We are pleased to announce the release of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup 0.31 “The Alchemy of Forms”!

DCSS 0.31 features some major spell school and starting background changes, a variety of new spells, many dangerous new monsters, and some major species changes.

The Transmutations forms spells have been moved into talisman items, which allow permanently shifting into forms based on the new Shapeshifting skill. The remaining Transmutations spells and the Poison Magic spells have been merged into a new Alchemy school. The Shapeshifter and Alchemist starting backgrounds replace Transmuter and Venom Mage, respectively. To support these changes, this release adds 4 new spells, sees 7 spells reworked into improved replacements, and has many tweaks to the levels and schools. In fact it’s a bit too much for me to write up as we’re getting ready for tournament! So please check out the “Spells” section of the release for full details.

The new Oni species replaces Ogres. Oni love a good drunken brawl, gaining double effect when drinking any potion that restore HP or MP, and also perform an immediate cleaving melee attack. They are otherwise similar to Ogres, but also have horns and some increased apts. Starting at XL 7, Armataurs now regenerate HP and MP while rampaging. They also lose their double potion effect, and no longer read scrolls slowly. Felids now have an extra life at XL 1 and don’t lose XLs when dying. Tengu have an inherent acrobat effect (like the amulet) at XL 1, and gain 4 EV at XL 7 instead of gaining an EV bonus and fast movement. Humans gain the exploration healing effect formerly found on Meteorans, which are no more. Instead, players of any species can now rush to find gems stashed at the end of many branches as achievement items.

Download DCSS 0.31 here or play it online on one of many servers across the world! Packages for Windows, OS X, and Linux are available now. See the full list of changes on the release page here.

The tournament starts on Friday January 19th 8pm UTC and runs through Sunday February 4th 8pm UTC, with all online 0.31 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 January 26th 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 0.31 possible, and to the admins who run and maintain the official servers. A special thanks to the following community members who contributed to 0.31 and a warm welcome to the first-time contributors. (Let us know if someone is missing, this data is tricky to collect in bulk!)

910rd, aedyr, AlexanderPosch, Aliscans, Alvin, Anabel, Antal Spector-Zabusky, CipHuK, cureja, DevJac, geekosaur, Jared Miller, kippig, laserbat, MainiacJoe, mgdelmonte, Monkooky, Nephila Hirsch Oliveira, NormalPerson7, orjb1, Perren Yang, Quinten Konyn, Roadster Tracker, Rosstin Murphy, RypoFalem, Rytis Petronis, sandertyu, sdynet, Sean Dewar, Sebastian Zivota, Skrybe, yrdzrfxndfvh, Zhang Kai