Slime Squisher
Posts: 419
Joined: Monday, 12th September 2016, 16:25
Tuesday, 9th April 2019, 18:04
Yet Another Crawl Variant: Stoat Soup
Two friends of mine and I were dissatisfied with monster spawn removal in 0.21, so we started a variant of our own (which is now based on 0.22). I have just completed a planned rework of ghosts, and this seems like a good time to release it so Tavern can hate it.
We don't have a design philosophy besides doing stuff we like, getting rid of stuff that annoys us, not removing things we like even if vanilla Crawl removes them, being a bit more relaxed about what Hypothetically Optimal Man might do, and liking mustellids.
You can play Stoat Soup on crawl.kelbi.org.
You can also play by ssh-ing as user "fortunato" to "crawl.montres.org.uk" using the same ssh private key used on public servers (if you don't normally play online console, you might want to read https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto to find out what this means). I regret that we don't intend to offer Webtiles on this server. (However, where Stoat Soup changes or additions have necessitated new tiles, I have bodged them up, and I do much of my own testing in tiles so I expect it to work.) Beware that in Stoat Soup, "bold_brightens_foreground" defaults to "true" - if you can't see walls out of your field of view, read http://www.montres.org.uk/about.html.
Stoat Soup scores can be found at http://www.montres.org.uk/, including the minor innovation of Sprint scores; in the event that any other server offers it and tells me where the logfile is, I'll add their scores to this page.
https://github.com/damerell/crawl is the github repository for the variant. Now it is released, I will refrain from doing gratuitous rebases of the "master" branch.
https://github.com/damerell/crawl/blob/master/crawl-ref/docs/changelog.txt should include every change made in Stoat Soup 0.22 and 0.21, but here's a list in approximate order of importance:
We don't have a design philosophy besides doing stuff we like, getting rid of stuff that annoys us, not removing things we like even if vanilla Crawl removes them, being a bit more relaxed about what Hypothetically Optimal Man might do, and liking mustellids.
You can play Stoat Soup on crawl.kelbi.org.
You can also play by ssh-ing as user "fortunato" to "crawl.montres.org.uk" using the same ssh private key used on public servers (if you don't normally play online console, you might want to read https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/howto to find out what this means). I regret that we don't intend to offer Webtiles on this server. (However, where Stoat Soup changes or additions have necessitated new tiles, I have bodged them up, and I do much of my own testing in tiles so I expect it to work.) Beware that in Stoat Soup, "bold_brightens_foreground" defaults to "true" - if you can't see walls out of your field of view, read http://www.montres.org.uk/about.html.
Stoat Soup scores can be found at http://www.montres.org.uk/, including the minor innovation of Sprint scores; in the event that any other server offers it and tells me where the logfile is, I'll add their scores to this page.
https://github.com/damerell/crawl is the github repository for the variant. Now it is released, I will refrain from doing gratuitous rebases of the "master" branch.
https://github.com/damerell/crawl/blob/master/crawl-ref/docs/changelog.txt should include every change made in Stoat Soup 0.22 and 0.21, but here's a list in approximate order of importance:
- Monsters still continue to spawn as in Crawl 0.20, but you knew that because that's our whole rationale for the variant.
- Ghosts don't roam the dungeon murdering you horribly or hide in ghost vaults to be cashed in for XP later. They remember what killed them, and come into being to seek revenge on their slayer. They're neutral monsters, so they're not entirely safe to be around, but if you don't aggravate them they're useful allies. Ghost AC/EV/HP were all reduced to, probably unsuccessfully, encourage players to fight alongside ghosts rather than sitting back as they flatten their targets.
- High elves and mountain dwarves are back, and joined by faerie dragons. MD aptitudes have been adjusted in line with the across-the-board aptitude adjustments since their removal.
- The monster list in console is enormously improved, able to provide information on more than one monster of the same kind and to report on a vast range of criteria - know at a glance that 2 of these 3 gnolls have polearms. (This change is not made in Webtiles, both because the monster list in Webtiles is generated in an entirely different bit of code in a different language, and because much of this information is already available.)
- Zin cures mutations on a gifting timeout, so can't be used to lock in a good mut set. Recite was very slightly improved, both in the HD of monsters it can affect and by being usable more frequently at ****** piety.
- You can still get that good mut set by eating purple chunks. Purple monsters start to "cool down" when first sighted, and if killed sufficiently much later aren't mutagenic. I don't know if H.O.M. was actually stowing them in branches for later, but now he can't.
- You are optionally warned before entering, or when forcibly transported to, the last level in a branch.
- Ozo's Armour doesn't prevent movement, but it can only be cast with monsters in view, so H.O.M. can't cast it before opening every door. It runs out twice as fast if no monsters are in view, but twice as slowly if they are, which since it still gives ponderous might result in some harmless amusement.
- Ogres get +1 Maces and Flails; we're fine with an easy choice, but it doesn't have to be overpoweringly good. Ogre spell apts are a mix of -1s and -2s based roughly on Ogre and Ogre Mage apts in pre-DCSS days.
- LRD digs rock, but never stone or metal, since much of the problem with it seemed to be cracking into stone vaults. IOODs and eyes of devastation also dig rock. I suppose this means H.O.M. will dig killholes everywhere, but if that annoys you, don't do it.
- The Swamp gains the Triceratops, a unique who's a melee beast who knocks down trees because that's original, er. But I like triceratopses.
- Deep dwarf MP loss on healing gets averaged out - it is much harder now to have a run of bad luck that loses you MP every time, or a run of free heals. Additionally, the first MP loss of the game is ignored. This makes DD easier, of course, but is analogous to the 0.18 situation where you got one load of wand charges for free.
- Food still consists of meat and bread rations, fruit, and honeycombs, because who needs inventory space? Honeycombs are only found in bee vaults, though, to cut down on food spam slightly.
- The Mace of Variability still varies but does so on hits so H.O.M. can't just wait for it to be +16. The Singing Sword is vorpal; independent invention of a vanilla change.
- Dream sheep can still spread sticky flame to each other, which Dithmenos hates, because Dithmenos still hates fire.
- Labyrinth loot was unchanged; minotaurs got some but not all of the vanilla boosts.
- Engulf still gives a movespeed penalty.
- Cosmetic changes; if you worship Qazlal, the noise bar goes to 11! Quokkas are now weasels. Double and triple swords are now broadswords and claymores.
- You can now wear-ID amulets with relative impunity. The amulet of harm does not drain you. However, when you take one off, you continue to take extra damage until fully healed and some time has passed, so it still can't be usefully swapped mid-fight. The amulet of faith only starts to increase piety gain after a random amount of piety has been gained while wearing it - on average, 3 points. However, it drains at most 1/5 of your piety on removal, and cannot drain more piety than was gained by wearing it.
- Infusion and Shroud of Golubria are now "permabuffs", lasting forever rather than having to be recast. The intention is to add more permabuffs; the implementation is not that found in Hellcrawl or Gooncrawl.
Last edited by damerell on Tuesday, 24th September 2019, 22:02, edited 8 times in total.
Ascension reports with too many words since 2016.
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You see, blood level management has got a few things to consider, nameley str + regen + general transform possibility + possible berserking vs. bat transform ability + resistances (rpois!) + stealth + degeneration (negative regen when bloodless).