There have been a lot of new and exciting changes in the unstable (master) tree of Stone Soup. We desperately need people to play through and give us feedback on them – are the changes good, bad, mediocre? Could things be improved in some manner? What shiny new features have already been implemented?

You can give us feedback in the following ways:

  1. You can subscribe and email them to crawl-ref-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net.
  2. You can file an issue in our bug tracker, Mantis (requires easy registration).
  3. You can catch us on IRC! ##crawl-dev on irc.freenode.org.
    We are also in ##crawl, though feature reports may get lost in there, as it is also the reporting channel for Henzell and Gretell, the reporting bots for our two public servers.
  4. You can leave a comment on this post!

On to the changes:


Gods

We’ve three new Gods in trunk!

  • Jiyva – god of slime.
  • Fedhas – god of plants.
  • Cheibriados – god of all things slow.

We’d appreciate all comments on abilities, playing styles, piety gain and loss, and so on.

Two of our current gods have also had some rather radical changes:

  • Kikubaaqudgha now has a new invocation: “receive corpses”, which summons corpses in line of sight (depending on invocations skill), for use in necromantic magic; he will protect you from torment at the cost of piety; you can also cause torment by butchering corpses during prayer; he will still gift the necromancy books, but instead of gifting the Necronomicon by default, you now have the option of permanently branding a weapon with pain instead (similar to Lugonu’s final gift).
  • Vehumet additionally extends the range of conjurations, as well as reduces the MP cost of certain spells.

Monsters

There are new monsters in trunk. Specific to the Shoals branch (see the “Branches and Portal Vaults” section) are kraken, multi-tentacled monsters.

Slime creatures will now merge together to form larger (and more powerful, threatening monsters), while ugly things now come in a variety of flavours defined by colour, each colour having an individual attack (ranging from freezing, flaming to acid).

Giant spores can now also produce ballistomycetes, which again produce giant spores. A new feature in the Slime Pits are golden eyes, fast, pack creatures which blink and cause (resistible) confusion.

Dancing weapons, both as a monster and as an ally (created by Tukima’s Dance) have been adjusted. See the “Spells” section.

There are also a variety of new uniques:

  • Kirke, coming with a band of hogs, found in the late mid-game area.
  • Grum, coming with a band of war dogs, found in the mid-game area.
  • Purgy, a timid troll (found mainly in the Sewer portal vault), found in the early game.
  • Menkaure, an ancient mummy spell caster (also found in the Ossuary portal vault), found in the early game.
  • Duvessa and Dowan, elven twins who spawn together. Duvessa is a fighter, while her brother, Dowan, is a spell caster. They are found in the early game.
  • Gastronok, a greedy elephant slug who feasted upon a wizard and somehow gained its spells and intelligence. Found in the late mid-game.
  • Maurice, a thief who wants to steal your equipment!
  • Khufu, an ancient mummy who comes with a group of other mummies, found in the late game.
  • Nikola, a lightning-obsessed man.
  • Aizul, a disgraced guardian naga who has taken on the role of a warrior, found in the mid game.
  • Pikel, a big kobold slaver taking his wares (a selection of four slaves) to the Orcish Mines, found in the early game
  • Crazy Yiuf, a crazy old (maybe not so old) gnoll with a guaranteed quarterstaff of chaos.

A unique has also recently been removed from the game: Michael.

Branches and Portal Vaults

The Shoals are once more enabled in trunk. The layout and the kraken currently need to be tested, as well as the XP balance in contrast to the Swamp branch, which it will sometimes replace (randomly decided per-game).

There are several new portal vaults, however:

  • Minitomb has been renamed to Ossuary, and features several new maps.
  • Treasure Troves, a timed-and-tolled entry portal vault which provides loot in return for money, though entry mechanisms are currently being adjusted
  • Baileys, polearm and axe “castle” themed portal vaults.
  • Volcanoes, lava and fire-themed portal vaults.
  • Soon: Wizard Laboratories, “named Wizard” (such as Tukima, Lehudib, etc) themed portal vaults.
  • Soon: Gamits, gambling and Nemelex Xobeh themed portal vaults.

Spells

There is a variety of new spells introduced, though most of these relate to ranged combat (see the “Ranged Combat” section). Most noticeably, the Tukima’s Dance spell has been more properly balanced. It now depends both on spell power and the weight of the weapon, meaning that smaller weapons are now less powerful than larger weapons.

Summon Small Mammals now has a hard limit of monsters-summoned per spell (2), and will only summon up to grey rats (green rats and orange rats are no longer included).

Summon Wraiths has been re-implemented as Haunt, a smite-targetted undead summoning spell.

Mechanics

Shafts and Escape Hatches have changed recently. Shafts may generate more regularly in the dungeon, though this may need to be adjusted if the generation level is too high.

Shields have a new ego: Reflection, and shield representation numbers (“SH”) have been adjusted to fit more in line with current numeric representations of AC and EV.

Auto-exclusions are now created for harmful clouds; these may be generated quite slowly. Initial stat generation is now deterministic.

We’ve changed to a new unique placement system; this may result in more or even less uniques being placed, however, this may also be an affect of the increased number of new uniques.

Carrying capacity has recently been adjusted; this may affect Spriggans, as well as hunters who use large rocks.

We have also switched to a new line of sight system, which has quite a few improvements on the old one.

Finally, it is now possible to view previous levels in the “X” overmap by using the keys “[" and "]“. You can view more information by pressing “?” while in the overmap screen.

The skill pool is now coloured yellow (15k+) and then red (unsure) at various stages of “fullness”.

Jobs and Species

Demonspawn have recently had an overhaul that makes their mutation system more deterministic (though not fully). There is also a variety of new and fun mutations.

Wanderers have also been changed dramatically recently.

Finally, there is a new class: Arcane Marksmen! this is an overhaul of the Warper class, though it does not replace that class. It places heavy emphasis on the enchantment of ammunition, and introduces new spells that correspond to the new ammunition brands. See “Ranged Combat” for a fuller explanation of the new brands.

Ranged Combat

There are a variety of new missile brands:

  1. Penetrating (similar to Bolt-esque spells such as Bolt of Fire, etc)
  2. Reaping (raises slain monsters as undead allies)
  3. Dispersal (causes hit enemies to blink away)
  4. Exploding (causes a 3×3 explosion upon impact)
  5. Electric (causes effects similar to weapons of electrocution)

There are also two new types of ammunition material: steel and silver. Steel have less chance of mulching, while silver have an affect upon chaotic beings.

As a buff to the Hunter class, their starting ammunition now has a +1 enchantment.

Items

A new type of amulet was introduced: Amulet of the Guardian Spirit. (This “spirit shield” can also be found as a brand on some caps, as well as on the unrandart hat of the Bear Spirit). Upon wearing, it will reduce your current MP to 0, and after it has regenerated, damage will be subtracted from your MP until it reaches zero again, in which case it will be subtracted from your HP.

Deep Dwarves will not regenerate an MP while wearing this amulet, though they can still do so by an act of a god (channeling), or consumables and other items.

As noted above, there are now a variety of new brands for missiles: see the “Ranged Combat” section.

Stealth-based jobs (such as Enchanter) for the Ogre and Troll races now start with a club instead of a dagger. Small clubs also provide a bonus to backstabbing (or back-coshing).

And that’s it! Please do give us your comments, we appreciate them greatly.

-Jude