Caves of Qud's first expansion, Diaspora, will launch in early access on Steam on December 9. Developer Freehold Games and publisher Kitfox plan to keep developing it in early access for "on the order of one year", the same route the base game took before its 1.0 release.
Caves of Qud is an extremely complicated game with many interlocking systems & features and lots of unpredictable, emergent gameplay. Diaspora will add a whole new layer to that. Just like with the base game, our approach to building something this complex is to have the community stress test it the whole way.
The expansion's main feature is new mutant animal and plant stocks. Players can start a run as creatures including cats, dogs, frogs and chameleons, or as vines and trees. Previously, a character could begin as a human and mutate toward animal or plant forms; Diaspora lets a run start from those forms instead. It also expands the pool of player mutations with additions such as claws, muzzles and tails.
The early access launch adds new creatures and artifacts across Qud, makes the camelfolk trade caravans' saltback tortoises mountable for the first time, and reworks road and river networks with revised world-generation algorithms.
Planned additions through 2027 include a questline about migrants arriving in Qud and a dromad named Je'ome the Bounty, two new humanoid factions called the foxen and snailfolk, underground villages, multi-zone dungeons, roaming seasonal mega-caravans, new music, and more items, creatures, biomes and diseases, including new fungal infections.
Freehold plans weekly updates, or monthly ones when there is more to ship, and will publish a roadmap at the December launch. A free update to the base game is due either shortly before Diaspora leaves early access or at the same time, and some of its additions will appear in the expansion first.
