The broodmother hits you!!! A trunk update bursts forth from the wound!

A ho ho ho from Santaeus here in the icy expanse of Cocytus the North Pole! Welcome to the last trunk update of 2021. The frenzied pace of trunk development continues, with 150 commits since we last wrote. One big chunk of commits was some behind the scenes web tiles modernization, with some help from CKO admin and community contributor floraline. There are three big headliner sets of changes: a new set of Spider monsters, a variety of new early-game appearing unrands, and a new type of item to carry in your offhand instead of a shield. Before we get to those three change sets, let’s check out the rest of the trunk changes:

• The glaive of Prune now turns you into a prune when paralysed, petrified, or put to sleep, causing you to take half damage until the effect ends.
• If Jiyva dies Dissolution‘s summon eyeballs is replaced with a cantrip.
• Sewer maps have been updated and re-vamped, plus two new sewer maps.
• Bailey maps have been updated and re-vamped, plus three new baileys.
• New Spell: Enfeeble (L7 Hexes). Enfeeble irresistibly applies weakness and antimagic to a single foe. Additionally the target is also dazed and blinded if they fail a willpower check.
• Formicids now dig at normal movement speed, and each cell dug causes draining.
• Centaur warriors replace centaurs in Shoals.

New and updated Spider monsters

• Pharaoh ants are an undead spider that drains and when killed binds the souls of all nearby monsters.
• Steelbarb worms are fast, regenerative, fire-resistant worms that apply barbs in melee.
• Jorogumo are tough ensnaring monsters with bolt of draining and hornet poison melee.
• Broodmothers summon spiders and bite to summon spiders.
• Culicivora are healing spiders, with heal other and a vampiric bite, appearing in spider packs.
• Sun moths are holy moths with a single tile halo, sticky flame, and energy bolt.
• Radroaches are armoured roaches that cast irradiate, which contaminates the player a lot (not a direct malmutation).
• Demonic crawlers gain warning cry.
• Emperor scorpions are less tough but faster.
• Ghost moths no longer poison but their stat draining is much more intense.

Early Game Artefacts

Artefacts can now generate on D:2-3. Additionally, several new unrandarts specifically designed to be interesting early and then fall off are added:

• Delatra’s gloves heal the wearer for drinking unknown potions and restore MP for reading unknown scrolls.
• The woodcutter’s axe is a vorpal +8 war axe that always swings at 10 aut, regardless of skill, shield penalty, slow or haste, etc.
• The staff of the Meek is a +7 quarterstaff of protection with an extra protective bonus AC when below 55 HP.
• Throatcutter is a +7 long sword of draining with a 1/3 chance to instantly kill foes that are below 21 HP.

Orbs to ponder

This round of updates brings a new item type: orbs. A shield-slot analog of scarves that give no SH and no penalty. Several new armour egos are added that appear only on orbs:

• light: a radius 3 halo.
• wrath: gives *Rage (20% berserk chance).
• mayhem: when the wearer kills something, it has a chance to send a monster that saw the kill into a frenzy.
• guile: reduces the will of the wearer’s target by 3 pips, while reducing the wearer’s will by 2 pips.
• energy: gives a source of passive channeling: a chance to power a spell instead of using the wearer’s MP, with a chance to backfire and drain int or cause confusion. The success chance goes up with each source of passive channeling, and the backfire effect triggers if each source backfires. The staff of Wucad Mu now counts as two sources of channeling (so it stacks with an orb of energy in addition to being buffed!).

That’s all for now. This development cycle is coming to a downslope, most of the big ideas for 0.28 have reached trunk, but of course there are always surprises in Santaeus’ sleigh. So I don’t have horizon prognostication for you about what might appear next beyond the polish, balance tweaks, and bug fixing that make up the later end of the release cycle. Until next time, happy crawling!

The energy of discovery flows out of the trunk update and into your fingertips!

You begin with the following items: a +0 vorpal quarterstaff, a piece from Xom’s chessboard (15/15), a +0 cloak, a +0 leather armour, and a trunk update…

Hello crawlers! We’re getting back to a more regular trunk updates post schedule, but this comes hand in hand with a continued feverish pace of change. Since we last wrote there have been 186 commits to trunk. Unlike last time a much larger fraction of these are fixes, tweaks, and technical behind the scenes work that enable the headliner items.

First, a big congratulations and thank you to longtime community contributor nlavsky and team member advil for initiating and seeing through to completion the implementation of a consumable panel for web tiles, similar to the inventory pane of local tiles. This has been an outstanding feature request for almost a decade, and is the number one reason offline players cite for why they don’t play online. So if you’re a long-time offline player and you don’t mind playing trunk, come check it out; otherwise, we look forward to you trying it during the 0.28 release! In addition to this panel, advil has been doing a lot of work expanding the web tiles mouse support, the second most requested online feature. Try it out!

Since we last wrote, we also had community contributors Aliscans, ArmiesAndCastles, Brian Power, EdDewey, Gopall, Goratrix, Jonathan Klabunde Tomer, Oneirical, Perry Fraser, aMcNicky, mgdelmonte, Zachary Chandler, and sdynet send in various tweaks, fixes, new items, lua api improvements (mgdelmonte is a big driver of these), and other assorted changes. As always, a big thank you to the community for participating in development.

On the gameplay side, the two big headline changes are the Yredelemnul overhaul and a revision of the Wanderer background start. Let’s dive in.

Carry the Black Torch!

Last post I mentioned an experimental overhaul of Yredelemnul looking for playtesting feedback. This overhaul has arrived in trunk, after a set of balance tweaks and bug fixes thanks to your feedback. Here’s what Yredelemnul now offers, instead of permanent ally gifts.

• At 0* Yredelemnul grants passive reaping of living and demonic creatures, as well as recall, and immunity to umbra and spectral mist clouds. Things with a corpse come up as zombies, things without as spectrals (including those poor souls whose corpse was exploded). These reaped creatures stick around until the player leaves the level.
• Piety is proportional to the total strength of reaped dead in the player’s LOS.
• At 2* grants the Dark Bargain active, which trades some zombies/specters for a long-duration undead servant summon. Summon quality scales with piety, and the summon list now covers all (non-harmful) ghoul, skeleton, vampire, and wraith genus monsters (except Vampire magi who belong to Kiku); for console players that’s monsters on glyphs n, z, V, and W.
• At 4* grants Drain Life. Same as old drain life, but now costs zombies/specters as well as mp.
• At 5* grants Bind Soul. Same as old enslave soul, but also costs zombies and has been renamed. Bound souls can follow the player between levels, retain the spells and weapons they had when alive, and are tougher than before.

Wandering About

hellmonk took the charge in re-designing the random generation process of the Wanderer background. I won’t bore you with the old creation model, Wanderer players will know that the bad rolls could just be absolutely nonsensically awful. The new generation model picks three skills in an apt-weighted way: a “good” skill and two “decent” skills. Using these choices it hands out starting gear, “good” stuff for the good skill and “decent” stuff for the decent skill. Finally it assigns stats and skill points based on these choices, again in an apt-weighted way. The result is more lopsided and more likely to align with the gifted items, though it is not guaranteed to be that way. Along with a change to the random model, the possible items have been expanded, with some carried over from the old model. To entice you to check it out, here’s the possible list:

• “good fighting” selects a weapon and gives the good weapon instead. “decent fighting” gives an extra plus to a weapon if one was already given, or a decent potion or scroll otherwise.
• “good weapon” gives a +2 weapon, an upgraded base type or a vorpal branded starting weapon (hunting slings with sling bullets are now possible). “decent weapon” just gives a plain weapon.
• “good unarmed” gives two random good potions or scrolls. “decent unarmed” gives a single decent potion or scroll.
• “good armour” gives either +2 scale, chain, or acid scales to weirdly shaped wanderers. “decent armour” gives either plain scale or ring mail, or aux armour to weirdly shaped wanderers.
• “good shield” can give either a +2 buckler or a +0 buckler of protection (upgraded to a kite shield for species that can’t use a buckler). “decent shield” gives a +0 buckler.
• “good magic school” gives a 3-spell randbook (capped at level 4) from that school. “decent magic school” gives a 2 spell book totaling 4 levels from that school.
• “good spellcasting” gives a 4-spell randbook (capped at level 3), picking spells from any school. “decent spellcasting” gives a 2 spell book totaling 4 levels from any school.
• “good stealth” gives either a +2 dagger and a good consumable or a +0 dagger and atropa and datura darts. “decent stealth” gives a piece of aux armour.
• “good throwing” gives a +2 dagger and curare darts. “decent throwing” gives either boomerangs or poison darts.
• “good dodging” gives either a +2 leather armour or a +0 leather armour and some nets (oddly shaped wanderers get an aux armour instead of leather). “decent dodging” gives a piece of aux armour.
• “good evocations” gives either a wand (weighted towards the stronger wands) with a good number charges or an XP evoker other than the chess piece. “decent evocations” gives a handful of flame or polymorph charges or a piece from Xom’s chessboard.
• The possible range of starting consumables is expanded.
• If starting with the sandblast spell, a wanderer also receives stones.

Trunk Updates

Of course, with 184 commits, even with all of the User Interface work there are plenty of other gameplay changes around. Read on for the mix

• New Unrand: the dreamshard necklace. Concept and initial implementation by community contributor aMcNicky, the dreamshard necklace is an amulet an amulet of nothing that for the most part does nothing. However, on a lethal or near-leathal blow the necklace shatters, absorbing the blow and releasing protective dreams of healing (a big heal, between half and full HP), friendship (shadow creatures), and clouds (fog).
• The ring of the Mage loses Will++ and Int+3 and trades them for Archmagi. Multiple sources of Archmagi now stack, so have fun blasting!
• The autumn katana loses Clarity and trades it for a chance to cast Manifold Assault on hit, slicing through space because it is too sharp. This unrand refresh by community contributor sdynet.
• The monster mix in Dis and Cocytus is adjusted to bring them closer in line with Gehenna and Tartarus threat levels.
• Okawaru’s Duel ability is more expensive, and the post-duel grace period shorter.
• Quazlal abilities have had their costs balanced: Upheaval is cheaper in MP and Piety, Elemental Force cheaper in MP, and Disaster Area more expensive in MP.
• Chain Lightning damage now falls off more quickly with range.
• Yara’s Violent Unravelling can now unravel summons in addition to enchantments. When targeting a summon it causes the summon to explode, killing it instantly. Additionally, it is now smite targeted.
• The briar patch monster now blocks all non-aligned beams, shielding its allies from all hostile fire, while allowing allied beams to fire through them. Bushes allow all beams to pass through, regardless of alignment.
• The infusion ego is buffed, now costing only one MP per hit.

There’s still a lot more brewing on the horizon this trunk season, with a Spider refresh and a lot of new and updated vaults on the way. So until next time, happy crawling!

You go downstairs. The trunk update is left behind to rot!

The blog shudders from the hit and a flood of trunk updates pours out!

Hello crawlers! Sorry for not writing, there was a leak in the lava system down here in Gehenna and it was all hands on deck for the Devil’s team to get it contained. Despite the chaos, since the last trunk update there have been a whopping 480 commits to trunk. So buckle up for a meaty post. Before we dive into the details, some headlining information.

First, a warm welcome to Sastreii, who has joined the dev team as a tiles artist and has been prolific in refreshing old tiles and filling in art for the new content that’s arrived in this cycle.

Next, on the horizon in this version are a refresh of the Spider branch and an overhaul of Yredelemnul. Both are currently playable on the experimental crawl.dcss.io development server (not tracked in scoring or Sequell). Playtesting feedback is welcome and wanted on these branches, drop us a line on GitHub, reddit, the tavern, or #crawl-dev on libera.chat if you have substantive feedback based on playing experience. Both sets of changes should arrive in trunk very soon, but they aren’t quite there yet.

Also on the immediate horizon: a combined effort by community contributor nlavsky and team member advil will soon deliver a consumables panel for web tiles. This has been a desired feature for a long time, so hats off to both of them for the effort!

A big thanks to community contributors ManiacJoe and DreamDust for new vaults, as well as to AdamPG, Aliscans, ArmiesAndCastles, Brian Power, David Damerell, Gopall, Implojin, Martin Kennedy, nlavsky, perryprog, Santiago Acosta, dilly, mgdelmonte, paul, and robertxgray for patches with tweaks, bug fixes, balance adjustments, lua improvements, and more since we last wrote.

With all that said, lets dive into the trunk changes!

Branches & Environment

• Exploration-based shaft traps are now limited to one shaft per branch per game.
• Portal vault portal mimics have cackled and vanished for the last time, and are removed.

Character

• Two new Demonspawn mutations:
• The weakening stinger mutation gives a tail aux attack. At level 3 it blocks the cloak slot and the aux attack applies the weak status.
• The demonic touch mutation adds irresistible damage to the off-hand attack. At level 3 it blocks the gloves slot and applies the vulnerable status.
• Player-chosen attribute increases now happen every 6 XLs, starting at XL 3, and increase a stat by 2. Demigods are unchanged.
• Black Draconian Breath no longer includes shock.
• Clarity from any source again blocks *Rage.

Gods

• Ashenzari’s passive trap avoidance and item identification are moved 1*. No more freebies without a curse!
• Cheibriados’ passive poison slowing is moved to 0* and bend time moved to 1*.
• Elyvilon’s abilities are streamlined to be less redundant with one another and with Zin’s sanctuary:
• Pacification grants full XP, and can be used on intelligent plants.
• Lifesaving is completely passive, and is a bonus chance on top of the usual good god chance that becomes guaranteed at 5*, but with a piety-gated timeout.
• Lesser Healing is removed, with Greater Healing renamed to Heal Self and moved to 3*.
• Purification is moved to 1* and is cheaper.
• Gozag’s gold distraction chance is capped.
• Ignis’ abilities are shifted based on playtesting experience:
• Rising Flame is now a one-time use ability, but costs no piety.
• The cost of the other two active abilities is increased to compensate.
• The Sea of Flames ability is removed and replaced with Fiery Armour, a long lasting duration that gives +7AC and causes melee attackers to suffer fire damage.
• Jiyva gurgles merrily and shifts into a new form:
• Stat shuffling, healing and piety from item eating, and cure mutation, are all removed.
• Piety is now exploration based and grows very quickly.
• Jelly healing is replaced with passive HP and MP regeneration.
• Mutation gifts arrive in bursts that attempt to remove a mutation (more likely a bad one) and then max out a good one.
• rCorr is now granted at 2*, and jelly-on-hit at 5*.
• New active ability Oozemancy granted at 3*. Somewhat expensive in piety it temporarily turns walls in radius 4 into slime walls.
• The chance of Ru retaliation is reduced.
• The Shining One abilities arrive earlier, with Divine Shield at 1* and Cleansing Flame at 3*.

Items

• The spawn rate of wands is reduced.
• The electrocution brand now triggers on fewer attacks.
• Regen is reduced to 0.8 HP / turn per pip.
• MPRegen is increased to 0.4 MP / turn.
• The brand weapon chances have been tweaked, and are now described in the scroll’s description.
• The spawn rates of scrolls and potions are adjusted slightly and now described in in-game descriptions.
• New glove ego: infusion. Gloves of infusion add damage per hit in exchange for 2 MP per hit.
• New unrandart: the +3 Mad Mage’s Maulers {Infuse+∞ RegenMP Int-3}. These exchange all of the wearer’s current MP in exchange for bonus damage proportional to the amount of MP used.
• The hat of the Bear Spirit now grants extra bonus HP while berserk (for a total of +100% HP) and reduces the post-berserk slow duration, though it loses rN+.
• Unrandarts that produce allies no longer do so when worshipping Okawaru.

Monsters

• Demonic and Holy monsters are now susceptible to fear, intoxication, and mushroom spores, and are able to go berserk.
• Monsters now have a chance to break a door permanently when opening it to get to the player. This chance is higher if berserk.
• Classed draconians now come in a fixed colour based on their job.
• Plain demonspawn are removed. Each class of classed demonspawn has one mix of demonspawn attributes.
• When Dowan dies, Duvessa goes berserk permanently; when roles are reversed Dowan gains haste permanently.
• Merfolk impalers and javlineers are nerfed slightly.
• Walking Tomes have a summon cap on their living spells.
• Shard shrikes now engage in batty wandering after casting icicle once, as they were meant to.
• On death, Eleionoma and Fenstrider Witches drop a wand if they drop a corpse (similar to a dragon’s hide).

Spells

Within the spell changes, a big chunk of them involve making existing spells scale with power and making sure the power caps for low level spells aren’t too high. Here’s that set first:

• Corpse Rot scales with power, placing more miasma clouds per corpse and placing clouds at radius 2 if all the radius 1 space is already filled.
• Passage of Golubria now has a range that scales with power.
• Blink has a cool down that scales (downwardly) with power.
• Teleport Other, Sublimation of Blood, Spider Form, Inner Flame, Gell’s Gravitas, and Vampiric Draining all have their power caps reduced.

And the rest of the spell changes: