Hi crawlers! Here’s what’s new in trunk:

• New summon spells:
  • Summon Lightning Spire (L4 Summoning/Air), which places a lightning spire up to two squares away from the player; it replaces Summon Scorpions in the book of Callings.
  • Summon Guardian Golem (L4 Summoning/Charms), which creates a golem that protects the player with Injury Bond and occasionally explodes on death; appears in the book of Callings.
  • Summon Forest (L5 Summoning/Translocations), which summons a dryad and temporarily converts terrain near the player to forest; it is in the Book of the Warp.
• The speed brand now consistently grants 2/3 weapon delay and no damage reduction (previously it was 1/2 delay and 10% damage reduction for melee weapons).
• Fulminant Prism is now level 4 (was 5); Iskenderun’s Battlesphere is now level 5 (was 4).
• Formicids are no longer rPois- and have the same HP and XP aptitudes as humans.
• Grey rats, spiny worms, giant amoebae and deep dwarf berserkers (the monster) are no more.
• Spellbooks of types you have seen before are automatically identified (like staves).
• Racial weapons no longer generate.
• The rod of destruction now fires random bolts instead of having a pre-set spell list.

Enjoy the tweaks, and happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! Here’s the latest and greatest from trunk:

• God wrath has been changed to trigger only as experience is gained; it occurs more frequently, but tends to occur only during / after significant battles.
• Several deities – Okawaru, Trog, Vehumet, Makhleb, Yredelemnul, and Kikubaaqudgha – have had their wrath tinkered with, mainly to scale better with the player’s XL.
• The shadow mimic behaviour of Dithmenos (formerly Dithmengos) followers has changed – spells aren’t directly mimicked (except for enchantments), instead yielding a shadow shard or shadow bolt depending on the original spell, and damage output from physical attacks has been reworked.
• All skills usable by divine abilities are available to train immediately on worshipping that god, rather than needing to wait for the abilities to become available. For most gods this is Invocations where applicable; for Nemelex this is Evocations; for Kikubaaqudgha this is Necromancy. TSO followers can also train shields at any time (cf. Divine Shield).
• New unrand artefacts: the +3,+5 arc blade {discharge, rElec}, a cutlass which causes a static discharge effect on one third of melee attacks; and the +3,+6 demon whip “Spellbinder” {antimagic, MR+}, which inflicts miscast effects on spellcasters related to the spells they can cast.
• An experimental new Swamp level layout, appearing on 2/7 of all non-ending Swamp levels.
• Summoned allies will attack enemies without needing to be being prompted to do so.
• Another redesign of the Vaults:5 layout – the outer ring has returned, and all of the corners of the quadrants are now open to the ring.
• Item destruction from sticky flame has been reduced.
• Felids can now use wands.
• The list of recommended combinations has been revised heavily; as part of the changes, species and background recommendations are now independent of each other – that is, a species may recommend a background where that background does not necessarily recommend that species, and vice-versa.
• Large rocks are no longer inherently penetrating (this was itself a trunk experiment).
• Dith’s Shadow Form now causes skill drain on taking damage, and is usable by all races (i.e. undead can use it).
• Crystal golems have been replaced with crystal guardians – less HP, but the ability to fire a crystal bolt which bounces off of all features and deals either fire or cold damage on a per-bolt basis.
• Lemures and jellyfish are no more.
• Many other smaller changes.

Happy crawling!

Hello, Crawlers! This is meant to be the first of many posts updating you on recent changes to trunk, much as has been done with the blog in the past.

Without further ado, here are some things you may not have seen yet, relative to the last time an update was posted here (which was a while ago, so some things here may not exactly be news):

• The lower half of the Dungeon from D:16 onwards is a new dungeon branch, the Depths – six levels long and containing the entrance to the Realm of Zot.
• The Depths (and D:15-) do not require a rune to enter; instead, Vaults requires a rune to enter.
• Two new races to play with: Formicids, an ant-like people with innate stasis and the ability to dig through walls and shafts in the floor, and Vine Stalkers, a plant-like parasite on a humanoid host who regenerates quickly, cannot heal through wands or potions, and possess an innate spirit shield effect and an anti-magic bite.
• A new deity: Dithmengos the Shadowed, granting a number of shadow-themed abilities.
• Ziggurats no longer charge gold for entry, but require three runes to enter.
• New uniques: Asterion, a minotaur of Makhleb; Natasha, the ex-familiar of a powerful wizard with some magic of her own; and Vashnia, the leader of an elite squad of naga sharpshooters.
• Many, many new regular enemies, especially in the Lair branches and Pandemonium.

The relatively infrequently-updated changelog contains more details on many of these, and can always be found by way of Gitorious at http://gitorious.org/crawl/crawl/blobs/master/crawl-ref/docs/changelog.txt.

Not everything that’s tested in trunk will end up in a stable release, so be sure to enjoy things while they last! You can play trunk online, or download a local build of trunk from here.

Happy Crawling!