C. Zircon

I gave Caves of Qud another try last night. I haven't died yet, but I don't know what to do, because it seems like I'm not strong/equipped enough to fight anything outside of the salt marshes, but I can't find any equipment (or any creatures that have equipment) in the salt marshes. I haven't seen a single snapjaw yet, and I'm running out of water from automatically pouring it on myself while exploring.

I looked at the wiki and they have a checklist of stuff you should have before leaving the salt marshes, but I don't know how to get any of it since I can neither buy it nor find any creatures to loot it from.

I remember when I played several years ago, I somehow made it far enough to get the quest where you have to get 200 feet of wire or whatever, but I have no idea how I managed that now.

Man, I hadn't played Caves of Qud since like 2017 (and I never got very far in it then) but I just booted it up and it looks like they hella updated it. I still find it pretty impenetrable though. I feel like I could get pretty into it if I could get past the initial learning curve, but I've never quite managed to do that.