We are proud to announce that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.13: “Pan-Galactic Gargoyle Blasters” is released! 0.13 adds a new species: Gargoyles, made from living stone. It also features many new and reworked spells, monsters and items, including a reworked Skald spellbook and a brand new monster set for the Crypt.

Download DCSS 0.13 here, or play it online on one of many servers across the world!

The release tournament will begin at 20:00 UTC on Friday 11 October, with all online 0.13 games counting towards your score. See the tournament website for more details, including how to set up or join a clan.

0.13′s highlights include:

• Characters: A new species, Gargoyle, has been added. Made from living stone, they have low HP but are very tough and have a number of innate resistances. Sludge Elves have been removed, as has the Priest background. Stabbing skill and Traps skill have both been removed, with stabbing effectiveness now based on the average of weapon and stealth skills, and trap detection based on experience level.
• Monsters: The Crypt contains many new monsters. Revenants cast spells of ghostly fire, jiangshi are fast and possess strong vampiric attacks, plague shamblers erupt in a cloud of miasma on death, and lost souls sacrifice themselves to heal nearby undead. Many existing monsters from both inside and outside the Crypt also have new spells or abilities, including improvements to lesser demons, elementals, deep elves, and many others.
• Places: A large number of layout generators have been improved and added, including new unique layouts for some branches. All timed portal vaults now give an announcement upon entering the level. Mechanical traps no longer generate randomly. A new Sprint map has been added: “|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||” by st (also known as linesprint).
• Gods: Hill Orcs are given the chance to convert to Beogh on the spot upon meeting an orc priest in the dungeon. Zin’s Recite ability can now be used while moving and fighting, instead of forcing the player to stay in place doing nothing else for its duration.
• Spells: Skalds now start with the new book of Battle, containing a number of new spells. Infusion spends MP each hit to increase melee damage, Song of Slaying grants increasing slaying bonuses when killing monsters, Spectral Weapon creates a clone of your weapon that attacks with you, and Song of Shielding causes damage to reduce MP instead of HP. Other new spells include Searing Ray, a conjuration which deals damage over multiple turns, and Discord, a high-level hex that causes monsters to enter a frenzy, attacking one another indiscriminately. Summoning spells have also been adjusted, with each spell having an independent cap on the number of monsters that can be summoned at a time.
• Items: Many evokable items have been reworked. The elemental evokers each have themed effects in addition to summoning multiple elementals, but require the player to gain experience to recharge. The box of beasts now creates 3-headed chimeras, with abilities and melee attacks from multiple randomly-selected beasts. The sack of spiders is a new evokable item which creates webs and spiders nearby.

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 0.13!