1.0: Initial release.
1.1: Fix typos.
1.2: Added Force Bubble tip from toewsy12!
1.3: Clarified thoughts about Ego Projection and Force Wall.
1.4: Glimmer is now tragically calculated from all mental mutations, even relic ones. But there remains even more reason to seek relics than ever!
1.5: Added alternate build for players seeking guaranteed access to Ptoh's Final Gift!

Have you ever wondered "Who is this Ptoh I keep hearing about, and how can I apply Its teachings to my life?"

On a related note, are you the type to seize power with no regard to the consequences?

Going further, do you long to avenge all this game's unfair deaths by becoming a walking apocalypse, inevitably surviving everything even as you uncaringly sow death and ruin everywhere in Qud?

So help you, do you take inspiration from the alpha-plus psykers of Warhammer 40k, the false Dragons of The Wheel of Time, the endless parade of Sith lords from the Star Wars franchise, and countless other examples of individuals who combined world-shattering power with horrifically questionable sanity?

If your answer to these questions is "Hell, yeah!", then you're in luck - Ptoh wants all of these things for you, too!

With this guide, we will learn how to become a mega-Ego Esper and achieve ultimate psionic power - Ptoh's way!

Before we go any further, I must acknowledge my debt to Aquillion's "Kill things with your mind: How to play an Esper" guide, which first inspired me to try mega-Ego espers, and which today continues to offer a lot of useful information and advice. My guide stands on Aquillion's giant shoulders!

That said, you'll find a somewhat different perspective on the mega-Ego Esper here. We'll be emphasizing an alternate set of skills and mutations, along with a few new Ptoh-approved tricks to help take your mega-Ego Esper to the next level (and survive the consequences). The goal here is to make our early game more unpredictable (in a fun way) while still being cognizant of late game issues - and, of course, achieving ultimate psionic power!

It is my modest hope that, just as Aquillion's guide did for me back in the day, this guide will inspire new ways for you to enjoy Caves of Qud.

I also owe thanks to toewsy12 of Reddit for opening my eyes to an interesting use for Force Bubble.

In case this is somehow the first Esper guide you've ever read, the concept of the mega-Ego Esper is pretty simple.

Your character's Ego modifier adds to the level of all mental mutations. Thus, one Esper strategy is to focus on having the highest Ego possible, take the Esper trait to ensure you will only ever have mental mutations, and spend your mutation points only to buy new mutations. In the end, you will have a wide array of powers at extremely high levels and be generally awesome.

Okay, all that is Mega-Ego Esper 101, as is the fact that no matter how high your Ego is, your mutations cannot rise above half your character's level (round up). I bet you can't believe I'm wasting your time guidesplaining all this.

What a lot of Esper guides don't mention, however, is that there are certain mental mutations where having a super-high Ego helps even if you're already at the level limit. Mutations where if your level limit is 5, a +10 Ego mod will still help you more than a +5.

Well, we're going to be talking all about those mutations. Especially as, if you follow this guide to the end, you might ultimately achieve an Ego in the 50-60 range - or more! You'll learn exactly how to exploit such an incredible Ego mod bonus long before your level has caught up.

"But wait!" you protest. "Won't that inevitably cause megatons of Glimmer and we won't be able to go five screens without triggering an Esper-hunter dogpile of apocalyptic proportions?!"

Perhaps. But to paraphrase John Milton, to have ultimate psionic power is worth ambition.

Everything you need to know about being an Esper, you can learn from this guide's patron saint, the entity Ptoh.

Ptoh, of course, is a godlike and rather Lovecraftian alien being who was sealed somewhere on Qud ages ago by order of a now-forgotten interstellar federation known as the Coven. This entity (along with the Gyre plagues) may well have played some role in the downfall of the Eater civilization. Even now, Ptoh longs to escape Its prison, and Its followers - the Seekers of the Sightless Way - hunt restlessly for rogue Espers to assimilate.

While, tragically, current builds of the game do not allow us to free Ptoh or even join the Seekers of the Sightless Way, that doesn't mean we can't take all the inspiration we'll need from Ptoh's example!

Consider the following facts about Ptoh:

• The purpose of Ptoh is to flip out and kill people.
  
• Ptoh is immortal and almost certainly 100% unkillable.
  
• Ptoh's influence on mortals is insidious and corrupting.
  
• Ptoh can fold the fabric of space and time with Its mind as easily as you or I could make a paper airplane.
  
• Ptoh is popular with Seekers of the Sightless Way and Highly Entropic Beings.
  
• Ptoh once annihilated a research station by manipulating quarks in a region of spacetime. When It was politely granting Its approval to a Coven vote.

So, to summarize, your goal is to be unkillable, insidiously corrupting, able to screw around with time and space, and in all ways a person of mass destruction even when you're trying to be nice.

Let's do this!

We'll start off as a Mutant Apostle with these stats and mutations:

Strength 10
Agility 10
Toughness 18
Intelligence 19
Willpower 16
Ego 26

Esper
Clairvoyance
Light Manipulation
3x Unstable Genome
Psionic Migraines (defect)

Stats

You might recognize those stats as similar to what Aquillion's guide recommends, except we're lowering Willpower by 2 so we can raise your Intelligence by 1.

On the one hand, this does make you slightly more vulnerable to mental attacks, and you might think we need to be careful about that, given that you'll be dealing with Esper-hunters down the line. However, the brutal truth is that with this guide, both you and the Esper-hunters will be flinging mental attacks so fearsome that two points of Willpower won't make a damn bit of difference.

Not compared to what we can do with just one extra point of Intelligence.

And that would be gaining Trash Divining by level 12 (at latest) without any further sacrifices. Over the course of a long run, Trash Divining will reveal tons of new ruins and even Historical Sites for you to loot for books (and, by extension, tons of XP), making it a top-tier skill in your quest for ultimate psionic power!

Calling

Apostle continues to be the best calling for mega-Ego Espers like you. Aside from the Ego bonus, they come with Proselytize and Intimidate, which are both excellent tools for surviving the early game. Proselytize in particular is on-brand as it will give you a Ptoh-like ability to ensnare creatures into obeying your will!

Starting Mutations

Light Manipulation is a great starter weapon which only gets better throughout the run, eventually allowing you to regularly deflect laser shots as well as fire them. (Don't use it as your only light source, though.)

Clairvoyance is also useful from turn 1. Early on, it'll help you find where those damn Seed-Spitting Vines are attacking from. Later, it'll let you know exactly what you're up against on every floor - or when the Esper-hunters spawn!

Unstable Genome

The three levels of Unstable Genome serve a dual purpose.

First, they make the early game more interesting - even when you've played through the Joppa / Grit Gate stuff a zillion times, you can still enjoy seeing what random new powers you get as you level up.

Second, you're all but guaranteed to have a satisfyingly ridiculous number of powers by your teen levels - and with just a little RNG love, you'll end up with ones that are worth much more than you spent on Unstable Genome.

Defect

Finally... Psionic Migraines?! But that keeps you from wearing helmets, including ones that could boost your Ego! How the hell does THAT serve the purpose of ultimate psionic power?!

Calm down, fellow aspirant of Ptoh. The points you get from this Defect are what enable you to take all those levels of Unstable Genome in the first place.

Okay, I realize being able to equip a helmet with a Two-Faced mod would allow you to wear two severed faces, potentially boosting your Ego by as much as 7 (+1 for the best non-relic helmet with an Ego mod, +3 x 2 in the unlikely event you could acquire TWO faces worth +3 Ego).

But I choose the path of having a whopping 8 mutations by level 13. (And still being able to equip one +3 Ego face!)

If you've already read this whole guide and know all about the Ptoh's Final Gift exploit, you'll remember that it depends on gaining Precognition at a very low level - ideally before you even have Glimmer.

So you might be looking back at the above build and thinking "Okay, mutation roulette is fun... but do I really want to roll the dice on gaining Precognition in time? Even with three levels of Unstable Genome, it's totally possible for Precognition to NEVER show up as a choice before my Glimmer is too high for the exploit!"

Well, fellow aspirant of Ptoh, I've thought of this, too - and I've got your back.

If you would prefer to be absolutely sure that you can get Ptoh's Final Gift when the time comes, then swap out the above mutations for these:

Esper
Clairvoyance
Light Manipulation
Precognition
Sunder Mind
Sense Psychic
Psionic Migraines (defect)

Everything else (stats, calling, etc) remains the same.

The above is nice because you'll have two of our three priority mutations - Precognition and Sunder Mind - right on turn 1 instead of having to wait for the RNG to cough them up. (You also get the 1 point Sense Psychic, which isn't anything special and will never become anything special, but might occasionally spot psychic enemies before your Clairvoyance is up to snuff.)

The downside is that by taking Precog and Sunder Mind instead of three levels of Unstable Genome, you're sacrificing one mutation for a more precise build (and a guaranteed exploit). As such, your ultimate psionic power might not end up being quite as ultimate as a player who took the original build and managed to roll Precognition (in time) with one of their three Unstable Genomes... but it'll definitely be more ultimate than a player who rolled those dice and lost!

I'll leave it to you to decide which way you prefer.

As you level, you will follow the standard mega-Ego Esper strategy: put ALL stat points into Ego and save ALL mutation points to buy new mutations. Never waste MP leveling mutations you already have.

When you have enough MP to get another mutation (or when Unstable Genome triggers), these are the ones we want:

Precognition

Aquillion swears by Teleport as the one power you should ALWAYS choose when it comes up, and that's a one million percent defensible stance. But we are going with Precognition as priority number one. It's a must-have for the Ptoh aspirant and immortality-seeker! The earlier you can get this power, the better.

If you want to know exactly why I feel this way, check out Ptoh's Final Gift at the end of this guide.

Of course, Ptoh's Final Gift is only available for a limited window. Outside of THAT use, Precognition remains good for saving your life in uncertain situations, safely ingesting neutron flux, ensuring that your Dominate / Beguiling attempts always work, safe-guarding your entry every time you enter a new floor or map location, reverting when you buy an expensive unidentified artifact only for it to turn out to be lame, and using drops of nectar to exert more control over your build.

"Say what?" you protest upon reading that last one. "We use drops of nectar to control our build? Don't we care more about that 25% chance to permanently gain +1 to all stats off one meal?"

Yeah, if you were an average character, sure. But for you, that stat increase is just a helpful side effect!

Your real use for nectar is to reset the mutation RNG when you pop Precognition, buy a mutation with level-up MP, and don't like your choices. You can then revert your precog, cook with that nectar, and get a new set of choices! THAT functionality is well worth the cost of a drop of nectar. The possibility of a +1 to all stats is just (incredibly nice) icing on the cake.

Combined with the Mass Mind mutation, Precognition can also make you basically unkillable, and you can totally go that way if you want... but Mass Mind has its own horrifying drawbacks, as we'll discuss below.

Teleport

After Precognition, priority number two is Teleport. This mutation gets you out of danger, it makes locked doors irrelevant (with Clairvoyance), it saves you from getting eaten alive by madpoles and red death daccas and other jerkasses that grab you, it closes the gap when you really want to Proselytize / Beguile someone, and - last but not least - absolutely NO ONE is going to take you seriously as an aspirant of Ptoh if you can't do even a little spacefolding of your own.

Sunder Mind

This wonderful head-exploding mutation is my third priority after Precognition and Teleport.

I know a lot of players believe that Sunder Mind has been nerfed. It no longer does one big hit, it instead does a series of smaller hits over 10 turns (during which you can do nothing else), and only THEN delivers a massive hit...

...but that's only for Espers who aren't aspirants of Ptoh! For YOU, Sunder Mind is even better than ever!

Remember what I said about your full Ego helping you on certain powers? RIGHT HERE!

See, no matter what level your Sunder Mind is, your full Ego mod adds its penetration, which in turn increases its damage - and with the Ego you're going to have, your Sunder Mind will be inflicting its old massive damage EVERY TURN before you're level 20.

So you'll annihilate most enemies in just two or three turns (at most), and you'll rarely see something with so much HP, even among Esper-hunters, that you'll have to hold still the whole 10 turns.

Unfortunately, Sunder Mind still can't hurt robotic enemies or mindless creatures like plants or oozes. But that's what your other powers are for!

Space-Time Vortex

I know this mutation doesn't get a lot of respect, and you won't need it in the early game, but later in a run, it's indispensable for disposing of Esper-hunters and other dangerous enemies - or escaping from them. Yes, it can suck hurling yourself somewhere random where you'll have to find a safe spot to recoil back to safety... but that's way better than staying to face certain death or (worse) a fight that's not even worth winning. I always end up taking Space-Time Vortex at SOME point, and so should you. At later levels, its cooldown lowers to 5 rounds, allowing you to use it flagrantly, which is always fun.

On top of the escape utility, this mutation raises your credibility with Highly Entropic Beings, which isn't all that useful on its own, but it's totally a Ptoh thing to do.

"Wait," you cry. "What about 0lam? That character is a Highly Entropic Being, and it's got those sweet Otherpearls! I'd love to see if you can claim one of THOSE for some faction rep! Especially as you lowered our Willpower, douchbag!"

All I can say to that is... my fellow aspirant of Ptoh, if you can already get far enough in this game to worry about 0lam, then you are the one who should be writing guides, not me.

Force Bubble

Force Bubble was already my favorite defensive mutation to start, but a hot tip opened my eyes to how great this power really is. Before, I thought it was good for noping out of bad situations (satisfyingly just plowing through anything that tries to block you) or shrugging off all physical attacks as you shred enemies with your Light Manipulation and Sunder Mind, but now I've learned that Force Bubble also lets you tinker, go back to the world map, and recoil even when you're surrounded by enemies. It would have saved so many of my earlier Espers to know this!

Let Force Bubble save your character, too.

Ego Projection

This mutation is purely a defensive option for you. You can't do Boost Strength and Boost Agility at the same time, but alone they're of little use to a brain wizard like you. Boost Toughness, on the other hand, is a great panic button. Better yet, the boost works from your Ego bonus, not the mutation's level, making this another power that doesn't "waste" your massive Ego. I prefer to have both this AND Force Bubble for defense, but you can get by with having one or the other.

Syphon Vim / Cryokinesis / Pyrokinesis

Sunder Mind, Light Manipulation, and maybe Burgeoning will be the bread and butter of your offense most of the time, but it doesn't hurt to have a mutation (or two) from this group, as well.

Syphon Vim can save your life by healing you with the scary damage you're inflicting on your would-be killer. It does suck that you have to be next to the enemy to start it, but the drain will continue even if you then put up a Force Bubble or teleport across the screen. Overall, Syphon Vim isn't totally essential, but it can still be a neat little shank to have in your arsenal.

Be warned, though, that like Sunder Mind, Syphon Vim won't work against robots. Oozes and other mindless organics are still open season, though.

Cryokinesis and Pyrokinesis I'm slightly less fond of, but they definitely have their uses, particularly in dealing with groups, enemies on the other side of walls, or the aforementioned robots. They are also good for hurting Esper-hunters who have Force Bubbles up. Or just Force Walling an enemy and burning/freezing them in place, that also works. However, one reason I sometimes hold off on picking these two is that there are many ingredients that can grant Pyro or Cryo through Cooking, making it feel slightly wasteful to use one of our mutation picks.

Force Wall

It's no secret that I prefer Force Bubble to Force Wall, but I won't deny that Wall is in its way the more versatile power. Aside from shielding yourself or blocking an enemy's advance, it can also trap enemies. This, in fact, is a common tactic of Esper-hunters (which is why we value normality grenades and Teleport), and you can use it yourself to keep an enemy from stepping out of your Cryokinesis or Pyrokinesis fields, or just hold them in place while you hose them with your gun. Still, I usually only take Force Wall when Force Bubble just absolutely refuses to appear as a choice.

Never take both Force mutations - use that second pick to get more offense!

Beguiling

Another free ally on demand, another way to emulate Ptoh's insidiously corrupting influence, and it works even better than Proselytize. Your full Ego mod adds to the Beguiling roll, so this is another power where having a massive Ego helps no matter what level you are. There's not much else to say about this mutation other than it's really good for you and makes you feel good.

Domination

This mutation isn't 100% mandatory, but there's a lot of cool things you can do with it.

If you invest in allies, this will let you spend their stat/skill/mutation points - which can be important for gaining access to Dismember if you want to wear an Ego-boosting face (and you should!). This power can also work as a poor Esper's Precognition, as you can Dominate a disposable monster and send them to the next floor/screen to see what's on it. Probably the best use of this power is to Dominate book sellers (preferably after using Precognition in case you fail the roll) and get free books all game.

Another use for Domination is tricky but still neat, and that's body-swapping - permanently moving your mind to the body of something more badass than your current form! The easiest way to do this is to Dominate a monster (the one you permanently want to inhabit, and which itself must have the Domination mutation), then Dominate a second monster. The duration of the first Domination will run out before your second Dominate does, and then you will be "trapped" in the first monster (the one you want to be) when your second Dominate expires.

Do you know who's a good candidate for body-swapping? Transdimensional Esper-hunters! Aside from Ego, they'll have significantly better stats than you, and a lot more HP, too.

Temporal Fugue

An infamous mutation that requires no introduction. I usually end up with this power, but I try to wait until the Esper-hunters have started getting out of hand, as it's rarely necessary before then. And also because Historical Site relics seem to offer this power fairly often, which would save you the cost of buying it yourself.

At any rate, this is your panic button to wreck anything that's currently hassling you, and it only gets better as you go up in level (and destructive mutation count). Be VERY careful if you use this after you've taken Cryokinesis, Pyrokinesis, Disintegrate, Space-Time Vortex, or explosive weapons, because your clones will spam these and they don't give one lonely, mountain-dwelling bang about hitting you.

Try to avoid carrying grenades, too, especially ones that can't hurt you (defoliant, fungicide, etc), because your stupid clones will waste their turns throwing these at enemies they can't hurt, either.

After a while, almost every Esper-hunter will also have this power, leading to armies of clones (yours and theirs) duking it out with godlike powers and damage fields and force fields and vortices everywhere, making it futile to keep track of what's going on (and a huge headache to wade into it yourself). All the same, your clones just might win the battle. If not, they will still buy you time to escape.

As a side note, this power pairs very well with Clairvoyance and Teleport, as your clones can teleport to attack anything you've revealed on the screen.

Burgeoning

For a long time, I somehow failed to see the worth of this plant-summoning mutation, but then I remembered how frigging obnoxious a lot of Qud's plantlife is, and I've since come around. I still wouldn't take Burgeoning at low levels (when it summons only weak plants), but when your Ego mod can push its level into the teens, then it starts regularly summoning red death daccas which can grab and shred a lot of enemies, including many Esper-hunters.

Remember all the times you've been killed by goatfolk in the jungle? Those horny pricks are just a snack to a red death dacca.

As an added bonus, that's also around the point where Burgeoning's cooldown lowers to a mere five rounds, letting you spam it almost at will! (You know, in between spamming Space-Time Vortex everywhere.)

Confusion

I won't lie, I don't always take this mutation every run, but I can't deny its usefulness, either. It's best for countering Esper-hunters, but it's pretty handy for messing up groups of regular enemies, too. Being confused (when it works) keeps even Esper-hunters from doing much of anything to you.

Like other mental attacks, your massive Ego will help this mutation land regardless of level, but don't waste your time using it on robots, plants, or oozes.

Mass Mind

There's a lot to like about this power. You can reset the cooldown on all your mutations and (if you feel like it) keep Precognition running pretty much 24/7, which is the next best thing to being totally invulnerable. HOWEVER, it comes with the very serious downside of permanently raising your Glimmer by 1 with every use! Some runs, I'm too foolish to care. Yeah, come at me, you stupid Esper-hunters! Don't tell me how to live! But the other downside is a rep penalty for Seekers of the Sightless Way, and that is NOT a Ptoh move - failing to be down with the Seekers will only hurt you in the long game.

I'm not saying never, ever take this mutation - used sparingly, it might save your character when nothing else will. But you need to understand its downsides.

Having ultimate psionic power isn't just about the highest power levels possible. It's also about having the right powers, with no dead weight in your mutation list. Remember that each and every mutation you take will notably impact your Glimmer. You need to make sure that what you're getting is worth the price you're paying.

Remember, too, that the Esper-hunters will mirror your Ego, but their mutation lists are randomized. Their rosters can and will contain powers that do little or nothing for NPCs like Beguiling, Domination, Psychometry, Mental Mirror, and others. By keeping your list free of junk, you can be a more versatile Esper than the Esper-hunters will ever be!

So let's talk about mutations that proper aspirants of Ptoh should avoid.

Psychometry

This mutation unlocks doors and both identifies artifacts and gives you their schematics. You could waste a mutation pick and take the Glimmer hit for this... or you could just eat a cheap banana meal whenever you need your artifacts' schematics. Psychometry would be more tempting if it also improved the results of Trash Divining, or helped reveal points of interest while traveling the world map, or granted more rewards for defeating robots, or SOMETHING. As it is, though, this power just doesn't give you enough to make it worth picking over better mutations.

Disintegration

This mutation potentially is the hardest-hitting after Sunder Mind, and it works a lot more quickly, too. Too bad, then, that it has two potentially run-ending drawbacks.

The first is that you're paralyzed for three rounds after using it. Late game, it does no good to annihilate an Esper-hunter when their buddies will then be free to Sunder Mind or bury you in Burgeoning plants or come counter-blast you with their own Disintegrations before you can do anything. The other problem is that you're probably going to take Temporal Fugue... and your clones won't care about hitting you with their Disintegration, either. So now you have a suicide button!

Stunning Force

This does negligible damage even at high levels, but stuns a group of enemies. I'd rather use powers that just straight up kill enemies, though. Okay, Stunning Force works against groups, and the few good damage powers that also hit groups - Pyrokinesis and Cryokinesis - are sometimes a hassle to use optimally. Even so, Confusion is better (as it effectively disables enemies AND makes them more vulnerable to your other mental attacks). There's also the issue of your Temporal Fugue clones spamming it and hitting you. I'm just not feeling it with this mutation.

Teleport Other

This mutation is actually pretty good for what it does, and it quickly reaches a 5 turn cooldown, letting you use it regularly when needed. The problem is that when an enemy is next to you, that's when I would prefer to use Syphon Vim or Beguile or Proselytize or Burgeoning or Cryokinesis/Pyrokinesis or a flamethrower. (I have to admit that Syphon Vim + Teleport Other would be a pretty slick combo, though.) I'm not saying I would never take this power, but at the end of the day, there's usually a better pick.

Mental Mirror

Unfortunately, this mutation has been severely nerfed from its former height. Now, it only boosts your Mental Armor rating, reflects ONE attack (if your MA even manages to block it), and then has a lame cooldown.

That said, because we sacrificed some Willpower in our base build, you might think this mutation can help make up for that. And I'll admit it does feel good when some Esper-hunter tries to confuse or sunder your mind, only to grief themselves instead! So you might be tempted to pick this mutation after all. Alas, you would still be wrong.

The problem is that the powers you want Mental Mirror to block - Sunder Mind and Confusion - both use Ego as their penetration bonus. Mental Mirror, on the other hand, only uses its level+3 as a MA bonus. So once you hit your current mutation limit with this one, your further Ego points count for nothing on defense.

What does that mean? It means that you (with your massive Ego) and the Esper-hunters (who always match your Ego) will both regularly blast right through Mental Mirror as if it weren't even there, so pick something else.

In the end, most of your power will come from mutations, not skills or gear. But that's not to say the right skills can't bring you closer to ultimate psionic power.

Cooking

Cooking is good for all characters, but it's amazing for you. You just get so much from cooking - buffs, wealth, free mental mutations - that it would be ridiculous to not learn it. Luckily, it's a short skill tree, and you can get everything you need by level 5 or 6. Yeah, it's best to make this the first thing you learn, so you can begin collecting ingredients right away.

All the Cooking skills are worth learning. Once you pick up Carbide Chef, you can make your own recipes, which will make the buffing results of your meals consistent, allowing you to have your choice of buffs going 24/7.

Better yet, everything but watervine will be worth a lot of water with your massive Ego, and all ingredients are weightless once preserved, making Cooking a steady source of easily-carried wealth.

Best of all, several ingredients can temporarily grant mental mutations, which your Ego will boost right alongside your real powers! So when you're dealing with chefs and kippers at the Stilt (or anywhere else), keep an eye out for:

• Beguiling: Congealed Love. (Be warned, though, that when the meal's effect times out, anything you've Beguiled will turn hostile.)
  
• Burgeoning: Algae, Crushed Grave Moss.
  
• Cryokinesis: Convalessence, Freeze-Dried Hoarshrooms.
  
• Pyrokinesis: Congealed Blaze, Cured Dawnglider Tail, Fire Ant Gaster Paste.
  
• Psychometry: Bananas.
  
• Teleport Other: Fermented Yondercane, Voider Gland Paste.

Other important ingredients for meals include:

• Congealed Love: +4 Ego. This kind of endgame-worthy boost is honestly better for a recipe than Beguiling.
  
• Drop of Nectar: For reasons already discussed.
  
• Honey: Disease resistance (another reason to learn Cooking early, so you can have this recipe ready for Golgotha).
  
• Mashed Lag: +4 Willpower, in case your average Willpower is making you feel insecure.
  
• Meat/Jerky (of any sort): Bonus HP. One of the most readily available (and useful) ingredients.
  
• Neutron Flux: Permanent +1 AV with a small chance of instadeath, so cook with this ONLY after you attain (and use) Precognition.
  
• (Concentrated) Nullbeard Gland Paste: Normality breath is one way to ruin an Esper-hunter's day.
  
• Picked Mushrooms: Fungus faction rep, fungal infection resistance.
  
• Psychal Gland Paste: Reveals a secret.
  
• Sliced Bop Cheek: Rare, but can grant 90% falling damage reduction for a shortcut through Golgotha.
  
• Spine Fruit Jam / Mirror Dust:: Reflects damage, wrecking attempts to sunder your mind by fragile Seekers.
  
• Canned-Have-It-All: Randomly duplicates any ingredient, including the ones above. Be warned that it can also duplicate BAD ingredients (like glotrot-causing Black Ooze), so you might want to use Precognition before experimenting with this.

This skill tree, incidentally, is one reason to start in Joppa - you can learn Harvesting from the Elder or Mehmet. Also incidentally, Cooking is another reason you should consider taking the Burgeoning mutation, as you will sometimes spawn plants that you can harvest ingredients from!

Wayfaring

This skill tree is useful for avoiding (and rebounding from) getting lost. Jungle Lore is very useful, as much of the world map is jungle and you may decide to traverse it at a relatively low level for one particular reason (see "Village Tour", below). The other Wilderness Lore skills can wait until more important skills are out of the way. Some of the "early game" ones - Marshes, Salt Flats, Canyons - you can skip entirely.

Contrary to what its description may imply, Wayfaring skills aren't the best way to find ruins and villages as you travel the world map. The best way is through Trash Divining or the World Tile Hopping technique (below).

Customs and Folklore

When you hit level 12, you should immediately buy Trash Divining, as your Intelligence will meet the requirement, and this skill is extremely useful over a long game. Any of the ruins it reveals might have books to loot (along with possibly other loot and high-XP monsters). On rare occasions, this skill can even reveal Historical Sites - and as we'll discuss later, Historical Sites are wonderful things for you.

If you're lucky, you might not even have to wait until level 12. If you can get rep with the Pariah faction, they can teach it to you for free! Unfortunately, while there is a guaranteed Pariah at the Stilt, they for some reason do not offer the Trash Divining skill. You're just going to have to get lucky with a random Pariah encounter.

Tinkering

You're probably not going to be a major tinker with this build, but getting this tree up to Tinkering 1 is still useful, as you can start reverse-engineering everything once you get access to a banana (and, by extension, Psychometry). Tinkering 1 will allow you to craft anything you can learn through Psychometry.

Once you've cooked yourself a Psychometry-granting meal, useful things to "read history" on include the lead slugs, salve injectors, blaze injectors (to counter freezing), ubernostrum, love injectors (to preserve as Ego-boosting congealed love), Eater's nectar injectars (to preserve into drops of nectar), normality grenades, power cells, and any gun that uses level 4 or better components (an easy way to convert your excess components into gear worth hundreds of water drams when needed).

So where is the best place to get bananas? Most players would say Ezra, but if you pay attention, sometimes the Stilt's chefs and kippers will offer bananas, too. Hell, one time I found a banana gatherer in a random hookah tent!

Other good skills from this tree include Disassembly, Repair, and Scavenger (which pairs nicely with Trash Divining).

Persuasion

You start already knowing two of the most useful Persuasion skills - Proselytize and Intimidate - but some of the others in this tree can be useful, too. (At least once you get more important skills in place.) Menacing Stare and Berate give you more tools to mess with enemies, and Inspiring Presence helps a little if you're going to invest in allies (Beguiling, water ritual buddies, Patreon pets, etc).

Do not ever waste your hard-earned skill points on Snake Oiler, though. It's only helpful for low-Ego characters WHO ARE NOT YOU. If you insist on having Snake Oiler, you absolute fetus, you can just learn it from Consortium of Phyta legendaries (one of whom is guaranteed at the Spindle).

Self-Discipline

Despite that we're not emphasizing Willpower, there's still some good stuff in this tree, even if it will be deeper into the game before you can explore much of it. But you can at least get Fasting Way early, which will make your meals last twice as long - well worth the price of entry once you start cooking with Ego boosters or mutation-granting ingredients!

Endurance

Everything in this tree is of some value to your character (except maybe Swimming), but like Self-Discipline, it'll be a while before your Toughness naturally rises enough.

Like any mega-Ego Esper, our build is very much a "magikarp" build.

In other words, you're godlike in the late game, but you're weak in the early game, as your mutations are capped at low levels and Toughness 18 doesn't keep you from being distressingly fragile.

Because you have no Agility or Strength, you're easy to hit with attacks, it's going to be a while before you see any real armor that won't tank your miserable carrying capacity, and once your Light Manipulation runs dry, anything tougher than a regular snapjaw is going to laugh off your feeble melee attacks.

So you need to be careful!

Basic Survival Tips

Despite your desire to follow in Ptoh's footsteps, a lot of the basic survival tips for any character still apply to you.

• This is a roguelike and some players might call you a noob for it, but there's no shame in playing on Roleplaying mode (where you just reload your last save when you die instead of starting over). I personally have hundreds of hours in Caves of Qud and only ever play on Classic mode, but you don't need my permission to enjoy this game YOUR way.
  
• Start in Joppa. Not that a random village start can't be cool, but once you know what you're doing, Joppa offers a stronger start - and since you're a magikarp, that's an important consideration. Joppa's two quests are predictable and not terribly difficult, the rewards include guaranteed salves, one ubernostrum, Resheph lore, and a town recoiler. Right out of the gate, there are also three chests to loot (just remember to close the doors first), with two more once you're on Argyve's good side.
  
• Speaking of Joppa, check all nine screens around the center village - there is a statue to the north with lore and a Historical Site location. Sometimes, there's a statue on one of the other eight surrounding screens, too!
  
• Despite being hyped as a "shortcut", the Waterlogged Tunnel can be very dangerous - at least, more so than just marching overland to Red Rock. And the tunnel is longer than the overland route, too. Starting out, it's best to play it safe and avoid the tunnel. You can always come back later when you're more powerful.
  
• There's a guaranteed random village in the marsh area around Joppa. One of nearby green tiles on the world map contains it. Find it to get another merchant and/or tinker to trade with, an extra quest, and maybe even a skill that you can learn from water rituals (with the rep you'll get from the quest).
  
• Remember to SPRINT. Unlike nearly all other roguelikes, Caves of Qud actually lets you run from danger, and even today a lot of players forget this. But when you've exhausted all your Light Manipulation charges and your Proselytized ally can't block all the bad guys and now one of them is kicking your ass... remember that you can run!
  
• On a related note, when you're in danger... STOP and THINK. Whenever things start going wrong, a lot of players panic and end up making boneheaded mistakes that seal their doom. But this is a turn-based game, so you have all the time in the world to contemplate each and every move! Sometimes, surviving a bad situation is as simple as pausing, collecting yourself, and remembering that salve injector or Sprint button or Force Bubble or Intimidate skill that could save you.
  
• Learn to stair-dance. Qud's monsters will follow you up (or down) stairs if they're close enough... but facing them one at a time like this is better than tackling a whole mob of them at once. Be warned, though, that legendary monsters with their own group of minions can ascend with them en masse!
  
• When you find books, do not sell them. Take them to the Stilt and give them to the Librarian (in the center screen) for mad XP. Late in the game, you'll get more XP from books than you'll ever see from monsters or quests.
  
• Get a gun. It's a fact, there's a lot more monsters out there than you'll have Light Manipulation shots to deal with. So any gun, even the lowly musket, will help you when (or even before) your inner laser craps out. And even with your weak Agility, it's still pretty easy to shoot things at close range. Better yet, if you get Force Bubble or Force Wall, you can shoot through those in safety! Luckily with your massive Ego, guns are super-affordable. There's no reason to leave Joppa without one.
  
• One of the best guns is a flamethrower. It eats oil and slows you down, but it hits hard, requires absolutely no Agility to aim properly, and can kill a huge variety of enemies. And you can find more oil than you'll ever need at the Asphalt Mines or underground in the Salt Dunes.
  
• Make full use of dreadroots. With the Harvest skill (which, like a gun, you should already have when you step away from Joppa), you can get dreadroot tubers from "ripe" dreadroots - and the tubers also drop occasionally when you kill a dreadroot with your weapon! (Use ctrl-direction to hit them.) Dreadroot tubers are the rarest ingredient of salve injectors, so you'll want as many of them as you can get.
  
• Learn to recognize (and deal with) early game player-killers. Seekers of the Sightless Way, Slugsnouts, Slumberlings, and turrets can all easily murder you if you're careless. Slumberlings are best avoided (at all costs) at this point, but the others will fall to your laser blasts - if you can get into position to hit them without getting blasted back. Seekers in particular are very dangerous. If you can't kill them quickly, you will need to get off-zone (via stairs or a screen edge) ASAP before your head explodes - yet another reason Teleport is so important.
  
• Finally, remember that you aren't required to kill everything you encounter. This is doubly important to remember late in the game when Esper-hunters have become both common and dangerous (yet rarely worth the reward of fighting them). If the bad guys aren't in a town or on a quest dungeon level you need to pass, it's often easier to just withdraw and go some other way.
  
• All right, one last thing - flamethrowers. Seriously.

Specific Mega-Ego Early Game Survival Tips

Remember to actually use your skills and powers.

Use Proselytize on the first non-trash mob you meet - Goats, Hermits, Bears, Beetlebums, legendary Snapjaws, whatever will help block for you. When they inevitably die, just ensnare a new monster. Use Intimidate when something's in your face, either to get away from it or just to buy time to reload your gun.

Use Clairvoyance the instant you decend a stair to reveal any monsters nearby. This one time, I died at the start of the game, literally within three turns of entering the Waterlogged Tunnel, because there was a Slugsnout just around the corner, and the pig one-shotted me the turn after I stepped away from the stairs. Using Clairvoyance at the stairs would have saved me (as would have following my own damn advice to avoid the Waterlogged Tunnel at low levels).

Did you just burn a bunch of monsters to ash with Light Manipulation? Good work! Now remember to take a breather before you continue on. Use the "." key to rest 20 turns at a time until all your laser charges are back. Nothing makes you feel like a punk like forgetting to get your charges back, only to run around the corner to find a tough monster while you're still "empty".

Later, when you have more powers, you can just hit shift-W to automatically wait for the longest cooldown (usually Precognition) to expire.

All right, now that we've got all the noob survival tips out of the way, we can focus on the stuff that's REALLY going to help you achieve ultimate psionic power!

Befriend The Seekers

The Seekers of the Sightless Way are number one on the list of factions you want to earn favor with.

For one thing, they make up 50% of all Esper-hunters, but if you can get your Seeker rep up to 250+, they will stop spawning as hunters, leaving only the transdimensional hunters for you to worry about.

For another thing, the Seekers are Ptoh's fanboys, and it should hurt so much that they give you no respect!

Unfortunately, legendary Seekers are so rare that you might play twenty games all the way to the end of the main quest without encountering ONE. And even then, you'll have to get through their psychic thralls to ensnare them so they'll talk and let you even do the water ritual.

Instead, you'll need to earn Seeker favor in other ways. When you deal with booksellers, keep an eye out for Schrodinger pages (either Seeker or unspecified) and acquire them at all costs. When you meet legendary monsters and ritualable NPCs, be very careful to note ones with Seeker rep - do the water ritual with everyone the Seekers love, and kill everyone they hate.

Also, you might have heard about how legendary Seekers will let you trade rep for free mental mutations (instead of skills like most legendaries). While this is true, a) you'd have to spend enough rep to again put Seeker Esper-hunters on your trail, and b) again, legendary Seekers are uber-rare. I hate to discourage you, but I wouldn't get my hopes up for this.

In fact, you might not even get to 250 rep with the Seekers at all. It does require a good amount of RNG love, and some runs, try as you might with all the legendaries and booksellers, the Seeker rep just isn't there. It's not the end of the world - at least the Seeker Esper-hunters are a lot more fragile than the transdimensional ones.

Other Factions You Should Ensnare Make Friends With

The Seekers aren't the only party in Qud. Here are some other factions who can do wonderful favors for you:

• Barathrumites: You will steadily gain tons of Barathrumite rep as you proceed with the main quest. Use water rituals to trade it for useful artifacts, schematics, or secrets.
  
• Fellowship of Wardens: Most wardens are worthy allies once you have the rep to recruit one.
  
• Fish: At -249 reputation or higher, sewage eels leave you alone, vastly reducing your risk of contracting glotrot in Golgotha (especially as you won't have the Agility to keep from being tripped and infected by them). -249 is also when Twinning/Trinning Lampreys leave you alone, which is even better as they are so fantastically annoying.
  
• Fungi: At 250, brooding mushrooms will not blast spores if you step near them. This makes fungal biomes and the Rainbow Woods less annoying. Luckily, you can make mushroom recipes to help boost fungus rep on the occasions when you'll need it.
  
• Mechanimists: At 250, they'll let you stroll right through their level at the end of Bethesda Susa and finish that particular quest without opposition. Luckily, this is among the easiest reps to gain, as you can toss artifacts in the well at the Stilt to gain Mechanimist favor.
  
• Mollusks: -249 pacifies the Slog of the Cloaca, the second biggest threat in Golgotha after the sewage eels. 50 or above lets you learn the Cloaca Surprise recipe from Slog, which absolutely every player should try at least once (but is also beyond the scope of this guide).
  
• Oozes: At -249, sludges leave you alone, neutering the most horrific threat of the Rainbow Woods. Not gonna lie, this one alone is worth devoting a rare unspecified Schrodinger page - or two!
  
• Pariahs: You remember what I said about Trash Divining, right?
  
• Robots: At -249, leering stalkers and chrome pyramids leave you alone, making it MUCH safer to explore (and loot) the Deathlands. You still need to be careful, though, as these dangerous robots will continue to attack other creatures, and their explosive weapons could nail you as collateral damage.
  
• Winged Mammals: You know all those sap monsters that can permanently drain your stats? They're winged mammals, and at 250, they'll stop trying to gimp you.
  
• Random Villages: Using the Schrodinger page for a village reveals it on the world map. And all villages have a skill they can teach you (in exchange for rep). A lot of times, the skill on offer will be of no use to you, but the exceptions are glorious. It's very sweet to get something like Tinkering 2 or any of the Endurance or Self-Discipline skills long before your stats would allow it.

Keep an eye out for Schrodinger pages and legendary creatures that have rep for (or against) these factions, and do the right thing!

Managing Allies

At first glance, Caves of Qud seems to follow the usual roguelike "lone wanderer" approach, but it can totally be a party-based game... if you're willing to commit to that.

Remember that as an aspirant of Ptoh, you are insidiously corrupting. At a minimum, you have Proselytize. Later on, you might also gain Beguiling and/or enough rep to recruit allies from some of the above-mentioned factions. Finally, if you support the devs on Patreon, you'll have the codes to start with a pet.

(Make no mistake, the Patreon stuff is absolutely NOT a "pay to win" deal. Most of the pets are interesting but only marginally useful, and even the combat-oriented ones tend to die off by the midgame unless you're going out of your way to keep them alive.)

Aside from whatever tough monsters you can find wandering around Qud, another good target for Proselytize / Beguiling are the Esper-hunters, especially the extradimensional ones (as they're more durable than the Seeker hunters).

Once you ensnare an Esper-hunter (or any other mutant, for that matter), you need to ctrl-space in their direction and manage their mutations. If they have these mutations, forbid their use: Burgeoning (because you don't want tumbler pods everywhere), Disintegrate (because they don't care if they hit you with it), Space-Time Vortex (because they don't care if they hit you with that, either), and Stunning Force (because they don't... you know the drill).

Identifying Eater's Nectar

As discussed under Precognition above, drops of nectar are uber-useful to our build strategy. On rare occasions, chefs and kippers and dromad caravans will actually offer drops of nectar that you can just buy, but another way to get them is preserving Eater's nectar injectors.

NEVER inject yourself with a Eater's nectar injector - ALWAYS preserve it as a drop of nectar instead. Being able to fine-tune our list of mutations AND get that 25% chance of +1 to all stats? That's worth far, far more than a measly +1 to a random stat or even another mutation point.

Of course, finding Eater's nectar injectors is easier said than done.

The first time you see an Eater's nectar injector, it will probably be in a trade - unidentified. Luckily, they cost roughly three times as much as most other injectors. So if you see an injector which is that expensive, you may rest assured that you're looking at an Eater's Nectar injector and you should buy it immediately!

Besides shops, the best source of Eater's nectar injectors is legendary Putus Templars. These douchebags tend to both be high level and have a hefty entourage, which can make them tough targets (one reason why we value Temporal Fugue and Precognition), but Ptoh doesn't care for the Putus Temple's dependence on power-blocking ontological anchors, and neither should you. Kill them and gorge yourself on their sweet nectar!

Much later in the game, you'll be able to mess around in the Palladium Reef and the Deathlands, where you can find arsplice seeds - the rarest and most expensive component of Eater's Nectar injectors. And while that will kick ass when it comes, you're not going to want to wait THAT long to start exploiting drops of nectar!

Wear Your Best Face

One perk of the Axe tree's Dismember skill is that it will sometimes sever an enemy's face, which you can then wear like a mask.

Aside from this being a totally metal thing to do, even the lowliest face grants +1 Ego while worn - just the thing to make up for your lack of a helmet! Better yet, more badass monster faces can grant +2 or even +3 Ego! Sweet Ptoh, that's like an extra level for all our powers!

Your need to know more is intensifying now, right?

Unfortunately, with your low Strength, you will never qualify for the Dismember skill, and you probably won't be insanely lucky enough to find a random village that can teach it, either.

Don't give up on the face game just yet, though. You could still gain access to dismemberment by ensnaring a legendary monster that has the skill or (if you support the devs on Patreon) starting with the Man Opener pet. If you have Domination, you can always force a strong ally to learn Dismemberment - just make sure they're using an axe while you're at it.

(Yes, weapons with Serrated mod are also an option, but again, you're physically a wuss, and you really shouldn't be doing your own melee combat. Give that weapon to an ally!)

If all else fails, you can recruit Warden Indrix in Kyakukya, who knows almost all the Axe skills (including Dismember) and is super-inclined to use them. You should have enough Warden rep to recruit him after completing a "village tour" (see below).

Even with a dismembering ally in place, it might take some patience to get a good face to wear. But remember that our lord Ptoh has waited literally eons for release from Its prison. All YOU have to do is wait for a monster to drop the second-creepiest component of a skinsuit.

Historical Sites And You

Aside from embracing Ptoh's Final Gift (which we'll get to, I promise), perhaps the single best thing you can do for ultimate psionic power is to explore each and every Historical Site that you learn about.

Not only do Historical Sites often (not always, but often) contain veritable mountains of books for you to take to the Stilt, but each site has a guaranteed random relic at the bottom. Some sites even have special named levels on the way that contain extra relics!

This is a big deal because relics have unique bonuses that no other items can have. Of course, it's all random, and there's no promise that the relic you're about to loot will be of any use to YOU... but some relics grant a mental mutation for as long as they're equipped! (And yes, your Ego bonus will apply.) Wow, free powers!

Doesn't get better than that, right?

Oh, but it does: it's possible to get physical mutations from relics, too.

You may have previously felt envy when you read all those forum posts about non-Espers taking Electrical Generation and wearing their jacked Force Bracelets for a permanent force field, but now that's totally possible for you, too!

Mind you, Historical Sites aren't always gonna just hand their relics to you.

The cults that inhabit them will have two or three base creatures that make up most of the site's opposition. A lot of the time, these will be nothing to one such as you, but it's also possible to have monsters - acid slugs, saps, ferah lahs, twinning lampreys, rimewyks, etc - that can make the site very annoying or dangerous to explore. A sultan's cult of Seekers, with dozens of them wandering a level, can just keep that Sunder Mind damage coming nonstop until you die.

So do be careful. If a Historical Site keeps wrecking you, there's no shame in backing off and trying again when you have a few more levels to your name (and to all your mutations!).

Coping With Esper Hunters

You knew this was coming. To have ultimate psionic power, you have to pay the price, and that price is hordes of Esper-hunters playing the Agents to your Neo. Just like the One, you will never fulfill your potential unless you're willing to face them.

Luckily, Ptoh is with you.

Oh, the Esper-hunters may have exactly as much Ego as you have. They may have exactly as many innate powers as you do. And as your Glimmer skyrockets to match your arrogance, they'll most certainly have superior numbers, ultimately coming at you five at a time on a bad day.

But what they sure as hell DON'T have is you - the true inheritor of Ptoh with a roster of mutations ruthlessly curated with Precognition and nectar for maximum survivability, even more powers via relics, more injectors and urberries than a continent-sized hospital, a mountain of normality grenades, as much Neutron Flux-induced AV as a chrome pyramid, and maybe even a good old flamethrower to keep blasting them when your brain gets tired.

The Esper-hunters are already dead. You just need to make it official.

Because like Ptoh Itself, you can fold space and see the future.

You know every stunt the Esper-hunters can pull, and you're going to starkly annihilate them for refusing to let you join the Seekers of the Sightless Way or for daring to leave their home dimension of The Pale Nutsack Of E9129598C to confront you.

You're going to start the fight at screen's edge or directly on the nearest stairs, Teleporting if necessary.

If you can't see them already, you're going to use Clairvoyance to reveal them.

If you get the first move, you're going to Sunder Mind them. It won't matter if they have Mental Mirror - the Ego involved here will almost certainly smash past it and kill most Esper-hunters well before turn 10.

If they Sunder Mind you first, you're going to step off zone the same turn to end it, salve or berry up, come back, and nail them before their Sunder Mind cooldown is even close.

If they hit you with Confusion, you're going to step off-zone and regain clarity with the Yuckwheat you'll have equipped in one of your gear slots, so you know where it is even with all your item names screwed up. Then you'll come back and nail them. Or you already opened with a sphinx salt injector and thus never got confused to start with!

If they use Burgeoning to bury you in lethal plants, you're going to step off-zone (or Teleport) to get away from the plants, circle back, and nail them.

If they use Temporal Fugue, you'll kill the clones with normality grenades, move off-zone and wait out the clones' duration, or start spamming your own clones and Space-Time Vortices.

If they Force Wall you, you'll break out with Teleport or normality grenades.

If they use a Force Bubble, you'll use normality grenades or Pyrokinesis or Cryokinesis or Burgeoning or Sunder Mind.

If they hit you with Cryokinesis and freeze you in place, you're going to... just keep using your mental mutations anyway. If you have to move, you'll use a blaze injector to unfreeze yourself.

If they get close to you, you're going to lay the smack down with Pyrokinesis, Cryokinesis, Confusion, normality grenades, and/or your flamethrower.

If they get really close to you, they're idiots who are going to get Proselytized or Beguiled or Syphon Vimmed or hit even worse with that flamethrower.

If they're fragile Seeker-hunters who got past your Sunder Mind, they're going to get burned to ash in a couple shots of your Light Manipulation.

If they're non-fragile transdimensional hunters, they're going down from any combination of Sunder Mind, Light Manipulation, Force Wall + Cryokinesis/Pyrokinesis, Space-Time Vortices, flamethrowers, and/or being dogpiled by Temporal Fugue clones.

If there's more than one Esper-hunter, you'll carefully zone-dance, killing them one at a time before fleeing off zone. (If they follow you, then they've foolishly closed the gap and you can nail them.)

If you screw up and the Esper-hunters manage to kill you, it'll turn out that you used Precognition first, and now you're stepping off zone to either flee or wait out the precog cooldown for another try.

If you just can't be bothered with ANY of this, then you'll summon a Space-Time Vortex, jump in it, find a safe spot (wherever you end up) to recoil back to a town, and keep going with the main quest your quest for ultimate psionic power. Or you'll just use your Force Bubble to go back to the world map or recoil out.

I won't lie, whenever you stay to fight Glimmer 100+ level Esper-hunters, you will as often as not wreck whatever screen you're on, which can make you feel (accurately by this point) like a walking apocalypse. This is a problem if the Esper-hunter battle took place in a town and now the merchants and local quest dispensers are dead or Space-Time Vortexed to Ptoh knows where.

But let's check out our next tip to get around that little issue.

Village Tour

When it comes to Esper-hunters, it's very important to remember that they will NEVER spawn on a screen you've already visited - only on new screens.

Because of this, one thing I like to do is to first get Precognition, Teleport, and Jungle Lore in place, which will ideally be before the Esper hunters have gotten out of hand. Then I travel to every town in the game after Grit Gate - Kyakukya, Ezra, Yd Freehold, and any non-goatfolk villages I might have gleaned from Trash Divining or Schrodinger pages. Doing this will keep these important locations from being wrecked, because their screens will have already been generated, so there's no risk that hordes of late game Esper-hunters will spawn and ruin everything!

Another benefit to doing this village tour is that you can water ritual all the wardens, getting enough Fellowship of Wardens rep to recruit some of these badasses. (Without using Proselytize or risking Beguiling.) The wardens of Joppa and Kyakukya are especially good to have on your team.

Oh, and don't forget to buy recoilers from all the major villages, so that you can revisit them to sell off your loot at will.

While we're on the subject of villages, scroll to the next section for another of Ptoh's tips!

World Tile Hopping

There's probably a better name for this particular technique, but you'll understand what's up with this one soon enough.

As I've hinted elsewhere in this guide, those randomly-generated villages can provide you a lot of nice things - free skills, extra merchants to trade with, and randomized village quests (which tend to offer good rewards for the simple things you have to do). In most runs, there will be anywhere from two to three dozen of these villages scattered around the world map.

(If you want to know exactly how many, you can check the number of "village of" factions on your Faction screen!)

The problem is that you start the game not knowing where ANY of those villages are... and 36 villages isn't a lot when the world map has 1,750 tiles to contain them.

So how can you find those village needles in that world map haystack? Buy as many village Schrodinger pages as you can? Trust in Trash Divining to finally reveal to you something that ISN'T a ruin? Learn all the Wayfaring skills and hope you get lucky wandering around on the world map? Never, ever use the world map and just manually travel everywhere, tedious as that would be?

Those are some of your tools, sure. But there's another weapon in your arsenal.

And that weapon is knowing how Qud's terrain is laid out. Every tile on the world map is a 3 x 3 screen "parasang". If a village is present in a parasang, it will always occupy the center tile of that parasang... and the surrounding eight tiles will all be named "outskirts of (village)".

What does that mean?

For one, it means if you're wandering around manually, you can always know if a village is on an adjacent screen. Not only will you see the "outskirts" title, but the music will change to something more peaceful.

More importantly, it also means you can descend from the world map on ANY parasang and automatically discover any village present.

So finding villages can be as simple as making one move on the world map, hitting "+" to descend and check for a village, hitting "-" the next turn to get back when you (probably) don't find one, and moving on to the next parasang.

In practice, this makes it feel like you're "hopping" across the world map, parasang by parasang.

You might (and probably will) discover extra ruins to loot while you're at it, too!

There are risks, of course. Aside from getting lost, you might come down from the world map and find yourself next to enemies that you'll have to kill or flee from before you can return to the world map. Or worse still, you might come down and spawn Esper-hunters... in terrain where you can't spot them immediately... and your Clairvoyance might not be leveled enough to reveal them before they get the drop on you with Sunder Mind.

But that's why you used Precognition before you came down from the world map, right?

Yes, if you revert from precog in that scenario, you'll go back to the world map.

By Ptoh, is there anything that mutation can't do?

The Amaranthine Prism

Interestingly, a great artifact of Ptoh is already in the game - the Amaranthine Prism! This dreaded relic, once equipped, will continually raise your Ego while lowering your Willpower, ultimately killing you when the latter reaches 0. And you can't unequip it.

Unfortunately, despite that the Prism is a) an Ego-booster and b) an artifact of our patron saint Ptoh, I must encourage you to avoid it like the plague, because our ultimate goal is to be both powerful AND immortal.

Someday, though, the developers will finish this game, with a final quest that you can beat to see the game's ending.

And on that day, you better believe I'm going to tell you to equip the Prism before starting that final quest.

I've saved the best for last. This is it, the tip that's going to bust the mental mutations game wide open and set you firmly on the path to becoming the Esper god that you've always known you could be. But before I drop this bombshell on you, before we take this final step, I need to know that you're truly ready for it.

Are you prepared to swear allegiance to nothing less than your own raw, unadulterated nigh-omnipotence?

Can you look deep within your heart and truthfully say "I'm not afraid of the Esper-hunters! I want an Ego so powerful that all my mutations will be pushing the limit until my level's in the 30's!"?

Do you want to find yourself thinking "Oh my god, this feels like SUCH a disgusting exploit! I better enjoy this now because the devs are gonna nerf it when they hear about it!"?

Are you ready to experience the true meaning of ultimate psionic power?

All right, let's make this happen!

So you've hit Glimmer 20 and the Esper-hunters have started appearing. Right now, they're just fragile Seekers of the Sightless Way who go down in a laser blast or two, and if you're lucky, you might get a free Ego point from killing one... but as we discussed above, this is only the beginning of something that's going to get much, much worse.

Wait a second, what's this? You managed to get Precognition as one of your early mutations like I told you to?

Oh, my fellow person of mass destruction, Ptoh has just handed you a gift that's gonna skyrocket you to levels of power that you've never even dreamed of.

(At least, not since Canned-Have-It-All got nerfed as a random replacement for nectar in recipes.)

The moment you hit Glimmer 20, haul yourself to the Salt Dunes without delay. On the way, try to kill as FEW things as you can manage so that your level (and, by extension, your Glimmer) climbs as slowly as possible.

The longer you can keep your Glimmer in the 20-40 window, the more you will benefit from this cheesy yet awesome thing that you're about to do. Don't even buy new powers with your MP until this is over.

Once you reach the first Salt Dune tile, press that + key to come in from the world map, and -

- yes, you're going to just wander the Salt Dunes on foot and grind those fragile Glimmer 20 hunters as they appear, secure in your knowledge that you're getting that same 10% chance for a sweet, sweet Ego point as you would from a pack of Glimmer 110 mega-assassins.

Did I say 10%? You have Precognition, my friend, so that's actually a 100% chance per Esper-hunter for an Ego point!

That's right - unlike buying mutations, Esper-hunter Ego rewards don't use a separate RNG, so you can just reload these easy fights over and over until you get that Ego point! Those Esper-hunters aren't harassment from Ptoh's cult - they're Ptoh's gift to you! And it's a gift that can keep giving until you've mapped the entire Salt Dune region!

Why the Salt Dunes? Because you can see across the entire screen during the day, allowing you to immediately spot the Esper-hunters every time they appear - and start blasting them with your Light Manipulation the turn after you pop Precognition. YOU are the hunter now, and they have nowhere to hide, either in space or time!

Just make sure you travel during the day only. At night, even a light source won't give you the visibility to avoid danger, so hit ctrl-` to wait until dawn!

Stay at the screen edges so you can back away if you run into Dawngliders or other threats. As much as you can get away with it, try NOT to fight anything but Esper-hunters because a) you're still rather fragile yourself, and b) you don't want to gain levels and push your Glimmer up.

Staying at screen edge is also good for fighting the Esper-hunters themselves, as you can break zone if they hit you with Sunder Mind, Burgeoning, or Confuse - or you have to revert from Precognition (because you didn't get the Ego point) and need to escape to wait out the precog cooldown for another try.

When I do this, I also like to put a campfire on every Salt Dune screen I visit, just so I know which screens I've already seen. (Remember, Esper-hunters only spawn on new screens.)

Not that this process is all sunshine and rainbows and your increasingly powerful brain. Despite your best efforts, you'll be forced to at least occasionally kill a Dawnglider or Issachari raider or something else, and even the Esper-hunters themselves are worth a minimal amount of XP. You might also stumble across lairs or even Historical Sites that are worth XP for discovering! Therefore, your level will still increase, and your Glimmer will inevitably hit 40+, allowing the more dangerous (and durable) transdimensional Esper-hunters to appear, which probably is when you should stop grinding like this.

With patience and careful management, though, you might reach 40+ or even 50+ Ego before you're ready to move on with the game! Try as the Esper-hunters might, there will be no dispute as to who is the most powerful Esper on Qud!

Of course, with the mutation limit, it will be dozens of levels before you experience the full potential of all those Ego points... but you plan to survive forever, and your Sunder Mind is this much more awesome already!

I should note, too, that even if you lack Precognition (or if the devs end up nerfing Esper-hunter Ego rewards to have their own RNG like mutations do), it's still worthwhile to trawl the Salt Dunes in the hopes of at least a few extra Ego points.

Because as they say in those old infomercials: Wait, there's more!

Precognition or not, the Salt Dunes are surprisingly rich in ruins (with books and other loot), dromad merchants, friendly legendaries (particularly Mechanimists, Barathrumites, and Pariahs), trash to exploit after you learn Trash Divining from the aformentioned Pariahs, random stairs in the middle of nowhere (which sometimes lead to oil or fresh water), and even the occasional village or Historical Site!

Granted, you'll have to wait to fully exploit a lot of that stuff until you're done with Ptoh's final gift and are once again allowing your level to climb, but still. Keep your eyes open, and you can expect a sizeable wealth increase to go along with your incredible new Ego!

And given Caves of Qud's sheer randomness, you just never know what you're going to find doing this, either.

This one time, I found the Ruin of House Isner unique pistol just laying around in a random chest - I didn't even need to read any books to find the clues. And oh wow, it granted yet another Ego bonus!

This other time, I was following a Salt Kraken, sifting through its trail of garbage, when it dropped the corpse of an enigma snail - a late game monster that I butchered to produce an enigma cone.

What the hell is an enigma cone?

It's chest armor that a) is worth around 1200 drams of water and b) grants you the Confusion mutation when worn. Full Ego bonus, just like a relic mutation. Wow, I didn't even know non-relic gear could grant mutations!

I know what you're thinking. Lowering ourselves to Trash Divining is one thing, but now I'm encouraging you to bottom-feed through Salt Kraken crap in the name of ultimate psionic power?!

Yes. Yes, I am.

And so we've reached the end of our journey to ultimate psionic power. Thanks for reading this far, and I hope that I've shown you new ways to make your mega-Ego Esper more powerful than you've ever previously imagined. I would love to hear about your adventures following this strategy!

Live and drink, fellow aspirant of Ptoh!