When comparing Caves of Qud vs Dungeon of the Endless, the Slant community recommends Caves of Qud for most people. In the question“What are the best roguelikes/roguelites on PC?” Caves of Qud is ranked 11th while Dungeon of the Endless is ranked 35th. The most important reason people chose Caves of Qud is:
Mutations are one of the biggest parts of Caves of Qud. Want to be a two-headed beguiling spider-thing? A four-armed flying plant-man? You can. There's also lots of armor, weapons, and equipment, which can be found enchanted, as well as a bunch of "spells" (mental mutations) and skills.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Tons of customization
Mutations are one of the biggest parts of Caves of Qud. Want to be a two-headed beguiling spider-thing? A four-armed flying plant-man? You can. There's also lots of armor, weapons, and equipment, which can be found enchanted, as well as a bunch of "spells" (mental mutations) and skills.
Pro Fantastic User Interface
The UI in Qud is very well designed, which helps to make it easy to get into.
Pro Over 60 factions
Befriend or become enemies with dozens of different factions—crabs, turtles, robots and even trees to name a few.
Pro Interesting and original setting
The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world that feels truly unique. Caves of Qud's world is like no other, and everything from the creatures/characters you'll encounter, to the items you'll find, and the locations you'll discover is different from what you would find in most rogue-likes.
Pro Unique idea
Unique content and idea of "retro-future" make this "not another rogue-like", in a way.
Pro Unique and evocative prose, art and music
Extremely well written, with highly evocative prose which brings this unique world to life. The fantastic writing is supplemented by a unique art style and sublime otherworldly music.
Pro Huge, procedurally-generated world
Pro Excellent pixel art
The art in this game is vibrant and colorful. It has a level of detail that many pixel games lack.
Pro Risk and reward
The game is semi-turn based. Basically, when you clear all the enemies, no more enemies will spawn until you open the next door. Which door will you open? Once you have a path to the next floor, will you continue to open the rest of the doors in case you find some rare loot? It's a wonderful gamble on your life!
Pro Great soundtrack
Pro Mixes genres of tower defense and roguelites
The game fuses the two genres in a unique way. The permadeath and random gen of roguelites mixed with the necessity of setting down strategic defensive turrets which comes with the tower defense genre.
Pro Varied game start by choosing different heroes
Cons
Con Can be difficult to get started
The beginning of the game explains little, depending on what attributes you put points into in character creation will have a high level of impact at the start of the game. This is not explained to the player, so if you do not put 18 points into "toughness" without having a very particular build in mind that will have some way of dodging or avoiding attacks, the result will just be plenty of death with little advancement.
Con Cooldown simulator
Con UI is in the way
UI is in the way, literally. Even with the overlay mod you'll have issues. The original overlay is too bulky and hard to read.
Con Tower defense can become daunting
If you prefer relaxed gameplay this can be difficult.