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?