You hear the tinkle of a tiny bell. The trunk updates and a butterfly come into view!

Hello crawlers! Welcome to the last trunk update of the 0.29 cycle. We’ll be branching off the 0.29 beta branch and rolling it out to the servers soon, in anticipation of an upcoming release and tournament starting Friday, August 26, 2022, at 8:00pm UTC. Watch this space for the tournament website soon!

As we’ve been in feature freeze for part of the time since the last update post there’s not much to report, but here’s the latest on what will round out the version. Expect to see a few more new vaults and tweaks before the beta, and don’t hesitate to report any bugs you’ve noticed. Community contributor nlavsky has continued the stream of bug fixes; riverfiend did a deep dive in god wraths and did a lot of sanity checks, big thanks to them both! Here are the rest of the changes:

• A new scroll of butterflies summons some insectoid cover, alternating in a set with the scroll of fog
• Sastrei has been hard at work drawing a slew of new tiles
• Some spell balance tweaks:
• Irradiate now applies more contamination
• Flame wave and sticky flame do more damage
• Sandblast is more accurate
• Frozen Ramparts and Ozocubu’s Refrigeration now check AC.
• Ozocubu’s Refigeration no longer applies -Potion, does more damage, but significantly reduced damage to monsters adjacent to each other (they huddle for warmth, cute!).
• Arcane Markspersons starting sling is now +1, and they trade the scroll of vulnerability for a scroll of poison.
• The roll attack of Palentonga is now quieter, and they gain +2 strength.
• A lot of behind-the-scenes work in key code handling and UI menus has been done by advil; the work has payed dividends in making new menu shortcut features easy to implement, visible in the use an item menu (toggle between wear/takeoff with !). Look forward to more of this in the next version.

Along with these gameplay changes have been a host of bug fixes as we get the next version ready for launch. Get amped for the tournament, and until next time, happy crawling!

The butterfly can only feel hate for you!

The trunk updates twirl on the spot.

Hello crawlers, and welcome to the latest trunk updates! It’s a hot summer here in Gehenna, where the devil’s team is toiling away. Before we dive into the latest diabolical ways to die, mark your calendars. The tentative dates for the 0.29 release tournament are 26 August 2022 to 11 September. Watch this space for more information as the 0.29 development cycle winds down and we ready the new version for release.

We’ve got a big trunk update for you. Since last time we’ve added community contributions from nlavsky, robertxgray, Goratrix, Zhang Joke, Cebolla Sunbeam, chequers, perryprog, amcnicky, nikheizen, Brian Power, Aliscans, David Damerell as well as welcomed first-time contributors 4Hooves2Appendages, catern, Sentei, Reono, ruxi, and Rosstin Murphy. Some of these are bug fixes, grammar tweaks, quotations and dialog, and vaults, the little stuff that all together gives crawl its polish, but there are also some bigger-ticket items in the round up. If you’re interested in helping out with the effort to make crawl, click here for more information!

With that said, let’s dive into what’s been shaking in trunk.

First up, a new monster: the starflower, contributed by Cebolla Sunbeam. A stationary plant/tentacle hybrid monster with harpoon shot, reach 3 distortion melee, reach 2 melee, and an additional distortion melee attack. Meant as a vault-placed monster for abyssal vaults, guarding an exit or a rune or what have you, as a threat that’s dangerous to be close to, but can be neutralized if the harpoon shot can be blocked or avoided somehow.

Sentei adjusted the -Scroll and -Potion mutations. They are now 2-tier mutations in the regular bad mutation pool. The Ru sacrifice corresponds to the 2nd tier. Follwing up on Senti’s work, teleportits and berserkitis are also now two tiers.

nikheizen sent us a design to reflavour and re-mechanic gnoll shamen, turning them into gnoll bouda. They have a new spell set: Weakening Gaze, Hunting Call (like battlecry but gives swiftness instead of might), and heal other. The name bouda is a nod to the bouda of Northeast African folklore: shapeshifters that turn into jackals. They have the power of the Evil Eye which curses others with spectacular misfortune.

Temples are adjusted to place six to twenty-one altars, with a distribution that lightly favors the center of that range. On a one percent chance, a rare temple is selected instead. Rare temples are to Lugonu, Jiyva, or Ignis, or have a particularly extreme number of altars. Designing a Temple map is a great way to start contributing: there’s a particular need for Temples that support 7-8, 11, 17, 19, or 20 altars. Read more about map making for crawl here!

Support for item reskins has been added. Crazy Yiuf’s has his hammers once more. Sigmund and Reapers’ scythes are now reskinned halberds (so you can actually use them if you want, instead of trap items), and all scythes except unrand scythes are removed.

The Bows, Crossbows, and Slings skills are combined into a single Ranged Combat skill. Fustibali are removed. Hunting slings are renamed to slings. Launcher stats and spawn rates and locations are adjusted to give the ranged skill greater strategic depth.

Continuing to build on the item rotation concept, there is a new item: wand of roots, appears in item rotation with iceblast. Roots fires a 3×3 fireball-sized effect which constricts its victims (like BVC), with a duration scaling with wand power.

And a grab bag of slightly smaller changes:

• a new silent ossuary map
• Jiyva altars now place 2/3rds of the time at the entrance to Slime
• Hex miscasts now only slow the player, instead of also cancelling effects
• Lair now 5 floors
• Ijyb’s wand power is nerfed.

That’s all for now. Expect the changes to slow down as we arrive into feature freeze in August and get ready for the release. Until next time, happy crawling!

Which is more difficult, to awaken one who sleeps or to awaken one who, awake, dreams that he is awake?

Kikubaaqudgha calls the trunk updates from the earth!

Hello crawlers, and welcome back to Trunk Updates. While I’ve been away in a far corner of Pandemonium, my fellow devils have slacked off and left this space blank! Well, not slacked exactly, because they’ve been hard at work in Tar:7, as the length of this post portends. There have been several big moves, in the direction of item sets, a necromancy overhaul, and a new species, as well as balance adjustments following the opportunity attacks change and of course a wild grab bag of other changes. Before we dive into those, let’s mention community contributions since we last wrote: dilly sent in several new guarded unrand vaults, sdynet tweaked the rings of the Octopus King, and Aliscans, chequers, nlavsky, perryprog, and spicyCebolla each sent in various fixes and adjustments. I know there’s a big backlog of pull requests on the GitHub right now, but with luck we’ll bring in a bunch more new community work in the next month. Until then, let’s look at the rest of the changes!

Item sets

In an effort to increase run-to-run variation, experiment with new interesting item effects, while not increasing item pressure, the new notion of an item set is introduced. Only one type of item from a set can generate normally in a given game (though certain special situations, like rare vaults or shops, or perhaps a forgotten god, might bend this rule). Currently there are two item sets:

• The hex wand set: alternating between Paralysis and Charming.
• The bolt wand set: alternating between Acid, and two new wands: Light and quicksilver.
• wands of light fire a bolt of blinding light, checking AC and EV but no resists. The beam blinds what it hits, and deals  damage identical to an acid wand.
• wands of quicksilver fires a quicksilver bolt, dispelling the magical effects of targets it hits. Does slightly more damage than acid.

Watch this space for future exciting item sets!

Corpseless necromancy

As foreshadowed in the last post, hellmonk and PleasingFungus have been hard at work on overhauling Necromancy to not use corpses directly, as well as make Necromancy less awkward to use and give Kikubaaqudagh some bone polish. Their efforts have paid off, and crawl’s Necromantic magic now deals directly in the shadow between life and death, instead of meddling with the long-dead.

• Kikubaaqudgha is buffed:
• The pain brand can be applied to ranged weapons.
• Torment no longer requires a corpse sacrifice.
• Corpse Delivery is removed and replaced with Unearth Wretches, which summons some paralysed, 1 HP, 0 will monsters that die in a few turns, to use Necromancy spells on.
• Animate Dead now gives a duration, and for the duration killed monsters with corpses have a power-dependent chance to become zombies. The zombies are permanent as long as the player is on the level, and are destroyed by a subsequent cast of Animate Dead.
• Simulacrum is now a smite-targeted spell that gives an irresistable status. Monsters that die with this status spawn a power-dependent number of simulacra.
• Death Channel cannot be re-cast while active.
• Corpse Rot is now Level 4 Necromancy/Poison/Air. When cast it produces miasma for each corpse-producing monster killed in sight, scaling with power.
• New Spell: Necrotize (L1 Necromancy). Necrotize deals damage identically to the old Pain spell, but additionally gives the monster a short-lived status that causes it to animate as a skeleton on death (if it has a skeleton). It replaces Animate Skeleton and Pain in all player usable places.
• The spells Animate Skeleton, Pain, and Excruciating Wounds are removed.

Meteorae

The roiling success of hellmonk’s April fools Mayflytaurs’s mechanic comes back in a modified form. Welcome Meteorae!

Meteorae have an exciting variety of bonuses – great attributes and aptitudes across the board, passive mapping, and exploration healing, regaining HP and MP when viewing new territory. In exchange, they have one big downside: instead of getting 6,000 turns of Zot clock for each floor, they get 600! Meteorae are humanoid beings. (In the night sky, they look like dots because they’re very far up.) Hat tip to Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. They also glow in the dark, with permanent backlit status (not halo!), that they can’t escape by transmuting (Dithmenos can hide them, though!).

Along with their introduction comes a softening of the Zot clock, a slight move away from “instant death”. The Zot clock now applies very heavy draining the first time it trips, and gives the player an additional set of turns. Only at very low max HP will it outright kill the player.

Balance adjustments

The introduction of attacks of opportunity was a significant shift, and there have been several follow up changes to adjust balance while keeping the tighter tactics they introduce.

• Some early game monsters are nerfed a bit in terms of base damage.
• Consumable generation is increased.
• Monsters slower than the player don’t get opportunity attacks.
• The maximum duration of paralysis a monster can inflict is reduced to 5 turns.
• Dungeon shafts attempt to send the player to a location outside of LOS of monsters.
• Using all un-explored stairs and hatches is now fast.

The rest

Of course, this wouldn’t be a trunk updates post without a potpourri of other assorted changes. First of all, advil has done a host of behind the scenes work, improving the shopping menu, the plumbing of various bits of UI and save handling. And of course, Sastreii’s artistic endeavors continue to beautify the dungeon as well as clarify UI elements: you might have noticed the flashy new status icons for various status effects that are applied to monsters. Read on for the rest:

• Timed hell effects no longer apply on a timer, and instead have a chance to apply on each level entry.
• Hunter‘s starting dexterity is increased.
• Positive stat mutations now give +4 to the primary stat and -1 to the other two.
• Formicids’ base dexterity is increased by 3.
• Formicids  can now wield giant (spiked) clubs.
• Demonspawn demonic touch damage is doubled.
• Uskayaw grants piety for ally damage.
• Lugonu’s Bend Space is adjusted. It no longer does damage, and makes a better effort to blink monsters away from the destination.
• Stones always mulch when thrown.
• Shadow dragon scales AC increased
• Weapon descriptions now display a “damage rating“, describing the contributions to weapon damage from various sources.
• New item: scroll of poison. When read the scroll of poison fills every unoccupied space on the screen with poison clouds for 10-20 turns.
• +MP items remove MP when they are taken off.
• New unrand: the +8 trishula “Condemnation” {holy, Anguish Fly rN+}. Inflicts 4-8 turns of the Anguish status on targets it hits.
• New unrand: the +3 mountain boots {rDislodge, rC+}. Prevent the player from being involuntarily moved by physical means (trampling, shafts, tentacles, etc.).
• The amulet of Vitality now gives two pips each of Regen and RegenMP, and is now evil (Borgnjor is said to have made or used it or been involved in it somehow).
• Scrolls of holy word are removed
• Animated Armour now flies.
• Sandblast no longer uses stones as ammo. Instead it takes twice as long to cast as a normal spell, and has its range increased by one.
• Airstrike’s bonus from empty space is doubled.
• Finally, Deep Dwarves are removed.

Wow! It’s been a few months since we last wrote and a lot has happened. Still more is on the horizon, though through the haze what exactly remains as mercurial as a quicksilver elemental. So, until next time, happy crawling!

Whisper “Farewell” when you leave, Dimli…

The trunk updates gesture, and weapons take to the air!

Hello crawlers, and welcome to the first trunk update post of the 0.29 development cycle. The dust has settled from the 0.28 tournament, and a bug fix release for 0.28 will appear soon. Meanwhile, trunk development has taken off as various members of the team and the community get to work on new exciting projects. First off we have several new vaults by community contributors DreamDust, and spicyCebolla, as well as tweaks, fixes, and text from Antern, chequers, CipHuk, Elliot Bernstein, Diego Essaya, Implojin, perryprog, and robertxgray. Many thanks to the community contributors that keep crawl alive and healthy! Now let’s turn to the gameplay changes since 0.28.

Launcher ammo is removed

You read that correctly: player launchers now have unlimited ammo. Along with this are changes and tweaks to bring balance in this new, free firing world:

• ranged weapons have had their stats adjusted downward
• the Hunter background no longer starts with a short sword and no longer has a throwing option
• Kobolds now have +3 crossbows aptitude
• Armour penalties apply to ranged weapon attack delay
• Launcher damage scales with dex instead of str
• Spriggans can no longer wield triple crossbows, and fustibali are 2-handed.

Several new Uniques stalk the dungeon

• Parghit the Mighty. Following the example of Maggie/Margery, Parghit is an “alt-timeline” version of Pargi. Parghit appears in late Depths, Zot, Crypt and Tomb, and sports high-enchantment golden dragon scales (with a 1% chance of wearing the Dragon King) and an astonishing 27 HP regenerated per turn. He’s definitely killable, but best not underestimated.
• Josephina the Ice-Lich. As one more “alt-timeline” unique, Josephina is an upgraded version of Josephine. She appears in late Vaults, Depths, Crypt, Tomb, and Zot, and borrows Wendigo Seracfall (turning simulacrula into 3d33 bombs) to add to her classic Ghostly Fireball. She comes with a guaranteed randart ring of ice.
• Amaemon the Diabolical Poisoner. Crawl’s first demonspawn unique, appearing in mid-D, early Lair and Orc:1. Alongside his orange demon companion, Amaemon summons scorpions (the classic returns!) and casts Concentrate Venom, upgrading his allies’ poison into curare. To encourage players to try to kill him, he wields a demon whip of venom, with 1% chance of the unique Snakebite.
• Lodul the Thundrous. Lodul is an ironbound thunderhulk who’s been sent to patrol outside the Vaults, in late D. He’s got a weaker version of Call Down Lightning and a big band of ogres and two-headed ogres to help him keep distance from the player. Defensively, he looks a lot like Erolcha.
• Vv the Exile. Vv is a combination of ironbound frosthearts (Creeping Frost) and Salamander Tyrants (Eruption/Pyroclastic Surge), appearing in Depths, Zot, Crypt, and Tomb. She’s themed as a new species, the Stoneborn, sentient earth elementals. She also has strong defenses and both flaming and cold melee.
• Zenata, Seeker of Sheza. Zenata is another late-game unique (appearing in Depths, Zot &c), borrowing a bit from the Desolation of Salt and putting a twist on it. She’s taken the ragged hierophants’ “Resonance Strike”, which is like airstrike that gets bonus damage from adjacent constructs instead of from open spaces, and uses it in conjuction with a new “Sheza’s Dance” spell, which summons 2-4 dancing weapons. She comes with a high-tier weapon with some plusses already on it.

Monster energy and attacks of opportunity

A major mechanical change has landed in trunk. “Random energy” was introduced long ago in Stone Soup’s history as an attempt at deterring tedious-but-optimal levels of pillar dancing and luring, while permitting shorter trips. It has not been successful in that role, and additionally offered a “get out of jail free-ish” card in many fights against certain monsters. The spirit that motivated it also motivated previous devteam attempts to meet the problem with a better solution, such as the dynamic-monsters experimental during the 0.17 cycle. This time around we’re tinkering with the mechanic again, in the following form:

• Monster move energy is no longer randomized.
• Monsters adjacent to the player gain a 1/3 chance to gain a free* attack if the player moves away from them. Wu Jian martial attacks & rampaging give immunity, and monsters that don’t move fast enough to follow you can’t attack. *Terms and conditions apply: the monster must have sufficient energy to be able to move the next turn (monsters slower than the player don’t get this chance on the turn they fall behind), and monsters that attack slowly don’t get a full refund on the energy used for the attack, only the amount of a normal turn.
• Ogres, 2-headed Ogres, Ogre magi, and Thunderhulks attack more slowly in melee.
• Early D spawns are nerfed a bit, with top killers less common and Harold moved later.

In addition to the direct tuning changes above, backgrounds have their starting kits improved a bit with extra consumables, to increase tactical options in the very early game. See the next section.

Expanded starting kits

Many backgrounds get improved starting kits with a new consumable or two to help with the very earliest moments of the game when tactical options are limited.

• All ‘mages’ (‘pure casters’) start with a potion of magic.
• Gladiators get a throwing weapon (one); a javelin, large rock, or boomerang.
• Monks get a potion of ambrosia.
• Hunters get a scroll of immolation.
• Brigands get an additional poisoned & curare dart.
• Artificers trade their chesspiece for nine charges of iceblast.
• Wanderers get an additional random potion or scroll.
• Abyssal Knights start at 60 piety (just over 2*) instead of 38 (just over 1*). This should allow them to use Bend Space if needed.
• Chaos Knights get Artificer’s xom chesspiece.
• Transmuters get a potion of lignification.
• Warpers get more boomerangs of dispersal.
• Arkane Markspersons get a scroll of vulnerability.
• Enchanters get another potion of invisibility.

Everything else

Along with big-ticket changes there’s the usual froth and fizz of trunk development, with little tweaks and small features all over.

• Unrand tweaks:
• the Glaive of the Guard is reduced to +5
• the arbalest “Dammnation” is reduced to firing 2d14 explosions
• Gyre & Gimble are now +12
• the Woodcutter’s axe is now a battleaxe
• Long and short blade damage scales with Dexterity instead of Strength.
• Merfolk’s polearms aptitude is reduced to +3, with long blades increased to +2
• Mummy necromancy enhancers now appear at XL 3 and 13
• Most zombies and skeletons are removed from Dungeon generation.

That’s all for now! The team is still getting organized around 0.29 priorities, so through the haze of Gehenna it’s hard to make out what’s coming. One big project is an overhaul of Necromancy, particularly the corpse exploitation spells; it’s still in the early phases so keep an eye out to see what sort of dark abomination comes out of the work. Until next time, happy crawling!

The trunk updates hit you as you move away! Ouch! That really hurt!!! You die…

Hello crawlers! We’ve finalized the schedule for the 0.28 tournament, which will run from Friday February 4th, 8pm UTC to Sunday February 20th, 8pm UTC. Please bookmark the official 0.28 tournament page and use this page to track your progress throughout the tournament. We’ll continue to update this page with any rules changes. In coming days you may see summaries of test data in the “Overview” page taken from recent 0.28 beta games. Don’t worry, we’ll reset everything before the tournament starts.

We’re in the process of finalizing the 0.28 release which will appear in the next couple of days, and 0.28 is being rolled out to our online servers.

The trunk updates are haunted by guilt!

Hello crawlers, and welcome to the first trunk update of the new year! As hinted in the previous update, the 0.28 development cycle is nearing a close, and with that we are pleased to announce a tentative tournament start date of Friday, February 4, 2022, at 20:00 UTC for the sixteen day 0.28 Release tournament. We are chilling trunk into a feature freeze and will be focusing on bug fixes and balance in the coming three weeks, and plan to release 0.28 before the start of the tournament. More details about the tournament, including a tournament website and rules changes, will be available here soon!

With that announced, let’s dive into the 215 commits that have arrived in trunk since the start of the year (more or less). These commits included community contributions from Aliscans, DreamDust, Zhang Kai, perryprog, nlavsky, Goratrix, and a new rare Temple layout featuring Ignis by pdpol. In total, in these commits were 72 bug fixes spread among GitHub issues, Mantis issues, reports directly to the devteam, and community contributions to fix a bug the fixer noticed. Along side the polish and gameplay balance, UI improvements are always something we’re happy to include, and team member advil has done extensive work to make arrow keys and menu help more consistently available across the UI.

The last “big ticket” block of changes to land was to the Abyss, let’s open with that suite of changes:

• Random items no longer generate in the abyss.
• Kills in the abyss grant no reward (experience and piety), though Uskayaw still rewards damage and Yred still grants zombies.
• Exploring no longer grants piety in the abyss.
• The chance of plunging deeper into the abyss on teleport is increased.
• Wretched stars only apply a single temporary mutation per use of corrupting pulse, and use it less often.
• The abyssal rune, staircases, and exits are more common.
• On collecting the abyssal rune, the player gains two potions of experience worth of experience.

With two-hundred commits there’s still a lot of churn, and although at this stage we’re much more focused on balance, there’s also a new goody or two. Let’s dive in!

• New spell: Anguish (L4 Hex/Necromancy). Gives monsters in sight that fail a Will check the anguished status. Whenever an anguished monster deals damage it also takes the same amount of damage.
• Shield penalties now work more like armour skill; the penalty scales down as skill is increased from 0 up to 27, based on a shield encumbrance rating and species factor. Skill 27 is required to completely remove the penalty, regardless of size.
• Spider is no longer quiet, and completely open level layouts are much rarer
• Ghost moths toned down in melee
• orbs of mayhem are now disliekd by Cheibriados, and energy disliked by Trog
• the robe of Misfortune loses its unequip penalties
• Ashenzari’s skill boost is turned down
• Wendigo’s seracfall damage is reduced
• To-hit penalties from armour and shields are removed
• Aux attack chance and damage is now based on XL instead of attribute for all aux attacks.
• Offhand punch chance now starts at 5% chance and scales with unarmed combat skill to 50% at max skill.
• Dragon form gets 2 extra levels of fangs.
• The UI for interacting with frenzied monsters is greatly improved.
• The player gets XP for kills by and of frenzied monsters.
• Jiyva no longer grants piety for exploring the slime pits
• The poison dart generation rate is dropped
• Assorted tweaks to Spider monster band mixes and sizes

Well, that’s all for now! If you’re interested in helping in the release effort, drop us a line in #crawl-dev on libera.chat, check out the open issues on GitHub, or just keep playing and discussing trunk as the balance and tuning come in.

On the horizon, well, I opened with it. There’s the 0.28 Release and Tournament! The team is going to be focusing on getting release-ready in the next 3 weeks. Until next time, happy crawling!

The trunk update hits you! The trunk update is wracked by anguish!!! The trunk update dies!

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:

The trunk updates begin to smolder around you…

Hello crawlers, and welcome to the first trunk update of the 0.28 cycle. Coming fresh out of the gate are a new god Ignis and accompanying zealot background Cinder Acolyte, plus a big new feature for Okawaru and freedom from the summon XP penalty. On top of all that, a new unique Mlioglotl stalks the dungeon. Mlioglotl unique horror with the power to corrupt the level, changing terrain and summoning other abyssal horrors, as well as cause fear. He places in the S-branches and rarely in the Abyssal lair end. Thanks to community contributor amcnicky for the nightmares. Watch out!

Ignis, the Dying Flame

Ignis is a new god who does not appear in the temple. Indeed, altars to Ignis do not place in the regular dungeon at all! Ignis worship can only begin at character creation or from a faded altar. Ignis is dying, and as their last worshipper you are given all remaining power right from the get go.

• Ignis worshippers start at 5* piety (6* if a monk joining from a faded altar).
• Ignis has no piety gain and no piety decay.
• Once abandoned and mollified, Ignis dies and can never be worshipped again.
• Ignis grants the following abilities:
• 0*: Passive rF+
• 1*: Active ‘Sea of Flames’ ability. Creates smoldering embers (like Conjure Flame) on every empty square in LOS. They ignite after the next player turn unless snuffed out by something occupying the cell.
• 1*: Active ‘Foxfire Swarm’ ability. Conjures Foxfire on every open square in radus 2 around the player.
• 2*: Active ‘Rising Flame’ ability. Gives the player the “Rise” status, after 2-4 turns the player rockets through the ceiling and up one floor.

The main way to worship Ignis is by starting as a Cinder Acolyte. Cinder Acolytes are a new background and start worshipping Ignis, along with: a 7/5/0 stat split, a robe, a -1 flame branded weapon of their choice, and the spell foxfire memorized.

Okawaru, god of (single) Combat

In the 0.27 cycle Okawaru gave up on their old honorable ally conduct. That was the beginning of a shift in their point of view on allies, and the god of combat now wants to see you prove yourself a worthy hero alone!

• Okawaru now forbids all allies, as if you had sacrificed love under Ru.
• And gains a new 5* ability Duel. The Duel ability smite-targets a single non-summoned enemy in LOS (which must be threat level “tough” or higher), and transports them and the player to an Arena portal vault. Winning the duel opens a gate to return from the portal vault, and the player will be forcibly teleported back after a short duration.
• Finesse is moved to 4*.

Summoning Changes

For a long time summons have applied an XP penalty, stealing up to half of the XP reward from each kill. This was used as a balance tool, because allies in crawl are very powerful. However, over the past many versions a lot of the sources of ally power (summons attacking out of LOS, sources of permanent, very long lived, or cheap and powerful allies) have been removed. Summoning spells were still extremely powerful, owing to the large number of creatures that could be brought to bear on a problem. In trunk summons and allies are changed in the following way, to enable removing the XP penalty.

• Summon caps are reduced:
• Summon Small Mammal, Summon Hydra, and Monstrous Menagerie are capped at 2.
• Haunt is capped at 8.
• Summon Horrible Things and Dragon’s Call keep their old summon caps.
• All other summon spells are capped at 1.
• Summon-capped summons all time out uniformly and disappear after 10 auts.
• Shadow Creatures is made a monster only spell.
• The XP penalty is removed from all temporary allies.
• Permanent allies from Beogh and Yredelemnul currently retain the XP penalty, with a hope to change their design in the future in a way that allows us to fully remove the XP penalty.

And all the rest

Of course, in addition to big projects there are myriad tweaks, adjustments, and smaller features in trunk. Here’s the latest

•  Ziggurats no longer require a rune of zot to enter.
• The Enchanter background no longer starts with the Corona spell, and instead starts with a potion of invisibility.
• The evolution mutation is revised. Once per XL’s worth of experience it activates, providing a good mutation. Every two activations it reduces its level by one.
• New bad mutation: devolution. Mechanically similar to evolution but dispenses bad mutations and activates once every 1/4th of an XL.
• Strength 0‘s regeneration reduction is replaced with -Regen in monster LOS.
• Intelligence 0‘s 4/5 chance to fail scroll reading is replaced with -Scroll.
• The staff of Battle now triggers the battlesphere on melee hit (in addition to the usual spell trigger).
• All shields now only use Dex for stat scaling.
• The robe of Clouds‘ thunder cloud ability is now passive, placing storm clouds on enemies within range 2 each turn.
• Riposte is removed from long blades and base damage is increased.
• Demonspawn warmongers’ Sap Magic effect now causes a short term -Cast after casting a spell.
• Lesser Beckoning’s power cap is reduced to 100 and range reduced to 5.

What’s on the horizon

That’s all for now, crawlers, but there’s a lot cooking down here in Dis:7. There is a major refresh of the hells underway, discuss play testing feedback on reddit or the tavern! Hellmonk has some hellish new wizlabs nearing completion. PleasingFungus has been at work in his own wizard laboratory and has two new spell designs that might make it to trunk soon. Beyond that, who can say what malicious whims will flit through the devteam’s head. So until next time, happy crawling!

With a burst of heat and light, the trunk updates rocket away!

You open the Incunabulum of Trunk Updates and begin reading…

Hello crawlers! Coming hot on the heels of our previous trunk update we’re back with more of the latest. Before we dive into changes, some exciting scheduling matters:

The 0.27 tournament is tentatively scheduled for July 30th-Aug 15th

As usual, watch this space for links to the tournament webpage, more information about scoring, etc.

While it has only been a week since our last little chat, almost 100 commits have landed in trunk. One significant area of change is to spellbooks, feedback on the feel of this change is most welcome and we look forward to reading your remarks on various crawl forums. With that said, on to the changes!

• Thanks to community contributor Aliscans, wizmode monster creation now has in-game help, for all your monster experimentation needs.
• Archmagi can now appear on randart robes.
• Several unrands have been adjusted:
• Damnation only consumes bolts and explodes on hit.
• the staff of Wucad-Mu has been buffed, refunding MP more often and including the refund even when it backfires.
• the Wrath of Trog is angrier: it now extends your berserk duration on kill (sometimes) and grants Rampage. Raarhrhrhghghghghgh!
• The post-berserk penalty no longer includes paralysis.
• Using Trog’s Berserk now has a piety-adjusted chance to fail.
• Salamander Tyrants, Rockslimes, and Quicksilver oozes have been added to Ziggurat monster sets.
• Several further enhancements to the quiver:
• Potions and scrolls can now be quivered for use.
• Autofight correctly supports “waiting spells” like searing ray.
• New options are available to customize the quiver order
• A new spell: Maxwell’s Capacitive Coupling (Level 8 Air). When cast, the player begins charging up. If the player waits (with ‘.’) and is not moved then after a bit of time (random and depending on spell power) the accumulated charge is discharged, vaporizing the nearest foe (nearest at the end of the spell, not when it is cast!). This might seem familiar, but I’ve got absolutely zero idea where you might have seen the mechanics before.
• Wereblood now only grants its healing for kills of adjacent monsters.
• Felids no longer get a stealth penalty from Blade Hands.
• Everyone else can improve their stealth with a new good mutation that dampens sounds.
• Spell book changes:
• Spellbooks are always identified
• Randart spellbooks have fewer spells
• Fixed spellbooks are split into smaller books of 2-4 spells each, and 30 new books are added to pick up the contents.
• Spellbooks generate more than twice as often to keep the number of spells generated about the same. Book rarity is now more closely tied to the spell level.
• Book pricing in shops is reworked
• Backgrounds that previously started with a spell book are unchanged, their starting spells are added directly to the spell library at game start.

That’s all for now. In the run up to the release and tournament, “feature freeze” is scheduled roughly around July 16 or 23. Before then expect to see many more exciting new vaults reach trunk, both from our new devteam members and from several community contributors; along with balance tweaks, bug fixes, and user interface improvements (including, hopefully, an item panel in the WebTiles UI). Until next time, happy crawling!

Weird images run through your mind. The Trunk Updates vapourize in an electric haze!

Welcome to Tudoco Ucre’s Tempting Trunk Update!

Hello crawlers, it has been a while since a post has appeared in this space. While your author has been inactive the rest of the team and the community have been working away in the depths of Gehenna to sift the most lethal ideas from the hellish magma.

First of all, a warm welcome to the two newest players for the Devil’s team: hellmonk–a long time community contributor, fork developer, and notorious memelord. nicolae–another long time community vaultsmith, with a special talent for shop vaults, whimsey, and good quotations. We’re happy to have both of them aboard the team.

Speaking of community contributors, since I last wrote from among the 285 commits to trunk we’ve seen

• A new splash screen by ArbitUHHH
• New tiles from Sastreii, including for demonic trees which inspired a new dungeon feature
• Tweaks and fixes from Goratrix, dilly, nlavsky, and DreamDust
• Specific mechanical input from engine and pubby

New and Improved Vaults and Environment

• Everyone’s favorite lair ending, the Jungle Book, has been overhauled to no longer be a Lua-trigger spoiler. There are still plenty of appearing monsters, brought back from the dead by necromancers that now appear.
• hellmonk has been on fire, adding three new Volcanoes: a smoke and steam themed map, a tribute to the Zot hot tub (beware the orb of fire), and an elven volcano full of pryromancers.
• To cool off, he then added a slime themed new Ice Cave.
• Both hellmonk and nicolae have been at work improving Snake vaults; the first with a new rune vault, and the second with a wide variety of thematic vaults.
• Many old guarded unrand vaults have been tweaked and adjusted, as well as a slew of new ones.
• While not exactly a vault: demonic trees now appear in the Abyss, Pan, and themed vaults. They can be awakened like normal trees but when burned produce a cloud of chaos instead of a forest fire.
• Early out of depth monsters have a shallower maximum depth.

Gods

• Hepliaklqana waits until you have shown enough devotion to earn 1* of piety to bring your ancestor out of the mists of memory (and kindly also waits to impose the HP penalty).
• Sacrifice Experience costs more XP now: the experience cost of skills is calculated with your old XL value, which will have a much longer effect. The sacrifice can now be repeated up to three times.
• Sacrifice words and sacrifice drink grant bonus piety when both are taken (Mummies get the bonus just for sacrificing words.)
• Other sacrifice piety values have been tweaked and rebalanced in various directions.
• Okawaru no longer cares if you slaughter your allies.
• Kikubaaqudgha now gifts spells directly into your library; the capstone grants all of the spells of the Necronomicon and also Haunt once more.

Character

• Djinni aptitudes are adjusted (XP is increased from 0 to +1 and spellcasting reduced from -2 to -3).
• Unbreathing is no longer a mechanic distinct from rPois or holiness type (this applies also to monsters).
• Palentonga can now silence their rolls.
• Wisp form no longer has blinkitis.
• The guaranteed damage reduction mechanic is changed. Instead of being a secret percentage associated with particular armour items, it is an internal calculation derived from AC from any source. For the curious you can read the details, but to quote the LearnDB “If you’re making equipment decisions based on this, please reconsider.”

Spells

• The amulet of the Air loses EV+5 and becomes an Air magic enhancer.
• Monster Bind Souls now always creates a simulacrum when the targeted monster dies.
• Air Elementals lose their twisters, and gain Stunning Burst which inflicts 1 turn of paralysis and is resistible with rElec, stasis, or by dodging the attack (but not Will).
• Ice form‘s AC scaling with power is buffed.
• New spell: Storm Form Level 7 Air/Transmutations. Transforms the caster into a storm, melding all non-jewellery, and granting power-scaling electric cleaving melee, power-scaling defenses, and an activated blinkbolt ability.
• Wereblood grants a small amount of healing on each kill.
• Blade Hands is again level 5.
• Freezing Cloud is now level 5.
• Tornado is re-named and re-flavoured to Polar Vortex Level 9 Ice; the damage flavour is changed to icicle damage and increased.
• Chain Lightning is increased to Level 9 Conjurations/Air, and has its mechanics simplified to be easier to reason about (but still a bit more complicated than a bullet point).
• Poisonous Vapours no longer creates a cloud as part of its mechanical function.
• Absolute Zero and Hydra Form are removed.

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.

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.

As you read the scroll of trunk update it crumbles to dust…

Hello crawlers and welcome to the first trunk updates post of the 0.27 cycle. Things have commenced with a shebang! and there are a lot of new changes to report on. This update will have some thematic organisation to highlight several big sets of changes: curse removal, stat changes, monster spellbooks, adjusted demonspawn facets, and two new spells. There are of course all sorts of tweaks, shifts, changes, and new spells. Read on for more!

Curse Removal

The system of cursed items is no-more, courtesy of PleasingFungus who finally found the collective remove curse scroll and read it for all of us. Practically, this means the following:

• All items that generate are uncursed
• No mundane negative-plus items generate on the floor (though some special shops still place them)
• Scrolls of remove curse, rings of attention and teleportation, and amulets of innacuracy are removed.
• Ashenzari is the only source of curses. In current trunk, Ash uses identify scrolls instead; however this is a place-holder and a larger revision to Ashenzari is currently in-progress but not yet in trunk.
• The Scythe of Curses and Obsidian axe now have *Drain instead of *Curse; the necklace of Bloodlust no longer has a swap penalty.

Stat changes

Several tweaks to the stat system (including the impact of weapon stats) have arrived, to simplify the impact of base stats and remove hidden breakpoints and step-downs. Thanks to hellmonk and chequers for the submissions! Along with these changes are some adjustments to species stats.

• Dexterity and evasion no longer have hidden step-downs
• The percentage damage modifier for strength on weapon damage is derandomzied and simplified. 10 strength corresponds to 100% damage, and each point of strength above adds 2.5 percentage points to the modifier (points below 10 remove 2.5 percentage points).
• Demigod base stats are reduced to 9/10/9, and now gain 4 points of the stat of their choice every 3 levels. This will give players almost divine control over their stats.
• Gnolls base stats are reduced to 7/7/7.
• Spriggans lose one point of base dexterity and have their Dodging apt reduced to +3.

Monster Spellbooks

Monsters with multiple distinct spell books have had their spell sets combined into single sets. For a couple of monsters with multiple iconic sets, new monsters have been created to carry the torch. The full set of changes can be perused in the pull request, here are some of the highlights:

• Psyche has a new, more insane, spell set. She can cast Polymorph, Chain of Chaos (hi Xom!), Invisibility, and Cantrip.
• The named lords of the hells and pandemonium who summon demons now summon demons specific to their realm: Cerebov only summons fiery demons now, Ereshkigal only tzitzimimeh, and Dispater only hell sentinels.
• New monster: Dread Lich. Ancient liches now have an earth-conjurations spell book with LCS and Corrosive Bolt, but lich summoned demons are a classic. Enter the Dread Lich, with Summon Greater Demon, Paralyse, Invisibility, and Haste; appearing in the same places as ancient liches.
• Deep elf mages are removed, replaced with deep elf pyromancers (who have a fire-themed spell book) and deep elf zephyrmancers (with an air-themed spell book).

Adjusted Demonspawn Facets

Thanks to hellmonk for continued demonspawn improvement work! This latest round of mutation changes focused on the tier 2 facets, with the following adjustments and a new spellcasting-focused facet (combine with Big Brain “scales” for a truly demonic mage experience!).

• The mana link facet is re-ordered. The first rank increases MP Regen, the second rank provides guardian spirit, and the third the mana link.
• Foul stench generates miasma at every rank of the facet (scaling with rank) as well as miasma cloud immunity.
• The damage curve of spines is adjusted to be a bit better at high level.
• Ignite blood now ignites blood at every rank of the facet, with power scaling on rank.
• Demonic guardians are summoned when the player takes damage, and the tier of the guardian grows with level.
• The icemail facet shifts from pure AC to AC+SH; at rank 1 it grants a condensation shield for 4SH, with ranks 2 and 3 granting 4 AC of icy armour each.
• A new facet: malignant magic. Demonspawn with this facet attempt to paralyse foes in a radius equal to the rank of the facet whenever they cast a spell; at rank 3 this extends to include wand usage. The power of the paralysis depends on the level of the spell cast.

New Spells

PleasingFungus has developed two new spells aimed at generating new incentives to hybridise.

• Animate Armour. Level 4 Summoning/Earth magic. “Call forth the spirit of your armour, bringing forth a slow-moving ally that hits harder the heavier your armour is. Wham, pow! (Summon limit is 1, as with CCF.)”. Animate Armour appears in the book of Earth and the book of Dreams.
• Manifold Assault. Level 4 Translocations. Manifold Assault launches attacks with your melee weapon against 2-4 random enemies in LOS, depending on spellpower. Manifold Assault replaces Passage of Golubria in the book of Spatial Translocations, and appears in the book of the Warp (along with Passage of Golubria).

The rest of the changes

This has been an active month for trunk, and there is a lot more going on. Read on for the rest!

• Storm clouds no longer make noise; making Qazlal worship quieter at low piety.
• Regeneration is buffed; one pip of regen grants 1 HP per 10 auts (a normal turn). This is 2.5x as strong as it was before.
• Trolls and Vine Stalkers are adjusted slightly to compensate.
• Monsters with ranged weapons now have unlimited ammo. No more running that stone giant out of large rocks. (Except nets; infininetting gnolls are reserved for gnollcrawl.)
• Phantoms have less HP, and now blink the player with them when they blink from attacking.
• Big Kobolds are re-named Kobold Brigands and always spawn with darts (one third of the time curare, yikes!). Normal kobolds can no longer spawn with curare (though they can still pick it up from the ground, if you’re very unlucky!).
• Ranged targeting shows to-hit chance, and a monster’s to-hit chance can be seen in xv.
• Haunt moves from the Necronomicon to the Grand Grimoire
• Scarves of shadows no longer act as a spell de-enhancer
• Wands of disintegrate are now called wands of mindburst, and do not work on mindless creatures.
• Manuals no longer require an inventory slot; once picked up they boost skill aptitude until used up.
• Hats and Gloves can spawn with the stealth ego.
• Wands of random effects are de-spoiled, applying a random buff or debuff to the target (15% chance of a buff), with the list of effects visible in the description.
• Ozocubu’s armour and Frozen Ramparts now break on any player position change.
• Ozocubu’s Refridgeration is now level 7.
• Stone arrow damage is increased.
• Monstrous Menagerie no longer summons harpies.
• Summon Demon and Summon Greater Demon are removed as player spells.
• Gadget shops are removed.
• Rings of Stealth and Boots of Running are removed.

That’s all for right now! In addition to the Ashenzari changes, on the horizon are more demonspawn changes, refreshes of Vaults and Snake, and new vaults from returned vaultsmith nicolae—plus who knows what other twisted horrors we can dig out of the abyss. Until next time, happy crawling!