We’re toadally pleased to announce the release of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.20: “Scarf Our Wanderful Fried Frogs”! 0.20 features a new species, some new items and spells, dungeon updates, and many other additions, streamlinings, and general improvements to the game.
Download DCSS 0.20 here, or play it online on one of many servers across the world! Packages for Windows, OS X, and Linux are all available now.
The release tournament begins on May 26 2017, at 20:00 UTC, with all online 0.20 games counting towards your score. See the tournament website for more details, including how to set up or join a clan.
0.20′s highlights include:
- Characters: Barachim have been added, a new species that moves slowly but has good aptitudes, a powerful Hop ability, and can see one tile more than other species. Ogres have had their aptitudes and stats reworked, allowing them to be more proficient spell-casters and not just melee brutes, and mummies have a much higher spell-casting aptitude.
- Spells: Two new spells have been added: Ignition, a high level Fire Magic spell that drops a weakened Fireball on every monster in view, leaving the player and their allies unaffected, and Poisonous Vapours, a Poison/Air spell in the Venom Mage starting book the creates a very short-lived poisonous cloud on a single monster.
- Items: Scarves have been added, which are auxiliary armour for the cloak slot that has 0 AC and can’t be enchanted, but have special powerful egos like Repel Missiles, Cloud Immunity, Resistance (rF+ & rC+), and Spirit Shield. Mutation potions are now the only mutation-changing potion, and each quaff cures multiple existing mutations and grants several new ones. Additionally, spells formerly found on rods have been moved to wands of clouds and scattershot and the new rod of lightning XP evocable, and other wands have had their ranges and effects adjusted.
- Dungeon: Many new dangerous vaults have been added, including an epic level-wide Depths vault as well as tricky loot vaults using the new one-way transporter dungeon feature. The Tomb of Ancients now features more dangerous one-way stairs that don’t allow easy, immediate return, and the treasure walls of the Slime Pits now always breach when the Royal Jelly dies.
- Interface: A new noise meter now shows the relative loudness of each action, and in console mode this can be replaced by a bar showing the glyph of each equipped item. Stash searches now exclude distant duplicate matches of vanilla weapons, armour and ammo by default. Finally, the mouse can now be used in WebTiles by default and the species selection menu is reworked to have groupings in “simple”, “intermediate”, and “advanced” categories.
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 0.20!
1. Comment by kefirnik
25/May/2017 at 19:29
What’s the point of noise scrolls now?
2. Comment by wtrl
25/May/2017 at 19:52
It was wise to leave the gnoll species and council god out of this version. The evocable consolidation is also a solid move.
I have to say, though, it feels like just another version that fails to address core issues, among them constant gameplay interruptions to eat (literally every single minute of game time in my experience), an identification system that offers nothing but clutter and gameplay interruptions, and tactics that revolve around long distance luring, column dancing, and stair abuse.
3. Comment by Ultraviolent4
26/May/2017 at 00:13
Noise scrolls pull large chunks of Zot 5 into your oklob farm :D
4. Comment by Baconkid
26/May/2017 at 02:21
Please don’t listen to him ^
5. Comment by warren
26/May/2017 at 20:37
@wtrl: I don’t think any of the things you mentioned are core issues. Take a look at my .rc file if you want a snippet of code that eats chunks automatically when hungry. But I can’t remember anyone else thinking that eating and ID scrolls were “core issues” so I think they’re actually just pet peeves of yours.
Regarding tactics: Luring in order to not get swarmed is a tactic in most video games of all genres ever, from FPS to RTS to rogue-like. Column dancing to regen mana/HP is a desperation, last-resort tactic that doesn’t even come into play if you’re using better tactics.Stair dancing has been part of rogue-likes since the original Rogue so it doesn’t seem to be a new or significant issue.
6. Comment by wtrl
26/May/2017 at 22:34
If your standard of excellence is a 40 year old game, crawl is a modern wonder. It must be hard to say what a core issue would even be in the face of something so radical and new.
In reality, crawl has been around a long time and there’s a pretty well-developed body of commentary on it. It would be pretty fair to say the issues I mention are widely considered central, though some are more controversial than others.
7. Comment by Fv001
27/May/2017 at 12:36
The tournament does not count games on CUE.
Right now (27.5.2017, 10:33 UTC) there are 15 0.20 games on CUE, but according to the tournament page, there is no current game there.
Also I lost a GrFi, played only today on CUE, yet I do not show up in the All players page.
8. Comment by Fv001
27/May/2017 at 15:06
Someone fixed it. Thank you, whoever did
9. Comment by gail gurman
27/May/2017 at 21:07
Really, really disappointed in the stealth change to Ogres.
You took them from +3 maces to -1, I mean seriously not only does that not fit the lore but it severely challenges their already squishy early game. Even if you buffed all their magic apt to 0 it wouldn’t warrant a -1.
10. Comment by jay
28/May/2017 at 02:57
What is the level stat increase for Bar?
11. Comment by Andy
30/May/2017 at 14:00
I really like the new additions. I have noticed some problems playing online, though, which you may already know about.
1. There is no reason to play Mummies, unless one is a glutton for frustration. Spamming spells is nice, but not worth abyssmal aptitudes across the board, no way to cure rot short of sacrificing permanent MP, and general restrictions and handicaps throughout.
2. Necromancy now sucks. Players need corpses to get minions, but zombies and skeletons are completely inferior to EVERYTHING. Even a quokka from “Summon Small Mammals” can kill a goblin skeleton, and I can summon as long as I want, anywhere I want. Necromancy can’t be used without corpses, the allies are useless (I have to go through HOW MANY zombies to kill a single dragon?), and the only way to succeed long-term is to get spells like Infestation (which works on demons, thus extended end-game, at least in trunk) and Death Channel (less useless minions).
Sure, I can use Kiku for corpses, but a zombie army of 20 are all destroyed within a few turns in Vault/Hells/Pandemonium/Abyss. And I have to wait around for my army to catch up to me, and possibly die waiting for them. There is no guarantee I will find the Recall spell, either, except being forced into getting Yred. It’s a pain to set up an army that turns to dust in a few turns anyway, they are so slow that they aren’t around when I need them, the minions are weak useless versions of their former selves, and it doesn’t work AT ALL past mid-game without Kiku and plenty of piety. And even with Kiku, my army is destroyed in a few turns anyway. So what’s the point?
Or I could just be a summoner, and suddenly I am surrounded by pet hydras, dragons, etc. They chew through most anything, they are present on-demand whenever and wherever I need them, there is no setup cost, no hunting for a corpse here or there, and no worries.
Other than those two things, I am pleased with this release. You didn’t remove a bunch of useful items, and the additions are EXTREMELY welcome. Well done! I don’t know about Ogres, I usually play Vampire/Vine Stalker/Hill Orc (for Beogh).
12. Comment by DevsHaveGoneMad
1/Jun/2017 at 00:38
Oh look, another comment chain where the only comments about the ogre change is negative. My, I really feel like the devs listen to their players. Worst patch since I started playing at 0.9