Hi, crawlers! Here’s the latest changes in trunk:
- All range-based mechanics now treat diagonals identically to orthogonal directions. Line of sight, spell range, and other effects are now visually ‘square’. Many of those, including line of sight, are now slightly shorter. (This results in them covering roughly the same number of squares).
- Removed monsters: baby alligators, boring beetles, and goliath beetles. (To compensate for baby loss, alligators now come in pairs.)
- Removed curses: basic mummies’.
- Removed spells: Abjuration is gone. Aura of Abjuration is now level 5 and in the book of Summonings instead of the Grand Grimoire.
- Monstrous Menagerie is now in the Grand Grimoire in Aura of Abjuration’s place; it’s no longer in the book of Summonings or the book of Beasts.
- Summon Mana Viper has been moved from the book of Hinderance to fill Monstrous Menagerie’s place in the book of Summonings.
- Followers of good gods can no longer be Demonologists. (They get different high-level summoning titles.)
- ‘?’ should now work on the offline title screen.
- Player-made storm clouds no longer fire at four times the rate of those onscreen.
- Monsters can no longer zap empty wands & leave them with negative charges.
- Vine stalkers no longer have fur.
Happy crawling!
1. Comment by name
9/May/2015 at 22:39
Any chance we can finally get exciting beetles instead?
2. Comment by dpeg
10/May/2015 at 22:41
It is very hard to come up with exciting, slow moving monsters. As you can see, slow monsters without additional gimmicks have recently been purged or made normal speed. The one addition I can think of is the torpor snail. If you have an idea for an exciting beetle, tell us.
3. Comment by knex
11/May/2015 at 01:38
a slow moving blink beetle?
Perhaps a beetle with a ranged attack.
A rhino beetle that can throw the player?
4. Comment by 15RunesOrBust
11/May/2015 at 07:55
Why, after I’ve purged Hell of its Lords and shattered the undead hordes on the Crypt and Tomb, all the while as the devoted follower of The Shining One, can daevas still call down his fury upon me with smites? Surely none of them have slain as many evildoers in his name.
I can vaguely see them attacking me if they’re a different orthodox and TSO staying out of it (vaguely, as even he and other good gods have no problem with one another), but it seems patently absurd that he’d actively raise his hand directly against what is probably his most devoted follower just because some upstart angel asked.
5. Comment by 15RunesOrBust
11/May/2015 at 08:01
Out of curiosity, why the change to a square range-based mechanic?
I like the Abjuration change, the basic spell was, well, basically pointless.
Goodbye beetles. You gave the more newbish me a number of overconfident deaths with your sudden goliath-sized bites and your tunnels made certain levels anything but boring. RIP.
6. Comment by Grisamentum
11/May/2015 at 22:18
Exciting Beetle: Boring Beetle with Berserk Other
7. Comment by newbestfriend
12/May/2015 at 06:35
goliath beetles =[ !!!!
8. Comment by PleasingFungus
12/May/2015 at 21:22
@15Runes: Some mechanics, like movement & melee, treated diagonals equal to orthogonals; some (LOS, spell range, etc) treated them differently, in a sort of weird and fuzzy way. This caused a number of weird & undesirable effects – ref. https://github.com/crawl/crawl/commit/44cf67ff301 .
Re: daevas, who knows? Maybe TSO just likes them more than you. (*They’ll* never betray him to follow another god, after all.) Maybe it’s a trial of your strength! Tough luck, but them’s the breaks.
9. Comment by Brickman
13/May/2015 at 00:59
How about giving Boring Beetles an acid spit (and bite, but not resistance)? Justification being they use the acid to tunnel. If poison spit plus constriction is enough to make Naga interesting for a whole branch, acid spit plus digging can definitely justify one beetle.
Also, an air-themed beetle-type with innate reflection (like the shield brand, probably with a nearly perfect block chance against ranged attacks only) would be pretty cool, especially if you also give it immunity to polearms reaching attacks. Maybe it even gives reflection to allies like the torpor snail and casts Control Winds to disperse clouds.
Or an ice or negative-energy themed slow-monster that is so unnaturally cold/unliving that it causes damage every turn it’s in LOS, proportional to how close it is.
A beetle with blink close would also be a fun one (as long as it doesn’t appear on its own–make it come in packs, and not in lair since it’s too open). And I like the berserk-others beetle someone mentioned above (or possibly just a might-others beetle, so they don’t step on the moth of wrath’s wingtips).
10. Comment by 15RunesOrBust
13/May/2015 at 06:39
As far as monsters who lack anything interesting about them, have quokkas (really, a basic rat by another name) been mentioned for consideration?
@Fungus: Thanks for the reference, I’m on board with it now.
Re: daevas, you mean that another part of the trial of strength is wiping out that entire holy plane of Pan with the daevas that TSO likes more than me? He certainly doesn’t say anything about me killing them, after all…
11. Comment by amethyst_igor
13/May/2015 at 13:44
Change for the sake of change? Removing stuff isn’t exciting. Adding new stuff is. Baby alligators, mummy curses and boring beetles aren’t crucial but add a little bit of color to the crawl world. It would be nice to add more baby monsters, boring beetles, and special effects like mummy curse rather than taking same away.
12. Comment by FatBoy
14/May/2015 at 07:25
Exciting Beetle: “Jumping” (like raiju) penetrating beetle attacking after few turns of charging. Additional bouncing and ricochet would be exciting!
13. Comment by CrawlMe
14/May/2015 at 07:28
@15Runes: you think that’s bad? Guess you’ve never watched a fire giant walk/swim through deep water. How does THAT happen?
14. Comment by Anon
14/May/2015 at 17:50
I hate to be “that guy”, but I fail to see what problem there was in being able to strategically position yourself to improve spellcasting, stabbing, etc.
15. Comment by PleasingFungus
16/May/2015 at 19:19
I don’t think you hate being ‘that guy’ at all.
16. Comment by Brickman
16/May/2015 at 20:13
On the topic of mummies: I think the idea behind “punishment when you kill them” was fine, the only reason it didn’t work well was that the curse hurts your permanent resources (you need to remove a curse, and if you don’t have remove curse id’d yet you could be in big trouble). Which meant people went to huge lengths to avoid it.
So here’s a thought: Instead of removing them, replace the curse with light draining! That’s always felt, whether there’s other enemies around or not, but is never felt too harshly and is not a permanent cost. Unless you’re undead, and letting them resist is fine, or you have multiple levels of resistance which implies you are so far in the game that normal mummies really shouldn’t matter.
I know I, for one, wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid a light drain like I would a cursed item, unless it was very early in the game (early enough that they’re not just popcorn so their curse should matter).
17. Comment by Pash
20/May/2015 at 08:10
Well, better call mummies ‘boring mummies’ to fill the current lack of boring monsters :P
Joking aside, from permanently cursing items to removing the curse thing from mummies is a bit harsh. @Brickman I don’t think light draining is the right replacement, there are already enough monsters that drain and it wouldn’t be that much more flavourful. What I thought was to implement a new, temporary curse, that goes off with XP just like draining does. So you would be stuck with some equipment for some time, but if you don’t want to use / don’t have any scroll left, you just have to kill some monsters and the curse is lifted.