Hello crawlers! The 0.33 development cycle is nearing a close, and we are pleased to announce a date of Friday, May 2nd, 2025, at 20:00 UTC for the sixteen day 0.33 release tournament. The feature freeze has started today, so we’ve stopped adding new content and will be making only balance tweaks and bug fixes over the next two weeks. A subsequent post will announce the official 0.33 tournament website, but please feel free to start organizing those tournament clans!

We haven’t had the time to post any trunk updates during the 0.33 development cycle, but that’s certainly not due to a lack of content! It would take a long time to go into detail on the past eight months of changes. Hence I’ve put the contents of the current changelog below for easier reading:

Highlights

  • New magic school + background: Forgewrights, building explosive constructs.
  • Two new species: poltergeists and revenants.
  • Twelve new talismans have been added, and Shapeshifters have been reworked.
  • Ghost vaults are moved into a game-long repeating portal, the Necropolis.
  • Yet more new monsters, decorations, and traps spread throughout the Dungeon.

Artefacts

  • New unrands:
    • The Crown of Vainglory, a +3 hat that grants two extra ring slots, but also makes entering floors wake up nearby enemies and temporarily prohibits stair use.
    • The fungal fisticloak, a +3 cloak that also takes up the hat slot, provides another gloves slot, and grants a confusion-branded auxiliary fungus attack.
    • The Justicar’s Regalia, a +5 scale mail that grants an extra amulet slot and gives allies summoned or created by the player the regeneration status.
    • The Skull of Zonguldrok, a talkative off-hand item that grants Reaping brand to one’s attacks and another hat slot (on the skull).
  • The macabre finger necklace now also grants +7 HP.
  • Randart weapons can now be Reaping branded, which now creates spectres.
  • -Cast on the Sword of the Doom Knight, Maxwell’s Patent Armour, and general randarts is replaced with *Silence, which inflicts a short-term silence on 1% of hits on the wielder.
  • +Invis, Harm, and Rampage artefact properties can now be found on talisman randarts.
  • Removed unrands: the Sword of Zonguldrok.

Branches, Environment

  • Ghost vaults have been moved into their own portal, the Necropolis.
    • Portals to the Necropolis can be found up to three times each game: once in D:5-15, Lair, or Orc; once in Swamp, Snake, Shoals, Spider, or Vaults; and once in Elf, Crypt, or Depths.
    • Each Necropolis contains three separate ghost vaults, which are still flavoured and tailored towards the branch a portal entrance is found in.
    • Another 10 ghost vaults have been added.
    • Pre-Lair ghost vaults have been somewhat nerfed, while rewards for many ghost vaults have been increased.
  • New traps, all of which activate when monsters or players step on them:
    • Archmage’s traps, which drain player mp and grant monsters empowered spells.
    • Devourer’s traps, which corrode players.
    • Harlequin’s traps, which grant monsters chaotic attacks.
    • Tyrant’s traps, which weaken players and grant monsters might.
  • New decorations:
    • Walkable: caches of baked goods, floral vases (sometimes broken), flower and garden patches, fountains of eyes, fur piles, infernal standards, mops and buckets (sometimes bloodied), mourning vases, and orcish standards.
    • Solid: enigmatic dynamos and nascence circuits.
    • Destructible: petrified flowers.
    • Walking over fountains now has a chance to produce flavour messages, varying based on the fountain, one’s god, and the absence of hostile enemies in sight.
  • Zot traps now can inflict blindness.
  • The last floor of Crypt now has a 30% chance to contain a sanguine talisman.
  • The clouds of degeneration in Alistair’s Party Mansion are now alcoholic mist, inflicting Vertigo.
  • The orb chamber on Zot:5 no longer has a chance to be completely blocked off by traps, and instead will deploy several of the above newer traps.
  • Frail pillars of rime can be found in Cocytus.
  • Ziggurats have even more exponential scaling for those doing multiple ziggurats.
  • Sprint VII (“The Pits”) has gotten major updates to balance and monster options, while Sprint V (“Ziggurat Sprint”) has had minor updates to the same.

Character

  • Stat drain has been removed.
    • Reaching 0 in any stat (through e.g. items or mutations) now solely makes the player permanently slow until their stats are raised again.
    • Undead players being malmutated now have their HP drained instead.
  • New skill: Forgecraft, used for Forgecraft spells. Most species have Forgecraft apts that are the same as their Summoning apts. Exceptions to this are Mountain Dwarves, Coglins, Yellow Draconians (all +2), Barachi (+1), Demonspawn, Felids, Poltergeists (all -1), Revenants, Minotaurs, and Tengu (all -2).
  • New background: Forgewright, which starts with a +0 hammer (a reskinned mace), a potion of magic, and a variety of Forgecraft spells.
  • Fighters now start with a second potion of might.
  • Shapeshifters now start with a quill talisman, three flux baubles, and a protean talisman, which can be used with 6 or more Shapeshifting skill to randomly transform it into a scarab, rimehorn, medusa or maw talisman. They keep their potion of lignification and start with 1 more Fighting skill.
  • Wanderers can now start with quill talismans, inkwell talismans, flux baubles, protean talismans, or any protean-tier talisman.
  • Reavers now start with knowledge of Rending Blade.
  • Summoners start with knowledge of Eringya’s Surprising Crocodile and Summon Seismosaurus Egg instead of Summon Blazeheart Golem or Lightning Spire.
  • New mutations:
    • efficient magic, making spells cost 1 less (to a minimum of 1 MP).
    • ephemeral shield, granting +7 SH briefly after spells and invocations.
    • poor constitution, inflicting Weak and then Slow on taking damage.
    • time-warped blood, hasting some of your allies when you fall below 50% health, and can only activate again after returning to full health.
  • Berserk players are now immune to fear.
  • Constructs the player makes with their own Forgecraft spells can be nonviolently deconstructed by pressing ctrl+[direction] while adjacent.
  • Fungus Form and Tree Form are both immune to sleep.
  • Paralysis, sleep, petrification, and vex status inflicted on the player all now share the same temporary immunity cooldown.
  • Penalties to body armour AC from talismans and the Deformed Body mutation are now also applied to the AC bonus from training Armour skill. To compensate, the AC penalties of Deformed Body and blade talismans have been reduced, and Naga and Armataurs have their Armour aptitudes increase by 1.
  • Removed mutations: deterioration.

Gods

  • Ashenzari’s curse of Companions now supports Forgecraft as well as its prior skills of Summoning and Necromancy.
  • Cheibriados worshippers are never hasted by potions of haste, and can’t enter penance by deliberately drinking potions of haste.
  • The wraths of Cheibriados and Trog have been simplified.
  • Dithmenos’s shadow mimic also works for Forgecraft spells, creating a shadow turret that can fire through allies.
  • Xom has received more adjustments:
    • Xom’s bazaars have more variety and are less common.
    • Polymorph and draining effects are less dangerous early on.
    • New actions: hyperbuff weak ally, burn webs.
  • All three good gods that care about injuring allies now consistently don’t care about injuring mindless non-living allies (like Forgecraft’s).

Interface and Options

  • Examining equipment and talismans now can show the changes to the player’s spell success chances for each spell if they switched to using that item.
  • Examining spellbooks in webtiles now colours spells according to their usability and whether or not one has the spell in their library.
  • Examining talismans now displays their upsides, downsides, and skill scaling in a more compressed format with additional details.
  • Spell range is now indicated with numbers instead of diagrams.
  • Default target-picking behaviour for spells, abilities, and items has been improved: it is now more consistent at avoiding the player or their allies when aiming harmful area effects and choose more sensible default aims for some utility effects.
  • Ranged autofight should no longer sometimes cast spells at invalid targets (such as Dispel Undead against living monsters in melee).
  • Casting ally-creating spells when there is no nearby room is now automatically cancelled, rather than wasting a turn and one’s MP.
  • Equipping an item that would require unequipping multiple other items (such as with going from a 1-handed weapon + shield to a 2-hander) no longer needs manual unequipping to work.
  • Players can no longer wield non-weapon items.
  • Equipment slots a player species doesn’t have access to no longer show up on the ‘%’ screen.
  • The autopickup menu no longer groups together rings and amulets.
  • The screen is now tinted blue during paralysis and grey during petrification.
  • Examining monsters shows if they can open doors.
  • Confusion on monsters no longer shares an icon with monsters being distracted.
  • Non-monster UI now darkens quote text and can rarely contain flavour text instead of just quotes.

Items

  • New weapon: partisans, uncommon one-handed polearms with higher base damage than demon tridents and the longest swing delay of any one-handed weapon.
  • Talisman skill thresholds have been reworked, with older talismans adjusted upwards in baseline stats for higher thresholds. The new tier summary is now:
    • Tier 1 talismans (old beast talisman): 0 skill minimum, 7 skill maximum
    • Tier 2 talismans (old flux talisman): 8 skill minimum, 14 skill maximum
    • Tier 3 talismans (blade talisman): 12 skill minimum, 20 skill maximum
    • Tier 4 talismans (granite talisman): 17 skill minimum, 25 skill maximum
    • Tier 5 talismans (storm talisman): 23 skill minimum, 27 skill maximum
  • New talismans:
    • Tier 1:
      • quill talismans, providing Quill Form. This melds all auxiliary equipment, but grants retaliatory quills damaging those who attack the player in melee.
      • inkwell talismans, providing Walking Scroll Form. This melds all equipment, increases all magic school skills scaling to one’s Shapeshifting, grants extra max mp, disables casting spells above level 4, and cuts one’s melee damage in half in exchange for a 50% to gain 1 MP on every hit.
    • Tier 2:
      • scarab talismans, providing Sun Scarab Form. This small form melds weapons and armour, carts around a solar ember that cleaves with fire attacks when scarabs attack, and grants Fire-exclusive spellcasting success bonuses.
      • rimehorn talismans, providing Rime Yak Form. This large form melds weapons and armour, makes adjacent walls deal cold damage over a short while on attacks, and grants Ice-exclusive spellcasting success bonuses.
      • medusa talismans, providing Medusa Form. This melds one’s head and cloak slots into a jellyfish, which inflicts poison on random nearby enemies on attacks and which petrifies poisoned enemies when falling to 60% health.
    • Tier 3:
      • spider talismans, providing Jumping Spider Form. This tiny form melds all armour and weapons, but gains Rampage, a small chance for melee to ensnare enemies, short-blade quality stabs, and a special un-aimed jump ability.
      • lupine talismans, providing Werewolf Form. This melds all auxiliary armour, grants a stacking slaying bonus on kills, gives a chance to howl on kills to lock enemies in immobile fear, and grants jumping attacks on afraid foes.
      • wellspring talismans, providing Aqua Form. This melds body armour, provides two extra squares of melee range (stacking with polearms and working with auxes), and granting an ability to waterstrike + waterlog nearby enemies.
      • fortress talismans, providing Fortress Crab Form. This melds all auxiliary armour, multiplies AC from body armour, and can breathe clouds of minorly-damaging, corroding and weakening rust.
    • Tier 4:
      • riddle talismans, providing Sphinx Form. These sphinxes can still wear cloaks and bardings (except for Felids), but meld all other armour and can’t wield weapons. Their unarmed strikes Airstrike their targets, they get major Hexes-exclusive spellcasting success bonuses, and their Hexes apply more easily to all susceptible foes.
      • hive talismans, providing Living Hive Form. This melds body armour and helm slots into a hive with high health + magic regeneration that also releases berserk curare-branded killer bees when the user is sufficiently wounded.
      • sanguine talismans, providing the living-undead Vampire Form. These vampires don’t regenerate with enemies visible, get vampiric attacks at 50% health, can raise a vampiric thrall when killing monsters with stabs, can transform into a swarm of bats that leave sleep-inducing clouds of bats, and have partial torment resistance.
  • Many other talismans have been adjusted:
    • Flux talismans have become stacks of flux baubles, which require less skill and deal more damage but each transformation lasts for only a finite amount of attacks instead of indefinitely.
    • Maw talismans have been lowered down a tier, with the maw dealing less damage and healing on kills for less HP, but can now break through body armour to reduce base AC by 75% instead of melding such entirely.
    • Serpent talismans now transform the user into a two-headed snake that can wear two hats (but no other equipment).
    • Granite talismans now apply a percentage EV penalty and provide additional strength in exchange for less unarmed base damage.
    • Dragon-blood talismans (now dragon-coil talismans) now transform non-draconians into golden dragons instead of fire dragons, changing the corresponding resists; they also get Draconian-style breath charges for a new tri-element breath, but deal less melee damage. Draconians also recharge their breath much faster in dragon form.
    • Talismans of death now uniquely require 26 Shapeshifting at minimum.
  • Talisman / randarts are notably more common throughout the game, with stones made less common in exchange.
  • Talismans no longer meld Gargoyle AC and resists unless they change substances entirely, and never meld away Spriggan move speed.
  • Beast talismans have been removed.
  • Acquirement now gives more out more talismans.
  • Acquirement gives less magical staves overall, but makes more randart staves.
  • Potions of degeneration are now of moonshine and solely inflict Vertigo.
  • Darts of dispersal are now darts of disjunction, which now repeatedly blink a target each turn for several turns and deal damage with each blink.
  • Experience-gated evokers now appear multiple times per game, stack up to a max of +5, and decrease the experience needed to gain charges with each stack.
  • Rings of slaying are no longer rarer than other rings.

Monsters

  • New monsters:
    • Alderkings, fae trees and necromantic masters of Depths.
    • Goblin riders, wvyern-taming cavalry for Bailies.
    • Fravashi, mid-tier warrior-summoning angels.
    • Ironbound Mechanists, dual-wielding forgewright coglins for Vaults.
    • Nekomata, self-cloning ranged cat demons for Pan.
    • Oni incarcerators, Manifold Assault users for Gehenna.
    • Sphinx marauders, masters of winds and minds for Shoals and Vaults.
    • Vampire bloodprinces, sleep-inducing lords of Crypt.
    • Wyrmholes, terrifying relocations drakes for Depths and rarely Zot.
  • Returning monsters:
    • hippogriffs, now nearly exclusive to bailies, now with both Warning Cry and a new damaging wind spell that slowly pulls enemies in.
    • ironbound beastmasters, now with a passive animal and slime hasting aura plus the ability to throw bolas to bind foes in place.
  • New uniques:
    • Nobody, a revenant made from countless forgotten souls, who can burn the memories of their deaths to both heal and change spellsets.
    • Sprozz, an early-game coglin forgewright who casts Clockwork Bee and Nazja’s Percussive Tempering and sometimes drops a Forgecraft spellbook.
  • Apises now have a passive aura that doubles the health of other monsters.
  • Arcanists now have more health and EV.
  • Ball pythons deal less damage.
  • Bennu deal more holy damage.
  • Blood saint and Mnoleg Call of Chaos now can temporarily double monster hp.
  • Monster deep elves and orc high priests now more consistently wear body armour, mostly gaining robes.
  • Creeping infernos now have a fairly large amount of health, move normally towards the player, and deal more damage when they explode.
  • Crystal echidnas deal more damage and are now speed 13.
  • Crystal guardians deal more damage.
  • Elementals in general now have animal intelligence instead of being mindless.
  • Endoplasms no longer have rPois.
  • Glowing orange brains are now unblindable.
  • Iron golems now have less health and EV.
  • Mummy death curses now more frequently drain hp, and the flat damage effects no longer check rTorment.
  • Mutant beasts count as chaotic.
  • Occultists now have more health and EV.
  • Player ghosts now respect the movement speed of their original species.
  • Quicksilver oozes have been renamed, rethemed, and retiled to void oozes.
  • Searing wretches can now swim across lava.
  • Simulacra can now always swim, regardless of their base type.
  • Sin beasts now come in duos in Pan.
  • Plain sphinxes are now “guardian sphinxes”, are stronger overall, and no longer appear in D or in Shoals.
  • Sky beasts lose electric damage and random invisibility to instead deal damage depending on the number of open spaces next to what they hit in melee.
  • Thermic dynamos and undying armouries reward more experience.
  • Water elementals and elemental wellsprings are now amorphous, gaining the same immunity to nets, constriction, and webs jellies have.
  • Mindless non-living monster allies consistently don’t get angry at the player for being hit, and do not disappear if they were summoned or constructed.
  • Removed monsters: quasits.

Species

  • New species: Poltergeists, ghostly trickster whirlwinds. Features:
    • They have the resists and immunities of being both undead and insubstantial.
    • They have six slots that can interchangeably wield auxiliary armour (hats, helmets, cloaks, scarves, gloves, or boots), but cannot wear body armour.
    • Whenever enemies are debuffed, they gain AC scaling to their XL.
    • At XL 13, they gain the ability to expand into a whirling cacophony, noisily animating each piece of armour worn into allies that try to stay close to the player and which can inflict random debuffs.
  • New species: Revenants, memory-burning mystic skeletons. Features:
    • Whenever they cast damage-dealing spells, they automatically attack a nearby monster with the highest health.
    • At XL 3, they start gathering memories from slain foes, charges they may burn away all at once to make that many damage-dealing spells cost 0 mp, be easier to cast while ignoring encumbrance penalties, and get extra power. Spell-activated automatic attacks during this also heal the player.
    • At XL 3, they also gain knowledge of a random level 1 destructive spell.
  • Formicids now may wield an additional pair of gloves.
  • Merfolk Long Blades apt is lowered from +2 to +1, and their Polearms apt is increased from +3 to +4.
  • Mountain Dwarf Summoning apt is lowered from 0 to -2.
  • Enhancer staves are now one-handed instead of two-handed for spriggans and kobolds.
  • Vampires and ghouls have been removed.

Spells

  • New spell school of Forgecraft: thematically a school of constructing bombs, cannons, and limited automata, mechanically a mostly-ally school more focused on direct damage and blasting than Summoning, and design-wise a new means of providing more cross-school spells and pivoting options.
  • New Forgecraft spells:
    • Kinetic Grapnel (L1 FC): A weak physical projectile connected to one’s weapon that guarantees the next melee attack hits and deals extra damage.
    • Construct Spike Launcher (L2 FC): Builds a spike launcher in a random adjacent wall, which launches spikes at random adjacent targets.
    • Launch Clockwork Bee (L3 FC): Targets a monster to wind up and ready a clockwork bee over several turns, which can be rewound up when it collapses.
    • Rending Blade (L4 FC / Conj): Temporarily transforms all of the caster’s mp into a blade that pierces through enemies whenever the caster attacks.
    • Nazja’s Percussive Tempering (L5 FC): A healing and buffing spell for Forgecraft summons that also produces an ally-avoiding physical explosion.
    • Alistair’s Walking Alembic (L5 FC / Alch): A summon that vents poisonous fumes as it attacks to brew various beneficial potion effects.
    • Fortress Blast (L6 FC): A highly-damaging blast that takes several turns to charge up and pins the caster in place, but which solely scales off of AC.
    • Forge Phalanx Beetle (L6 FC): A summon that always tries to stay by the caster’s side and protects them with an AC boost if adjacent.
    • Forge Monarch Bomb (L6 FC / Fire): Creates a bomb factory that launches bomblets on top of enemies, both of which only detonate on recast.
    • Diamond Sawblades (L7 FC): Places up to four sawblades on diagonals around the caster that shred everything around them each turn.
    • Splinterfrost Shell (L7 FC / Ice): Raises up several sturdy walls around the player that fire off as heavily damaging icicle salvos if broken.
    • Platinum Paragon (L9 FC): A metallic apotheosis of a single ally that replicates a given artefact weapon, blocks attacks for the caster, does extra attacks with player attacks, and can hit large areas by recasting the spell when charged-up.
  • The following spells have moved to Forgecraft:
    • Summon Lightning Spire: now “Forge Lightning Spire”, Summ/Air -> FC/Air.
    • Summon Blazeheart Golem: now “Forge Blazeheart Golem”, Summ/Fire -> FC/Fire.
    • Animate Armour: now “Awaken Armour”, Summ/Earth -> FC/Earth.
    • Iskenderun’s Battlesphere: L5 Conj -> L4 FC/Conj.
    • Hoarfrost Cannonade: Alch/Ice -> FC/Ice.
    • Spellforged Servitor: now “Spellspark Servitor”, Summ/Conj -> FC/Conj.
    • Hellfire Mortar: Fire/Earth -> FC/Fire/Earth.
  • New other spells:
    • Eringya’s Surprising Crocodile (L4 Summ): Creates temporary shallow water and a lunging crocodile all at once to drag an enemy and the caster back.
    • Summon Seismosaurus Egg (L4 Summ / Earth): Creates an egg that will hatch into a mighty dinosaur if the caster stays next to it with visible enemies.
    • Detonation Catalyst (L5 Fire / Alch): Gain a buff that makes non-cleaving melee attacks explode for damage scaled to damage dealt, avoiding allies, and which lasts for very little time if the user stops attacking.
    • Sphinx Sisters (L7 Summ / Hexes) that summons a pair of riddling sphinxes, one guardian and one maurader, to debilitate the enemies with hexes and batter them with violent winds.
  • Spell changes:
    • Awakened Armours now equip a replica of the body armour they’re echoing.
    • Battlespheres last longer at lower spell power, are better at pathing towards their target, and will target the most proportionally damaged foe if possible.
    • Ensorcelled Hibernation’s sleep no longer can be interrupted by noise or failing stealth checks, and has a slightly higher minimum duration.
    • Hellfire Mortar now scales heavily with spellpower, deals more damage, has longer mortar range, and pushes back singular flying foes.
    • Lightning Spires now target the furtherest-away foe, if possible.
    • Maxwell’s Capacitive Coupling can no longer be started without a visible monster in sight of the caster.
    • Maxwell’s Portable Piledriver can now be aimed and can push a connected line of lined-up enemies all at once.
    • Mephitic Cloud is now flavoured as throwing a non-damaging flask of fumes.
    • Mercury Vapours is now Poisonous Vapours, moved to level 1, no longer inflicts Weak, inflicts less poison status, and deals a small amount of flat
    • AC-ignoring damage against targets without rPois.
    • Permafrost Eruption’s damage has been lowered.
    • Rimeblight now chains to two other targets on cast and now reliably spreads on death instead of also spreading through its explosions.
    • Sculpt Simulacrum’s simulacra now attack the turn they finish forming.
    • Sting is now Mercury Arrow, moved to level 2, no longer inflicts the poison status (but still partially checks rPois), and gains Mercury Vapours’ previous HD-check area-of-effect Weak status.
    • Summon Horrible Things now has a chance to inflict a Will-lowering temporary mutation with each cast.
    • Teleport Other is now smite targeted.
  • Spells that can’t miss are no longer affected by player blindness debuffs.
  • Monstrous Menagerie is removed as a player spell, but is still used by Kirke.

Tiles and Other Art

  • New tiles for existing game elements:
    • Abilities: Accepting Makhleb’s infernal marks.
    • Features: altars to Fedhas, altars to Xom, caches of meat, granite statues in Depths and Zot.
    • Items: all forms of leather armour.
    • Monsters: apises, boggarts, brain worms, creeping infernos, culicivora, great orbs of eyes, living spells, ophanim, rakshasa, scrub nettles, shapeshifters and glowing shapeshifters, sky beasts, all tengu types.
    • Mutation icons: big wings, demonspawn demonic touch, mp-powered wands, screaming, subdued magic, tendrils, pseudopods, wild magic.
    • Plants, both regular and withered.
    • Player dolls: Coglins.
    • The prune curse from the glaive of Prune.
    • Ru sacrifices: sacrificed eye, sacrificed hand.
    • Species passives: barachi hops, demigod divine attributes, djinn flat hp, human explore regen, mertails.
    • Spell components: Hoarfrost Cannonade, Hellfire Mortar.
    • Spell icons: Blazeheart Golem, Dazzling Flash, Fulsome Fusillade, Hellfire Mortar, Hoarfrost Cannonade, Lightning Spire, Magnavolt, Permafrost Eruption, Spellspark Servitor, all remaining monster-only spells.
    • Starting screen icons: high scores.
    • Unrands: the robe of Augmentation, Brilliance and its brand, Firestarter, Punk’s acid brand, the robe of Folly, the sword of the Doom Knight, and the toga “Victory”.
    • Visual effects: airstrike, draining gaze, doom howl, entropic weave, fire storm, fulsome fusillade, ice blasts, magma, manifold assault, mephitic cloud, mystic blast, potion petition, sap magic, sentinel’s mark, wand of warping.
    • Walls: Vaults and Trove rock.
  • Pandemonium now has unique stone wall tiles for regular floors and unique wall tiles for each of the unrand Pan lord vaults.
  • Gehenna now has unique stone wall tiles.
  • Depths and Zot now have unique metal wall tiles.
  • Webtiles now has the banishment animation offline tiles uses.
  • New oni splash screen by benadryl.

That’s all for now, so until the next update, happy crawling!