry
• Proselytize (mechanimists)
• Tinkering/Gadget Inspector (Barathrumites)
• Disassemble
• Tinker I
• Cooking and Gathering/Meal Preparation (Villagers of Kyakukya)
• Weathered (issachari)
• Calloused (crabs)

Tier 1: "Likely to save you from death"

• Long Blade Proficiency [special note: for defensive stance]
• Swipe [special note: for disarm]
• Dueling Stance [special note: for disarm]
• Improved Defensive Stance
• Block (Wardens Esther, Neelahind) [special note: only with Stopsvalinn, bought via water ritual]
• Intimidate (Warden Indrix) [special note: good early with 18 ego]
• Cleave
• Hook and Drag [special note: reduces the target's DV to -10]
• Decapitate
• Berserk!
• Bludgeon
• Suppressive Fire
• Juke
• Juicer
• Butchery [special note: generates voider glands]
• Endurance/Shake it Off
• Iron Mind (robots)

Tier 3: "Questionable"

• Wilderness Lore: Mountains
• Sweep
• Improved Aggressive Stance
• Improved Dueling Stance
• En Garde
• Flattening Fire
• Pistol/Steady Hand
• Akimbo (mysterious strangers)
• Weak Spotter
• Disarming Shot
• Dead Shot
• Empty the Clips
• Fastest Gun in the Rust
• Fasting Way
• Lionheart
• Mind over Body
• Bloodletter
• Hobble
• Pointed Circle
• Shank
• Tinker III
• Demolish
• First Aid/Staunch Wounds
• Heal

Tier 4: "Garbage"

• Jump (frogs)
• Ultra Fire
• Beacon Fire
• Sure Fire
• Disorienting Fire
• Backswing
• Swimming (fish)
• Poison Tolerance
• Set Limb
• Heavy Weapon/Strapping Shoulders
• Tank
• Sling and Run

Danger levels

Here are two maps of danger levels of each area on Qud.

From 1

From 5

Cybernetics

Always check if destroyed on removal, if so, think very carefully before installing.

Sourced from 7, but apparently very controversial:

Cybernetics tiers

God tier

• Radar – Single handled best cybernetics in game and it could solely justify playing true kin. Can be mounted in almost any place of body, frees hand slot from light sources, frees floating nearby slot and is much better than any light source. Makes exploring dungeons much, much safer because you see what’s coming. If that would not be enough, it has larger radius than most light sources and it still can be increased. It’s worth every cybernetics point, even as much as it cost.
• power plant – Are you annoyed by constant refilling of your filmsy chem cells? You can’t find enough bits for biodynamic cell? This with some rather common mod can solve every of your problem. Amount of power generated each turn is large, so you can plug a lot of devices into yourself. Mutant would have to get really high willpower and mutation level to generate similar power.
• trauma plate – Get out of jail free card, or amulet of life saving. Bit pricey for one time use, but in game with permadeath, when this could be that 1 turn you need to activate force field I can’t image putting this any lower.
• cranial plating – Shake off is one of most important skills. This is much, much better. You don’t fear crabs, apes or pretty much anything with cudgel. And for how useful it is, is rather cheap. Head slot can be contested, but IMO this is well worth it.
• High-fidelity matter recompositer / matter recompositer – You have problem staying alive? Just teleport away!
• medassist – very similar logic as with trauma plate. One free action can mean life or death in very difficult situation. Less powerful as tonic isn’t guaranteed to save your life, but still comes handy.
• Custom visage – you can make fraction of your choosing non hostile. It really can be run changing item.
• Very strong
• Stabilizer arm locks - my go to starting cybernetics. Ranged combat is bread and butter of Qud, +6 agility in ranged combat is strong bonus. Useful early, useful latter on. I almost never take it off.
• Hyper-elastic ankle tendons - one of strongest starting cybernetics. Having even a small edge means you can outrun chasing your enemy and live another day. Very crucial early on, latter is fails off a bit, when you have access to item mods or simply foortwear increasing movementspeed. Looks kinda laughable when compared to mutant counterpart in multiple legs.
• Anomaly fumigator – godsend against some centrain, annoying fishes that often guard historic sites 4. Rather lategame oriented.
• Gun rack – As I said: ranged combat is beard and butter. This let’s you double your firepower. You want to wield double chaingun? Go get it!
• Motorized treads – extra speed, extra movement resistances. Very good and what it does, but you have to be really committed to investment. Sometimes feet are handy.
• Carbide hand bones - really strong starting cybernetics, that coulc carry you through very, very long time. Can give you amazing start with few very quick level ups in waterlog tunnel. However, you have to go max strength on it. So it is very restrictive in character creation.
• Giant hands - would be better if not two handed weapons were so hard to get hold on. But still I wont complain against higher amount of guns.
• bionic liver (pre Golgotha only) – Even for fairly powerful characters Golgotha can be dangerous. This one almost completely nullifies danger. Downside is, that you probably won’t have much of an use for it outside it.

Useful

• Intravenous port - double duration of phase, salve, shade or sphix salt! Nice to have, but nothing to write home about.
• Palladium electrodeposits – lategame oriented, but can boost some very useful items and the best cybernetics. 4 possible slots, so you probably can fit one in.
• Equipment rack – at first I thought this is really good, but after a while I realized that there are not that many back slots items that are OP. Maybe if you and somehow get your hands on two chrome mantles it is really amazing. Maybe you wear two Issachari banner to get weathered? Anyway, you can always carry extra backpack and cloak of your choice, to get extra carry capacity.
• Ultra-elastic ankle tendons – you probably find this much latter in game, so extra 10 speed isn’t as important as in early game. Still, there aren’t that many upgrades for feet, and movespeed is undeniably nice.
• Transparent/translucent skin - extra dodge is nice, but overall not gamebreaking. You probably put one in when you have free slots and free license points. Higher point version is slightly better due to better utilization of body slots. Overall they have same cost of license for points of dodge.
• High-grade dermal insulation/dermal insulation – similar as above. You probably want something better but you don’t have it. I put it below as resistances are more situational than straight dodge.
• Situational
• Fullerite hand bones – I run this much lower than carbide, because they are random drop. Unless you run very high strength character, they are not very useful. It’s probably easier to find good mace than those.
• Inflatable axons/Nocturnal apex – kinda similar, but kinda different. I really cant make use of any of those, but they get more powerful with compute power so I suspect they could be nice, I suppose.
• Schemasoft (tools) - you can get recoiler to ezra early, or to six day stilt. It is only use, and after you build it, you remove it and free your body parts.
• Phase harmonic modulator – cheap, can be put in multiple bodyparts. Probably you can do some cool things with it.
• Rapid release finger flexors – vast majority of characters are better with rifles than pistols. And there are better options for starting cybernetics. Still you might find use of it. It isn’t complete garbage.
• Night vision – face slot is not highly contested. However 2 points is rather a lot for slightly better glowsphere that makes difference pretty much only on desert. But it frees some of equipment slots.
• Parabolic muscular subroutine – it never happened to me to me that I wanted to throw grenade at something outside of my range. But still, not complete garbage.
• Pentaceps -not every build uses charge. And when you use one you don’t always need more range. But still, is cheap, possibly can be useful for chasing some enemies?

Bad

• all +1 stats – it is almost offensive how little they offer for how much they cost, and for which slots. Only reason I put it above other is that they can be sort of useful when you don’t have anything else, not even transparent skin to put on.
• Micromanipulator array – very high cost for something very situational. It only happened to me once that I needed normality gas grenade and I didn’t have one in inventory.
• Air current microsensor – Extra information’s always can be matter of life and death. However it doesn’t provide that much of them. You cant find it easily, so you have to choose it at start, meaning forfeiting armlocks or ankle tendons. And it contest body or head slot.
• Schemasofts (all other) – they could be useful if eating bananas would not solve every problem in this game.
• Skillsoft – they could be good. But you have no control what skills you get. They could give you skill you already know, or one that doesn’t fit your build at all.
• Pneumatic pistons – jump still has 100 turn cooldown. And you still can jump over enemy creature. And it costs a lot of points.
• Security interlock – by the time this becomes useful you have other means to open dors.
• Optical bioscanner – you get a lot of information about your enemies even without it. Cant imagine this has much of an impact
• Optical technoscanner – It seems all right. Sometimes you spend a lot of water to buy artifact and it turns out it is not suited to your build. Problem is by the time it becomes useful, you have good chance of finding googles that do same thing. That doesn’t cost license, and can be swapped on demand.
• Force modulator – I’m yet to see situation when I want to walk through forcefield and can’t do any other thing to make up for it.
• Anchor spikes – I’m yet to see situation when I could see this as useful.
• Navigation system – I’m pretty sure it is bugged and it actually increases chance of being lost instead. So worse than nothing.

Sourced from 6

In-depth description of cybernetics

Name	Cost	Slots	Description
Dermal Plating	3	Body, Head, Back	Interlinked plates of wafery carbide tessellate into a subcutaneous sheet. +1 AV
Dermal Insulation	2	Body, Head, Back	Pillowy fiberglass scales tense around a supporting axis. Once installed, they'll unwind and inflate under the skin. +6 Heat Resistance +6 Cold Resistance +6 Electrical Resistance +6 Acid Resistance Destroyed on removal.
Optical Bioscanner	1	Face	A minuscule graphene array that processes optical data against a repository of organic lifeforms. You gain access to the precise hit point, armor, and dodge values of biological creatures.
Optical Technoscanner	1	Face	A minuscule graphene array that processes optical data against a repository of robotic lifeforms and artifacts. You gain access to the precise hit point, armor, and dodge values of robotic creatures and you automatically identify artifacts. Also shows precentage of power left in energy cells much like metric mod.
Night Vision	2	Face	Nerve-packed retina scatters incoming radiation and bends light so the irises turn jade. You gain the toggleable ability to see in the dark.
Hyper-Elastic Ankle Tendons	2	Feet	Banded ropes of hydrogel are bundled into one. +6 movespeed
Parabolic Muscular Subroutine	2	Arm	Nerve bundles so arranged to stimulate muscles in the arm along a parabolic slide rule. Your throw range is increased by 2. When you throw something at a target inside your throw range, your throwing accuracy is 100%.
Cherubic Visage	1	Face	Carnal instructions dictate the reformation of the face's bone structure and plump tissue mass into a soft and angelic countenance. Through such thaumaturgy, the people of hoary Ibul, cradled in the breast of a collapsed ice shelf, wander its lamplighted streets in rosy-cheeked disinterest. +1 Ego Only available to True Kin from The Ice-Sheathed Arcology of Ibul.
Translucent Skin	2	Body, Back	The diaphanous dermis throws the circulatory, muscular, and nervous networks into silhouetted relief. +2 DV
Stabilizer Arm Locks	2	Arm	Chrome clasps fasten arm joints to emulate the stillness of unlife. For the purpose of determining your accuracy with ranged attacks, your agility is treated as if it were 6 points higher.
Rapid Release Finger Flexors	2	Hands	Neuronically charged tissue sheaths transmit the will faster than what cell biology had achieved. You fire pistols 25% faster.
Carbide Hand Bones	2	Hands	Blue carbide merely dents where weak collagen would be smashed to bits. Your fists deal 2d3 damage.
Fullerite Hand Bones	4	Hands	Black fullerite merely dents where weak collagen would be smashed to bits. Your fists deal 2d4+1 damage.
Pentaceps	2	Feet	The quartet of knee joint extensors gain the assistance of a synthetic fifth. Your Charge range is increased by 4 spaces.
Transparent Skin	3	Body, Back	The new flesh is as ghost film, cloaking none of the machinery of life. +3 DV
Bionic Hands	3	Hands	A whole new pair of hands fabricated from graphene and neutrafoam. Their pylons await engagement. +1 Agility
Bionic Arm	3	Arm	A whole new arm fabricated from graphene and neutrafoam. Its pylon awaits engagement. +1 Strength
Ultra-Elastic Ankle Tendons	3	Feet	Neutrafoam ropes are banded and bundled into a fluted column. +10 movespeed
Beautiful Visage	2	Face	Instructions dictate the reformation of the face into a countenance that arouses latent desires in its onlookers. +1 Ego
Dopamine Synth	3	Head	The microscopic cartridge synthesizes dopamine at a rapid rate and floods the neural pathways in motivational bliss. +1 Willpower
Bionic Heart	3	Body	An apparatus-in-chromium that pumps blood in smooth waves rather than the frantic beating of carcass-grown muscle tissue. +1 Toughness
Giant Hands	3	Hands	For ages they dreamed, 'the hands must grow'. In the soft luster of a laboratory, the dream was realized. You can wield two-handed melee weapons in one hand.
Communications Interlock	2	Any	Between the multipronged sticktool and cipherbox, one can interface with all available robotic ports. You rebuke robots as if you were 5 levels higher.
Security Interlock	3	Any	Fluted keys for every wavelength along every spectrum permit entrance through every portal. You can unlock any door. Destroyed on removal.
Intravenous Port	3	Any	Three catheters imprint the skin from underneath. The effects of tonics last twice as long.
High-Grade Dermal Insulation	3	Body, Head, Back	Pillowy neutrofoam scales tense around a supporting axis. Once installed, they'll unwind and inflate under the skin. +9 Heat Resistance +9 Cold Resistance +9 Electrical Resistance +9 Acid Resistance Destroyed on removal.
Motorized Treads	4	Feet	Triangular treads swathe the teeth of giant gears that turn to locomote. Their human has escaped the confines of bipedal motion. +50 movespeed (Effectively doubles movement speed.) You cannot wear shoes. This implant can't be uninstalled because it amputates your feet to replace it with these item
Inflatable Axons	2	Head	Nanoscopic stents inflate the gossamer brain-threads that restrict the conduction of the will. Activated. Cooldown 100. You gain +40 quickness for 10 rounds, then you become sluggish for 10 rounds (-10 quickness).
Nocturnal Apex	2	Head	The metabolic rhythms of the Holy City's denizens are synchronized to their diurnal rituals: during the day, repose in prayer beneath the shade of a fluted ziggarut; during the night, prowl the toxic arboreta for sacrifices. +10% regeneration during the day. Once per night, you can Prowl, gaining +6 agility and +10 movespeed for 100 rounds. Only available to True Kin from The Toxic Arboreta of Ekuemekiyye, the Holy City.
Electromagnetic Sensor	1	Any	Small distortions in the electromagnetic field caused by machine folk are visible to this sensor. You detect nearby robots without having to see them.
Matter Recompositer	3	Body	The flux inside this milliscopic cask can fold space on just a large enough scale to shunt a human chassis nearby. Activated. Cooldown 100. You teleport to a random, explored space on the map.
Air Current Microsensor	2	Body, Head	Near the Fuming God Sea, where seawater crashes into sunrock and erupts into mephitic vapor, a labyrinth of volcanic grottos form a dimensionless space where the utility of sight wanes. For the children of the deep, new senses wax in its stead. Staircases and other up/down map transitions are always revealed to you. Only available to True Kin from The Crustal Mortars of Yawningmoon.
Custom Visage	3	Face	Meticulously detailed modeling software and instructions for facial reformation allow the host to assume the visage of choice, forever obsoleting masks. +300 reputation with a faction you choose at installation time. Destroyed on removal.
Gun Rack	4	Back	The back-mounted gun rack of polished chrome has two slots for pistols to sit over each shoulder or for a single rifle to sit over the shoulder of choice. You gain an additional left and right missile weapon slot but You cannot wear equipment on your back. Any skill that allow you to fire multiple guns at once will also include weapons equipped by the gun rack.
Force Modulator	1	Any	The emitted frequencies of your tiniest bits are synchronized with the standardized band for force emission. You can walk through forcefields.
Skillsoft (low)	1	Head	Encoded on this chip are the neural patterns of a particular skill. You gain a random skill whose cost is between 0 and 50 SP.
Skillsoft (medium)	2	Head	Encoded on this chip are the neural patterns of a particular skill. You gain a random skill whose cost is between 51 and 150 SP.
Skillsoft (high)	3	Head	Encoded on this chip are the neural patterns of a particular skill. You gain a random skill whose cost greater than 151 SP.
Skillsoft (skill tree)	varies	Head	Encoded on this chip are the neural patterns of a particular skill tree. You gain access to a whole skill tree.
Schemasoft (low-tier)	2	Head	Encoded on this chip are the schematics for a whole class of low-tier artifacts. You gain access to every schematic for a single class of artifacts. Destroyed on removal.
Schemasoft (med-tier)	3	Head	Encoded on this chip are the schematics for a whole class of mid-tier artifacts. You gain access to every schematic for a single class of artifacts. Destroyed on removal.
Schemasoft (high-tier)	4	Head	Encoded on this chip are the schematics for a whole class of high-tier artifacts. You gain access to every schematic for a single class of artifacts. Destroyed on removal.
Equipment Rack	3	Body	Carbide mounting rods expand available equipment options. You gain another Back equipment slot.
Cyberliver	3	Body	Layers of nanoactive metamaterials provide superior filtering capabilities. You are immune to poison and disease.
Pneumatic Pistons	2	Feet	Heavy-duty compression cylinders in the lower legs multiply high-impulse self-propulsion. Your Jump range is increased by 4 spaces.
Reactive Cranial Plating	3	Head	Metamaterial plates cradle the brain in safety and comfort. You cannot be dazed or stunned by kinetic effects.
High-Fidelity Matter Recompositer	8	Body	The flux inside this milliscopic cask can fold space on just a large enough scale to shunt a human chassis nearby. The integrated nonlinear circuitry controls the outcome with flawless precision. Activated. Cooldown 40. You teleport to a designated explored space on the map.
Anomaly Fumigator	3	Any	Ultralinear paracircuitry excites the structure of spacetime into a normotropic pseudoparticulate. You emit 0-2 clouds of normality gas every turn. Toggleable.
Phase Harmonic Modulator	3	Any	A flat disc of hypermathematical microstructure brings the astral into the mundane and vice versa. You become physically interactive with both in-phase and out-of-phase objects and creatures. Toggleable.
Penetrating Radar	5	Body, Back, Head, Face, Arm	Picophase transceiver arrays assemble an exquisitely detailed model of one's surroundings. You gain the toggleable ability to "see" in a radius of 10 squares, blocked only by force fields and spatiotemporal anomalies.
Navigation System	1	Head, Arm, Hands, Body, Back	This compact artifact is dense with geosocial information dating back to the Eaters. Does not stack with compass bracelets.
Reactive Trauma Plate	4	Body	This plasteel plate, dense with woven spring-logic layers, is a one-time last-ditch trauma intervention for its host. Neutralizes one hit that would otherwise cause lethal damage, or damage of at least 50% of your max hit points, destroying itself.
Micromanipulator Array	4	Hands	A set of jointed metal armatures ending in a dizzying array of manipulator tools. Improves artifact inspection performance. Greatly improves artifact disassembly performance. Reduces action cost of using tinkering skills by 40%. Makes it possible to build artifacts and mod items in combat, at an action cost of one turn (not reduced by this implant).
Onboard Recoiler	4	Any	A reprogrammable geospatial core integrated with a long-range spacefolding rig. Imprint on a location (cooldown 100) and teleport back to it (cooldown 50).
Anchor Spikes	2	Feet	Kinetic accumulators driving memory-fractal crysteel spikes forestall all possibility of being dislodged from a chosen position. You cannot be involuntarily physically moved. Toggleable.
Biodynamic power plant	6	Body	Subtly involuted curves of shining chrome Eater esotechnology promise to shatter open the energetic potential of the host's blood. Provides a continuous 500 amps of charge to equipment with integrated power systems (such as those provided by the Jacked mod).
Fire suppression system	3	Head, Body, Back	A compact, self-renewing biochemical reactor fitted with thermal sensors and hoses. Automatically discharges flame-retardant gel whenever the implantee is on fire. Toggleable.
Medassist Module	4	Body, Back, Arm	Smooth chrome formed into a set of biodeployment tubes with computational crystal worked aesthetically along their length. Reduces action cost of applying injectors by 80%. Can store up to eight injectors which a toggleable AI assistant will automatically apply to the implantee in appropriate circumstances at no action cost.