When comparing Caves of Qud vs Don't Starve, 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 Don't Starve is ranked 25th. 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 Uniquely atmospheric art style that gives a polished look that is difficult to match
Don't Starve has a very unique art style, using two dimensional or 2D characters and items in a 3D world gives a very interesting artsy feel to the game. The hand drawn look and feel to the graphics are a nice change of pace from ultra realistic games, but it doesnt take away from the suspense.
Pro Very active modding community with numerous mods available allows for a lot of replayability and customization
Using the Steam Workshop, Don't Starve has a very active modding community. With nearly 800 mods currently available, there are unlimited ways you can change your Don't Starve experience.
Pro Challenging arcade style game play, with permadeath mixed in makes for a tough to master game that is still fun to play over and over again
Don't Starve is a classic example of "Easy to play, tough to master". The game play is very easy to learn, in fact Don't Starve doesn't really tell you how to play, you just point and click. Some items will be clickable, exploration leads to discoveries, and discoveries lead to longer survival, but death and a new game are always right around the corner.
Pro Randomly generated worlds allows for content that continually stays fresh to the user
Don't Starve generates a completely new game world for every new game, and since you only get one life per game, you will be seeing a lot of different worlds. All of the lands and items will be totally new on every try.
Pro There's never a dull moment thanks to how new mechanics are introduced throughout the gameplay
As the game progresses, it offers more and more mechanics that require constant attention to function properly. It becomes a constant re-evaluation of risk and reward.
Pro Pleasantly twisted sense of humor makes for an entertaining environment and story
Random quips from characters, info, text and the world itself (such as the existence of werepigs) show glimpses of a dark sense of humor throughout.
Pro Easily customized thanks to being able to adjust difficulty on the fly
The game gives you a lot of world customization options. You can change the length of day, weather patterns, how much of each monster or resource spawns, etc. This effectively allows you to adjust how difficult you wish the game to be.
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 Constant restarts can be drawn out and boring
The beginning of a playthrough starts out pretty slow, which is exacerbated by the fact that the player will need to restart many many times as the game is a rouguelike, so permanent death is something that will be encountered often.