0.25

Version 0.25: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

0.25 is a version of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It was released on June 12th, 2020.

Highlights

• Spells in many schools have been redesigned to make the schools more distinct.
• Acquirement scrolls have been despoilered, offering the player a choice of generated items.
• Effects from spell miscasts, god wrath, death curses, and Zot traps have been overhauled for consistency and simplicity.

Branches, Environment

• Potions of cancellation now appear as loot in Ziggurats.
• Boris can now spawn after the player picks up the Orb of Zot.
• Forest fires and the Tornado spell can no longer destroy temporary trees made by Summon Forest.
• D:1 Level spawns can no longer generate within LOS distance of the player's starting position.
• Many arrival vaults have been reworked to allow better player tactics.
• A new Swamp ending themed as a conflict between Yred and Fedhas that includes an undead version of the Lernaean Hydra.
• Ziggurats now have level set featuring many player ghosts.
• Zot traps have had their effect flowchart simplified and focused.
• Abyss exits that spawn from earning xp can spawn after the initial spawn, instead of every subsequent spawn being a downstair.
• Troves can now ask for scrolls of fog or scrolls of fear.

Character

• Monsters summoned by the player now dismiss when they become hostile.
• Players can now renounce their religion while silenced.
• All Evocable items can no longer be used by the player while confused.
• Formicids can no longer cast Swiftness.

Gods

• Trog no longer gifts ranged weapons nor ammunition, gifting only melee weapons. These weapons can only have egos of plain, vorpal, flaming, and anti-magic.
• Trog now hates use of all magical staves and pain weapons.
• Elyvilon's Divine Protection now always protects exactly at 5* piety instead of protecting at a value between 5* and 6*.
• Fedhas now protects plant allies from collisions and from ranged attacks by other allies.
• God conducts for harming allies now apply to spells and items that place harmful clouds.
• Nemelex abilities can no longer be used while silenced.
• Nemelex card revisions:
  • The pain card no longer summons a flayed ghost, instead it torments at high power (the card user is spared).
  • The cloud card now produces black smoke around enemies in sight, to better fit with the deck of escape.
• Wu Jian has been tweaked:
  • Wall jumps are now only activated via the 'a'bility menu.
  • Whirlwind attacks no longer pin
  • Heavenly Storm now starts with a slaying bonus of 5, capped at 15, and increases by 1 for each martial attack.
• Xom no longer inflicts miscast effects.
• Xom demon summoning is increased in power.
• Wrath changes
  • Trog's "firey rage" is now a fireball, instead of a fire miscast. Trog no longer uses rot as retribution.
  • Lugonu's "translocation wrath" no longer uses translocations miscast. Instead, the player is either teleported to monsters, banished, or set upon by Abyss summons.
  • Cheibriados' wrath no longer uses miscasts. At very high tension, in addition to sleeping and slowing the player, Chei makes a lot of noise. At low tension, miscasts are replaced by stat damage.
  • Fedhas' wrath no longer uses elemental miscasts. These are replaced by a choice of corrosive bolt, primal wave, or thorn volley.
  • Yredelemnul's wrath no longer uses necromancy miscasts, in their place Yred fires a bolt of draining.
  • Kikubaaqudgha's wrath uses death curses in place of necromancy miscasts.
• Vehumet is less likely to give duplicate gifts.
• Xom is stimulated upon worship at a faded altar.

Items

• Scroll of Acquirement rework:
  • Offers players a choice of five fully generated items.
  • Three of the item categories are randomly chosen and the other two are always gold and food (for species that eat).
  • Generated items are always useable and not hated by the player's current god.
  • The Miscellaneous category for evocable items is no longer available.
• New Potion of Stabbing that gives a 50% chance to upgrade weak stabs (e.g. distracted monsters) to strong ones (e.g. sleeping monsters).
• Tin of Tremorstones, a new multiuse evocable. Tremorstones have 3 charges which recover over time with XP. When used, it creates a number of radius 2 explosions (the number scales with evocations skill) near the center of present monster that are triple-affected by AC (like LRD). The explosions are randomly skewed and may hit the user. Most useful for players with good armour.
• The chaos brand now has might and agility effects, no longer causes miscast effects, and its cloning effect can create friendly and neutral monsters.
• Potions of Brilliance now provide a stronger universal spell enhancer and remove spell hunger. They no longer provide an Int bonus nor wizardry.
• Potions of Might no longer provide a bonus to strength.
• Scrolls of Magic Mapping now reveal any floor traps on the level.
• The -Tele property no longer appears on artefact weapons and jewellery.
• Ordinary shields have been renamed to kite shields and large shields have been renamed to tower shields. This helps make equipment descriptions less ambiguous.
• The vorpal weapon ego no longer has distinct adjectives for each weapon class. Now all such weapons are described as 'vorpal'.
• Unrandart changes:
  • New unrand: Cigotuvi's Embrace, a +4 leather armour with rN+, rRot and *Drain that automatically gathers corpses to increase AC. The AC decays slowly over time but decays more quickly as more corpses are added.
  • Boots of the Assassin are now called the hood of the Assassin and use the headgear slot.
  • The demon blade Leech gains *Rage/+Rage and loses its AC-3 and EV-3 properties.
  • The Elemental Staff now acts as an enhancer for all elemental schools, with enhancement applying independently for each school.
  • Warlock's Mirror can now reflect piercing ranged weapons.
  • The Staff of Olgreb now has a chance to deal poison-arrow flavored damage on hit, based on evocations skill. It no longer has an additional chance to cast Venom Bolt on top of casting OTR when evoked. It now grants poison immunity to monsters wielding it.
  • The Dragonskin Cloak now provides rCorr instead of sticky flame resistance.
  • The scythe of Curses no longer curses items in inventory, and now applies death curses instead of necromancy miscasts.
  • The plutonium sword still applies transmutations miscasts, but gains a chance to polymorph the target on hit (since this is no longer a miscast effect for monsters).
  • The brooch of Shielding is now a guardian spirit amulet with SH+8.
  • Bloodbane has been removed, having been merged into Leech.
  • Maxwell's Etheric Cage has been removed.
• Phial of floods now applies a silencing "waterlogged" debuff to all monsters in the flooded area and no longer summons water elementals.
• Staves of poison now do resistable poison damage on hit like other staves instead of just having a chance to poison.
• Distortion branded weapons no longer teleport foes.
• Distortion unwield effects no longer cause a translocations miscast. Instead, they either teleport the player to monsters, banish the player, or cause severe contamination.
• Regeneration items only activate after attuning to the player at full HP, identical to the amulet.
• Scarf egos are revised: cloud immunity and spirit shield are removed, harm and invisibility are added. Harm scarves do not drain the player when removed.
• Amulets of reflection now always give +5 SH and must attune to the player at full HP. Reflected missiles, poison, and banishments now correctly award piety.
• Cloak egos are revised: invisibility is removed, preservation (providing corrosion resistance) and stealth are added.
• The Harm property can now appear on randart armour, and does not incur a drain penalty on removal.
• Stat rings are now always either +6 or -4. AC, EV, and Slay rings are now always either +4 or -4.
• Removed: potion of agility, staff of power, crystal ball of energy, sack of spiders, lamp of fire, fan of gales, wand of scattershot, amulets of the gourmand, amulets of harm, amulets of rage.

Interface

• A new option auto_butcher_max_chunks prevents automatic butchering with more than that many chunks in inventory. Its default value is 10 for non-ghoul characters.
• explore_auto_rest now defaults to true.
• auto_butcher now defaults to always.
• New morgue section: screenshots. When notes are taken with : a screenshot is additionally saved and can be added to morgues.
• The console monster list now displays monster status information and whether or not the monster is wielding a launcher or polearm, or has a wand
• The ^x summary display now shows monster status information
• A new option monster_item_view_coordinates can be set to true to display player-relative coordinates in the ^x display.
• The auto-travel trail displayed with show_travel_trail can now be customised in console (both for glyph and colour).
• The "visited status" of stairs and transporters can now be indicated both by glyph and by colour in console.
• Allies now show sleep and confusion status tiles.

Monsters

• New unique: Maggie, a younger version of the unique Margery, who appears just before and in Lair. She has a steam, acid, or swamp dragon scales, Bolt of Fire, and Mesmerize. Only one of Maggie or Margery will place in a game.
• Margery now always gets Fire, Shadow, or Storm dragon scales as a counterpart to Maggie's armour.
• Both Maggie and Margery have a small extra chance of spawning with a pre-enchanted Wyrmbane (1 or 2 points of enchantment, respectively).
• Monsters such as spiders no longer have a clinging ability.
• Mummy death curses are no longer necromancy miscasts, and instead have their own effect table.
• New monster: nameless horror. Nameless horrors are produced by summoning miscasts. They are giant, tanky, have an antimagic attack and abjuration as a natural ability.
• Hepliaklqana ancestors and demonic guardians can no longer be enslaved or frenzied.
• Summoned monsters can now get the inner flame status, both from the spell and the scroll.
• Monsters now try to avoid blocking the line of fire of monsters behind them.

Spells

• Spell in many schools have been redesigned to make the schools have better differentiation, more positional considerations, and better UI. The descriptions below describe the schools' individual focus and any new, changed, and removed spells in each school:
  • Fire spells have directed explosions or set things on fire:
    • New L1 Conjurations/Fire spell Foxfire that conjures two foxfire projectiles that quickly hone in on their target, each doing a bit more than half the damage of Flame Tongue.
    • Conjure Flame now creates embers on the player's position that turn into a flame cloud a turn later. The embers smother if a monster steps on them.
    • Inner Flame now creates a flame cloud under the affected monster whenever it takes damage in addition to the usual explosion it makes when the monster dies.
    • New L6 Conjurations/Fire spell Starburst that fires 8 range 5 bolts in the principle directions.
    • Removed spells: Flame Tongue, Throw Flame, Bolt of Fire.
  • Air school spells bounce, are pointy, or are hard to direct:
    • Airstrike damage now scales so it's greater the more unoccupied squares there are surrounding the target.
    • Summon Lightning Spire now places the spire randomly.
  • Earth spells are directed:
    • Borgnjor's Vile Clutch now is a range 6 always-penetrating beam instead of a smite-targeted 3x3 explosion.
  • Ice spells are diffuse and subtle:
    • New L3 Ice spell Frozen Ramparts that makes all walls within radius 2 become covered in ice, damaging monsters that walk by. Damage bypasses AC and slows cold-blooded animals.
    • New L4 Conjurations/Ice spell Hailstorm that fires a ring of ice beams from radius 2 to radius 3, not affecting radius 1 squares. Monsters with rC+++ such as ice beasts are immune to this effect.
    • Ozocubu's Refrigeration does 33% more damage on-average and no longer harms the caster.
    • New L9 Ice spell Absolute Zero that instantly freezes to death the closest monster in range, leaving an ice block. A random closest monster is chosen as the target when there are ties. The spell is range 5 and very loud, with noise attenuated by power.
    • Removed spells: Throw Frost, Throw Icicle, Bolt of Cold, Glaciate.
    • As a result of these changes, Ice Elementalists no longer put starting skill in Conjurations.
  • Conjurations are pure magic with good accuracy in some way:
    • Iskenderun's mystic blast now makes a range 5 explosion around the player that damages and pushes back monsters, potentially colliding them with features and other monsters.
    • Dazzling Flash replaces Dazzling Spray. Makes a flash centered on the player of up to radius 3 that can blind monsters in the affected area.
    • Searing Ray now fires all its rays at the chosen target, adjusting the rays as the target moves. If no target is chosen, the spell repeatedly fires in the chosen direction. The rays all penetrate and each has the same damage and to-hit. The ray damage is adjusted to have the same overall damage distribution as before this change.
    • Spellforged Servitor now gives only one spell to the servitor. This is the highest level servitor-compatible spell the player has from the following sets, in order of preference: L4 and higher ranged damage spells, cloud spells, and low-level or short-range spells.
    • Force Lance is removed.
  • Poison spells poison things or perform some kind of alchemy
    • Sting is now a range 3 Poison/Transmutations spell using the same partly-resistable beam type previously used by Poison Arrow.
    • New L6 Poison/Transmutations spell Eringya's Noxious Bog that creates a temporary toxic bog trail as the player moves. The bog terrain applies the same partly-resistable damage flavor as Sting as well as the movement and combat penalties of shallow water.
    • Removed spells: Venom Bolt, Poison Arrow
    • As a result of these changes, Venom Mages now put starting skill in Transmutations instead of Conjurations.
  • Necromancy has balance adjustments to make the school not so strong and to begin to move it closer to a melee support school:
    • Corpse Rot now creates miasma clouds in a ring around the player, making one cloud for each corpse in LOS, but with lower duration.
    • Agony and Dispel Undead are now range 1, and Dispel Undead is now L4.
    • Regeneration and Bolt of Draining are removed.
• The Young Poisoner's Handbook now contains Ignite Poison.
• Confusing Touch is now level 3 and checks MR instead of monster hit dice.
• The player is now immune to the melee-fumbling effects of liquefied ground made by casting Leda's Liquefaction. The slow movement applies regardless of flight status and the spell can be used while flying.
• Firestorm and Ignition now can burn trees, and Fireball burns trees in all squares of its explosion.
• Call Imp no longer bases the type of imp summoned on spellpower.
• The Confuse spell has been removed.
• Spell miscast effects have been simplified to give contamination and a single per-school effect, scaling with spell risk and level. The new effects by school are:
  • Charms and Hexes: debuff and slow.
  • Summoning: durably summon a nameless horror (new monster).
  • Translocation: dimension anchor.
  • Transmutation: extra contamination for the player, malmutate a monster.
  • Conjuration: irresistable AC-ignoring damage.
  • Elemental schools: school flavored damage (Earth uses fragmentation damage).
• The Deflect Missiles spell has been removed.
• Tukima's Dance can no longer be used if the player sacrificed Love.
• Lesser Beckoning and Teleport Other now turn allies hostile.
• Eldritch Tentacles from malign gateway can no longer attack out of LOS of the player, and arrive sooner after the gateway is opened.

Development

• The WebTiles server has seen a major overhaul and now supports python 3 as well as Tornado 5+.
• The catch2 testing framework is now integrated into the project and is enabled in our Travis CI testing.
• GitHub actions have been configured to replace Travis CI testing.

bugfix release

0.25.1 bugfix release is a version of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. It was released on July 17th, 2020.

• Artefacts from acquirement now leave a note in morgues.
• Scarf of harm is fixed.
• Foxfire will no longer attack out of LoS.
• Stacking from empty Nemelex decks is no longer possible.
• Wizlab entry now generates a milestone / note again.
• Fix a bug where cloud generators triggered on load when no time had passed, leading to a different cloud arrangement from saving + reloading.
• Seeded play fixes for seed instability in a few cases, as well as crashes related to seed stability and pregeneration code.
• Several speedups for dungeon rendering, especially in zigs.
• Sprint 3 cloud generators have been retuned.
• Improvements to the behavior of restart_after_save (on by default since 0.25.0).
• Using [] in map view from stairs to view other levels now correctly finds the matching stairs.
• Crashes to do with annotation, off-level map view, and custom flashes have been fixed.
• It is no longer possible for a bug to cause the player to drown or fall into lava, emergency flight will be activated instead.