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.
1. Comment by Quazifuji
9/Feb/2017 at 06:02
The potion of mutation changes (https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/b9e5f3fc1c77b7484e45122498c1692b8fab371f) seem to have come a bit too late to make it into this post, but they’re probably worth mentioning too, since they’re pretty big.
TL;DR: Potions of mutation, cure mutation, and beneficial mutation have been merged into one fairly common potion type that removes 2-6 mutations, then adds 1-3 random and 1 beneficial one. The idea is to make mutations a thing people actually have (if you don’t worship Zin) instead of something people generally avoid ever having.
2. Comment by lyraley
9/Feb/2017 at 13:39
@Quazifuji
Interesting change. I like the new mutation potion.
3. Comment by DoubleByte
9/Feb/2017 at 15:58
Those !mut changes are coooooool. Annoying, but cool.
4. Comment by Gottschkopf
10/Feb/2017 at 14:19
“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.”
So, instead of being able to pour tremendous damage into targets one at a time for a reasonable manacost over some time, Conj are now able to burn all their mana to maybe get a combo which doesn’t work when enclosed, against heavy, fast or dodgy enemies? Nice…
5. Comment by Taxman66
10/Feb/2017 at 15:19
Yeah, I think I’m now done playing newer versions of DCSS. v19 is about my limit. I hate just about every design change made.
6. Comment by kitchen_ace
13/Feb/2017 at 00:10
RIP in Pizzas. Literal loss of flavour :(
I assume DMsl still exists as a spell?
7. Comment by PleasingFungus
13/Feb/2017 at 00:37
@kitchen_ace: Correct.
8. Comment by ViolentBeetle
13/Feb/2017 at 12:32
> removes 2-6 mutations, then adds 1-3 random and 1 beneficial one.
This sounds like I’m going to lose more mutations than I gain, so I’m not entirely sure it’s such a great balance.
9. Comment by Balentius
13/Feb/2017 at 16:38
So, to summarize:
No high elves
No repel missiles
No wands of heal wounds, teleportation, slowing or hasting
So, basically, you’ve eliminated all the best ways of playing a wizard. High elves gave the best mana, repel missiles saves regularly from centaurs, the various wands have helped out in many situations.
I realize that there are some players that walk into the dungeon, play for ~5 minutes and win. For the others (like me), we NEED some of this stuff to survive past level 4 or so…
Really not liking the trend I’m seeing here. I may have to stick with v19 too. Which is annoying since I like new features.
Please reconsider at least some of these changes.
Thanks!
10. Comment by pratamawirya
15/Feb/2017 at 13:41
It’s not too bad. We can still get rMsl from a scarf, though it means losing up to 3 AC. But since scarves are a bit rare, we might get to the endgame without rMsl at all to protect us from yaktaurs etc.
11. Comment by pratamawirya
15/Feb/2017 at 14:03
…Wait. How about octopodes and felids? The two species with least defense (HP and AC)? They can’t never get rMsl anymore except from the incredibly rare amulet of air?
12. Comment by Andy
16/Feb/2017 at 13:19
Aww… I liked using Delayed Fireball as a Vampire bat. It was nice to have a trick up my wings when I inevitably woke up a nasty creature WHO HAD NO BUSINESS SLEEPING RIGHT AROUND THAT ONE CORNER…
Ignition sounds nice, though. Meh on everything else. I usually cheat, just so I can wander around, take in the scenery, and blow the living crap out of stuff. But reducing defense against missiles to one relatively rare item sounds unwise… Balentius is right, Yaktaurs/Centaurs can easily shred a maxed-out player if they are busy with melee mobs.
Not digging the removals. Nope, not a bit. So we finally got an addition that sounds REALLY cool, Ignition, and had a bunch of stuff removed. One neat thing does not make up for losing 5 or 6 established features, and I don’t really care whether DCSS people are allergic to Tolkien-esque wording or not.
Don’t “simplify” this game anymore! None of us want a “simple” game, because that is boring in an RPG: we want a *streamlined* game that has DEPTH!
13. Comment by Andy
16/Feb/2017 at 14:23
Okay, good, I misread the part that Deflect missiles is still in, so that’s good. If the player ever has a chance to learn it in time, that is. Maybe shields should give a bonus to armor against missiles, to give people who never find a scarf or a book with Deflect Missiles in it?
14. Comment by ViolentBeetle
17/Feb/2017 at 20:21
Maybe the design should try working towards some kind of sustained spells if spells being renewed out of combat is undesirable? Like have player learn spells that do not expire but are reducing max mana when active?
15. Comment by delverdown
17/Feb/2017 at 22:16
Well… I literally started playing DCSS this week, and I’m enjoying it so far. But, I’m playing a deep elf Conj, and all the tips & tricks I’ve read so far tell me “get Battlesphere as soon as you can!” and basically the idea that it’s the key component to the build. Now, I uhhh…. There goes my whole strategy. I guess I’ll stick with v.19.
16. Comment by Andy
22/Feb/2017 at 14:43
That brings up a good point: DCSS is randomized, so there is *never* any certainty a player will get certain spells, items, or anything during a playthrough. DCSS encourages players to be adaptable by it’s very nature, but… how the heck can we be adaptable if there are no other options to adapt WITH?
The more stuff in DCSS, the better the chance that a workable solution to a given situation will present itself. This is why limiting players and removing gobs of useful stuff is a bad thing. That, and it makes DCSS more linear, less interesting, boring, or even outright annoying.
If an increasing number of people are giving up on Trunk and sticking with 0.19, then that SHOULD tell the devs something…
17. Comment by delverdown
22/Feb/2017 at 20:10
Well, I’m willing to give the Prism/Force Lance combo a try. I was looking forward to battlesphere, but I’m up for working with this. I downloaded 0.19, so if I absolutely have to have battlesphere, I can just drop back a version. Having fun with this game either way! Prism may have some entertaining possibilities.
18. Comment by tv1990
23/Feb/2017 at 12:36
i like this patch, the mut change, the scarves, and the new and sweet ignition spell, the changes just make dcss .20 more exciting for me
i really appreciate your efforts, keep on the good work devs
19. Comment by DevsHaveGoneMad
23/Feb/2017 at 21:22
Worse and worse and worse and worse.
Patches used to be good. Do you even listen to the comments anymore? This and the last two major updates have had sooo many dissenting opinions but as of yet no reversal on the shit changes like rMsl removal, battlesphere removal, wand removal, high elf removal, shite barachian addition, Ogre fuckery.
If there is one dev that suggested all or the majority of these changes fucking reign them in already. It’s. Fucking. Shit.
20. Comment by PleasingFungus
23/Feb/2017 at 21:24
Changes are the result of general dev consensus. We don’t all agree about everything, but all the major changes have had the support of at least the majority of the active dev team.
Also, battlesphere wasn’t removed.
21. Comment by dpeg
23/Feb/2017 at 22:02
We don’t listen. We are unmoved. We have ideas that are worse beyond worse. Not satisfied with worst, we’re going straight for the wurst.
Battlesphere: not removed.
rMsl: moved from bad spell to cool item ego.
boring wands: removed at last, thank Trog.
22. Comment by Stevie-poo
24/Feb/2017 at 14:53
I like what you guys are doing.
Many times in the past I’ve read the change logs and thought that the changes sounded pretty bad, but then when the next release has come out and I’ve played it I’ve realised that the game is much better as a result.
This game is by far my favourite roguelike and the only one I’ve actually played until I could win.
Please keep up the good work and don’t let the negativity in the columns get to you. I there is a very loud minority of players that moan about every single thing they don’t like, while the rest of us are happy with the way the game is developing and normally say nothing.