A trunk update comes into view. Wyrmbane glows green as a worthy foe approaches.
Hello crawlers, it’s been a busy few weeks in the cottage industries of the Iron City. This trunk update has several big things, but before we get to them I want to highlight some non-code community submissions since we last wrote:
- New vaults by beargit, nicolae, and Skrybe, appearing in various places in the dungeon. If you’re interested in making vaults (prefabricated bits of the map), read an introduction to editing vaults here and consider setting up a development environment to test your vaults.
- New tiles by Sastrei. If you’re interested in making tiles, read our tiles guideline here.
Both kinds of contribution can be submitted on our GitHub repository, either as an issue or a pull request, if you don’t have a mantis account. If the documents seem a little old, they’ll be getting updates in the coming month.
Diving into some of the other changes that have happened since we last wrote. Several branches have had changes.
- Slime gains two new monsters:
- rockslimes, a high AC flame resistant slime that tramples and hits like a rock.
- quicksilver oozes, an antimagic and engulfing magic-immune ooze.
- Eyes of draining and death oozes are removed (both from Slime and the game).
- Vaults monster sets have been heavily revised:
- so-called “trash mobs” no longer spawn, for a deadlier experience.
- orc warlords in Vaults come with bands of loyal knights, and nothing weaker.
- wizards in Vaults come with bands of ugly things, their disgusting pets.
- New ironbound frosthearts are human spellcasters see invisible and draw creeping frost from the walls.
- New ironbound thunderhulks are ogres with a magical lightning rod, which can fire smite-targeted lightning, but cannot hit nearby foes.
- New ironbound beastmasters lead beastly war bands of dire elephants or lindwurms through the vaults, speeding them along with spiked goads.
- peacekeepers have arrived to keep the peace in the vaults, coming with bands of constructs.
- Snake monsters have been refreshed (in addition to a change to poison mechanics):
- naga and naga warriors get a buff to base damage, and the latter have learned a battlecry.
- naga ritualists no longer cast force lance and have become priests.
- nagaraja no longer cast force lance or teleport other, and now cast dimension anchor.
- naga magi now cast venom bolt, haste, and enchant their allies to turn their poison into curare.
- New salamander tyrants call forth volcanic eruptions and glare with a weakening gaze.
- The early dungeon has some new features:
- Shops can generate on D:1-3.
- Rare scrolls, books, manuals, and staves can generate on D:1-3 at normal rates.
- Quokkas can spawn on D:1.
- Ball pythons are adjusted.
- Hobgoblins no longer spawn with a weapon but have higher base damage.
- Oozes have less hp and melee damage, but can cast freeze.
- Leopard geckos are removed.
Next, a new species has arrived in trunk: Djinn. Djinni are floating spirits formed from smokeless fire, they have no MP, instead casting spells using their HP. They also cannot learn spells from books; they instead get spells randomly and naturally, starting on XL 3 and continuing on every even level. The former mechanic is inspired by a design from kilobyte, who created another ‘Djinni’ species in 0.13. The latter comes from pubby, who created an ‘Oni’ race using it in various DCSS forks. We are indebted to their ideas, though this implementation is somewhat different from both.
Of course, trunk development is not all headline items. There’s been a lot of behind the scenes technical work, bug fixing, and an assortment of other changes. Read on to see what else has changed.
- Wyrmbane now glows when a dragon that can upgrade it comes into view.
- Dexterity and EV formulas are tweaked again.
- Assorted autoexplore edge-case improvements by Aliscans.
- Swamp is now loud.
- Cheibriados no longer hates quickblades.
- Elixir gives both heath and mp at all power levels.
- Zin sanctuary no longer applies holy word.
- Empty space no longer reduces the variance of Airstrike‘s damage.
- Kobold Fighters start with bucklers now.
- Monster weapon delay is standardized at the monster’s speed, certain monster
base damages are adjusted to compensate. (hellmonk) - Poisonous Vapours can no longer target empty space.
- Palentonga HP apt is reduced to +0.
- Player poison now ticks much faster.
- Yredelemnul accepts nonliving worshippers again. Return the black torches to your Gargoyles and statuary!
- Halflings are removed.
- Shatter deals bonus damage to toenail golems (youch).
That’s all for now. The future keeps approaching even though we can never see it clearly, but by desperate Aperomancy it seems that the branch freshening trend might reach to Spider or the Hells. More vaults from vault smiths new and old are soon to appear. Perhaps hellmonk’s promised Tier 3 demonspawn changes will materialize? Or perhaps none of these things will happen and this space will show something completely different next time! Until then, happy crawling!
The trunk updates whisper ‘farewell’ as they head to the true west.