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Raiders of Salt by Aric

Raiders of Salt is an expansion that focuses on the Isschar and the Salt Desert in Caves of Qud. It adds a variety of features:


Travel to the Great Salt Pyramid of HaTikhon, the home of the Issachar people. Protected by deadly snipers and ringed with barbed wire, inside you can find the Chieftain of the Issachar people, and perhaps gain access to their most holy site.

Delve into the Abyss, an ancient Eater facility. Once used to house nuclear waste for all eternity, now it is populated by a clan of mutant cannibals, and other deadly threats.

Adds a questline for the Issachar, granted by the Chief. Explore ruins, slay enemies of the tribe and become one of the people. Start by stumbling across an Issachar esper running through the desert, or find the Issachar capital (though you will not be welcome, if you are disliked by the Issachar faction!) Speak to any of the Dromads in the desert to get some background and start your journey!

Adds an all new faction, the Wrathchild Revanchists. The manscorpions, known to themselves as Kuyeti, once held an empire that spanned the Mograh'yi. Long believed extinct,  their parties of pillagers and slavers have been spotted in the desert, battling Dromads, Templar and Issachar alike.

The quests reward the player with thematically appropriate gear, and there are a couple of Spiked chain upgrades to the whip, that can be found throughout Qud.

Several new radioactive creatures roam the Abyss, though I won't entirely spoil the surprise. Also, 3 standard and 1 legendary variety of Kuyeti warriors stalk the salt desert, and new, powerful Issachar protect their secret holy site. It should be noted that Gnarf's excellent Issachar expanded (see dependency tab) mod IS REQUIRED to run this mod, as his elders, snipers and water guardians all feature heavily.


I'm still fairly new to modding, so some of the creatures may be somewhat unbalanced- I'm taking a short hiatus from modding to actually play the game a bit more, and will use that as an opportunity to work out the balancing. I welcome feedback from the community too, so feel free to leave a comment, or (more likely to get a response) contact me on the Caves of Qud discord.

In terms of difficulty, the first mission should be fairly intuitive. When you're told what to do, you'll probably have an idea of if you're ready or not! As for the primary dungeon, I'd suggest to be comfortable, having finished Bethesda Susa. If you're feeling brave, after Golgotha. I will expand this section after trying it a few times with a few builds myself!

Firstly, a huge thanks to Gnarf for allowing me to use his excellent Issachar expanded mod as a prerequisite. Even if you don't fancy this mod, I highly recommend it, as it adds some brilliant new enemies to the Issachar faction.

Also a massive thanks to the brothers Balthichou and Patatifique for allowing me to use their script library, as it's allowed me to do some fun stuff that I would have really struggled to do otherwise. Likewise for allowing me to see how they did certain things on their excellent Tortoise faction expansion mod. (Note, the script library is also a prerequisite for the mod, check the dependency tab)

And huge thanks to the Caves of Qud modding discord, as without their help, this mod would probably have never seen he light of day.

And finally, a massive thanks to Balthichou and Thighs for their excellent artwork. The Kuyeti were originally just going to be a single creature for an inciting incident, but they volunteered and made some really brilliant tiles. Thighs' tile can be found on the Wrathchild Revanchist faction page, and as the rare Kuyeti War Leader, and Balthichou's Kuyeti Axer, Hunter(Spiked chain) and Sharpshooters can be found in hunting and war parties, rarely in the desert.

While I think the mod is pretty much there right now, I do still have a few changes I'd like to make:

• creature balancing
  
• expansion/rework of the Abyss vaults
  
• potential expansion of the Kuyeti. At one point I envisioned a full faction with Quest and settlement, before paring them back to the single encounter, before ramping back up to a persistent desert threat. If they're popular and inspiration strikes me, I may look to expand them further, and maybe spin them out into their own mod.
  
  I hope you enjoy!