Posts from ·PleasingFungus·

Trunk Updates 11 December 2023 and Tournament Announcement

Hello crawlers, and welcome to the ultimate trunk update of the year! The 0.31 development cycle is (finally!) nearing a close, and we are pleased to announce a tentative tournament start date of Friday, Jan 19, 2024, at 20:00 UTC for the sixteen day 0.31 Release tournament. We’ll shift towards bug fixes and balance as we get closer to 0.31′s release, sometime before the start of the tournament. More details about the tournament, including a tournament website and rules changes, will be available here!

A heads-up also that crawl.kelbi.org will be shutting down after the tournament. Many thanks to Floraline for their years of hard work maintaining the server! We’ll have news on a replacement server sometime in the coming few months.

Looks like we somehow have not even posted one trunk update since 0.30 released (!), so to fit all the major changes in, this post will be a little more condensed than usual. I’ll still try to sneak in one or two fun things, and the changelog has more details on some things.

  • Shapeshifting and Transmuting:
    • Form spells have turned into a new type of item, ‘talismans’.
    • Talismans are very rare items that, when used, transform the user into a corresponding form until they choose to leave it.
    • A new skill, Shapeshifting, governs use of talismans. Like Spellcasting, the ‘default’ (human) aptitude for this is -1.
    • Form changes:
      • Beastly Appendage has been replaced by Beast Form, provides innate Slaying but melds all auxiliary armour.
      • Spider Form has been replaced by Flux Form, which causes melee attacks to magically contaminate and explode victims. It melds weapons, shields, and body armour.
      • Ice Form has been replaced by Serpent Form, which transforms the user into a massive, foe-crushing python.
      • New form: Maw, which opens a horrible, foe-devouring second mouth in the user’s chest. It grants an auxiliary bite attack and sometimes heals the user when they kill foes in melee, in exchange for melding body armour.
      • Lich Form has been replaced by Death Form, which severely debilitates foes struck in melee and grants an active ‘Siphon Essence’ ability that torments nearby foes to heal the player. It’s otherwise similar.
      • All forms have had their stats adjusted and scaling rebalanced.
    • A new background, Shapeshifter, replaces the Transmuter start. Shapeshifters start out with two talismans, Beast and Flux.
    • The Transmutations skill continues to support use of the ~ten remaining Transmutations spells. There are no current plans to remove it.
    • You can read more about the motivation for these changes here and here. Note that many of the implementation details have changed since those were written.
  • Hexslingers:
    • Hexslingers have had their starting spell set vigorously reworked.
    • New L2 Hex spell: Jinxbite. Deals additional Will-checking damage to foes attacked while its duration lasts, but also halves the caster’s will. Lots of faerie laughter is involved.
    • New L3 Hex spell: Sigil of Binding. Creates two magical traps nearby, which temporarily bind hapless victims in place. Don’t step in these yourself!
    • New L4 Hex spell: Dimensional Bullseye (replacing Portal Projectile). Targets a foe and teleports all shots fired at other foes to also hit the chosen unfortunate.
    • Inner Flame and Cause Fear are still included. Slow is no longer in the starting spell set.
  • Uniques:
    • New: Jeremiah, a peaceful barachi trapped between sleep and waking. Their dreams leak into reality in a stream of beautiful butterflies.
    • Returned and revamped: Norris, a death cultist who surfs into battle with a gang of skysharks.
    • Maurice is now a vine stalker, with high regen and antimagic bites.
    • Erica is now an octopode, with constriction and a more focused spell set.
    • Frederick has a new spell set.
  • Other monsters:
    • New and returning:
      • Kobold blastminers, who blast enemies with alchemical cannons and get sent flying backwards by the recoil.
      • Brain worms, which eat magic and minds alike
      • Glass eyes (replacing floating eyes), which vitrify victims to make them fragile as glass.
      • Formless jellyfish, which constrict and sting for single-turn paralysis.
      • Arcanists, a kind of fairly dangerous vitrifying wizard.
      • Crocodiles, which drag victims backward.
    • Alligators and reapers are now somewhat weaker, but drag victims backward.
    • Ufetubi and tengu warriors now slip behind their foe before meleeing.
    • Tengu reavers now have rMsl.
    • ‘Wizard’ has been renamed to ‘occulist’ and is now somewhat stronger.
    • Great orbs of eyes have a new spell set, and are slightly stronger.
    • Deep Elf Elementalists now cast LRD instead of Awaken Earth.
    • Red very ugly things now do direct fire damage instead of sticky flame.
    • Abominations’ speed is no longer randomized. (Did you know it was..?)
    • Behavioral changes:
      • Attacks of opportunity have been reworked. Previously, whenever players moved away from a same-speed-or-faster monster, the monster had a 1/3 chance of launching a free melee attack. Now, they launch such attacks only if they move to follow the player, and there’s a chance for the attack to cost a small amount of their time (so they can fall behind). The old ‘random energy’ effect, causing monsters to have a chance of gaining or losing a small amount of time when moving, has returned specifically when monsters are pursuing the player. Some discussion of the reasoning for these changes: A, B, and C. The last of those describes an experimental ‘hot pursuit’ section which has since been removed, but ‘history’ section remains applicable.
      • Giant monsters can now be ensnared by webs and nets.
      • Jellies can no longer be netted or constricted.
      • Allied undead no longer become angry when damaged.
      • Monsters no longer use up charges when zapping wands.
      • Monsters can no longer use scrolls or potions.
      • Some monsters now have special dialogue after killing the player.
  • Other species changes:
    • At XL 7, Armataurs now gain temporary regeneration when they roll (rampage) toward foes. Their base health has been decreased to compensate.
    • Felids now get an extra life at XL 1, don’t lose XLs on dying, and have somewhat more base health. They no longer have fast movement – see here.
    • Tengu now have inherent Acrobat (+15 EV after moving/waiting) at XL 1, and gain +4 EV at XL7 instead of a 20% EV bonus.
    • Mummies now get their first necromancy enhancer at XL 1, not 3.
    • Vine Stalkers now get regeneration at XL 1, not 4.
    • Djinn now use all magic skills, instead of only Spellcasting. Djinn can only choose to train all magic skills or none. This is pretty similar to how they worked before, but means that e.g. they can now use skill manuals, do elemental staff or pain brand damage, and care about other types of Ashenzari skill curses.
    • Ghouls start with an additional +4 Int, to encourage more variety in playstyles.
    • Formicids can no longer be involuntarily shafted.
  • Items:
    • An old favorite returns: sack of spiders, an XP-charged evoker which webs foes and summons creepy-crawlies. Alternates with boxes of beasts.
    • Changes to ranged weapons:
      • New weapon: orcbow, between a shortbow and an arbalest in strength.
      • Hand crossbows are now hand cannons, alchemically belching smoke and death. (See here for why.)
      • New unrand: Mule, a +7 flaming hand cannon which sometimes knocks the user backwards when fired.
    • Potions of flight replaced with potions of enlightenment, which also give Will+.
    • Scrolls of magic mapping replaced with scrolls of revelation, which also give X-ray vision and sInv for one turn.
    • Quick blades now hit twice for every swing, with a higher attack delay. Gyre & Gimble hits four times.
    • Artefact staves can now enhance other schools of magic, even those which don’t have corresponding base enhancer staff types.
    • The dreamshard necklace now has Acrobat, but only restores the player to 1 HP when they’d otherwise die, rather than healing 50-100% of their max HP.
    • To simplify, shields no longer degrade in effectiveness with each hit taken per-turn. Instead, they now have a limit on per-turn blocks, based on shield type – bucklers give 2, kites give 3, towers give 4.
  • Spells:
    • New: Brom’s Barrelling Boulder (L4 Earth/Conj). Creates a boulder, which crushed and knocks back foes until it’s broken or it hits a wall. (In the latter case, it explodes!)
    • Arcjolt now initially arcs to foes within two tiles of the caster.
    • Static Discharge now does more damage, but checks half AC instead of none.
    • Borgnjor’s Vile Clutch (and Fastroot) now work on invisible enemies, but the former now does less damage.
    • Hailstorm does more damage at low power and less at high power.
    • Swiftness now works in water. (Did you know it didn’t?)
  • Other Notes:
    • The Slime Pits now have many possible endings, instead of one fixed pre-designed one. Many thanks to long-time contributor nicolae for his work on this one!
    • Monsters with unusual items (e.g. distortion) are now highlit in purple by default.
    • Okawaru now gives exactly one weapon gift and one armour gift as a capstone (chosen by the player), rather than giving many random gifts.
    • Nemelex’s Cloud, Elements and Swarm cards have been changed to scale more appropriately with power.
    • The Ecumenical Temple is now fully mapped on entry. This saves time for some of the really big temples, and also lets us add really silly stuff like a labyrinth-themed temple. Not that we’d ever actually add one of those, of course…

Many thanks also to Sastreii and CanOfWorms for contributing many new tiles over this period, including spell icons, artefact art, cat dragons, and more. In particular, thanks to CanOfWorms for commissioning this lovely new splash screen.

Thanks also to all the community members who’ve contributed over the last year, who I am too tired to credit in full. Crawl wouldn’t be Stone Soup without you.

Happy crawling, and happy holidays!

Trunk Updates 1 April 2023 and Tournament Announcement

Hello crawlers, and welcome to the most completely serious and truthful trunk update of the year! The 0.30 development cycle is (finally!) nearing a close, and we are pleased to announce a tentative tournament start date of Friday, May 5, 2023, at 20:00 UTC for the sixteen day 0.30 Release tournament. We’ll shift towards bug fixes and balance as we get closer to 0.30′s release, sometime before the start of the tournament. More details about the tournament, including a tournament website and rules changes, will be available here!

We’d also like to celebrate the addition of two (!) new devs to the team. Félix Medrano (née robertxgray) and Implojin have both more than proven themselves by their work so far, with Félix specializing on the Crawl Android port and Implojin contributing great designs like Rampage and the toga of Victory. We’re very happy to have them onboard!

Anyway, let’s get some very real and serious changes headed your way.

  • Branches and Environments:
    • You can now enter the Vaults without holding a rune. However… you can never leave! Unless you get a rune while you’re inside.
    • Slime walls now corrode instead of dealing damage. Unless you use Oozemancy, in which case they still do damage. Also, they don’t corrode monsters. Unless the monsters take Oozemancy damage. It’s all pretty straightforward.
    • Thunderstorms now do much more damage. If you were in the habit of standing in the middle of thunderstorms before… this might be a good time to break the habit.
    • Zigsprint now lets you start with orbs of guile or mayhem. But why would you not use Gong? It’s Gong!
    • By overwhelming popular demand, you can now place up to 100 waypoints. We know you, the players, were suffocating under the previous 10 waypoint limit. Now you are freed. Go forth!
  • Characters:
    • Harm now stacks. This is a game changer.
    • Channeling effects (from Wucad Mu or orbs of energy) no longer backlash and no longer scale with Evocations. They just give -Wiz and have a flat chance of refunding spell costs. We’ve reworked this mechanic about four times this year and I’m sure it’s going to stick at some point.
    • The acidic bite mutation works again, for the first time since 2016. Oops.
    • Armataurs no longer claim to drink ten potions at once. Their tongues are long, but they aren’t actually that long.
  • Gods:
    • Piety costs are now shown more clearly for invocations. Did you know that Enter the Abyss costs Piety——-? Sort of unclear what that means, but it seems like an awful lot of -s, huh?
    • Kikubaaqudgha’s second gift is now a little less predictable. It could be anything. It’s probably about four Necromancy spells… but what if it’s not?
    • Good gods will no longer get mad when you generate negative energy clouds with a condenser vane. Instead, they’ll get even. They put their metaphysical foot down and squash the evil clouds – just like that!
    • Hepliaklqana’s Knights are now as good at attacking as ogres, or at least as slow as them.
    • Xom is no longer fixated on giving you a few different mutations.
    • Ashenzari’s trap detection ability is now only available at 4* of piety. Except that traps are always revealed these days, so this is more of a malevolence suppression ability. The world is so cruel…
    • Ashenzari’s skill boost is a little less boosted.
    • For Gozag’s gold distraction aura duration, size really doesn’t matter. (Anymore.)
    • Ru can no longer redirect butterflies’ attacks.
    • Flame Tongue is removed.
  • Unrands:
    • New unrand: the toga ‘Victory’. Gives +AC, Int, and Slay if you kill scary stuff while wearing a toga. If you drink or read anything while foes are in sight, though, you are a coward and a fool, and the toga will revert to its primal state. Victory!
    • New unrand: the Consecrated Labrys. It’s like the obsidian axe, but it’s good instead of evil, and it gets more enchanted the more scary enemies are in sight. As with the obsidian axe, we strongly recommend charging headfirst at every group of enemies while holding this.
    • New unrand: the Storm Queen’s Shield. You have probably never in your life thought “I would like to be a shock serpent”, but that’s how powerful this shield is: it will grant a wish you didn’t even know you had.
    • The Staff of Dispater is now an orb. It has +AC and *Corrode. Much to ponder…
    • The Slick Slippers are even slicker and slipperier than before. Also, they’ll no longer hustle you around when your feet are already occupied climbing stairs.
    • Majin-Bo’s spell-vamprisim now can suck up blood from a Polar Vortex. It all just flies right into the middle, it’s kinda gross.
    • Many unrands now have helpful inscriptions for their special effects, like EVERVAMP, MEGAVAMP, and probably some other things that don’t involve VAMP.
    • Morg has been removed. Actually, for all you know, it might have been removed years ago. Would you have even noticed?
  • Items:
    • Orbs, scarfs, and even magical staffs can now all generate as random artefacts. Finally, you can find the orb of “Zot” of rage!
    • Randarts are very slightly, ever so imperceptibly, worse. Yes, that is why your best character splatted the other day. How did you know?
    • Hyperinflation has hit throwing weapons, causing javelins, boomerangs, darts, and even large rocks to skyrocket in price.
    • Tremorstones and condenser vanes are now in a set: you only get one of the two per game. Star-crossed lovers…
    • When throwing weapons break, they now deal extra damage. It’s a considerate thing. They’re very sorry that you can’t throw them around anymore and they’d like to offer you a little parting gift as they go.
    • Spectral weapons now deal damage as if you were launching an extra attack, rather than using a secret and inscrutable set of spectral weapon monster stats. They’re also not allowed to attack themselves anymore, since that was really creeping us out.
    • Longbows, arbalests, and hand crossbows have all had their stats shuffled around a little.
  • Spells:
    • New spell: Plasma Beam (L5 Fire/Air), which shoots a bolt of lightning AND a bolt of fire at the most distant foe around. My first email address involved both “fire” and “plasma” so I’m very excited about this.
    • Lesser Beckoning is now level 2 (was level 3). This gives more potential design space for Greater Beckoning, to say nothing of the long-awaited Greatest Beckoning.
    • Battlespheres now fire when you cast any destructive spell, matching Vehumet. Vehumet says that a god can’t be matched by a mere L5 spell, but I’m unconvinced.
    • Arcjolt can now hit any monster in sight, as long as there are a continuous chain of other monsters between you and that monster.
    • Irradiate now only malmutates monsters sometimes. Try saying ‘pretty please’ before casting it for best effects.
    • Lightning Bolt is gone. Amazing it lasted this long, really. Not really famous for their longevity, lightning bolts.
  • Monsters:
    • New monster: sleepcaps. If they hit you, their spores might put you to sleep. If they put you to sleep, the next thing that hits you will get a big stabbing damage multiplier. And if you lose all your hit points? That’s right: you die in real life.
    • New monster: skysharks, cutting through the air (as sharks are known to). If they bite you and draw blood, somehow they’re the ones that get mad about it? And that makes them bite even harder? Seems very unfair, frankly.
    • Smitten monsters now wake up, but they’re not happy about it.
    • Giant fish zombies have been removed.
    • Endotherms have been removed.
  • Webtiles:
    • You can now enter explore mode online! Hit + to explore freely… without any fear of death. You are immortal. You are a god!
    • You can now block trolls. They cannot regenerate from this. (Not yet enabled on every server: this will roll out to servers next time they restart webtiles.)
  • Crawl has, somehow, become even more Australian.
  • We fixed a typo in which we wrote “entire the” instead of “the entire”. Not really a big deal, honestly… except that this text has been in every single morgue since 2007! Shouldn’t someone have told us? We’re so embarrassed right now.
  • Last but not least, we rewrote maybe_bool to be, arguably, better. See below for
    motivation, but here are the practical notes up front:

    * `maybe_bool` becomes a class rather than an enum.
    * After this commit, nearly anywhere you would write MB_FALSE or
      MB_TRUE you would simply write `false` or `true`.
    * Where you would write MB_MAYBE you now should write
      `maybe_bool::maybe`.
    * Comparison to `true` or `false` is safe and will do exact
      comparison. (The latter may appear surprising, but it is because
      comparison will cause a bool to be cast to maybe_bool, rather than a
      maybe_bool to be cast down to bool.)
    * Semantics change: `maybe_bool::maybe` does not convert to true by
      default under any circumstance.
    * In cases where you would have previously written `mb == MB_TRUE` you
      can just rely on a bool cast (`maybe` does not convert to `true`). In
      cases where you would write `mb == MB_FALSE` you can write `!mb`.
    * frombool and tobool are replaced respectively by constructors and
      the class method maybe_bool::to_bool (as well as an explicit bool
      cast).
    * While bool explicit operators have weird rules and can be used
      implicitly in some cases, there are still times when you'll need
      to do the cast. In particular, if a function returns a bool, to
      return a maybe_bool you'll need to explicitly cast.
    * Mixing bools and maybe_bools in logical expressions generally requires
      an explicit cast. (If you write a condition that just uses !, that
      doesn't need one.)
    
    Old `maybe_bool` had the advantage of simplicity: it was just an enum
    and as long as these enum values are used consistently, it is pretty
    simple to use and as efficient as any integer-based type, with
    effectively no implementation code.
    
    However, there are a few complaints about it. First, the naming scheme
    was quite ad hoc across the enum values and various functions that used
    them.  Second, and more importantly in my mind, the enum-based
    implementation led in a very non-clean way to implicit int and bool
    casts, and a very ad hoc semantics for this type, especially in its
    interaction with boolean expressions. Taken as a three-valued logic, it
    is very weird. The law of the excluded middle *is* valid (in the sense
    that `p || !p` is always true), but double negation elimination is *not*
    valid (i.e. `!!p != p`); the weaker double negation inference `!!!p ==
    !p` does hold conceivably classing it with some paraconsistent logics,
    though I haven't found an exact analogue (see [1], though this logic
    doesn't much resemble L8 there, which has the same double negation
    pattern). At a practical level this ad hoc nature made mixing with bools
    in both directions weird and somewhat error prone; aside from the above
    concerns (which essentially result from MB_MAYBE implicitly casting to
    `true`), `true` would cast to the enum value MB_MAYBE, leading to clunky
    conversion code in a lot of places, needing to always use MB
    constants, and error-prone comparison with regular bools.
    
    This commit tries to systematize things more cleanly, albeit with a much
    more complicated implementation. The underlying data type does still
    amount to a fancy enum (now an enum class), but it's wrapped with a more
    clearly defined class, largely inspired by boost's logic::tribool.  (I
    considered whether importing one of the various "`optional` but for
    c++11" packages out there might be a solution, but ultimately rejected
    this, because these classes tend to have an even weirder, for a
    bool-based type, set of implicit conversions to bool). A `bool`
    constructor is provided making it generally safe to use `true` and
    `false` as e.g. return values, and an explicit cast to bool is provided
    that has a better default than MB_MAYBE->true. (In some cases, this may
    be the desired semantics, of course, but this is still doable via
    `to_bool` or direct checks against false.) The operator semantics is
    based on the standard "Strong Kleene" three-valued logic operators,
    which provide a (imo) very sensible set of defaults for a three-valued
    logic. Note that because of the existence of the bool operator, this
    won't let you mix `maybe_bool`s in logical expressions together with
    bools without some explicit casting one way or the other.  The
    implementation is nearly (but not quite) purely header-based.
    
    As part of this commit, I have implemented everything as a
    back-compatibility layer and purely just tried to clarify the semantics
    of various instances of maybe_bool in cases where it did get an implicit
    conversion. The bulk of this is around `can_wear_item` which does tend
    to treat its maybe return as truth-y.  A future commit will convert
    MB_TRUE etc into their `maybe_bool::t` etc equivalents.
    
    [1] Kamide 2013, A Hierarchy of Weak Double Negations, Studia Logica 101.6

Many thanks also to Sastreii and CanOfWorms for contributing many new tiles over this period, including spell icons, artefact art, Shrek, and more.

Thanks also to all the community members who’ve contributed over the last few months, who I am too tired to credit in full. In particular, check out what SpinningBird sent us!

Happy crawling! Stay serious out there.

Trunk Updates 11 Jan 2023

Happy new year, crawlers! It’s been a little longer than usual since the last updates post, so this post will be a little longer than usual, too. To get you started, here’s a cool new splash screen from PhilosopherOpposite:

An Armataur Paladin, by PhilosopherOpposite.

And off we go!

  • New background: Reaver.
    • Reavers are warrior-mages, primarily focused on melee combat but with
      situational Conjurations for tough situations.
    • New starting spell: Kiss of Death (L1 Conj/Necro). Does high draining damage to an adjacent enemy, at the cost of significant max HP drain to the caster.
    • New starting spell: Momentum Strike (L2 Conj/Tloc). Redirects the caster’s momentum for a damaging attack that doesn’t require line of fire, but locks the caster in place for some turns after a hit. (It cannot be recast until this effect expires.)
    • Reavers also start with Hailstorm, which is now L3 (formerly L4) and can now miss. Ice Elementalists lose Hailstorm, but get Summon Ice Beast in exchange.
  • Species rework: Palentongas have become Armataurs.
    • Like Palentongas, Armataurs are large, scaled mammals, wearing bardings
      instead of boots.
    • New species innate: Long Tongue, which doubles the effects of drinking potions, but makes reading scrolls take 50% longer.
    • New species innate: Rolling (innate Rampage – extra movement when moving toward enemies).
    • Rolling Charge is now a spell, Vhi’s Electric Charge (L3 Tloc/Air). It sends the caster charging toward a nearby foe to deliver an electrified strike, phasing through targets in the way. Warpers now start with Vhi’s Electric Charge instead of Gell’s Gravitas.
    • Armataurs lose the Rolling Charge and Curl abilities.
    • Armataurs’ aptitude have been adjusted across the board.
    • See these commits for more explanation of the reasoning behind the changes.
  • God rework: Lugonu has been substantially revised, with the goal of being a much more tempting pick for players unlucky enough to have been banished to the Abyss.
    • The Banishment ability is now available at ** piety (was ***). It fails less often, and when it is resisted, the victim will be malmutated instead, making them more vulnerable in future. (This does not apply to other sources of banishment, such as the monster spell or weapons of distortion.)
    • When another god’s wrath descends upon a worshipper, Lugonu now scornfully responds by banishing several nearby foes.
    • Altars to Lugonu are more than three times as common in the Abyss.
    • Converting to Lugonu in the Abyss now gives even more bonus piety.
    • The Abyssal Knight background and the Bend Space ability have been removed. (For more explanation of why, see these commits.)
  • New brand: Heavy.
    • Heavy weapons have +80% base damage and +50% attack delay. (This has proven to be pretty strong, so don’t be surprised if this gets toned down slightly before release.)
    • Both melee and ranged weapons can be Heavy.
    • The Vorpal brand has been removed. It simply wasn’t very exciting. Flaming and Freezing remain as very simple damage multiplier brands.
    • The Dark Maul and Sniper are both now Heavy instead of Vorpal, and have had various stat adjustments. (Sniper is now +27.) Other formerly Vorpal unrands have changed or lost brands and gained enchantment as needed.
  • New unrands:
    • The Hermit’s Pendant, an amulet of faith that sets the wearer’s Invocations skill to 14 and their Evocations skill to 0. (Only for as long as you continue wearing the amulet, of course.)
    • The Force Lance, a Heavy +5 lance (a spear with +2 base damage, like Wyrmbane). When it lands a damaging hit, there’s a 1/3 chance of the target being knocked back, suffering extra damage if it collides with anything.
    • The Slick Slippers, which make all damaging melee attacks trample their wearer backward. They also provide immunity to constriction, engulfing, webbing and netting!
  • New spells:
    • Cigotuvi’s Dreadful Rot (L2 Necro/Air/Pois). Rots away the caster’s flesh to create a cloud of deadly miasma on their tile. Great for escapes, but also very fun with effects like Lesser Beckoning and potions of attraction! Replaces Conjure Flame in the Hedge Wizard starting spell set.
    • Kindle Blastsparks (L3 Fire/Air/Tloc). Creates a cloud of ‘blastsparks’ on the caster’s tile, which explode when any creature moves into them or when they are hit by fire damage. Usable as a land mine, as a way to create distance from enemies, or for other fun tricks. Replaces Conjure Flame in the Fire Elementalist starting spell set.
    • Arcjolt (L5 Conj/Air). Electrocutes everything adjacent to the caster, everything adjacent to those creatures, etc, etc, in a chain.
    • (And of course Reavers’ Kiss of Death and Momentum Strike are both new, too – see above!)
  • Further item-related changes:
    • The Mad Mage’s Maulers have been reworked. They lose Int-3 and RegenMP and gain -Cast and MPVamp, causing the wearer to gain MP when they strike foes in melee. They now add as much damage when spending MP in melee, matching the normal infusion ego’s ratio of MP to bonus damage.
    • Rings of evasion are now +5 instead of +4, to be closer in value to other rings (eg AC/Dexterity). The Ring of the Hare, accordingly, goes from +8 to +10.
    • Majin-Bo is now a one-handed staff instead of a two-handed quarterstaff. (The HP vamp and not being able to wield an enhancer staff is plenty of drawback.)
    • Scrolls of butterflies now create dramatically more butterflies. They now alternate with scrolls of summoning instead of scrolls of fog, since the latter have a more unique and irreplacable effect. Watch this space!
    • All ranged weapons can now generate with electrocution, antimagic, and draining brands. Venom ranged weapons no longer appear.
    • Short sword attack delay reduced.
    • Evocable invisibilty and blink no longer have an MP cost.
    • Spells have been reshuffled between books, and a new Maxwell’s Memoranda book has been added.
    • Hand crossbows are very slightly weaker and slower.
    • The Lochaber Axe now causes temporary HP drain on unequip.
  • Further character-related changes:
    • Arcane Marksmen (Markspersons?) have been renamed to Hexslingers, for stylistic and pun reasons.
    • Base regeneration increased by 0.2 HP/turn, to make resting faster in the early game.
    • Mummies have innate Faith, giving extra piety gain.
    • Reaching the end of the Zot clock now causes a smaller amount of permanent max HP loss (similar to Borgnjor’s Revivication), rather than temp HP drain. The Zot clock can no longer directly kill the player. (This change is intended to simplify the mechanic and to move away from a weird/nonstandard use of HP draining.)
    • Large species move at normal speed through shallow water.
    • rF- and rC- are added to the ‘bad mutations’ pool.
    • Will is now capped at +++++. (When affected by the Will/2 status, the cap is applied before halving.)
    • Pale draconians’ breath is no longer usable twice as often as others’.
    • Formicids can now shaft themselves in the Tomb of the Ancients.
  • Further god-related changes:
    • When worshipping at a faded altar, the player is given a preview of three gods the altar might belong to. (Then you can back out if you don’t like the options, without suffering wrath.) Care to take a gamble on that altar to Sif Muna, Vehumet, or Trog?
    • Gozag’s corpse-to-gold effect now blocks enemies from creating simulacra.
    • Fedhas protects trees from being set on fire by the player.
    • Okawaru’s Heroism and Finesse abilities cost more piety.
    • Removed Ashenzari’s Astral Vision (automatically seeing through walls). It was very annoying for autotravel/resting/etc, had a surprising number of bugs, and Ashenzari was quite strong enough without it. Maybe we’ll try to add a fixed version back in someday as a potion or such.
  • Further monster-related changes:
    • Demonic Crawlers lose their Warning Cry ability, their omni-elemental resistances, and some Willpower. In exchange, they get higher damage and very fast regeneration. This is intended to make Spider overall easier (by making it easier to sneak around), to reduce overlap with Swamp’s Bunyips (and their Warning Cry), and to experiment more with fast regenerating monsters.
    • Doom Hounds’ Howl is now resistable by Will.
    • Many monsters (boulder beetles, two-headed ogres, various orcs…) do less damage.
    • Walking Tomes are now unable to cast while silenced.
    • Ironbound Frosthearts’ Creeping Frost spell is now fully resistable by rC.
  • Further spell-related changes:
    • Manifold Assault moved to L4 (from L5) and does half as many attacks with UC as with a weapon. This is intended to make it a viable choice for more characters. Lowering its level makes it more viable for weapon-using characters to grab, and reducing its effectiveness for UC characters is compensation, since Manifold Assault was already very good for them.
    • Ozocubu’s Refrigeration’s damage has been increased.
    • Lesser Beckoning is now better at low power.
    • Slow no longer has bonus hex power.
    • The Simulacrum and Static Discharge spells have been weakened.
    • Conjure Flame and Corpse Rot have been removed. Neither were beloved by players, despite having gone through many rounds of revisions and (at least in the former case) being fairly strong; Kindle Blastsparks and Dreadful Rot are the next generation.
  • Interface-related changes:
    • Damage ratings are now shown in @. That includes ratings for unarmed combat, which were previously unavailable.
    • Bumping a foe while holding a ranged weapon now automatically shoots instead of asking if you want to hit the foe over the head with your bow.
    • Unrands have a distinct colour (teal) by default.
    • The % screen no longer shows .s for Stealth values, in an attempt to avoid misleading players into believing that there was a ‘maximum stealth’ value that could be achieved. (That is, it now shows “Stealth: +++” instead of “Stealth: +++…….”.)
    • Spells’ maximum damage is now displayed in their descriptions, in an attempt to make it a little easier to understand how spellpower relates to spell damage
    • Many weapon brands now provide more quantitative damage information.
    • New show_blood option allows disabling blood spatters and bloody corpses.
  • Notable bugfixes:
    • Various webtiles spectator issues have been fixed.
    • The Autumn Katana no longer claims to be vorpal. (Vorpal no longer exists, but also, the Autumn Katana hadn’t *actually* been vorpal since 0.27.)
    • It’s probably no longer possible to generate an Orc:1 with zero monsters.
    • Monsters are no longer described as being both resistant and immune to blinding.
    • Monsters with ‘see invisible’ no longer pretend to be unable to see invisible players while casting spells.
    • Monsters no longer get huge SH from orbs.
    • Monsters can no longer riposte when the player blocks their attacks.
    • Guardian golems and ironbound preservers no longer protect orbs of destruction.
    • Fsim (the wizmode fight simulator) once again works with ranged weapons.
    • Targeting a mirror cloned monster with Vampiric Draining will no longer give away its secret.
    • Jiyva’s missile-eating jelly mutation now works, for (possibly) the first time since 2014.
    • Remove Wu Jian’s secret ability to pick up mimic runes and shop at mimic shops.
    • Felids can no longer throw javelins.
    • Trees can no longer drown.
  • Many thanks also to Sastreii for contributing many new tiles over this period, including spell icons, artefact art, new draconian sprites, and more.

    Thanks to all the community members who’ve contributed over the last 6 months: robertxgray, Zhang Kai, Monkooky, 张凯, pdpol, Roadster Tracker, Rytis Petronis, Perry Fraser, scarf, bfaires, Aliscans, mainiacjoe, Benjamin S Wolf, Ernest Antanishinm, yrdzrfxndfvh, Alex, RypoFalem, Samantha Tobias, Michael Del Monte, Marcelo Henrique Cerri, Josh Braendel, Duong Hoang, and kd7uiy.

    To send you off, here’s another new splash screen, this one from Micah C:

    Ereshkigal, by Micah C.

    Happy crawling!

    0.29 “Shooting Stars”

    We are pleased to announce the release of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup 0.29 “Shooting Stars”!

    DCSS 0.29 features a sweeping rework of Necromancy, streamlining and upgrading many of its spells, along with similar improvements to the necromantic god Kikubaaqudgha. Ranged weapons have likewise been streamlined and reworked to be more satisfying to use.

    For those seeking a special challenge, we’ve also added a new Meteoran species that heals when seeing new terrain and has great skills and attributes. However, Meteorans have to move fast, with only one-tenth the normal time per floor before they suffer heavy draining.

    Many backgrounds now start with extra scrolls, potions, or other consumables, allowing more tactical options when faced with a sticky situation. Speaking of sticky situations, characters cast into the Abyss will find that monsters there once again give experience and piety, and an ultra-dangerous ‘deep abyss’ is now accessible…

    Many new item types have been added, like scrolls of poison and wands of quicksilver. Some of these ‘alternate’, with only one type of item from a set being generated in any given game. We’ve also added many exciting new unique monsters, from Amaemon the Diabolical Poisoner to the alt-timeline troll Parghit the Mighty.

    Launchers, long blades and short blades all now use dexterity instead of strength when calculating damage, allowing new evasive playstyles. Monsters no longer gain and lose ‘random energy’, and can instead launch opportunistic attacks on fleeing players. As always, there are many more changes small and large alike!

    Download DCSS 0.29 here or play it online on one of many servers across the world! Packages for Windows and OS X are available now. Linux debs are coming soon. See the full list of changes on the release page here.

    The tournament starts on Friday August 26th 8pm UTC and runs through Sunday September 11th 8pm UTC, with all online 0.29 games counting towards your score. See the tournament page for more details, including how to join or setup a clan. Clans membership can be changed until Friday September 2nd 8pm UTC.

    Many thanks to all those who have contributed to DCSS over the years. Thanks especially to the DCSS development team, whose contributions made 0.29 possible, and to the admins who run and maintain the official servers. A special thanks to the following community members who contributed to 0.29 and a warm welcome to the first-time contributors, listed in italics. (Let us know if someone is missing, this data is tricky to collect in bulk!)

    4Hooves2Appendages, Aliscans, Ernest Antanishin, Spencer Baugh, Elliott Bernstein, David Damerell, DreamDust, dilly, Diego Essaya, Perry Fraser, Goratrix, Implojin, Alex Jurkiewicz,  Nikolai Lavsky, neo-bop, Oleksiy Pavlikovsky, Rytris Petronis, Brian Power, Reono, riverfiend, robertxgray, Rosstin Murphy, ruxi, sdynet, Jeffery Stager, Cebolla Sunbeam

    0.28 Tournament Results

    The 0.28 tournament is over. On behalf of the Dev Team, many thanks to all the server admins, outside contributors, bug reporters, and to the many DCSS players who made the 0.28 release and tournament possible!

    For 16 days, players could compete for tournament points and banners by playing 0.28 games on the public servers. This was the fourth tournament held after the major revision of the tournament rules done for 0.25. There were changes based on previous input, and once again we’ve collected the feedback posted on tavern and reddit.

    Congratulations to Yermak, perennial champion, for once again taking first place in the individual competition, with a spectacular 111,412 points! Over the course of the tournament, Yermak won 43 games, including a streak of 13 games (second-best in tournament), an 76M high score run (first in tournament), 30 Nemelex’ Choice combos, 4 species high scores, 3 background high scores, and 19 tier 3 banners.

    Other big winners:

    • Acrobat2: 2nd place overall (101,150 points, 34 wins), longest streak (18 games), 4 species high scores & 1 background high score, tied for lowest XL win at 16, all level 3 banners completed.
    • Fagentul: 3rd place overall (89,909 points, 21 wins), 5 species and background high scores, tied for lowest XL win at 16, 16 level 3 banners completed, 8-win streak.
    • p0werm0de: Fastest realtime win (an auspicious 27 minutes 44 seconds), 2nd place low turncount, 8th place overall.
    • Caminho: Lowest turncount win in a scanty 8,492 turns.
    • sweetandcool: A third tie for lowest XL win at XL 16; 14th place overall.
    • Lici The Crawler (alias Borgnjor’s Vile Crotch): First win of the tournament.
    • Ge0ff, RubberyChicken and NoScrollMutBadDesign all tied for most ziggurats completed at 27 apiece.

    The clan competition was won by Gozig or Gozag (captained by Ge0ff) with 105,656 points, sealing their victory by winning 40 Nemelex Choice combos to second place’s 30. In a close 2nd place was That felt unstrangely rewarding (captained by acrobat2) with 98,434 points, and first place in the Clan Combo Highscores and Streak Length leaderboards. 3rd place was held by Team Splat (captained by shummie) with 85,513, following up on last year’s 2nd place ranking by maxing out the Clan Low Turncount Win leaderboard.

    Thank you to everyone for playing! I hope you all had fun.

    To close out, here are some overall tournament statistics (with the 0.27 numbers in brackets for comparison). 2,559 players started a game at some point during the tournament; of those 2,504 completed a game without quitting or leaving the dungeon sadly orbless. This definition of “player” (players who completed a non-boring game) is used for subsequent calculations and was used for the 0.27 statistics.

    • Players: 2,504 (0.27: 2,474)
    • Total player time: 28,008 hrs (0.27: 27,502 hrs)
    • Average player time: 11.2 hrs (0.27: 11.2 hrs)
    • Games played: 69,201 (0.27: 67,203)
    • Players who got a rune: 742 (0.27: 734)
    • 357 winners and 1160 wins (0.27: 404 winners and 1571 wins)
    • Win rate: 1.68% (0.27: 2.34%)
    • Proportion of players using WebTiles: 96.6% (0.27: 94.4%)

    The 0.29 season has begun, and changes are already in motion. Watch this space for further information as the 0.29 trunk update posts begin to flow. Until next time, happy crawling!

    Trunk Updates 6 November 2020

    Hello, crawlers! It’s been a bit, but here’s the latest from Trunk:

    • The Swamp branch has been drastically reworked:
      • New monster: will-o-the-wisp, an unearthly gas that spits out powerful Foxfires.
      • New monster: goliath frog, capable of licking players from afar with its acidic tongue.
      • New monster: eleionoma, a spirit of the swamp akin to water nymphs. It flows with the woods and shoots shrapnel at nearby enemies. It’s quite difficult to kill while it’s next to trees.
      • New monster: bloated husk, a shambling abomination that explodes with a powerful burst of putrescent gas.
      • New monster: bunyip, an Australian cryptid that hits with enormous force but a slow recovery. (Did you know DCSS is Australian?)
      • New monster: fenstrider witch, a rare top-tier threat casting Paralyse, melee-range Agony, and Throw Sludge, a new spell that splatters Eringya’s Noxious Bog all over the victim.
      • Bog bodies cast much more powerfully, and their freezing touch attack has been merged in with their normal attack so that it actually does something.
      • Many weak and irrelevant enemies no longer appear in Swamp.
      • Swamp levels are, on average, about 20-25% smaller.
      • For a limited testing period, Swamp will appear in every game of Dungeon Crawl, even sometimes alongside Shoals. Enjoy!
    • Further monster changes:
      • Boulder beetles are back! This time, their trademark rolling attack uses standard monster movement rules, rather than Orb of Destruction projectile movement. That means they can follow you as you move and around corners. They can also blink. On the plus side, they’re worth more XP!
      • Crocodiles (but not alligators), porcupines, and hippogrives have departed this mortal plane. None of them did anything particularly interesting. A service will be held on Sunday from 4 to 6.
      • To follow up porcupines’ passage, hell sentinels and torturous demonspawn no longer have spines. They weren’t scaled high enough to do anything against late-game players, and it wouldn’t be particularly fun if they had.
      • Batty monsters, such as bats or harpies, used to re-focus on their target once per player turn. That meant that players taking fast actions (swinging with short blades) would make them attack more often, and taking slow actions (using the Dark Maul) would make them attack less. No longer! Batty monsters now act of their own free will, unconstrained by players.
      • Again in celebration of boulder beetles’ return, insect glyphs have been reorganized. Ants, beetles, and other non-flying insects now live on ‘B’, with ‘s’ reserved for arachnids.
      • Monsters’ spells’ damage is now shown when examining them with ‘xv’.
    • Player species changes:
      • New Demonspawn mutation: sharp scales, giving 1/2/3 AC and slaying.
      • New Demonspawn mutation: big brain, giving 2/4/6 int, along with wizardry (spell failure reduction) at level 3.
      • Demonspawns’ thin skeletal structure mutation has its stealth bonus doubled.
      • At XL 7 and higher, Palentonga now curl defensively when hit, getting an AC bonus against subsequent hits before their next action. Useful when in big fights, against hydras, etc.
      • Wheals made a large number of improvements to the Palentonga charge targeter. Thanks, wheals!
      • Palentonga can now mutate poisonous tails.
    • Item changes:
      • Potions of stabbing have been replaced with potions of attraction, which pull nearby monsters toward the player while active. See if you can come up with some fun ways to use this!
      • Potions of brilliance now halve spell MP costs while active.
      • When targeting the polymorph wand, you’ll now see a set of three random monsters that the wand can turn the target into. Less guessing!
      • Wand noise is now shown in the UI.
      • Many XP-charged evocable items have had their charges reduced, their recharge time increased, and their shop prices raised. They’re still extremely strong.
      • The condensation vane now has a lovely new set of tiles. Credit, as ever, to canofworms.
      • Broad axe delay has increased from 1.6 to 1.7.
      • The black knight’s barding is back! Now naga and palentonga can wear it.
    • Miscellaneous changes:
      • There’s now a selection menu when x-ving to examine spaces with multiple interesting things. (Monsters, items, features…)
      • Gozag no longer gives a free potion petition on worship, to pull his power a bit back towards other gods.
      • Similarly, Nemelex Xobeh now starts gifting decks only at higher piety.
      • Now that you can see the amount of gold you get from a scroll of acquirement before you pick it, the huge variance that made for exciting gambles before just makes for really boring ‘take the massive pile of gold over the cool item’ decisions. As such, gold acquirement now produces much smaller and more consistent amounts, to encourage more fun decisions.
      • Some Lair and Snake level layouts have been tweaked for increased fun.
      • Many new vaults have been added, including several exciting boulder beetle vaults and several transporter vaults.
      • Zot clock changes: the maximum ‘bank’ is much larger (27k turns per branch, not 15k), all Hells share a single clock, and the clock is now deterministic and displayed numerically. If this means nothing to you, don’t worry about it. You can now enable always_show_zot if you really want to, though.
      • Vampiric Draining’s damage is no longer limited by the amount that it heals the player.
    • Bugfixes:
      • Searing Ray no longer tracks invisible monsters.
      • Withered plants no longer wither. (Now they crumble.).
      • You can’t crash the game by trying to (P)ut a non-jewellery item on.
      • Dungeon Crawl will no longer claim that non-lifesaving gods will save lives.
      • Cunning players can no longer use Yredmenul’s Enslave Soul targeter to deduce which illusory clones are fake and which are real.
      • Donald now deigns to talk to followers of the Wu Jian Council.
      • While in the Slime Pits, you can no longer be shafted next to slimy walls and die instantly.

    Have a lovely weekend, all! Happy crawling.

    Trunk updates, 25 February 2017

    Hi, crawlers. If you want to know about the latest changes in trunk, you’re in the right place! If not, well, uh… leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

    • New temple god: the Wu Jian Council.
      • An order of militant monks that have ascended to divinity, the Wu Jian Council offer worshippers powerful new combat moves.
      • 1*: Martial Attack – Whirlwind. When moving between two tiles adjacent to the same enemy or enemies, automatically attack them, potentially Slowing those hit.
      • 2*: Martial Attack – Wall Jump. When moving directly into a solid obstacle, instead move two tiles backward, attacking all enemies adjacent to your destination and potentially distracting them.
      • 3*: Martial Attack – Lunge. When moving directly toward a foe, automatically attack them, dealing extra damage to slowed and/or distracted enemies.
      • 4*: Serpent’s Lash. When activated, gain two instant movement actions.
      • 5*: Heaven On Earth. When activated, you are surrounded by opaque clouds, and your combat abilities are enhanced for so long as you continue performing Martial Attacks.
      • All martial attacks scale with movement and attack speed such that fast-movement races aren’t penalized for attacking normally, and slow races aren’t penalized for using martial attacks.
      • Piety is gained through defeating foes.
      • A more verbose writeup (with an old name for the god) is here.
    • Noise from the last turn is displayed as a meter in the top-right of the screen, replacing the gold display. (Gold is still visible in % and $, or replacing the piety display for Gozagites.) Noise is an important part of crawl, and even though this display doesn’t communicate the full complexity of it, it’s a big step forward that I’m very excited about – please thank ‘advil’ for implementing it! Here’s a fuller writeup.
    • Barachians have been rethemed and reworked; instead of being barbarians from the frigid south, they’re creations of the gods who rebelled against their masters long ago. In memory of their maker, shadows still flee at Barachians’ approach, giving them +1 LOS. (Increasing both the range of their attacks, and the range & number of enemies that can attack them!) In compensation for this, their attributes have been raised to human levels, their skills aptitudes have increased by +1 across the board (except for a few flavour-based exceptions), and their Hop’s range now increases even further at XL 13.
    • Potions of mutation, cure mutation, and beneficial mutation have been blended together into one big slurry! They (potions of mutation) now removes 2-6 mutations, adds 1-3 random mutations, and then adds another 1 ‘good’ mutation, which is essentially similar to drinking all three old potions in a row. This is intended to encourage more players to interact with the mutation mechanics in 3-rune games, and to create more interesting decisions: a fuller explanation is here.
    • New unrand: Maxwell’s thermic engine, replacing the Dagger of Freezing Death and the Scimitar of Flaming Death. The Thermal Engine is a freezing/flaming double sword that temporarily increases in enchantment with each blow. Trivia: in development, it once had the ability to summon demons. :)
    • The Ratskin Cloak is somewhat rattier, insofar it can now be evoked to summon rats. Yum!
    • Warper/Arcane Marksperson shakeup: Gell’s Gravitas loses Hexes (it’s now purely Translocations) and moves into the Wr starting book, while Portal Projectile goes from pure Translocations to Hex/Tloc and moves into the AM starting book. This should, hopefully make both spells and both backgrounds more useful.
    • Portal Projectile is now manually cancellable.
    • Transmutations no longer have special-case added damage from str/dex; their base damage has been raised to compensate.
    • During character selection, species are now ordered by ‘complexity’, e.g. appropriateness for new players. This is intended to guide said new players toward species that will be more fun for them, and away from HuFi. The categories are, of course, fuzzy and somewhat arbitrary; there will probably be more tinkering with them over time.
    • The auto_butcher option defaults to ‘Very Hungry’, meaning that auto-travel will go to & butcher corpses once the player is ‘Very Hungry’ or hungrier. This is a compromise between the most convenient behavior for most characters and for necromancers/Fedhasites; the latter would rather not automatically butcher every corpse they encounter!
    • Slow Regeneration is now a 1-level mut, with the effect of the old level 2 of the mut (no natural regeneration while monsters are in LOS). The old Slow Regeneration 3 (no natural regeneration) is now DD-exclusive, and cannot be gained during play.
    • Deep trolls and iron trolls drop exciting new colours of hides.
    • Casting Ignition with tentacles on-screen is considerably less dramatic.
    • Xom is significantly less prone to electrocuting the player.
    • It should no longer be possible, even in rare circumstances, to be 101% of the way to the next level.

    Happy crawling!

    Edit: removed marriage, and other errors.

    Trunk updates, 8 February 2017

    Hi, crawlers! Welcome – to the second changelog of 2017! Even better than the first!

    • New item type: scarves!
      • Scarves occupy the cloak slot. They give 0 AC and cannot be enchanted, but always generate with an ego.
      • Scarf egos: rC+, Spirit Shield, Resistance, and rMsl.
      • Scarves replace about 1/6 cloaks.
    • Spells:
      • Replaced Delayed Fireball with a new spell: Ignition (L8 Fire). Ignition drops a fireball on every single enemy in line of sight. The player and their allies are immune. Have fun :)
      • Repel Missiles is gone. It didn’t work especially well as a spell: rather than being an effect that required investment (an interesting strategic choice), it was essentially a permanent buff that applied to any non-Trog character that found it. As a spell that’s mainly cast out-of-combat, it didn’t work with the spell failure system, either; players were encouraged to take off armour, swap in wizardry items, etc to cast it. Everyone liked it, of course, since it had good lootfeel, but it’s better to provide that lootfeel without the accompanying annoyances. It’s an effect that works better as an item (e.g. the new scarf ego, or the Amulet of Air) than as a spell.
      • Airstrike replaces Repel Missiles in the Book of Air. This should give AE a high-accuracy, lowish-damage spell to complement their other tools.
      • Similarly, Force Lance replaces Battlesphere in the Book of Conjurations. This is an experiment to encourage use of e.g. Fulminant Prism, with which Force Lance has considerable synergy.
    • Unrands:
      • Amulet of Bloodlust: MR++ (was MR+), Slay+6 (was +3). Encourage use of an exciting *Rage item.
      • Sceptre of Torment: only has a chance of tormenting on-hit, rather than randomly over time. Simpler, and doesn’t encourage annoying swapping while out of combat.
      • Shield of Ignorance: changed from +6 {AC+4, *Curse, rN+, Int-6} to +10 {rN+, Int-4}. Int-6 was too harsh for almost all potential users to consider it, and *Curse really didn’t accomplish anything.
      • Sword of Cerebov: works on rDamnation monsters.
      • Sword of Jihad: now the Zealot’s Sword. Replace a good but loaded word with a very good and non-loaded word.
    • Food:
      • All food takes one turn to eat, including rations and royal jellies. Chunks only taking one turn to eat meant that the already-limited tactical implications of slow food were very limited, and the annoyances of getting interrupted while eating outweighed those.
      • Removed: pizza and beef jerky, since they no longer had much purpose. The loss of pizza in particular is very sad… some day it will return in cheesy glory.
      • The auto_butcher option now takes an optional hunger threshold parameter; check options_guide.txt for details.
    • Webs generated over the course of play (by e.g. jumping spiders or sacks of spiders) are no longer permanent. Once the monster or player they’re webbing escapes or dies, the web vanishes. This is to discourage certain degenerate behaviors involving luring jumping spiders around the game and using their webs to trivialize tough enemies; I realized it was theoretically possible when we first implemented permanent webs, but credit to Ultraviolent for actually putting it into practice and forcing me to get off my rump and fix it!
    • Elyvilon’s wrath is simpler. Instead of various irrelevant effects (e.g. minor poison miscasts), Ely just has a chance of applying lifesaving to enemies, healing those that were about to die.
    • Wands are now ID’d when you step on them, instead of on pickup.
    • Fixed a longstanding mouse cursor bug in local tiles, which annoyed quite a lot of people. Performance should be much better now!
    • Temple entrance vaults can spawn again. (Broken since last June… oops!)
    • The legendary titan, Antaeus, is no longer terrified of the level 3 spell ‘Conjure Flame’.
    • Monster Upheaval no longer increases in power with the player’s Invocations skill.
    • Frogs can now ribbit, croak, or, under very special circumstances, bellow.
    • Mushrooms caps have been banned.
    • Vampire mages now have ghost hands.

    Trunk updates, 14 January 2017

    Hi, crawlers! Welcome – to the first changelog of 2017!

    • Evocations:
      • Rods of scattershot & rods of clouds have both been turned into rare, high-power wand types. Wands of Clouds, unlike their rod predecessors, always create harmful clouds.
      • Discs of storms have been replaced with lightning rods, a new xp-charged misc evocable with a remarkable resemblance to the old ‘lightning’ type of rod.
      • Wand power scales significantly better with Evocations skill.
      • Some wands have sub-LOS range.
      • Wands cannot be evoked while confused.
      • Wands of disintegration no longer destroy terrain; wands of digging can now destroy statues.
      • Wands of slowing have, belatedly, followed their hasting friends into oblivion; they’re gone.
      • Rods have been removed.
    • New race: Barachians, a species of frog-men with a great hatred of the letter t. They have a powerful innate Hop ability, a partially-controllable Blink effect that requires several turns of motionlessness to recover before re-use. To balance this, they also have slow movement 1 (1.2 turns/move; nagas move at 1.4) and ghoul-tier attributes.
    • New spell: Poisonous Vapours, L2 Poison/Air. Smite-targeted; creates an extremely short-lived poison cloud on a targeted creature. Appears in the VM starting book.
    • Removed: Poisonous Cloud.
    • Apportation scales more significantly with spellpower. Its targeter is also hopefully a little better.
    • Your current regeneration rate is shown in %.
    • Deep dwarves can now benefit from the special effects of Kryia’s armour.
    • The displayed resistance chance for Siren/Avatar song is shown correctly in monster descriptions; it formerly miscalculated (underestimated) their power.
    • Clearing multiple ziggurats will make the figurines you find within glow in new and exciting colours. Note that clearing multiple ziggurats is, quote, “silly and should not be encouraged”.
    • In addition to summoning golden dragons (see trunk update post #219, true believers!), fortunate TSO worshippers can also use poison stingers.
    • Iron giants can no longer throw your orbs of destruction back at you. (It didn’t work properly anyway.)
    • It’s no longer possible to ?acquire an item directly into lava or deep water. Sploosh no more…
    • Cerebov scumming has been removed.
    • Wizards can now rest inside walls.
    • Sandblast blasts sand.

    Happy crawling, and happy new year, and if you haven’t yet taken the survey, hey! What better time for a fresh start (on taking the survey) than now?)

    Trunk updates, 23 December 2016

    Hi, crawlers! Hope everyone’s been enjoying the holiday season as much as we have. Here’s the latest, most festive changes from trunk:

    • Characters:
      • Whisper ‘Farewell’ when you leave, Legolas: High Elves are no more. (This is, of course, part of the crawl dev team’s newly “straight edge” lifestyle.)
      • Ogres’ apts have been adjusted: their Maces and Flails apt has been lowered, and in compensation, their spellcasting skills have been increased to -1 across the board.
      • Deep Dwarves’ wand recharge ability has been replaced with a self-healing ability that has a chance of decreasing their max MP whenever it’s used.
      • Mummies’ Spellcasting apts are now +2; formerly -1.
      • The demonspawn Augmentation effect is 25% less dramatic.
    • Items:
      • To avoid miskeys, the letter keys can no longer be used to wield or throw useless items unless the * key (‘display all’) has been pressed first. Breadswingers can rest easy, as other selection techniques, e.g. {@w1}, are unchanged.
      • Wands of heal wounds, teleportation, and hasting have discharged their last zap. They’re removed. We removed them. Hence: no more zapping.
      • Wand and misc acquirement have been merged into one category, ‘evocables’.
      • Nemelex wrath reclaims all decks, instead of merely sabotaging them.
    • Monsters:
      • Hill giants and two-headed ogres have merged into one big two-headed monster. (I’m not sure what happened to the third head.) ‘Hill giants’ will be seen no more, and two-headed ogres take their place, becoming significantly nastier in the process.
      • Monsters should no longer, very rarely, appear to be random strange colours in console. This bug was first reported at least three years ago; thanks to johnny0 for finally figuring it out and creating a fix!
      • Monster white draconian breath can now be resisted by AC.
    • Per popular demand, Sandblast now consumes stones directly from the inventory. As part of the change, it no longer functions without ammo, and large rocks can’t be used at all. (Earth Elementalists get more stones to compensate.)
    • Slime:$’s walls no longer collapse entirely when TRJ is slain; instead, only newly-added transparent sections will be destroyed. It seemed a bit too mean to take out the entire thing, even for us.
    • In the spirit of helping new players, the autofight_stop default is now 50, up from 30.
    • For the first time in nearly two years, acquirement and god gifts can now produce helmets. Oops.
    • Followers of the Shining One can now summon golden dragons.
    • Trees will appear angry, when appropriate.
    • You can no longer rest while on fire.
    • You can no longer learn spells that no longer exist.

    Happy crawling, and a happy new year in advance! Here’s to many more.

    (P.S.: take the survey!)

    Trunk updates, 30 November 2016

    Hi, crawlers! Here’s the first set of changes for 0.20:

    • Monsters:
      • Draconian callers are now draconian stormcallers; they smite, summon drakes, and also invoke Upheaval, the Qazlal ability. Boom!
      • Snorg, Xtahua, and Bai Suzhen’s hides now have an inherent bonus enchantment.
      • Polymorphed uniques no longer keep their spells in certain obscure cases.
      • Ushabti breathe significantly less often.
      • Monsters’ melee attacks are now included in their descriptions.
      • Monster MR is reduced by lowered HD, from e.g. draining or malmutation.
      • The last great renaming of 2016? Sirens are now, excitingly, Merfolk Sirens.
    • Gods:
      • The Shining One’s conduct has been simplified: all stabs are now automatically prevented (no bonus damage), and poison damage is no longer specially forbidden. Cleansing Flame also does somewhat more damage to non-evil enemies.
      • Jiyva pacifies all slimes, even those that are actually shapeshifters.
      • Nemelex’s Pain card is now roughly twice as powerful.
      • Abyssal gold no longer counts toward Gozag’s entrance cost.
      • Qazlal no longer spawns damaging clouds on plants, e.g. while you’re trying to rest.
      • The Xom Cleave status will no longer last up to 2000 turns.
      • Dithmenos’s shadow can once again mimic diagonal and reaching attacks. (Broken as part of a bugfix two years ago.)
    • Spells:
      • Invisibility and Haste no longer cause extra hunger over time.
      • Confusing Touch is less effective, especially against high-HD enemies.
      • Poisonous Cloud is level 5 (was 6).
    • Odds of confusing enemies with a melee attack (with Confusing Touch or fungus form) are displayed while examining enemies with those statuses active.
    • Various badforms (e.g. wispform, fungus form) have been simplified, and porcupine form has been removed.
    • Console colours have been reworked to avoid invisible colours for certain low-capability consoles. Review options_guide.txt for new options, e.g. best_effort_brighten_background and _foreground.
    • Max charges for wands are always displayed: e.g. “a wand of confusion (?/48)”.
    • The Hat of the High Council has ascended to a higher plane.
    • Lair’s vaults have been exhaustively reviewed and revised. Please thank regret-index for all of the hard work!
    • Demonic guardians expire over time, not based on tension.
    • Vampire feeding, like chunk eating, now always takes a single turn. All the blood has oozed out of our corpses for the last time…
    • Fire clouds no longer expire faster over water (and likewise cold clouds over lava). Fire clouds on water also produce less steam.
    • Noise no longer breaks mesmerization and fear.
    • Mottled draconians (both player and monster) and draconian zealots are no more.
    • Simplified chaos effects.
    • Screaming at tentacles is forbidden.
    • Removed off-brand knock-offs of the Captain’s Cutlass.
    • The player can no longer crash the game by attempting to eat their hat.

    Happy crawling, and don’t forget to take the survey if you haven’t already!

    Crawl 0.19: “Dancing Through Memory”

    We’re proud to announce the release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.19: “Dancing Through Memory”! 0.19 features two new gods, a new portal vault, and many other additions, streamlinings, and general improvements to the game.

    Download DCSS 0.19 here, or play it online on one of many servers across the world! The Windows and Linux packages are available now, as well as the source; the OS X binaries should be online within a few days.
    OS X binaries are now available, many thanks to agolden for building them!

    The release tournament begins on Nov 4 2016, at 20:00 UTC, with all online 0.19 games counting towards your score. See the tournament website for more details, including how to set up or join a clan.

    0.19′s highlights include:

    • Branches: Lair and its sub-branches have been made shorter but deadlier, Zot offers new perils to the unwary adventurer, and the Desolation of Salt, a new timed portal vault, offers hoards of ancient artefacts to those strong enough to face down the unique threats hidden in its blinding saltstorms.
    • Spells: Two new spells have been added: Lesser Beckoning, which pulls enemies straight to your feet, and Infestation, a high-level Necromancy spell that spawns death scarabs from the remains of slain foes.
    • Items: All Long Blades now offer a ‘riposte’ effect, giving a chance for an automatic counterattack whenever an enemy misses the player. The Fencer’s Gloves let you riposte with any weapon.
    • Characters: Halflings and Kobolds have had their aptitudes and stats reworked, pushing the former to be powerful heavy-armour fighters, and the latter toward stabbing and spellcasting.
    • Gods: Uskayaw the Reveler offers remarkable combat powers to acolytes, peaking at the ability to instantly kill any targeted foe, but the piety that powers those abilities drops back to nothing after every battle. Hepliaklqana the Forgotten gives followers a single, permanent ally, which grows in strength alongside the player. Plus, Nemelex Xobeh’s decks have been streamlined and reworked, and Sif Muna’s abilities have been overhauled to be much more fun to use.

    For a list of other major changes, see the changelog. Many thanks to all those who have contributed to Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. We hope you enjoy playing 0.19!

    Trunk updates, 17 October 2016

    Hi, crawlers! Today is the feature freeze day for 0.19, meaning that it’s all fixes from here until release. Here’s the last batch of major changes:

    • Gods:
      • Beogh can now enchant, upgrade, and uncurse followers’ ranged weapons.
      • Fedhas appreciates all corpse decay, and automatically rots all corpses when the player leaves a level. The ‘fungal bloom’ toadstool-generating effect is now an (a)bility, rather than a (p)rayer effect.
      • Qazlal’s cloud immunity applies to all clouds, not just the player’s.
      • Qazlal’s Elemental Wrath no longer generates neutral or hostile elementals from neutral or hostile clouds.
      • Jiyva’s Jelly Paralyse ability seems to have mysteriously vanished. In the distance, you hear a contented gurgling.
      • Uskayaw ignores damage-over-time effects (sticky flame, poison, and clouds), instead of only allowing piety gain after turns on which the player performed an attack-like action.
      • The (p)rayer action is gone. Altars are now used with < or >, as with shops and portals.
    • Items:
      • Monsters that could be butchered for their hides (trolls and most dragons) now, instead, have a chance of leaving behind the armour equivalents instead on death. Dragon armour has been correspondingly renamed to ‘dragon scales’.
      • Spellbook rarity is fixed! For the first time since 0.4. some spellbooks will be less common on earlier dungeon levels; this was intended throughout, but the code was broken. Such an exciting feature that no one noticed it was missing for eight years…
      • Scimitars and great swords are slightly buffed.
      • The Plutonium Sword no longer turns plants into free xp.
      • Manuals of stealth & unarmed combat are no longer twice as common as other types. (That behaviour was added as a hack years ago, when stabbing/traps & doors skills were removed.)
      • Artefact weapons can now generate with Protection or Chaos brands.
      • Amulets of dismissal suddenly vibrated and disappeared – forever.
    • Monsters:
      • Ushabti Death Rattle now fires miasma, instead of negative energy clouds.
      • Weaker Zot dragons have been replaced with nastier ones.
      • River rats and iguanas have been almost entirely removed from Lair.
      • Hornets and wasps have merged into one monster, roughly averaging their strengths. To avoid confusion, the new monster is called a ‘hornet’. Also it’s yellow.
      • Putrid demonspawn and Chaos Champions have bitten the dust. Blood Saints grabbed the latter’s Call of Chaos. (Pretty rude, IMO…)
      • Also, gelid and infernal demonspawn now have full elemental immunity (to ice/fire respectively), Corrupter’s Corrupt Body (beam-targeted) has been replaced with Corrupting Pulse (fullscreen), and Black Suns lost Malign Offering.
    • Spells:
      • New spell: Lesser Beckoning (L3 Translocations). Pulls the target adjacent to the caster. Range 2 at power 0, 7 (fullscreen) at power 200. Irresistible…
      • Apportation has been replaced in Warpers’ starting book with Lesser Beckoning; various other spellbooks have been slightly tweaked.
      • Irradiate causes significantly less contamination; it should now be safe for 3-4 uses before entering yellow glow.
      • The Haste spell has been removed.
    • Another layer of contamination is now displayed, between grey and yellow glow. This should make it easier to tell when you’re close to being dangerously contaminated.
    • Contamination reduction is now caused specifically by Potions of Cancellation, rather than by all ‘debuffing’ effects.
    • Player species and forms no longer have hidden ‘stealth factors’. Ogres’, Trolls’, and Centaurs’ stealth aptitudes have decreased by a point each, to compensate, Dithmenos’s Shadow Form now gives an explicit stealth multiplier, and various other stealth effects have been slightly tweaked. Wave goodbye as you leave, Remarkably Stealthy Tree Form…
    • Trees are renamed and recoloured (in console) during the effects of Awaken Forest.
    • Bat form no longer prevents quaffing and door use.
    • Berserk now costs hunger on activation, rather than on expiration. It’s no longer possible to avoid the effects of Berserkitis by remaining Very Hungry.
    • auto_butcher now functions only when autoexploring, to make it more useful for characters that might want to use corpses (e.g. necromancers or Fedhasites).
    • The messages_at_top rcfile option should, hopefully, be more useful for people using screenreaders. (It should print messages before printing the rest of the screen; if anyone reading this uses a screenreader, let us know if that helps!)
    • The orb run’s teleport restrictions (slow teleports, uncontrolled blinks, no Portals of Golubria) now apply throughout the Zot branch.
    • A large number of vaults have been added and reworked; Volcano, in particular, has been heavily revised, and should be both more dangerous and more potentially rewarding.
    • Hints mode text has been updated and revised, for the first time in a while.
    • In the last great convulsion of the Great Renaming of 0.19, greater naga are now nagaraja, and greatslings are fustibali. Great!
    • Orc wizards should no longer kill the player on turn 20 of D:1.
    • Skeletonless skeletons will no longer appear in Hell.

    Happy crawling!

    Trunk updates, 25 September 2016

    Hi, crawlers!

    First, a request: if you can read Korean and are interested in us getting these fantastic Korean fan-made loading screens into the main game, please contact us! We’d really like to ask the original artists for permission to use their art in-game. This is now in progress; thanks to everyone who volunteered their help!

    Second, here are the latest changes from trunk:

    • We have two new devs: Brannock and CanOfWorms. Feel free to give them a hearty welcome!
    • Monsters:
      • Monster renamings: giant newt -> frilled lizard, giant frogs -> bullfrogs, giant geckos -> leopard geckos, giant leeches -> tyrant leeches, giant eyeballs -> floating eyes, giant spores -> ballistomycete spores, giant orange brains -> glowing orange brains. Hill giants seem unaffected… for now.
      • Iron Giants now throw their allies at the player (as Robin/Polyphemus), instead of throwing the player at their allies..
      • Naga Ritualists’ Virulence spell no longer multiplies poison in the victim’s system; instead, it just applies rPois-.
      • Blink frogs and sixfirhies no longer heal when hit with distortion or electricity, respectively. Sixfirhies gain rElec+++ to make up for it. It’s the end of an era…
      • Tzitzimimeh’s melee attack no longer creates a ring of miasma clouds, but instead applies the rotting & slowing effect directly.
      • Mennas now has a guaranteed sacred weapon; more of a threat, or more of a temptation…?
      • Statues can be stabbed; obsidian and orange crystal statues gain sInv.
      • Turtles no longer withdraw into their shells at low HP.
      • Ragged Hierophants have been gently, lovingly nerfed.
      • Griffons have merged into hippogriffs, which is a little confusing, given that they’re originally both hybrids… anyway, hippogriffs are slightly tougher, and that’s that.
      • Say goodnight, Dan: boulder beetles attempted to squash a developer, but instead just rolled right out of crawl. They will be missed.
    • Species:
      • Halflings and Kobolds have had their aptitudes and attributes adjusted, to make them more distinct. Kobolds gain better intelligence and spellcasting aptitudes, but are slightly worse at weapons; for Halflings, the reverse is true. As Halflings are now a diminutive race well suited to a heavy armour, “sword and board toon” playstyle, you may as well refer to them by the traditional name for that role: Hill Dwarves.
      • Spriggans have the same weapon restrictions as halflings and kobolds, instead of more restrictive ones. “Allows spriggans to wield triple crossbows, and makes morningstars, eveningstars, long swords, scimitars, demon blades, war axes, spears, demon tridents and greatslings one handed for them.” SpBe buff!
      • Vampires have only four distinct blood levels, instead of six: Near Bloodless is merged into Thirsty, and Alive is merged into Full.
      • Mottled draconian sticky flame is now range 3 (was range 1).
    • Items:
      • The Ratskin Cloak has been buffed, from +1 to +2. This was actually an accident, but it seemed like more effort than it was worth to revert…
      • Punk’s freezing brand has been replaced with a new, unique ‘acid’ brand. Duck!
      • The *Confuse randart property is now *Slow.
      • Weapons of protection give a short-lived +7 AC on hit, instead of +5 AC passively.
      • Riposte’s trigger chance has decreased to 1/3, from 1/2.
    • Interface:
      • New rcfile option: auto_butcher, which, when set, travels to & butchers edible corpses during autoexplore. Thanks to mgdelmonte for contributing it!
      • Average monster max HP is now displayed in monster descriptions, above AC and EV.
      • Stepping on manuals IDs them, without them needing to be picked up.
      • Spell noise is now visible in the I/Z casting interface.
      • Clicking on books through the local tiles UI allows you to memorize spells from a specific book, and is now available at zero Spellcasting skill. (Only nineties players will get this…)
      • Auto skill training should be a little smarter now.
    • Branches & Environment:
      • The Desolation of Salt is no longer roughly guaranteed; it’ll appear in maybe ~15% of games, to keep from wearing its welcome out too quickly.
      • Beogh no longer smites creatures that destroy orcish idols.
      • The walls of Slime:5 now vanish entirely after the Royal Jelly dies, instead of simply turning to rock. Look sharp!
      • Ambient noise has been streamlined. It should be more relevant in Shoals and the Desolation, and it’s completely removed from Lair and Orc. Also, it no longer affects stealth, removing one of my favorite obscure special cases.
    • A whole pile of new monster tiles, including skeletal warriors, trolls, efreets, and, in a bittersweet moment, executioners. Thanks to Roctavian for all his great work!
    • Emergency flight is available from forms; if you would instantly die (from drowning/lava), you’ll enter emergency flight instead. It’s probably no longer possible to drown.
    • Hexes are slightly less effective against creatures with exactly 0 MR.
    • Mutations: rough black scales removed, large bone plates switched to give pure +SH, instead of a mix of +SH and +AC.
    • Hepliaklqana wrath no longer suppresses XP-gated effects. This included elemental evokers, Abyss gate spawning, the Evolution mutation, and other gods’ wraths; the latter is some good tech to keep in mind, if you are for some reason playing on a month-old version of trunk.
    • Using Step from Time near enemies with smite-targeted spells (entropy weavers, neqoxecs) will no longer result in the player being hit by those spells dozens of times.
    • The game should no longer crash when entering Tomb:3.

    Happy crawling!

    Trunk updates, 2 September 2016

    Hi, crawlers! It’s been a few weeks, so here’s the latest changes from trunk:

    • New timed portal vault: the Desolation of Salt.
      • Entrances appear in Elf and Vaults. (It’s guaranteed to appear in the current trunk, more or less, but that’s just for testing purposes; it’ll become less common shortly.)
      • Features an open layout filled with huge, blinding saltstorms, and ancient, treasure-filled ruins.
      • New monster: saltling, a small golem roughly similar to orc warriors.
      • New monster: peacekeeper, a mechanical beast with Battlecry (affecting other golems) and manticore barbs.
      • New monster: servant of whispers, casting Lightning Bolt and Still Winds, a new effect which temporarily disables all clouds.
      • New monster: ragged hierophant, casting Injury Bond and Resonance Strike, a smite-targeted damage effect that becomes more powerful for every golem next to the target.
      • New monster: imperial myrmidon, a fast, tough melee enemy with a variety of hexes and the ability to halve magic resistance on melee hits.
      • New monster: halazid warlock, a lich with a variety of powerful spells, including Ghostly Sacrifice, which turns an ally into a devastating explosion of negative energy.
      • …and various other guest monsters from other branches, including molten gargoyles and crystal guardians.
      • Tiles by the indomitable CanOfWorms!
    • Monsters:
      • Sheep have been replaced with dream sheep, a new pack monster that, when present in large numbers, can put enemies to sleep.
      • Anubis guards have been merged into ushabti. The latter get anubis guards’ warning cry and dispel undead.
      • Battlecry has been simplified; instead of working differently for every monster that casts it, it always and only affects all allies of the same genus. (So orcs can might other orcs, angels can might other angels, etc.) This means that orc knights can now might warlords.
      • Iron giants are back to speed 10 (from 8), but have had their other stats reduced somewhat.
      • Snorg goes berserk less often, but can berserk from full health.
      • Giant eyeballs now cast Paralysis Gaze in only two tries, instead of three.
      • Instead of sixfirhies being tier 4 demons and chaos spawn being tier 3, the opposite is now true.
      • Monster descriptions have been revised and improved; thanks, MarvinPA!
    • Clarity now gives immunity to sleep.
    • Gozag and exploration gods should now work better in sprints; their gold and piety (respectively) have been multiplied, as with other gods.
    • Beogh no longer enhances worshippers’ armour or shield bonuses.
    • The regeneration mutation’s strength has been doubled, matching most other sources of regeneration (e.g. artefacts). Vine Stalkers now gain regen at XL 4 and 12, instead of 1, 6 and 12.
    • Cure mutation is slightly rarer, though still more common than it was prior to rMut removal.
    • Temporary mutations only have a 50% chance of causing statrot for undead.
    • All temporary allies, including but no longer limited to summons, are unable to attack out of your LOS.
    • Crawl’s secret “monster stealth” mechanics have been removed; all monsters now have the same chance for their location to be guessed at while invisible.
    • Friendly detected monsters (for e.g. Jiyva) no longer interrupt resting.
    • Right clicking on the webtiles minimap should work properly again.
    • Very long-running bug, finally fixed: low-HP monsters will no longer fireball themselves to death or banish their allies. (This also fixed the “Hep allies will confuse the player” bug.)
    • Grate traps should no longer instantly obliterate poorly-placed items.
    • Eustachio the Eustachio Skeleton will no longer appear in anyone’s game.

    Happy crawling!

    Trunk updates, 17 August 2016

    Hi, crawlers! It’s been a while; those late summer doldrums, or late winter, for you strange people living upside-down. Whichever your preferred orientation, here’s the latest changes from trunk:

    • Monsters:
      • Jellies no longer eat any items, even unseen ones, unless the player is worshipping Jiyva.
      • Zombies, skeletons, &c now display damage taken (a health bar, etc), like other enemy types.
      • Zombies are now named by their base type (e.g. ‘centaur warrior zombie’), rather than their base species (‘centaur zombie’).
      • Necromancers’ Bind Souls now creates simulacra, not spectral things. This will, ideally, increase player deaths.
      • The Ghostly Fireball monster spell is now pure negative energy, rather than being partially irresistible. It also now inflicts drain.
      • Call of Chaos has had its effects reworked, and will no longer paralyse or petrify every monster in sight.
    • Spells:
      • Spells you’ve seen monsters cast are now automatically tracked. This is useful for monsters with multiple spellbooks, which now list in their descriptions only those spellbooks that they might have (based on the spells you’ve seen). Pandemonium Lords also list the spells you’ve seen them cast.
      • Spellbooks that the player walks onto or apports are now automatically identified, without needing to use the (r)ead command.
      • Book amnesia (the ability to forget spells by destroying a book that contains them) has been forgotten, and also removed from the game.
      • Paralysis and Confusion can no longer last for 50-100 turns when cast on monsters. (Players had, and have, a different formula that gives considerably shorter durations.)
      • Warp Weapon and the Akashic Record have been removed.
    • Characters:
      • rN has been reworked. Various effects (e.g. vampirism, pain) that were 100% resisted by a single level of rN now require 3 levels; rN provides 50%, 75%, and 100% immunity to them at rN+/++/+++, as with damage. The Agony effect now works like Torment, and goes down to 45%/40%/35% hp damage at rN+/++/+++.
      • Stabbing has been simplified. There are now exactly two types of stabs: those against helpless (sleeping/paralysed/petrified) targets, and those against merely distracted targets. In effect, this is mainly a buff to petrification and distraction stabbing, at least for now.
      • There is no longer an EV penalty for taking stairs, but the process of climbing/descending stairs now takes slightly longer.
      • Sustain Attributes (the ring, Dg innate, etc) is no more. Most stat-draining effects have been reduced to compensate.
      • Mutations no longer rot the undead, but only cause stat-draining.
      • The mummy Self-Restoration ability has rotted away.
    • Gods:
      • Most gods that require kills for piety are now less picky, and will accept kills of any monster type, including nonliving monsters and plants. (TSO and Zin remain exceptions.)
      • Divine piety decay has been simplified to one of two speeds, from seven or so. Some gods have had their piety gain speed buffed to compensate. (For other gods, the change was itself a buff!)
      • Hepliaklqanal now gives innate frail 1 on worship; this persists even after abandonment, until the god is mollified.
      • Pakellas has been temporarily disabled, until we figure out what is going on. Hopefully he’ll be back in time for the next stable release.
    • Daevas can now smite unsuspecting targets.
    • Zombies can no longer shapeshift.

    Happy crawling!

    Trunk updates, 12 July 2016

    Hi, crawlers! Trunk has changed. It will never be the same, unless we perform a truly remarkable and unprecedented series of reverts. Barring that, here’s what you might want to know:

    • Sif Muna:
      • Channel Energy is gone. Replacing it at 1* is Divine Energy, a toggleable ability that lets the player cast spells without having enough mp. Using this effect causes a -Cast status for several turns, depending on how many MP the player was short by.
      • New 3* ability: Channel Magic, a Trog’s Hand-like invocation that trades piety for a brief, but significant, MP regeneration boost.
      • Book gifts now appear starting from 5*, not 6*.
      • Sif now gives partial piety for kills, in addition to (slightly reduced) piety from skill training.
    • Players wielding long blades can now ‘riposte’. After dodging a melee attack, users have a 50% chance to launch a free counterattack. This does not trigger retaliation effects, such as porcupine spines or hydra head growth, but functions as a normal attack otherwise. Long blade base damage has been lowered to compensate.
    • The Fencer’s Gloves no longer give bonuses to Sbl & Lbl skill; instead, they let the user riposte with any weapon. This stacks with long blades’ innate riposte.
    • Various unrands have had their stats tweaked; the most notable change is to Eos, which trades its sInv -Tele for Brilliance’s halo. (Wyrmbane also trades +Rage for rC+.)
    • Removed unrands: Sword of the Doom Knight, Amulet of Cekugob, and Brilliance (except for the bits Eos took).
    • Ammo acquirement is no more.
    • The last mountain dwarf has finally been removed; please, pour one out for our dear, departed Wiglaf. Donald got his Haste and Might, and Joseph stole his hat.
    • Urug and Maud have merged into one very smelly, well-armed unique.
    • Nergalle can no longer enter Death’s Door.
    • Various monster spellsets have been reworked; notably, wizards’, ogre mages’, ancient champions’, and Kirke’s.
    • The Vaults branch monster set has been partially reworked; among other changes, vampire mosquitoes have been buzzed off, fire crabs have clattered away, and entropy weavers are… in.
    • “Special rooms” (rare rooms completely packed with monsters) have had their sets adjusted, and can now appear in Pan.
    • rPois now gives immunity to green draconians’ mephitic breath. (It was previously resisted by nothing, not even by the undead!)
    • Summoned monsters now vanish immediately when their summoner dies.
    • Allies no longer mark fireballed plants as priority targets.
    • Friendly monsters will no longer open doors. (This was generally either irrelevant or a bad thing for the player.)
    • Giving orders to allies no longer makes noise, and can be done while silenced. Hand signals or telepathy? You decide…
    • Sickness no longer has a chance of causing attribute damage.
    • The interface for eating food from the floor has been made somewhat more consistent with other floor-item use.
    • Kiku no longer gives the player extra HP while under Death’s Door.
    • Good gods no longer mind the player drinking a little blood, here and there.
    • Elyvilon’s no longer even pretends to care about the player letting their allies die.
    • Pakellas’s Quick Charge is no longer more powerful at 0 evocations than at 27.
    • Stoned creatures no longer stumble.

    Happy crawling! Don’t let the death scarabs bite :)

    Trunk updates, 27 June 2016

    Hi, crawlers! Trunk changes?

    • Spells:
      • New spell: Infestation (L8 Necromancy), found in the Necronomicon. Targets a 5×5 area; victims inside become ‘infested’, and, when killed, friendly death scarabs will pop out. Friends!
      • Alistair’s Intoxication only inflicts Vertigo on the caster if it succeeds in confusing any monsters.
      • Confusing Touch is back to level 1 (and the Book of Cantrips), after its long stay at level 2.
      • Hydra form devouring is no longer limited to victims smaller than a hydra. Yum! Support for extra-spicy meals has also been added.
      • Cure Poison has been removed. From the commit:
        Trivia: This was the last player-castable vestige of the pre-Stone Soup ‘Holy’ spell school. RIP ;_;
    • Monsters:
      • New unique: Bai Suzhen, Madame White Snake. A late-game draconian unique, she casts Summon Hydras; when severely injured, she enters her true form (a water dragon) and becomes surrounded by a ring of storm clouds. Also she gets water breath. Fierce! (this is what the refrance.)
      • Necromancer monsters can now cast Bind Soul, causing nearby monsters to reform as spectral things after death. (Somewhat like Death Channel.)
      • Almost all monster ‘shouts’ are now the same volume. The only exceptions are ‘hisses’, which are half volume, ‘deafening roars’, 1.5x, and ‘deep rumbles’, 2x. Also, pigs now squeal, and a few other monsters have had their shout behaviour changed.
      • Entropy weavers have become faster, but cast Word of Entropy less often. Also, now they’re ant-men, finally answering the question of “what are these weird things, exactly?”
      • Death scarabs lost their miasma trail, but are somewhat tougher.
      • Tzitzimitl no longer have pain or draining brands.
      • Ditto the bennu draining brand.
      • Obsidian statues can now Mesmerise. Stare into their spooky jeweled eyes…
      • Young spriggan druids have been replaced by boggarts. They really were too young to die…
      • The Cloud Mage has come into his or her rightful inheritance: Tornado.
    • Gods:
      • Nemelex Xobeh’s decks have been reworked, again. Current list:
        • Escape: the Tomb, Exile, the Elixir, the Cloud, Velocity, the Shaft
        • Destruction: Vitriol, the Storm, Pain, the Orb, Degeneration, Wild Magic
        • Summoning: the Elements, the Pentagram, the Dance, Foxfire, the Rangers, the
          Illusion

        If it’s not in here and it’s not a wrath effect, it’s not in the game.

      • The Vitriol card applies corrosion to all monsters in LOS.
      • Hep no longer provides additional ‘specialization’ choices beyond the initial ancestor class choice. Ancestor upgrades have been moved from XL21 to XL19 and from XL27 to XL24.
      • Hep’s Transference now drains targets at 5*, rather than slowing them.
      • Hepliaklqana’s ability piety costs are slightly higher.
    • Items:
      • Rapiers have +1 base damage, matching falchions.
      • The amulet of dismissal now only triggers on hits that do at least 10% of the wearer’s max HP.
      • *Drain items and “Harm now apply 50% more draining when taken off.
      • Vorpal weapons are no longer extra-likely to chop off hydra heads.
      • Books can now be ID’d by (r)eading them while on the floor. (Ideally this should be automatic, but it’s not quite yet.)
      • Scrolls of random uselessness can no longer create butterflies. Somewhere, a tiny bell tinkles for the last time…
    • Yiuf’s hut now has a runed door. Poor guy lost his keys… go let him out, wouldn’t you?
    • The minimum, average and maximum number of altars in Temple has increased, by about 2 each.
    • There is now a strong correlation between disco balls and demonic runes.
    • Quite a lot of other new and changed vaults. I shan’t spoil them, but I will say that several contain rare & powerful artefacts. Be on the lookout…
    • Web traps are no longer torn & destroyed when creatures escape from them.
    • The Monk background gains a choice of weapon, but no longer gets a choice of Dg.
    • Storm clouds have a 1/3 per-turn chance of striking (up from 1/4), but have dramatically less ‘spiky’ damage; from 40-131 down to 35-80.
    • You can no longer ID gold.

    Happy crawling!

    Trunk Updates, 12 June 2016

    Hi, crawlers! Summer’s in full swing (or winter, for those of you in the southern hemisphere), so here’s the latest changes from trunk:

    • Potions, scrolls and books can all now be used from the floor, instead of needing to be picked up first. Scrolls of Identify can also be used on floor items.
    • It’s no longer possible to drown from Flight expiring. Instead, if your flight runs out when over deep water (if you can’t swim) or lava, you’ll enter ‘emergency flight mode’ and take heavy drain until you reach solid ground again. (This includes Flight from monster-cast Tornado.) It’s still possible to drown if a flying transformation (e.g. dragon form) expires… for now.
    • In tiles, monster attitudes (e.g. friendly, neutral, etc) are now displayed by coloured circles behind the monster, instead of small icons in the corner of their tile. Should be helpful for ally play, hopefully!
    • Lair is now six floors (-2), and Slime is now five (-1).
    • Gods:
      • To minimize Okawaru-related confusion, Ukayaw is now known as Uskayaw.
      • U’s Line Pass always confuses its victims, but for a shorter duration than before.
      • Hepliaklqana’s slow-on-transference ability has been repeatedly fixed and should hopefully work now. Fingers crossed.
      • H’s hexer ‘specialization’ choice has been moved from level 15 to level 21; instead of choosing between Metabolic Englaciation and Paralyse, Paralyse is a gimme, and the choice is between Englaciation and Mass Confusion.
      • H’s battlemage melee damage has been dramatically increased, and their level 15 specialization choice is now between Bolt of Magma and Force Lance (formerly Iceblast). But that’s probably going get replaced too, so don’t put too much effort into remembering it.
      • Misc ancestor changes: ancestor kills now give full XP (like spectral weapon), but their AC has been reduced somewhat.
      • Nemelex Xobeh’s abilities now use invocations, not evocations.
      • Dithmenos’s Shadow Step can no longer be used on allies, or when you’re a tree.
    • Vampire players can now berserk and transform when merely satiated, without needing to be Full.
    • Demonic guardians (from the demonspawn mutation) can no longer be angered by the player.
    • New monster: meliai, bee priestesses based on obscure Greek mythology. They smite, they sting, they come in packs of three… what more could you want?
    • Asterion’s spectral weapon has been replaced by a Greater Servant of Makhleb.
    • Norris is gone, but Xtahua swiped his Paralyse before he left.
    • Various uniques have had their genders adjusted.
    • Salamander stormcallers have called their last; they are no more.
    • Boxes of beasts & sacks of spiders no longer have charges, but instead have a fixed 25% chance of disintegrating after each use. They now stack.
    • Elemental evokers have been differentiated a little more; the lamp of fire and fan of gales no longer create elementals when used, the phial of floods does less impact damage, and the stone of tremors has been removed.
    • Amulets of harm now increase damage dealt by 30% and damage taken by 20%, instead of increasing both by 25%.
    • Rods can now be gained from misc acquirement, instead of from staff acquirement; accordingly, staff acquirement is no longer available for Troggites.
    • Player-created non-opaque clouds now vanish instantly outside LOS, instead of just dissipating four times faster.
    • Olgreb’s Toxic Radiance does a little less damage, but no longer poisons the caster.
    • Removed cards: Dowsing, Exile, Feast, Focus, Helix, Mercenary and Xom.
    • Removed decks: changes, defense, summoning, wonders, and oddities (the one that you had a 1% chance of drawing from when using any deck). Decks can now only be found by worshiping Nemelex, or possibly from rare vaults.
    • The monster spell Control Winds (on wind drakes, spriggan air mages, and the Cloud Mage) has blown right outta town.
    • The evasion ego, and the randart blowguns that used it, are both no more.
    • Xom will no longer vitrify your surroundings. :(
    • Distortion weapons no longer banish individual kraken tentacles.
    • Ghosts of dead trees no longer get bonus AC.

    Happy crawling!

    0.18 Tournament Results

    Editor’s Note: This post was written by chequers, who put in a great deal of work to make this year’s tournament happen. If you played in it this year, please give him your thanks!

    Congratulations to everyone who took part in the Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.18 tournament! This (slightly delayed) post will go over the results and highlights of the event.

    More than 2500 players participated, with a third of players collecting a rune, and half of those going on to win.

    Some stats, with comparisons to the last tournament:

    (Individual images here.)

    Individual Winners
    First place goes to Yermak, who won comfortably with 6260 points. Yermak has been a regular sight at the top of recent DCSS tournaments, placing second or third in the 0.14, 0.15 and 0.16 competitions. His wins in this tournament include at least one with every species, background and god, making him the first tournament greaterplayer and polytheist!

    Second place was taken by Demise. As well as collecting 5648 points, Demise won the fastest game of crawl ever in 41:00 minutes*! As well as second individual place, his clan Distracted by YoutubeDollars** also came in second.

    Rounding out the podium, third place is awarded to Ultraviolent4 with 5459 points. Also part of Demise’s clan, Ultraviolent4 had the equal second longest streak of eight wins in a row***.

    Clan Winners

    Top clan was AWBW – Ban Blowguns – End Needles Violence, led by WalkerBoh (#6) with members MorganLeah, Snack (#9), moose, n1000 and Lasty.

    Second place was Distracted by YoutubeDollars, led by Demise (#2) with members BobtheCannibal69, Megaslime, Ultraviolent4 (#3), chequers and krfreak.

    Third place goes to The Shining Kimchi, a clan hailing from the Korean crawl community. It was led by irum and made up of Dowan, SilvereR, mooon, sheltermaker01 and thrrja.

    Notable Achievements

    The most commonly collected banner was “Vow of Courage I: Kill Sigmund before entering the Depths”, earned by 1495 players. The least common was a tie between “The Heretic III: Over the course of the tournament, abandon and mollify nine gods excluding Beogh, Elyvilon, Ru, The Shining One, and Zin.” and “Ruthless Efficiency III: Win the game before reaching experience level 19.”, each collected by just four players.

    Yermak had the longest streak of the tournament, winning 10 games in a row. His streak was broken by a d:1 shaft—see, it happens to the best of us!

    The most successful ghost was Iamsock‘s, who killed 27(!) players, including themselves seven times.

    Most impressive tournament stats goes to xeno23. They played just six games in the tournament and won them all, five of which were 15-rune games. Congratulations!

    Finally, a massive thank you to elliptic. For the past five years he quietly coded and ran DCSS’s tournaments. He’s passed on the crown this time around, but without his help and assistance this year’s would have never come to fruition. Cheers!

    Notes

    * as a point of reference, the second fastest win ever took 48 minutes and the average won game is around eight and a half hours long

    ** full disclosure: your scribe was part of this clan, contributing a mere 7% of points. He probably won’t be invited back next year

    *** it would have been nine, but Ultraviolent4 won two games with the Monk background, so the second wasn’t counted. Bad luck!