Unfortunately, CDO is no longer able to handle the load of WebTiles games and there has been a lot of lag recently. Everybody will be able to finish their games, but new character creation has been disabled – for now. I plan to migrate to a new server during this year (hopefully in time for the autumn tourney) and there may be the possibility to reactivate WebTiles then. DGL games will continue to work.

Anyone willing to host a WebTiles server, especially in Europe, please let us know in The Tavern. For now there are WebTiles servers available in the US.

Thank you all for participating!

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.11: “Arachnophobia” has been released! We proudly present the new Spider Nest branch. It is five levels deep, contains the gossamer rune of Zot, joins the Lair branch roulette, and is filled to the brim with spiders. And they are scary indeed: large groups of fast hard-hitting enemies in a fairly open layout that is riddled with webs. The melee spiders are backed up by slow but powerful orb spiders that try to keep their distance while weaving orbs of destruction. Almost all spiders were rebalanced to fit into a Lair branch, so they are generally much more powerful than before.

You can get 0.11 at our Downloads page, or see the How to play Online page for a list of available servers. There will be an official tournament to celebrate this release, but we’re waiting for the new CAO server before setting a date. As soon as more information is available a new announcement will be made.

One change that may cause problems for upgrading users, especially online players, is a slight change in the way the options file works: the default options file now consists only of commented out lines. If you modified your config and are reusing it for 0.11, which is done by default on the servers, you should comment out or delete all lines that you did not change from the default. This will ensure that you are not using any default values from older versions. You may also need to update your config to use the new syntax for various list options (such as message colours or travel stoppers), by ensuring you use “option += value” to append to the list instead of “option = value” (as in the future this will replace the list entirely instead of appending to it). Using the old syntax will cause an ingame message to be displayed, to remind players that the options format has changed. See the List Options section of the options guide for full details.

Some of 0.11′s major changes include:

• Places: With the addition of the Spider Nest, the Lair will now contain one of Swamp/Shoals and one of Snake/Spider. The Swamp has an improved layout with more compact levels. The Elven Halls are shortened to three floors. As always, there are many new vaults, including new branch endings and full-level vaults. The frequency of vaults has also been slightly increased. Upon escaping from the Abyss, you now land back where you came from, but with a few turns’ banishment immunity. A new Sprint map has been added: Ziggurat Sprint by st squeezes an entire Ziggurat into one floor, and contains appropriately ridiculous amounts of loot and monsters.
• Monsters: Fannar, an elven ice mage, and Arachne, a poisonous half-spider, join the ranks of Crawl’s unique monsters. The omniresistant Hell Sentinels replace Pit Fiends. Boulder beetles can now curl up and roll at you for heavy damage. Mimics can now constrict their foes, although early mimics are much weaker: their constriction does no damage, and they don’t resist elemental attacks. Monster constriction formulae have been changed to make it much easier to escape, but blink counts as two escape attempts now instead of always letting you get out. Equipment-using monsters can now wear rings and amulets and benefit from most of their effects.
• Items: Ammo enchantment has been removed, which greatly simplifies inventory management for those who use ranged weaponry. Weapon skill now fills the role of ammo enchantment, instead. You can now abort changing your armour instead of slowly getting nibbled to death by a rat while putting on your shiny new crystal plate armour. Most fixed artefacts now start out identified. Weapons are identified by having a certain amount of the corresponding skill instead of by whacking plants with them. Rods of smiting are replaced with lightning rods that let you shoot cones of lightning. You can adjust the width of the cone to either do heavy damage to single targets or quickly clear out hordes of popcorn.
• Gods: Okawaru now gives almost no piety for killing and sacrificing weak enemies, but gives much more for winning difficult fights. Nemelex worshippers can now earn the ability to use the top four cards in a deck at once, replacing the old “Mark Four” ability. Nemelex also gifts fewer decks of summoning, and various cards have been adjusted. Kikubaaqudgha gifts randomised necromancy spellbooks instead of the fixed ones. Xom now usually times his pranks to coincide with interesting situations.
• Interface: Several new options were added, including automatically dropping old chunks when burdened, and sacrificing corpses before autoexploring. The spell targeting interface has been greatly improved, showing the affected area for AoE spells and beam paths for bouncing lightning bolts. The ‘\’ known items menu lets you adjust your autopickup options while you play. The HUD now displays current gold and game time, so you can see in brackets how long your last action took. Local versions now include a scrollable highscore list that lets you easily open the morgue files of your most successful dead or victorious characters.
• Tiles: As always there are many beautiful new tiles for the dungeon, its inhabitants, and many items. These include special tall tiles for the unique lords of Pandemonium and the Hells, and a huge amount of new weapon tiles, including tiles for the different racial weapon variations.

There are a lot more changes, and as always the changelog lists all major ones. Many thanks to galefury for writing most of this post, and to all the contributors to Stone Soup. Have fun playing DCSS 0.11! Beware of the spiders!

As mentioned in MarvinPA’s announcement of the CAO downtime, a new public Crawl server is available: crawl.s-z.org, or CSZO for short.  The server, located in West Chester, Pennsylvania in the eastern United States, hosts both webtiles (https://crawl.s-z.org/) and console Crawl (ssh to crawl.s-z.org with username “crawl” and either the CAO key (putty version) or the password “crawlingtotheusa”).  CSZO runs trunk, 0.11, and 0.10, including sprint, zotdef, and the tutorial. Both trunk and stable versions are updated daily.

Games are shared between webtiles and ssh, and can furthermore be watched across interfaces (e.g. watch an ssh game in webtiles; chatting across interfaces doesn’t work that well for now, though).  You can even watch yourself in webtiles while playing ASCII, or vice versa, to get the best of both interfaces.

Ttyrecs and morgues are available for browsing at http://dobrazupa.org/ . Games and milestones are recorded by Sequell and reported in ##crawl on freenode by the new bot Sizzell; this also means that CSZO games will count for the upcoming tournament. Note that the user database is separate from CDO and CAO, so you will have to register an account for CSZO.

I plan to at some point publish the configurations, git branches, and instructions online to make it a little easier to set up a new server.  Eventually we’d like to make this all available as a Debian package or something similar, but first things first :)

The US Crawl server, crawl.akrasiac.org, is currently down for repairs. It will return (with upgraded hardware!) in September.

In the meantime, you can get your fix here on CDO or play on the new US-based server at crawl.s-z.org - for console use SSH (port 22, username crawl, OpenSSH key here, PuTTY key here).

Check the How to Play Online page for more detailed information on online play.

We are pleased to announce that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.10.2, the
latest maintenance update following the February release of 0.10, is now
available for all operating systems from the Downloads page. This
update incorporates the changes in version 0.10.1, which hasn’t been widely announced. The changes since 0.10.0 are:

* Lots of fixes for various crash cases
* Grey draconians can’t drown — we mean it this time
* Slaying now works as expected for magical staves
* Allies are not allowed to smite enemies through glass
* Allies can now cast Orb of Destruction
* Reaching with polearms is not allowed while trapped in a net/web
* Description text updates to match 0.10 changes
* plus many other small updates and fixes.

A bit more detailed list of changes can be found in the changelog.

Work on the next major release, Crawl 0.11, is proceeding rapidly. This
release will land in time for the next tournament, most likely sometime in
August. Bug fixes on the 0.10 stable branch will continue, as we are trying to give more than just lip service to actually maintaining the released version. You can help by
reporting any bugs you find (not counting spiders, giant cockroaches,
and killer bees — those are your problem!). And don’t forget to take a
few minutes to complete the Stone Soup Survey.

We are proud to announce that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.10: “Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus” has been released! With 6 months of development there have been a huge number of changes, including the addition of a brand new species. Octopodes are a race of sentient, amphibious cephalopods incapable of wearing armour, but able to wear up to eight rings at a time thanks to their tentacles. They’re squishy in mêlée but come with the new combat mechanic of constriction, allowing them to immobilise their foes and deal additional damage over time.

Alongside all the exciting new content in-game, there have been many significant improvements and additions to Webtiles. A list of visible monsters is now displayed, there are various menu improvements, and Webtiles games can even be watched by console players over SSH.

You can download 0.10 from our Download page, or play console builds online on CAO or CDO. Webtiles will be upgraded to 0.10 within the next few days, keep an eye out for an update!

We’re also conducting a survey of players alongside this release. If you have a few minutes to spare please take a look, we’d greatly appreciate your response.

Don’t forget that the 0.10 release tournament begins on February 25th! All 0.10 games played on CAO and CDO will count towards it, which of course includes Webtiles games. Check out the tournament website for the rules, start forming clans, and get ready to tackle the challenging new banners!

Some of the major changes this version include:

• New species: Octopodes, capable of wearing eight rings, but not most other items of armour.
• Removed species: Mountain Dwarves have returned to the mountains. Read why they were axed here.
• Changed species: Hill Orcs have had their aptitudes improved, and Minotaurs have gained both better aptitudes and a retaliatory attack with their horns. Centaurs have a slower metabolism, but are now somewhat herbivorous, gaining bonus nutrition from plants but less nutrition from meat. Draconians cannot wear body armour anymore, but can wear gloves and boots. Some Demonspawn mutations have been adjusted, and a number of new mutation sets are also available. Kenku have rediscovered their roots and now prefer to be called Tengu.
• Backgrounds: Arcane Marksmen are back with a Hex-based spellbook. Transmuters have Beastly Appendage (a new spell providing a temporary beneficial combat mutation) instead of Fulsome Distillation and Evaporate. Necromancers have Control Undead instead of Dispel Undead. Monks have been rewarded for their devotion to asceticism and gain a one-time boost to ** piety when they first convert to a god.
• Skills: You will now need to find an appropriate item or spell to train most skills (and doing so allows even unknown skills to be trained). Additionally, partial levels of skills (e.g., ‘15.2’) matter.
• New monsters: Blizzard demons can call down freezing cold and howling winds with but a gesture. Profane servitors are angels that have been corrupted by Yredelemnul. These undead beings radiate unholy darkness and are resistant to holy forces. Several new holy monsters have been added.
• Removed monsters: Giant toads have croaked, vipers have rolled snake eyes, and blue deaths have all died.
• Changed monsters: Reapers are much more powerful. Fiends are now known as Brimstone Fiends, and imps are now known as crimson imps. Some demons have found themselves on different glyphs. Summoning monsters bring fewer creatures with each cast, and monsters with breath attacks (e.g., dragons) need to recover between attacks. There are many new monster descriptions and quotes.
• Spells: Combining Swiftness and Flight no longer gives bonus movement speed. Mephitic Cloud and Evaporate no longer guarantee a 3×3 cloud. Passage of Golubria creates two portals when cast, and allows more than two portals to exist simultaneously. Lee’s Rapid Deconstruction and Shatter are stopped by walls unless the spell manages to destroy them. To account for the monster summoning changes, Abjuration is now a single-target spell. The screen-wide version is available as a new level 6 spell, Mass Abjuration. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer and Levitate have been removed.
• Cheibriados: Ponderous equipment has been replaced. Instead, gaining Cheibriados piety slows you down. Followers are no longer given resistances, but gain the Temporal Distortion ability, which moves nearby monsters forwards in time a few turns.
• Makhleb: The demon prince of destruction deals only in blood and souls! Makhleb’s invocations now cost health instead of magic. Followers will be rewarded for kills with a larger amount of health, but no magic.
• The three good gods now have piety decay over time, but each has new methods of gaining piety. Elyvilon piety from pacification has been greatly increased and piety from weapon sacrifices has been adjusted, Zin demands a tithe of all gold collected in return for piety, and The Shining One gives piety for meeting new monsters (and determining whether they need to be eradicated!).
• Constriction: Octopodes, nagas, some snakes, and tentacled monstrosities can now prevent their foes from escaping while squeezing the life out of them.
• Various changed mechanics: Poison resistance is now only 90% effective against most effects. No spells work through glass or trees anymore. The slaying property (incribed as {Dam+X}) now works identically to weapon enchantments. Contaminated (‘brown’) chunks always give nutrition and cause nausea instead of sickness. Nauseous characters can only eat when near starving and might make themselves ill.
• Items: All polearms have been lengthened and may now be evoked (‘v’) to attack non-adjacent squares (like the reaching brand). Potions of healing are now known as potions of curing, and wands of healing are now known as wands of heal wounds. Many new fixed artefacts have been added.
• Branches: Terrain in the Abyss now shifts with nearly every step. This may open new escape routes for stranded adventurers – or seal ones they were planning to take. Pandemonium has a dangerous new holy-themed unique level. The Hive is no more. Tiles players can enjoy the newly redecorated Snake Pit, Labyrinth, Vestibule of Hell, Crypt, Dis, Tartarus, Cocytus, and Pandemonium. Many new vaults have been added across the entire dungeon.
• Interface: Spell success adjectives are replaced with failure rate percentages which are coloured based on potential miscast severity.

Thanks to Eronarn for compiling the list of changes, and to the many contributors to this version. See the full changelog for much more!

Time for a new minor release which fixes a few bugs:

• Fix missing portals to Zot on D:27 with restart_after_game after Sprint.
• Fix most large special maps not being generated.
• Fix mad amounts of divine gifts in certain cases.
• Don’t duplicate monsters when exiting the Abyss.
• Fix a lock-up on selecting a random character.
• A number of crash fixes.
• Some documentation amendments.
• Don’t stop butchering on unimportant messages.
• Add a command “show runes” (‘}’) that was documented but not implemented.

Head over to the Downloads and enjoy! As all point releases, 0.9.1 is save-compatible with 0.9.0.

Note: Omg! All releases (Linux, Windows, OSX) uploaded in time! CAO/CDO/WebTiles are being upgraded while we speak!