Hello everyone from our Caves of Qud Making Money guide! Caves of Qud is a sci-fi roguelike saga filled with retrofuturism, deep simulation, and sentient plant piles. Live in an exotic world and cut through the layers of millennial civilizations. You can find ways to earn endless money in this adventure in our guide!
Caves of Qud Making Money Guide
Welcome to our Caves of Qud Making Money Guide. This guide will introduce you to Proselytize and how to abuse it to gain infinite money at any point in a run.
Step 1: Obtain Proselytize
Proselytize is an ability in Caves of Qud that allows you to attempt to “persuade” a creature to join you. On top of gaining a new ally in combat, proselytized creatures allow you to access their inventories and “buy” from them at zero cost.
The easiest way to obtain this ability is to start with it, either by choosing the “Apostle” calling for mutated humans or the “Consul” caste for True Kin at character creation. Of course, choosing one of these will prevent you from gaining the (arguably more useful) skills of other calling/caste options, so I would only recommend this if you’re testing out the strategy or really want to start with effectively infinite money.
A more sustainable method of getting Proselytize is from the Mechanimists, a faction which can teach you the ability for 300 Mechanimist reputation if you talk to one of the pink-colored “legendary” members.
Fortunately for us, we have a surefire way to find a legendary Mechanimist and get reputation: the Six Day Stilt.
The Stilt will always be near the top left of the map, not terribly far from where you’ll be running about normally. For the trek you’ll need to take through the salt dunes, make sure you have plenty of water and watch out for fire-breathing Dawngliders.
Once you arrive, head one area up and inside you’ll find Eschelstadt II, High Priest of the Stilt, our legendary Mechanimist we’ll be learning from. Perform the water ritual and perhaps share some secrets with him to earn some easy reputation.
To get Mechanimist reputation, you can throw artifacts into the sacred well to the south of Eschelstadt. Rare artifacts like relics will quickly give you reputation, but scrounging up guns from snapjaws and assorted junk from cave diving will still get you the needed reputation with a little more work.
It’s also possible to learn Proselytize like any other ability from the “Skills” menu, but given you can always farm Mechanimist reputation and learn from Eschelstadt this is not a good use of skill points.
Once you have Proselytize, you’ll next need to find a victim to become your cash printer.
Step 2: Find a Target
Success or failure of Proselytizing a target is based upon 4 things:
- your Ego modifier
- your level
- the target’s “MA” or “Mental Armor” (determined by their Willpower)
- the target’s level
Conveniently, there are two such creatures that can be found the early game that have these qualities: the giant dragonfly and glowfish. Both are level 1 creatures that can be found commonly in the salt marshes and have comically little willpower, giving them negative MA.
Once you locate your target, it’s time to make bank.
Step 3: Profit
Start by Proselytizing your target. If you fail, you’ll see a message saying they are “unconvinced by your pleas,” but worry not! You can always try again. Eventually, a bunch of hearts will fly out from the creature and you’ll get a message in the terminal.
Now, “talk” to your follower. The default binding for this will be the “c” key. From this window, you’ll want to “Begin Trade.” Notice that everything here has a “cost” of zero.
Then, “trade” one of your items to your follower.
Next we want to un-Proselytize this creature. You can do this by Proselytizing a different creature. For maximum efficiency, give the new follower one item for future use.
Go back to your ex-convert, who is no longer Proselytized by you. Open the trade menu again, and this time you can get water from selling your items. Sell whatever you want; we’ll be getting it all back in a moment!
Finally, re-Proselytize the creature and trade all your items back at no cost. Rinse and repeat this technique in an area with plenty of glowfish and giant dragonflies, and you can be a billionaire in no time!
Final Optimizations
With this trick in hand, you can earn unlimited water for your trading.
To make this process more efficient, consider the following methods:
- Get a dragonfly follower to join you back to the Six Day Stilt, where you can do the trick right next to valuable merchants.
- Obtain many waterskins or similar containers to increase the amount of water you can carry per run.
- Find or trade for high-value items to speed up the rate at which you can fill your containers
- Raise your Ego modifier to a point where you can directly Proselytize merchants, and get their wares for free. (Usually takes a minimum of a +2 modifier)
Thank you for reading, and enjoy your time as a true water baron on any run!
