Hi, crawlers! Trunk changes?

• Spells:
  • New spell: Infestation (L8 Necromancy), found in the Necronomicon. Targets a 5×5 area; victims inside become ‘infested’, and, when killed, friendly death scarabs will pop out. Friends!
  • Alistair’s Intoxication only inflicts Vertigo on the caster if it succeeds in confusing any monsters.
  • Confusing Touch is back to level 1 (and the Book of Cantrips), after its long stay at level 2.
  • Hydra form devouring is no longer limited to victims smaller than a hydra. Yum! Support for extra-spicy meals has also been added.
  • Cure Poison has been removed. From the commit:
    Trivia: This was the last player-castable vestige of the pre-Stone Soup ‘Holy’ spell school. RIP ;_;
• Monsters:
  • New unique: Bai Suzhen, Madame White Snake. A late-game draconian unique, she casts Summon Hydras; when severely injured, she enters her true form (a water dragon) and becomes surrounded by a ring of storm clouds. Also she gets water breath. Fierce! (this is what the refrance.)
  • Necromancer monsters can now cast Bind Soul, causing nearby monsters to reform as spectral things after death. (Somewhat like Death Channel.)
  • Almost all monster ‘shouts’ are now the same volume. The only exceptions are ‘hisses’, which are half volume, ‘deafening roars’, 1.5x, and ‘deep rumbles’, 2x. Also, pigs now squeal, and a few other monsters have had their shout behaviour changed.
  • Entropy weavers have become faster, but cast Word of Entropy less often. Also, now they’re ant-men, finally answering the question of “what are these weird things, exactly?”
  • Death scarabs lost their miasma trail, but are somewhat tougher.
  • Tzitzimitl no longer have pain or draining brands.
  • Ditto the bennu draining brand.
  • Obsidian statues can now Mesmerise. Stare into their spooky jeweled eyes…
  • Young spriggan druids have been replaced by boggarts. They really were too young to die…
  • The Cloud Mage has come into his or her rightful inheritance: Tornado.
• Gods:
  • Nemelex Xobeh’s decks have been reworked, again. Current list:
    • Escape: the Tomb, Exile, the Elixir, the Cloud, Velocity, the Shaft
    • Destruction: Vitriol, the Storm, Pain, the Orb, Degeneration, Wild Magic
    • Summoning: the Elements, the Pentagram, the Dance, Foxfire, the Rangers, the
      Illusion

    If it’s not in here and it’s not a wrath effect, it’s not in the game.

  • The Vitriol card applies corrosion to all monsters in LOS.
  • Hep no longer provides additional ‘specialization’ choices beyond the initial ancestor class choice. Ancestor upgrades have been moved from XL21 to XL19 and from XL27 to XL24.
  • Hep’s Transference now drains targets at 5*, rather than slowing them.
  • Hepliaklqana’s ability piety costs are slightly higher.
• Items:
  • Rapiers have +1 base damage, matching falchions.
  • The amulet of dismissal now only triggers on hits that do at least 10% of the wearer’s max HP.
  • *Drain items and “Harm now apply 50% more draining when taken off.
  • Vorpal weapons are no longer extra-likely to chop off hydra heads.
  • Books can now be ID’d by (r)eading them while on the floor. (Ideally this should be automatic, but it’s not quite yet.)
  • Scrolls of random uselessness can no longer create butterflies. Somewhere, a tiny bell tinkles for the last time…
• Yiuf’s hut now has a runed door. Poor guy lost his keys… go let him out, wouldn’t you?
• The minimum, average and maximum number of altars in Temple has increased, by about 2 each.
• There is now a strong correlation between disco balls and demonic runes.
• Quite a lot of other new and changed vaults. I shan’t spoil them, but I will say that several contain rare & powerful artefacts. Be on the lookout…
• Web traps are no longer torn & destroyed when creatures escape from them.
• The Monk background gains a choice of weapon, but no longer gets a choice of Dg.
• Storm clouds have a 1/3 per-turn chance of striking (up from 1/4), but have dramatically less ‘spiky’ damage; from 40-131 down to 35-80.
• You can no longer ID gold.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Summer’s in full swing (or winter, for those of you in the southern hemisphere), so here’s the latest changes from trunk:

• Potions, scrolls and books can all now be used from the floor, instead of needing to be picked up first. Scrolls of Identify can also be used on floor items.
• It’s no longer possible to drown from Flight expiring. Instead, if your flight runs out when over deep water (if you can’t swim) or lava, you’ll enter ‘emergency flight mode’ and take heavy drain until you reach solid ground again. (This includes Flight from monster-cast Tornado.) It’s still possible to drown if a flying transformation (e.g. dragon form) expires… for now.
• In tiles, monster attitudes (e.g. friendly, neutral, etc) are now displayed by coloured circles behind the monster, instead of small icons in the corner of their tile. Should be helpful for ally play, hopefully!
• Lair is now six floors (-2), and Slime is now five (-1).
• Gods:
  • To minimize Okawaru-related confusion, Ukayaw is now known as Uskayaw.
  • U’s Line Pass always confuses its victims, but for a shorter duration than before.
  • Hepliaklqana’s slow-on-transference ability has been repeatedly fixed and should hopefully work now. Fingers crossed.
  • H’s hexer ‘specialization’ choice has been moved from level 15 to level 21; instead of choosing between Metabolic Englaciation and Paralyse, Paralyse is a gimme, and the choice is between Englaciation and Mass Confusion.
  • H’s battlemage melee damage has been dramatically increased, and their level 15 specialization choice is now between Bolt of Magma and Force Lance (formerly Iceblast). But that’s probably going get replaced too, so don’t put too much effort into remembering it.
  • Misc ancestor changes: ancestor kills now give full XP (like spectral weapon), but their AC has been reduced somewhat.
  • Nemelex Xobeh’s abilities now use invocations, not evocations.
  • Dithmenos’s Shadow Step can no longer be used on allies, or when you’re a tree.
• Vampire players can now berserk and transform when merely satiated, without needing to be Full.
• Demonic guardians (from the demonspawn mutation) can no longer be angered by the player.
• New monster: meliai, bee priestesses based on obscure Greek mythology. They smite, they sting, they come in packs of three… what more could you want?
• Asterion’s spectral weapon has been replaced by a Greater Servant of Makhleb.
• Norris is gone, but Xtahua swiped his Paralyse before he left.
• Various uniques have had their genders adjusted.
• Salamander stormcallers have called their last; they are no more.
• Boxes of beasts & sacks of spiders no longer have charges, but instead have a fixed 25% chance of disintegrating after each use. They now stack.
• Elemental evokers have been differentiated a little more; the lamp of fire and fan of gales no longer create elementals when used, the phial of floods does less impact damage, and the stone of tremors has been removed.
• Amulets of harm now increase damage dealt by 30% and damage taken by 20%, instead of increasing both by 25%.
• Rods can now be gained from misc acquirement, instead of from staff acquirement; accordingly, staff acquirement is no longer available for Troggites.
• Player-created non-opaque clouds now vanish instantly outside LOS, instead of just dissipating four times faster.
• Olgreb’s Toxic Radiance does a little less damage, but no longer poisons the caster.
• Removed cards: Dowsing, Exile, Feast, Focus, Helix, Mercenary and Xom.
• Removed decks: changes, defense, summoning, wonders, and oddities (the one that you had a 1% chance of drawing from when using any deck). Decks can now only be found by worshiping Nemelex, or possibly from rare vaults.
• The monster spell Control Winds (on wind drakes, spriggan air mages, and the Cloud Mage) has blown right outta town.
• The evasion ego, and the randart blowguns that used it, are both no more.
• Xom will no longer vitrify your surroundings. :(
• Distortion weapons no longer banish individual kraken tentacles.
• Ghosts of dead trees no longer get bonus AC.

Happy crawling!

Editor’s Note: This post was written by chequers, who put in a great deal of work to make this year’s tournament happen. If you played in it this year, please give him your thanks!

Congratulations to everyone who took part in the Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.18 tournament! This (slightly delayed) post will go over the results and highlights of the event.

More than 2500 players participated, with a third of players collecting a rune, and half of those going on to win.

Some stats, with comparisons to the last tournament:

(Individual images here.)

Individual Winners
First place goes to Yermak, who won comfortably with 6260 points. Yermak has been a regular sight at the top of recent DCSS tournaments, placing second or third in the 0.14, 0.15 and 0.16 competitions. His wins in this tournament include at least one with every species, background and god, making him the first tournament greaterplayer and polytheist!

Second place was taken by Demise. As well as collecting 5648 points, Demise won the fastest game of crawl ever in 41:00 minutes*! As well as second individual place, his clan Distracted by YoutubeDollars** also came in second.

Rounding out the podium, third place is awarded to Ultraviolent4 with 5459 points. Also part of Demise’s clan, Ultraviolent4 had the equal second longest streak of eight wins in a row***.

Clan Winners

Top clan was AWBW – Ban Blowguns – End Needles Violence, led by WalkerBoh (#6) with members MorganLeah, Snack (#9), moose, n1000 and Lasty.

Second place was Distracted by YoutubeDollars, led by Demise (#2) with members BobtheCannibal69, Megaslime, Ultraviolent4 (#3), chequers and krfreak.

Third place goes to The Shining Kimchi, a clan hailing from the Korean crawl community. It was led by irum and made up of Dowan, SilvereR, mooon, sheltermaker01 and thrrja.

Notable Achievements

The most commonly collected banner was “Vow of Courage I: Kill Sigmund before entering the Depths”, earned by 1495 players. The least common was a tie between “The Heretic III: Over the course of the tournament, abandon and mollify nine gods excluding Beogh, Elyvilon, Ru, The Shining One, and Zin.” and “Ruthless Efficiency III: Win the game before reaching experience level 19.”, each collected by just four players.

Yermak had the longest streak of the tournament, winning 10 games in a row. His streak was broken by a d:1 shaft—see, it happens to the best of us!

The most successful ghost was Iamsock‘s, who killed 27(!) players, including themselves seven times.

Most impressive tournament stats goes to xeno23. They played just six games in the tournament and won them all, five of which were 15-rune games. Congratulations!

Finally, a massive thank you to elliptic. For the past five years he quietly coded and ran DCSS’s tournaments. He’s passed on the crown this time around, but without his help and assistance this year’s would have never come to fruition. Cheers!

Notes

* as a point of reference, the second fastest win ever took 48 minutes and the average won game is around eight and a half hours long

** full disclosure: your scribe was part of this clan, contributing a mere 7% of points. He probably won’t be invited back next year

*** it would have been nine, but Ultraviolent4 won two games with the Monk background, so the second wasn’t counted. Bad luck!