We Hindren can't wear helmets or hats, but we can wear two pairs of shoes instead. 'You'll also want ''healing items''. This is also how you'll get some ''armor''. This will probably mean taking a short bow off the corpse of a snapjaw. So you're going to want a ''missile weapon'' and ''ammo'' for it. You can ] for some things, some of them you can ] for.' 'What's essential?' 'Well, your vinereaper will do for a starting weapon until you find an iron battle axe or the like. You can steal from the village chests if you stay out of sight, but you seem like you're better than that. 'What's the first thing I should do? Once I have spoken to everyone?' 'Well,' Dernhind thinks on that, 'I think most important is to get some essential supplies. Accessories are usually good, sap masks especially. 'If you can't afford the thing you want, that's all right! Merchants are weirdly respectful of your things, so you can leave your loot in a pile next to one and pick them up when you come back with more items to trade. Obviously, better metal means a better sale price. Daggers and one-handed swords go for a very good price for their weight, axes and maces less so. They're extremely heavy and don't sell for enough to justify that. Buy out all of Tam's ammo, too it's feather-light and useful. 'If you're making choices in the field about what saleable items to keep: don't bother with leather or bark armor. They buy and sell for the same price, the only things to do so except fresh water itself. A moment later: 'well, first things first - buy copper and silver nuggets.

'Do you have some advice on trading?' I ask. 'Well, let's see what I can think of off the top of my head,' Dernhind says.

The space bar is a contextual button that can substitute for a lot of common commands - converse, open, operate, get - and may be a better choice than using the C key to talk.// ] You can also hold the ALT key to highlight significant items, monsters, harvestable plants, and stairs. Remember: C is for converse. This is also useful for finding invisible enemies later in the game. I personally like to assign semicolon to 'wait one turn' and single quote to 'look'. The 'force attack' key is SHIFT for laptops hold it down and hit a directional button to attack things that you don't auto-attack, like dreadroot or brinestalk stakes. You'll have to either use your arrow keys or the letters assigned to each line item. You probably want to reassign the 'look' command it's too important to leave unassigned. Remember - the cardinal direction keys are one key to the LEFT of the home keys, not on them! The HJKL directional keys are disabled for many menus, such as your items and equipment menu. If you're using a laptop, the very first thing that you should do in-game is hit escape, press 'k' for the controls menu, and activate the laptop default keys, then review those assignments.

This is also useful for finding invisible enemies later in the game. Remember: C is for converse. You can also hold the ALT key to highlight significant items, monsters, harvestable plants, and stairs. The 'force attack' key is CTRL hold it down and hit a directional button to attack things that you don't auto-attack, like dreadroot or brinestalk stakes. The period key means 'wait twenty turns' and CTRL and period together mean 'wait one hundred turns'. You can use 'W' to walk in a direction until you're stopped or see something dangerous, and numpad 0 will cause you to 'auto-explore' an area until the whole map is known. * cycles the menu. The '5' numpad key serves both as 'wait one turn' and also 'the space I'm standing on' for purposes of directing a skill or action. The / key hides your status menu, which you should sometimes do if you need to keep an eye on a large map area. The numpad + and - keys serve as 'down' and 'up' respectively, and are used to zoom in and out of the world map. Caves of Qud makes effective use of the number pad and the keys around it.

Getting lost caves of qud