Hello crawlers! The 0.33 development cycle is nearing a close, and we are pleased to announce a date of Friday, May 2nd, 2025, at 20:00 UTC for the sixteen day 0.33 release tournament. The feature freeze has started today, so we’ve stopped adding new content and will be making only balance tweaks and bug fixes over the next two weeks. A subsequent post will announce the official 0.33 tournament website, but please feel free to start organizing those tournament clans!

We haven’t had the time to post any trunk updates during the 0.33 development cycle, but that’s certainly not due to a lack of content! It would take a long time to go into detail on the past eight months of changes. Hence I’ve put the contents of the current changelog below for easier reading:

Highlights

• New magic school + background: Forgewrights, building explosive constructs.
• Two new species: poltergeists and revenants.
• Twelve new talismans have been added, and Shapeshifters have been reworked.
• Ghost vaults are moved into a game-long repeating portal, the Necropolis.
• Yet more new monsters, decorations, and traps spread throughout the Dungeon.

Artefacts

• New unrands:
• The Crown of Vainglory, a +3 hat that grants two extra ring slots, but also makes entering floors wake up nearby enemies and temporarily prohibits stair use.
• The fungal fisticloak, a +3 cloak that also takes up the hat slot, provides another gloves slot, and grants a confusion-branded auxiliary fungus attack.
• The Justicar’s Regalia, a +5 scale mail that grants an extra amulet slot and gives allies summoned or created by the player the regeneration status.
• The Skull of Zonguldrok, a talkative off-hand item that grants Reaping brand to one’s attacks and another hat slot (on the skull).
• The macabre finger necklace now also grants +7 HP.
• Randart weapons can now be Reaping branded, which now creates spectres.
• -Cast on the Sword of the Doom Knight, Maxwell’s Patent Armour, and general randarts is replaced with *Silence, which inflicts a short-term silence on 1% of hits on the wielder.
• +Invis, Harm, and Rampage artefact properties can now be found on talisman randarts.
• Removed unrands: the Sword of Zonguldrok.

Branches, Environment

• Ghost vaults have been moved into their own portal, the Necropolis.
• Portals to the Necropolis can be found up to three times each game: once in D:5-15, Lair, or Orc; once in Swamp, Snake, Shoals, Spider, or Vaults; and once in Elf, Crypt, or Depths.
• Each Necropolis contains three separate ghost vaults, which are still flavoured and tailored towards the branch a portal entrance is found in.
• Another 10 ghost vaults have been added.
• Pre-Lair ghost vaults have been somewhat nerfed, while rewards for many ghost vaults have been increased.
• New traps, all of which activate when monsters or players step on them:
• Archmage’s traps, which drain player mp and grant monsters empowered spells.
• Devourer’s traps, which corrode players.
• Harlequin’s traps, which grant monsters chaotic attacks.
• Tyrant’s traps, which weaken players and grant monsters might.
• New decorations:
• Walkable: caches of baked goods, floral vases (sometimes broken), flower and garden patches, fountains of eyes, fur piles, infernal standards, mops and buckets (sometimes bloodied), mourning vases, and orcish standards.
• Solid: enigmatic dynamos and nascence circuits.
• Destructible: petrified flowers.
• Walking over fountains now has a chance to produce flavour messages, varying based on the fountain, one’s god, and the absence of hostile enemies in sight.
• Zot traps now can inflict blindness.
• The last floor of Crypt now has a 30% chance to contain a sanguine talisman.
• The clouds of degeneration in Alistair’s Party Mansion are now alcoholic mist, inflicting Vertigo.
• The orb chamber on Zot:5 no longer has a chance to be completely blocked off by traps, and instead will deploy several of the above newer traps.
• Frail pillars of rime can be found in Cocytus.
• Ziggurats have even more exponential scaling for those doing multiple ziggurats.
• Sprint VII (“The Pits”) has gotten major updates to balance and monster options, while Sprint V (“Ziggurat Sprint”) has had minor updates to the same.

Character

• Stat drain has been removed.
• Reaching 0 in any stat (through e.g. items or mutations) now solely makes the player permanently slow until their stats are raised again.
• Undead players being malmutated now have their HP drained instead.
• New skill: Forgecraft, used for Forgecraft spells. Most species have Forgecraft apts that are the same as their Summoning apts. Exceptions to this are Mountain Dwarves, Coglins, Yellow Draconians (all +2), Barachi (+1), Demonspawn, Felids, Poltergeists (all -1), Revenants, Minotaurs, and Tengu (all -2).
• New background: Forgewright, which starts with a +0 hammer (a reskinned mace), a potion of magic, and a variety of Forgecraft spells.
• Fighters now start with a second potion of might.
• Shapeshifters now start with a quill talisman, three flux baubles, and a protean talisman, which can be used with 6 or more Shapeshifting skill to randomly transform it into a scarab, rimehorn, medusa or maw talisman. They keep their potion of lignification and start with 1 more Fighting skill.
• Wanderers can now start with quill talismans, inkwell talismans, flux baubles, protean talismans, or any protean-tier talisman.
• Reavers now start with knowledge of Rending Blade.
• Summoners start with knowledge of Eringya’s Surprising Crocodile and Summon Seismosaurus Egg instead of Summon Blazeheart Golem or Lightning Spire.
• New mutations:
• efficient magic, making spells cost 1 less (to a minimum of 1 MP).
• ephemeral shield, granting +7 SH briefly after spells and invocations.
• poor constitution, inflicting Weak and then Slow on taking damage.
• time-warped blood, hasting some of your allies when you fall below 50% health, and can only activate again after returning to full health.
• Berserk players are now immune to fear.
• Constructs the player makes with their own Forgecraft spells can be nonviolently deconstructed by pressing ctrl+[direction] while adjacent.
• Fungus Form and Tree Form are both immune to sleep.
• Paralysis, sleep, petrification, and vex status inflicted on the player all now share the same temporary immunity cooldown.
• Penalties to body armour AC from talismans and the Deformed Body mutation are now also applied to the AC bonus from training Armour skill. To compensate, the AC penalties of Deformed Body and blade talismans have been reduced, and Naga and Armataurs have their Armour aptitudes increase by 1.
• Removed mutations: deterioration.

Gods

• Ashenzari’s curse of Companions now supports Forgecraft as well as its prior skills of Summoning and Necromancy.
• Cheibriados worshippers are never hasted by potions of haste, and can’t enter penance by deliberately drinking potions of haste.
• The wraths of Cheibriados and Trog have been simplified.
• Dithmenos’s shadow mimic also works for Forgecraft spells, creating a shadow turret that can fire through allies.
• Xom has received more adjustments:
• Xom’s bazaars have more variety and are less common.
• Polymorph and draining effects are less dangerous early on.
• New actions: hyperbuff weak ally, burn webs.
• All three good gods that care about injuring allies now consistently don’t care about injuring mindless non-living allies (like Forgecraft’s).

Interface and Options

• Examining equipment and talismans now can show the changes to the player’s spell success chances for each spell if they switched to using that item.
• Examining spellbooks in webtiles now colours spells according to their usability and whether or not one has the spell in their library.
• Examining talismans now displays their upsides, downsides, and skill scaling in a more compressed format with additional details.
• Spell range is now indicated with numbers instead of diagrams.
• Default target-picking behaviour for spells, abilities, and items has been improved: it is now more consistent at avoiding the player or their allies when aiming harmful area effects and choose more sensible default aims for some utility effects.
• Ranged autofight should no longer sometimes cast spells at invalid targets (such as Dispel Undead against living monsters in melee).
• Casting ally-creating spells when there is no nearby room is now automatically cancelled, rather than wasting a turn and one’s MP.
• Equipping an item that would require unequipping multiple other items (such as with going from a 1-handed weapon + shield to a 2-hander) no longer needs manual unequipping to work.
• Players can no longer wield non-weapon items.
• Equipment slots a player species doesn’t have access to no longer show up on the ‘%’ screen.
• The autopickup menu no longer groups together rings and amulets.
• The screen is now tinted blue during paralysis and grey during petrification.
• Examining monsters shows if they can open doors.
• Confusion on monsters no longer shares an icon with monsters being distracted.
• Non-monster UI now darkens quote text and can rarely contain flavour text instead of just quotes.

Items

• New weapon: partisans, uncommon one-handed polearms with higher base damage than demon tridents and the longest swing delay of any one-handed weapon.
• Talisman skill thresholds have been reworked, with older talismans adjusted upwards in baseline stats for higher thresholds. The new tier summary is now:
• Tier 1 talismans (old beast talisman): 0 skill minimum, 7 skill maximum
• Tier 2 talismans (old flux talisman): 8 skill minimum, 14 skill maximum
• Tier 3 talismans (blade talisman): 12 skill minimum, 20 skill maximum
• Tier 4 talismans (granite talisman): 17 skill minimum, 25 skill maximum
• Tier 5 talismans (storm talisman): 23 skill minimum, 27 skill maximum
• New talismans:
• Tier 1:
• quill talismans, providing Quill Form. This melds all auxiliary equipment, but grants retaliatory quills damaging those who attack the player in melee.
• inkwell talismans, providing Walking Scroll Form. This melds all equipment, increases all magic school skills scaling to one’s Shapeshifting, grants extra max mp, disables casting spells above level 4, and cuts one’s melee damage in half in exchange for a 50% to gain 1 MP on every hit.
• Tier 2:
• scarab talismans, providing Sun Scarab Form. This small form melds weapons and armour, carts around a solar ember that cleaves with fire attacks when scarabs attack, and grants Fire-exclusive spellcasting success bonuses.
• rimehorn talismans, providing Rime Yak Form. This large form melds weapons and armour, makes adjacent walls deal cold damage over a short while on attacks, and grants Ice-exclusive spellcasting success bonuses.
• medusa talismans, providing Medusa Form. This melds one’s head and cloak slots into a jellyfish, which inflicts poison on random nearby enemies on attacks and which petrifies poisoned enemies when falling to 60% health.
• Tier 3:
• spider talismans, providing Jumping Spider Form. This tiny form melds all armour and weapons, but gains Rampage, a small chance for melee to ensnare enemies, short-blade quality stabs, and a special un-aimed jump ability.
• lupine talismans, providing Werewolf Form. This melds all auxiliary armour, grants a stacking slaying bonus on kills, gives a chance to howl on kills to lock enemies in immobile fear, and grants jumping attacks on afraid foes.
• wellspring talismans, providing Aqua Form. This melds body armour, provides two extra squares of melee range (stacking with polearms and working with auxes), and granting an ability to waterstrike + waterlog nearby enemies.
• fortress talismans, providing Fortress Crab Form. This melds all auxiliary armour, multiplies AC from body armour, and can breathe clouds of minorly-damaging, corroding and weakening rust.
• Tier 4:
• riddle talismans, providing Sphinx Form. These sphinxes can still wear cloaks and bardings (except for Felids), but meld all other armour and can’t wield weapons. Their unarmed strikes Airstrike their targets, they get major Hexes-exclusive spellcasting success bonuses, and their Hexes apply more easily to all susceptible foes.
• hive talismans, providing Living Hive Form. This melds body armour and helm slots into a hive with high health + magic regeneration that also releases berserk curare-branded killer bees when the user is sufficiently wounded.
• sanguine talismans, providing the living-undead Vampire Form. These vampires don’t regenerate with enemies visible, get vampiric attacks at 50% health, can raise a vampiric thrall when killing monsters with stabs, can transform into a swarm of bats that leave sleep-inducing clouds of bats, and have partial torment resistance.
• Many other talismans have been adjusted:
• Flux talismans have become stacks of flux baubles, which require less skill and deal more damage but each transformation lasts for only a finite amount of attacks instead of indefinitely.
• Maw talismans have been lowered down a tier, with the maw dealing less damage and healing on kills for less HP, but can now break through body armour to reduce base AC by 75% instead of melding such entirely.
• Serpent talismans now transform the user into a two-headed snake that can wear two hats (but no other equipment).
• Granite talismans now apply a percentage EV penalty and provide additional strength in exchange for less unarmed base damage.
• Dragon-blood talismans (now dragon-coil talismans) now transform non-draconians into golden dragons instead of fire dragons, changing the corresponding resists; they also get Draconian-style breath charges for a new tri-element breath, but deal less melee damage. Draconians also recharge their breath much faster in dragon form.
• Talismans of death now uniquely require 26 Shapeshifting at minimum.
• Talisman / randarts are notably more common throughout the game, with stones made less common in exchange.
• Talismans no longer meld Gargoyle AC and resists unless they change substances entirely, and never meld away Spriggan move speed.
• Beast talismans have been removed.
• Acquirement now gives more out more talismans.
• Acquirement gives less magical staves overall, but makes more randart staves.
• Potions of degeneration are now of moonshine and solely inflict Vertigo.
• Darts of dispersal are now darts of disjunction, which now repeatedly blink a target each turn for several turns and deal damage with each blink.
• Experience-gated evokers now appear multiple times per game, stack up to a max of +5, and decrease the experience needed to gain charges with each stack.
• Rings of slaying are no longer rarer than other rings.

Monsters

• New monsters:
• Alderkings, fae trees and necromantic masters of Depths.
• Goblin riders, wvyern-taming cavalry for Bailies.
• Fravashi, mid-tier warrior-summoning angels.
• Ironbound Mechanists, dual-wielding forgewright coglins for Vaults.
• Nekomata, self-cloning ranged cat demons for Pan.
• Oni incarcerators, Manifold Assault users for Gehenna.
• Sphinx marauders, masters of winds and minds for Shoals and Vaults.
• Vampire bloodprinces, sleep-inducing lords of Crypt.
• Wyrmholes, terrifying relocations drakes for Depths and rarely Zot.
• Returning monsters:
• hippogriffs, now nearly exclusive to bailies, now with both Warning Cry and a new damaging wind spell that slowly pulls enemies in.
• ironbound beastmasters, now with a passive animal and slime hasting aura plus the ability to throw bolas to bind foes in place.
• New uniques:
• Nobody, a revenant made from countless forgotten souls, who can burn the memories of their deaths to both heal and change spellsets.
• Sprozz, an early-game coglin forgewright who casts Clockwork Bee and Nazja’s Percussive Tempering and sometimes drops a Forgecraft spellbook.
• Apises now have a passive aura that doubles the health of other monsters.
• Arcanists now have more health and EV.
• Ball pythons deal less damage.
• Bennu deal more holy damage.
• Blood saint and Mnoleg Call of Chaos now can temporarily double monster hp.
• Monster deep elves and orc high priests now more consistently wear body armour, mostly gaining robes.
• Creeping infernos now have a fairly large amount of health, move normally towards the player, and deal more damage when they explode.
• Crystal echidnas deal more damage and are now speed 13.
• Crystal guardians deal more damage.
• Elementals in general now have animal intelligence instead of being mindless.
• Endoplasms no longer have rPois.
• Glowing orange brains are now unblindable.
• Iron golems now have less health and EV.
• Mummy death curses now more frequently drain hp, and the flat damage effects no longer check rTorment.
• Mutant beasts count as chaotic.
• Occultists now have more health and EV.
• Player ghosts now respect the movement speed of their original species.
• Quicksilver oozes have been renamed, rethemed, and retiled to void oozes.
• Searing wretches can now swim across lava.
• Simulacra can now always swim, regardless of their base type.
• Sin beasts now come in duos in Pan.
• Plain sphinxes are now “guardian sphinxes”, are stronger overall, and no longer appear in D or in Shoals.
• Sky beasts lose electric damage and random invisibility to instead deal damage depending on the number of open spaces next to what they hit in melee.
• Thermic dynamos and undying armouries reward more experience.
• Water elementals and elemental wellsprings are now amorphous, gaining the same immunity to nets, constriction, and webs jellies have.
• Mindless non-living monster allies consistently don’t get angry at the player for being hit, and do not disappear if they were summoned or constructed.
• Removed monsters: quasits.

Species

• New species: Poltergeists, ghostly trickster whirlwinds. Features:
• They have the resists and immunities of being both undead and insubstantial.
• They have six slots that can interchangeably wield auxiliary armour (hats, helmets, cloaks, scarves, gloves, or boots), but cannot wear body armour.
• Whenever enemies are debuffed, they gain AC scaling to their XL.
• At XL 13, they gain the ability to expand into a whirling cacophony, noisily animating each piece of armour worn into allies that try to stay close to the player and which can inflict random debuffs.
• New species: Revenants, memory-burning mystic skeletons. Features:
• Whenever they cast damage-dealing spells, they automatically attack a nearby monster with the highest health.
• At XL 3, they start gathering memories from slain foes, charges they may burn away all at once to make that many damage-dealing spells cost 0 mp, be easier to cast while ignoring encumbrance penalties, and get extra power. Spell-activated automatic attacks during this also heal the player.
• At XL 3, they also gain knowledge of a random level 1 destructive spell.
• Formicids now may wield an additional pair of gloves.
• Merfolk Long Blades apt is lowered from +2 to +1, and their Polearms apt is increased from +3 to +4.
• Mountain Dwarf Summoning apt is lowered from 0 to -2.
• Enhancer staves are now one-handed instead of two-handed for spriggans and kobolds.
• Vampires and ghouls have been removed.

Spells

• New spell school of Forgecraft: thematically a school of constructing bombs, cannons, and limited automata, mechanically a mostly-ally school more focused on direct damage and blasting than Summoning, and design-wise a new means of providing more cross-school spells and pivoting options.
• New Forgecraft spells:
• Kinetic Grapnel (L1 FC): A weak physical projectile connected to one’s weapon that guarantees the next melee attack hits and deals extra damage.
• Construct Spike Launcher (L2 FC): Builds a spike launcher in a random adjacent wall, which launches spikes at random adjacent targets.
• Launch Clockwork Bee (L3 FC): Targets a monster to wind up and ready a clockwork bee over several turns, which can be rewound up when it collapses.
• Rending Blade (L4 FC / Conj): Temporarily transforms all of the caster’s mp into a blade that pierces through enemies whenever the caster attacks.
• Nazja’s Percussive Tempering (L5 FC): A healing and buffing spell for Forgecraft summons that also produces an ally-avoiding physical explosion.
• Alistair’s Walking Alembic (L5 FC / Alch): A summon that vents poisonous fumes as it attacks to brew various beneficial potion effects.
• Fortress Blast (L6 FC): A highly-damaging blast that takes several turns to charge up and pins the caster in place, but which solely scales off of AC.
• Forge Phalanx Beetle (L6 FC): A summon that always tries to stay by the caster’s side and protects them with an AC boost if adjacent.
• Forge Monarch Bomb (L6 FC / Fire): Creates a bomb factory that launches bomblets on top of enemies, both of which only detonate on recast.
• Diamond Sawblades (L7 FC): Places up to four sawblades on diagonals around the caster that shred everything around them each turn.
• Splinterfrost Shell (L7 FC / Ice): Raises up several sturdy walls around the player that fire off as heavily damaging icicle salvos if broken.
• Platinum Paragon (L9 FC): A metallic apotheosis of a single ally that replicates a given artefact weapon, blocks attacks for the caster, does extra attacks with player attacks, and can hit large areas by recasting the spell when charged-up.
• The following spells have moved to Forgecraft:
• Summon Lightning Spire: now “Forge Lightning Spire”, Summ/Air -> FC/Air.
• Summon Blazeheart Golem: now “Forge Blazeheart Golem”, Summ/Fire -> FC/Fire.
• Animate Armour: now “Awaken Armour”, Summ/Earth -> FC/Earth.
• Iskenderun’s Battlesphere: L5 Conj -> L4 FC/Conj.
• Hoarfrost Cannonade: Alch/Ice -> FC/Ice.
• Spellforged Servitor: now “Spellspark Servitor”, Summ/Conj -> FC/Conj.
• Hellfire Mortar: Fire/Earth -> FC/Fire/Earth.
• New other spells:
• Eringya’s Surprising Crocodile (L4 Summ): Creates temporary shallow water and a lunging crocodile all at once to drag an enemy and the caster back.
• Summon Seismosaurus Egg (L4 Summ / Earth): Creates an egg that will hatch into a mighty dinosaur if the caster stays next to it with visible enemies.
• Detonation Catalyst (L5 Fire / Alch): Gain a buff that makes non-cleaving melee attacks explode for damage scaled to damage dealt, avoiding allies, and which lasts for very little time if the user stops attacking.
• Sphinx Sisters (L7 Summ / Hexes) that summons a pair of riddling sphinxes, one guardian and one maurader, to debilitate the enemies with hexes and batter them with violent winds.
• Spell changes:
• Awakened Armours now equip a replica of the body armour they’re echoing.
• Battlespheres last longer at lower spell power, are better at pathing towards their target, and will target the most proportionally damaged foe if possible.
• Ensorcelled Hibernation’s sleep no longer can be interrupted by noise or failing stealth checks, and has a slightly higher minimum duration.
• Hellfire Mortar now scales heavily with spellpower, deals more damage, has longer mortar range, and pushes back singular flying foes.
• Lightning Spires now target the furtherest-away foe, if possible.
• Maxwell’s Capacitive Coupling can no longer be started without a visible monster in sight of the caster.
• Maxwell’s Portable Piledriver can now be aimed and can push a connected line of lined-up enemies all at once.
• Mephitic Cloud is now flavoured as throwing a non-damaging flask of fumes.
• Mercury Vapours is now Poisonous Vapours, moved to level 1, no longer inflicts Weak, inflicts less poison status, and deals a small amount of flat
• AC-ignoring damage against targets without rPois.
• Permafrost Eruption’s damage has been lowered.
• Rimeblight now chains to two other targets on cast and now reliably spreads on death instead of also spreading through its explosions.
• Sculpt Simulacrum’s simulacra now attack the turn they finish forming.
• Sting is now Mercury Arrow, moved to level 2, no longer inflicts the poison status (but still partially checks rPois), and gains Mercury Vapours’ previous HD-check area-of-effect Weak status.
• Summon Horrible Things now has a chance to inflict a Will-lowering temporary mutation with each cast.
• Teleport Other is now smite targeted.
• Spells that can’t miss are no longer affected by player blindness debuffs.
• Monstrous Menagerie is removed as a player spell, but is still used by Kirke.

Tiles and Other Art

• New tiles for existing game elements:
• Abilities: Accepting Makhleb’s infernal marks.
• Features: altars to Fedhas, altars to Xom, caches of meat, granite statues in Depths and Zot.
• Items: all forms of leather armour.
• Monsters: apises, boggarts, brain worms, creeping infernos, culicivora, great orbs of eyes, living spells, ophanim, rakshasa, scrub nettles, shapeshifters and glowing shapeshifters, sky beasts, all tengu types.
• Mutation icons: big wings, demonspawn demonic touch, mp-powered wands, screaming, subdued magic, tendrils, pseudopods, wild magic.
• Plants, both regular and withered.
• Player dolls: Coglins.
• The prune curse from the glaive of Prune.
• Ru sacrifices: sacrificed eye, sacrificed hand.
• Species passives: barachi hops, demigod divine attributes, djinn flat hp, human explore regen, mertails.
• Spell components: Hoarfrost Cannonade, Hellfire Mortar.
• Spell icons: Blazeheart Golem, Dazzling Flash, Fulsome Fusillade, Hellfire Mortar, Hoarfrost Cannonade, Lightning Spire, Magnavolt, Permafrost Eruption, Spellspark Servitor, all remaining monster-only spells.
• Starting screen icons: high scores.
• Unrands: the robe of Augmentation, Brilliance and its brand, Firestarter, Punk’s acid brand, the robe of Folly, the sword of the Doom Knight, and the toga “Victory”.
• Visual effects: airstrike, draining gaze, doom howl, entropic weave, fire storm, fulsome fusillade, ice blasts, magma, manifold assault, mephitic cloud, mystic blast, potion petition, sap magic, sentinel’s mark, wand of warping.
• Walls: Vaults and Trove rock.
• Pandemonium now has unique stone wall tiles for regular floors and unique wall tiles for each of the unrand Pan lord vaults.
• Gehenna now has unique stone wall tiles.
• Depths and Zot now have unique metal wall tiles.
• Webtiles now has the banishment animation offline tiles uses.
• New oni splash screen by benadryl.

That’s all for now, so until the next update, happy crawling!

The 0.31 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 0.31 release and tournament possible!

For 16 days, players could compete for tournament points and banners by playing 0.31 games on the public servers. The only major rule changes compared to the 0.30 tournament were the addition of a Gem Collection category, making Uskayaw’s banner be based on gems, and allowing Felids to win the Ruthless Efficiency banner.

Congratulations to Sergey,  for once again taking first place in the individual competition, with 115,521 points and 16 wins! Sergey got the most points for combos won, with species high scores for HO and Hu, and class scores for Hu and Wn, won the most pacific game (a SpEn with only 421 kills), achieved an 8 win streak (3rd best overall), a 64M HuEE high score (3rd best overall), collected 17 tier 3 banners, and won 6 Nemelex’s Choice combos.

Other big winners:

• Wizard1ke: 2nd place overall with 106,191 points and 28 wins. Wizard1ke was the only player to collect all 24 tier 3 banners, and had the most points in the piety category, reaching max piety with 21 gods and winning with 21 gods. They also got the second most points for combos won, including the Te, Dj, and On species high scores, and won 13 Nemelex Choice combos.
• Flugkiller: 3rd place overall with 99,209 points and 13 wins. He got a 0:25:20 realtime MiFi win (2nd overall), collected 19 tier 3 banners (2nd overall), won a TrFi in only 14,063 turns (3rd overall), got a 7 win streak, and won 6 Nemelex Choice combos.
• TheMeInTeam: Longest win streak with 19 wins and highest in the winrate category (won 22 of 23 games played).
• Sapher: Highest scoring win at 91M points with an OpEE.
• EnegeticOcto: Fastest realtime win with a 0:22:48 MiFi.
• qw: Fastest realtime win by a bot with a 0:10:50 DjHu. qw won 3 games this tournament, including first ever wins of Dj and Dg (with DgHu). It also got 3 runes twice this tournament with SpHu.
• zran: Lowest turncount win with an AtCj winning in 10,274 turns.
• bookman: 23 Nemelex’s Choice wins, the most in the tournament.
• The first three wins of the tournament were by FlugKiller (a MiFi in 0:46:25), ShadowRider38 (a MiFi in 0:41:59), and p0werm0de (a MiFi in 0:27:52; 3rd fastest realtime win overall!).
• The last win of the tournament was by sewnkin, an OnEE that ascended 14 seconds before the end of tournament.

The clan competition was won by Retired Ogres Bocce Club (captained by EnegeticOcto) with 132,494 points. They bested the 2nd place clan in the Combo High Scores (1st overall), Best High Score (1st overall), Fastest Realtime Win (1st overall), Most Pacific Win (1st overall), Fastest Realtime (1st overall), Low Turncount (1st overall), Banner Collection (tied for 1st overall), and Piety (1st overall) categories. In 2nd place was The TeAM in MeEE-Cosplay(captained by TheMeInTeam) with 102,015 points, and first place in the Streak Length category, and 2nd place in the Piety and Nemelex Choice categories. Not far behind in 3rd place was Harold and a Few Mara Go to Wight Castle (captained by Wizard1ke) with 98,358 points, and 2nd place in the Combo High Scores, Best High Score, Low Turncount Win, and Most Pacific Win categories.

To close out, here are some overall tournament statistics (with the 0.30 numbers in brackets for comparison). 2,817 non-bot players started a game at some point during the tournament; of those 2,728 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 0.30 statistics.

• Players: 2,728 (0.30: 2,708)
• Total player time: 30,498 hrs (0.30: 30,426 hrs)
• Average player time: 11.18 hrs (0.30: 11.24 hrs)
• Games played: 71,851 (0.30: 69,571)
• Players who got a rune: 861 (0.30: 926)
• 454 winners and 1367 wins (0.30: 454 winners and 1433 wins)
• Win rate: 1.90% (0.30: 2.06%)
• WebTiles win rate: 1.85% (0.30: 1.94%). Console win rate: 3.59% (0.30: 6.18%)

Thanks to you all for playing! Many thanks as well to server admins, developers, and contributors who made the 0.31 release and tournament possible!

The 0.32 season has begun, and changes are already in motion. We have two online experimental branches that implement a new Steel Elf species and redesigns the gods Beogh and Yredelemnul. The Legends Say that Watch this space for further information as the 0.32 trunk update posts begin to flow. Until next time, happy crawling!

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!

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.