Map Breakdown

The world map can be a bit overwhelming at times, and it can be confusing to know what you'll encounter, what you should look for and when to access certain environments. I won't be talking about the unique tiles, just the generic ones.

Salt Marsh

Recommended Level: 1

The salt marsh is the environment most runs begin in. There is little to worry about here being the starting zone; it's here to allow you to get your footing and some starter equipment to set off into the world. Qud has never been so docile.

In a center zone, you can find an oddly-hued glowpad who is a Consortium of Phyta merchant and water ritual-able creature. In a different center zone, you can also find the remains of Argyve's last apprentice which holds a pair of mechanical wings.

In this environment (and indeed in any zone in any environment), you might find fork-horned gnu. This means that there will be chitinous puma also on the map, so be careful and consider avoiding that zone.

Pay close attention to lairs: you can find glowpad and glowfish lairs which give easy Fish and Flowers reputation. Additionally, you can find snapjaw lairs which often have multiple legendary snapjaw in them and some artifacts. Don't forget to get the guaranteed historic site lore from the statue 1 zone north of Joppa!

Desert Canyon

Recommended Level: 5

Aside from containing the first historic site, desert canyons don't have a lot going for them. They're a passerby environment; outside of fetch quests you'll probably never seriously spend time here. They aren't dangerous, don't hold good or common lairs, but aren't toothless enough to level up in early.

While most creatures in the desert canyons are of little threat, the most dangerous is probably the salthopper. It has the capability to Sprint, so the best way to avoid it is to let it Sprint up to you and hit you. This will disable its Sprint, allowing you to activate yours and get away.

The snapjaw that currently holds Stopsvalinn does exist in a random zone in the desert canyons, but it has become much more difficult to find than in the past so it's not as worth it to seek out anymore. If you get lucky then great, but don't spend too much time on it.

Salt Dunes

Recommended Level: 5

Salt dunes have quite a bit going for them. First off, it's more efficient (both turn-wise and water-wise) to travel zone-by-zone instead of on the world map over salt dunes. While you're there, you can find the occasional dromad caravan, Mechanimist grouping, Pariah grouping, Seeker of the Sightless Way grouping or Putus Templar grouping; all valuable in their own ways.

The one major threat of the region are the dawngliders; they fly and have a strong Flaming Ray to hit you with. It's generally recommended to only travel in the daytime in order to see the dawngliders from across the screen and avoid any zones with them in it if you're weak. Additionally, if you're weak you should also consider only traveling zone-by-zone so you don't get lost and land in the middle of a bunch of dawngliders.

It's common to journey in here for some early EXP as long as you know how to avoid the dawngliders as well as obtain an early Issachar rifle from the Issachari Tribe members that dot the landscape. Just make sure to not get swallowed by the occasional salt kraken.

Hills & Mountains

Recommended Level: 10

Hills & mountains are actually identical in terms of what creatures can appear there, the only difference is you can walk over hills from the world map but not mountains (plus mountains are mostly filled in with walls). Regardless, the only thing worthwhile here are baboon lairs which oftentimes have a huge amount of legendary baboons in them in case you want to hit the reputation roulette.

Generally speaking, you should avoid these tiles. Not just because they are practically worthless, but because they also have a spawn of novice of the Sightless Way that can occur, and do occur somewhat regularly. This makes traveling here somewhat dangerous for even mid-level players if they run into a seeker on the opposite side of the screen while they're near the middle surrounded by a pack of baboons. Be careful in these zones and make sure to have the proper precautions.

Flower Fields

Recommended Level: 12

Flower fields are one of the most varied overworld environments in all of Qud. They can contain creatures from desert canyons, hills, jungles, and creatures unique to flower fields. Not only that, but they can also rarely spawn in space-time vortices from the surface bringing in creatures from literally anywhere in Qud. This makes flower fields range from toothless to absurdly dangerous depending on your luck.

In the aggregate, flower fields are rather tame. They often will have slugsnouts, an occasional turret and bears as the common threats. In addition to these, you will often find feral lah spewing explosive tumbling pods everywhere, which you will want to take down sooner rather than later.

If you're willing to sift through the nothing, you can occasionally find some good stuff in the flower fields. Probably not worth the risk and the randomness though, best to find other ways.

Jungles

Recommended Level: 17

The jungle environment is the most common in all of Qud. In fact, it is so common that I strongly recommend getting the Wilderness Lore: Jungles skill to improve your travel through this environment and it's more dangerous variant, deep jungles. The common jungle residents are Naphtaali, goatfolk, and ice frogs; of which the goatfolk are definitely the most prominent threat.

Goatfolk shaman have goatfolk followers, so whenever you see one you can be sure you're in for a bit of a fight. Goatfolk lairs in particular are packed to the gills with these creatures and several legendary shaman, which are definitely your biggest threat here. A legendary goatfolk shaman is a serious threat that should be treated with utmost caution, but the treasures that can be obtained by looting their lairs is often worth the risk. If you do so, make sure you don't leave sower seeds on the ground because they will explode if ignited on the floor.

It's generally not worth it to explore random zones in the jungle. Instead, pop in when you find a goatfolk village as these will have far better loot and keep the population to a predictable goatfolk palette that is usually spread out across the map.

Ruins

Recommended Level: 20

It's a bit confusing at first, but the term "ruins" is used in-game to refer to several things. There are forgotten/named ruins, which you can find randomly while traveling in any environment and prompted to explore from the world map. For simplicity, we'll refer to these as "forgotten ruins". Forgotten ruins are an entirely different thing from ruins, which is the world map tile environment.

A ruins tile is different from most overworld tiles in that every zone in the parasang has a staircase, and will continue to do so until the 30 strata mark. Within that 30 strata range, the creatures you can encounter are mostly homogenous, with deep jungle tier creatures becoming reasonable to find past strata 20.

You'll primarily find goatfolk near the surface, then past strata 4 you'll encounter mostly robots (particularly turret tinkers). Ruins are fantastic places to visit if you have the capability to disarm turrets as you can make an incredible amount of money by looting guns here. That's not to mention the better-than-average loot that you can find as well, as chests and ground loot are more common here.

There's a healthy mix of creatures that can be found here, but like I mentioned the biggest danger are the robots and especially the turret tinkers. Chaingun turrets, laser turrets and (especially 15 strata+) rocket turrets can be quite commonly encountered here, so if you wish to brave the depths for look be sure to come prepared.

Rivers

Recommended Level: 22

There is nothing in the rivers except for blood and anger. It is highly recommended to simply avoid this terrain, and exclusively for 1 single excruciatingly common creature: the madpole. With quite high AV, the madpole is a nuisance more than a threat, but without 18+ AV a madpole is a run-ender to a laissez-faire Qud runner. They latch onto you and Dismember you piece by piece, and they are everywhere in the rivers.

If you are favored by Fish, then by all means wander the rivers as now they aren't much of a threat to you. But before that, there's simply nothing here. There are fish lairs (as you might imagine) and flower lairs for glowpads, but it's usually not worth dealing with madpole around every corner. There is a chance that Oboroqoru's lair is in a river tile, in which case just try and avoid the madpole if you're going to explore it.

Banana Grove

Recommended Level: 25

The banana grove is only found around the Spindle, which makes this a pretty limited environment to explore. However, it is one of if not the most annoying environment to explore zone-by-zone. It is absurdly dense with angry trees all over the place to smack you around and swallow you up. The only reason to come here is to visit the Spindle or a historic site if one can be found here.

It is notable to mention that a somewhat common (if incredibly dull) strategy is to come here fairly early once you have a gun and access to Mafeo for bullets. This is because the only creature that is default hostile to you that can move (the adiyy) is blind, so you can generally avoid it (or just gun it down). This leaves you to spend an eternity shooting the trees in complete safety for easy levels. Do it if you want, just make sure to watch your step.

Rainbow Wood

Recommended Level: 25

The rainbow wood is fairly unique in that it only has 1 threat: soupy sludges. However, soupy sludges range from one of the most pathetic creatures on Qud to the pale horse of Death (capital D); it all depends on how many liquids they've absorbed. Unfortunately for the soup, it can't hurt you if you're flying. It also can't hurt you if you just leave the zone before the primordial soup can coagulate into a soupy sludge since that takes time.

The only reason you'd be here is because there's a historic site or you're here for the main story, so just keep it moving quickly and fly and you'll be good. There is a strategy where you fill up waterskins with primordial soup to sell, but if you're doing that just choose a zone where none of the liquid weeps seep into the primordial soup.

Deep Jungle

Recommended Level: 27

The deep jungle is full of pretty nasty things: purple jells, elder tartbeards, dynamic turret tinkers and greater voiders are the threats of death while the stat saps are the intermediate player's biggest nightmare. In general, you should avoid normal deep jungle zones; they're difficult to navigate and really don't have much worthwhile for the massive slog it is to churn through.

Instead, you should explore the world map until you're prompted to explore a goatfolk haunt. These are guaranteed to only have goatfolk qlippoths in them, which drop crysteel tier equipment like it's their full-time job and similarly tiered artifacts, as well as there being chests with more loot in them. These are goldmines at this level, and it is highly recommended you have the Wilderness Lore: Jungles skill in order to fully enjoy the bounty of the deep jungle.

Lake Hinnom

Recommended Level: 27

Yes, Lake Hinnom is indeed different than the Palladium Reef, in a fairly significant way. The creatures you find here are quite weaker than the ones you find in the Palladium Reef. You also find common flocks of white esh, which are pathetically weak for how much EXP they give out. This area is not without risk, as it does come with a healthy dose of sultan croc and svardym eld.

Sultan crocs can skulk, which renders them temporarily invisible and they have a massive Charge range. On top of that, they also are known to Dismember very commonly, so they can be quite annoying to deal with. It's definitely recommended to have a few pieces of scaled gear so you don't have to deal with them.

Svardym eld are hit-or-miss. They have absolutely massive Ego bonuses, which means if they roll into a threatening mental mutation like Syphon Vim or Sunder Mind, they are devastating. However, they can just as likely roll Kindle and Mental Mirror and be totally useless, but treat every svardym eld as if it were the most dangerous variant of it. Other than farming white esh for EXP, there's really nothing of note in Lake Hinnom. Sure, you can get the occasional svardym lair but you probably don't want to take the risk of several very deadly svardym eld unless you've got damage reflection on lockdown and good MA.

Palladium Reef

Recommended Level: 30

The Palladium Reef has the same threats as Lake Hinnom, with the added threats of tongue tyrants, quatravolt gliders, and galgal. In return, mucking about in the reef has the chance to spawn a dram of sunslag; extremely valuable to find and the primary bit of loot you'll find here. Outside of that, reef hermits are an easy kill and have tons of high tier artifacts on them to loot.

You can find the cradle of Girsh Rermadon here, as well as the Hydropon. These take a considerable effort to find, so make sure you're methodical in your approach so you don't end up missing zones. The forgotten ruins here also occasionally spawn with some valuable chests, but they're pretty few and far between.

The biggest threat as mentioned are the galgal. They tend to be found within the palladium strut reefs themselves, which is just the worst because they obscure vision leaving you clueless to their location until you're right next to them. For that reason, always come to the Palladium Reef with several EMP grenades to disable galgal. If you can get distance on them, they'll prefer to shoot at your with their naser cannon. This will not only ground you if you are flying, but it also is a normality gun that can disable force fields. While this is a powerful weapon, it pales in comparison to their Run Over ability so do not approach one that is shooting at you. Instead, try and shoot back with arc winders as they have fairly high AV.

If you have extremely high movement speed, you can actually fight them by weaving in and out of their charge path and shooting them as they are about to charge. This gets easier the higher quickness you have compared to their 175, made easier with skills like Fastest Gun in the Rust, Empty the Clips and the rapid release finger flexors cybernetic. Additionally, with 100 cold resistance you can toss a few freeze grenade mk III to lock them down, making sure to reapply every now and again to ensure it doesn't thaw. The benefit here is that even when they do thaw, they'll have reduced quickness due to still being cold.

Baroque Ruins

Recommended Level: 35

Everything that applies to ruins applies to baroque ruins as well, the only difference being the loot is better and the creatures are far more powerful. There aren't any creatures bespoke to baroque ruins; you primarily get deep jungle creatures with the occasional red jell, but you also will get galgal especially from strata 15 onward.

The loot from these places is simply unparalleled; if you can handle galgal then you should absolutely visit. If you do not have a solution and especially a powerful ranged option, then the baroque ruins are out of your grasp. If you attain neutrality with Robots, these should be one of the first places you visit.

Moon Stair

Recommended Level: 35

The Moon Stair is awful and everything wants to kill you. The terrain itself is out to get you; between the dilute warm static giving you any effect possible and the hexagonal crystals spawning Evil Twinn((D)s of you on destruction it becomes difficult to even move around. Then you have the zero jells that can easily roll into some incredibly crippling effect, the n-dimensional starshells teleporting you 30 strata underground, and the leering stalkers spamming their stun cannon making everything more annoying than it needs to be. Luckily with the starshells you start neutral to them, and can avoid them targeting you with their Spacetime Vortex by wearing an ontological anchor.

Still, you should definitely have some form of Flight here, primarily to avoid the zero jells and the dilute warm static all over the place. Zero jells are simply not worth the effort to fight unless you feel like some stinky warm static cheese (which to be fair is extremely powerful). Leering stalkers can be beheaded, so Berserk! enjoyers are eating well here. Otherwise, they are actually not immensely dangerous at this level, more annoying with their blast cannon. The real threat is the chrome pyramid.

Chrome pyramid are one of the most dangerous non-boss creatures in the game. They have an immense health pool, a perpetual force field around them, a hugely powerful melee attack and shoot a literal rocket shotgun with relative accuracy. If you are seriously thinking about fighting it instead of tossing an EMP and moving on, you should have a strategy in place to deal with the swarm rack. If you have 25 DV and Swift Reflexes, you will always dodge all of the rockets. This means you can wait until the chrome pyramid has to assemble more rockets to reload and continue to do this over and over. Assembling rockets damages the pyramid, and you can wait until it gives up and tries to pin you against a wall to melee you.

If you don't want to do this, then you can instead have a way to disarm the pyramid; either through true disarm ways or by Dismembering its swarm rack. Then you will again have to deal with the pyramid pinning you against a wall, but this time it will be at relatively high (if not full) HP. The chrome pyramid can hit you through AV, so be sure to have a healthy amount of DV to attempt to dodge its melee attack. Good luck with that though, because the distortion field has a massive +10 to hit on top of the pyramid's Agility and +2 from the Cudgel Proficiency skill.

Keeping the chrome pyramid disabled for you to start to tear it to pieces is a great strategy. Cudgels work especially well here, as does the ceremonial vibrokhopesh and electric modded weapons. Corrosive Gas Generation is the ultimate chrome pyramid killer as you will very quickly shred it to pieces with this mutation being highly ranked. Outside of these methods, grenades work particularly well once you disable the force field with an EMP. Just like anything without 100 cold resistance; freeze grenade mk III really do wonders at locking these guys down. You can also use arc winders to hit the force field and have the electricity simply arc through and hit the pyramid, or do something similar with Electrical Generation.

Regardless of how you choose to kill your first chrome pyramid or first chrome pyramid of the run, you'll probably not want to spare the effort every single time one pops up on the Moon Stair, so for simplicity's sake just come with some EMPs and run away. Chavvah is located here in the Moon Stair, as is the chuppah of Qas and Qon. Again, if you're searching for the chuppah make sure to come with a strategy so you don't miss one zone and have to re-comb the map.

A piece of advise for those traveling through; since you can't travel through the Moon Stair on the world map, you have to move zone-by-zone. If you manage to move to a new parasang, you can go to the world map and then re-enter the same parasang from the center zone. This way you can skip a few zones, especially if you are traveling north-to-south.