crawl

Stone Soup 0.31 (20240119)

Highlights

• New skill and background: Shapeshifters, using Talismans to change forms.
• New skill and background: Alchemists, melding Poison Magic and Transmutation.
• A variety of exciting new spells for sorcerers and sword-slingers alike.
• Many dangerous new monsters, from the early Dungeon to the Realm of Zot.
• Major changes to many species.

Artefacts

• New unrand: Mule, a +7 flaming hand cannon which sometimes knocks the
  user backwards when fired.
• The dreamshard necklace now has Acrobat, but only restores the player to 1 HP
  when they'd otherwise die, rather than healing 50-100% of their max HP.
• Artefact staves and orbs can now enhance other schools of magic, even those
  which don't have corresponding base enhancer staff types.
• Gyre & Gimble's enchantment is reduced from +12 to +8.
• The macabre finger necklace is now evil, and the amulet of Vitality
  no longer is.
• Glaive of the Guard no longer gives +5 AC.

Branches, Environment

• The Slime Pits now have many new endings, instead of one fixed ending.
• Fast-moving adventurers can find gems at the bottom of many branches.
  These have no use, but are great for bragging rights.
• Negative energy clouds have been replaced with clouds of excruciating
  misery, which deal damage based on max HP %.
• The Ecumenical Temple is now fully mapped on entry.
• The lairs of the lords of Pandemonium have been reworked.
• Bazaars now have other (friendly!) patrons.
• Crypt now has a 1/3 chance of containing a talisman of death.
• The Hall of Blades in Elf:2 now holds weapon-enhancing scrolls, and sometimes
  has a blade talisman.
• 'Hard' ice caves are displayed pre-entry as "glacial chasms".

Character

• New skill: Shapeshifting, used for talismans.
• New background: Shapeshifter, replacing Transmuter. Shapeshifters enter the
  dungeon with a beast talisman, a potion of lignification, and an animal skin.
• Merged skills: Poison Magic and Transmutations have been merged into Alchemy.
• Reworked background: Venom Mage has become Alchemist, which has the reworked
  spells Mercury Vapours and Sticky Flame, along with Sting, Mephitic Cloud,
  and Olgreb's Toxic Radiance.
• Reworked Hexslinger, which now starts with new spells Jinxbite, Sigil of
  Binding, and Dimensional Bullseye, along with Inner Flame and Cause Fear.
• Conjurers no longer start with Dazzling Flash.
• Shields no longer degrade in effectiveness with each hit taken per-turn.
  Instead, they now have a limit on per-turn blocks, based on shield type.
• New mutation: persistent drain, which makes HP drain take more XP to cure.
• Hunters and Chaos Knights now start with scrolls of butterflies instead
  of immolation and xom's chesspieces, respectively.

Gods

• Okawaru now gives exactly one weapon gift and one armour gift as a capstone
  (chosen by the player), rather than giving many random gifts.
• Ashenzari now gives perfect mapping, but only maps within LOS radius.
• Trog now disables pain brand instead of becoming angry at it.
• Nemelex:
  • The Swarm card can now summon higher level bees.
  • The Elements card has had its summon set adjusted.
  • The Cloud card now produces different types of cloud based on power.
  • The Deal Four ability now costs more piety.
• The Wu Jian Council now allows rampaging.
• Cheibriados piety gain now only depends on monsters' base speed.
• The good gods now hate distortion-branded weapons.
• Gozag no longer detects gold.
• Kikubaaqudgha's wrath has been overhauled to be much more dangerous.

Interface and Options

• Monsters with unusual items (e.g. distortion) are now highlit in purple
  by default.
• Monster descriptions have been compacted and made more informative.
• Monster resists from equipment is now used for display and targeting.
• For many list options, commas can now be escaped with backslash.
• The ctrl-T "toggle travel speed" option has been removed.

Items

• New item type: talismans.
  • When used, talismans transform the player into a corresponding form.
    This transformation lasts until the player chooses to end it.
    It takes five turns to use a talisman.
  • Shapeshifting skill increases the power of talismans' forms. Insufficient
    Shapeshifting skill reduces the player's maximum HP while in a form.
    Different forms have different min and max Shapeshifting skills.
  • Beast talisman: starting talisman for Shapeshifters. Gives +Slay
    but melds aux armour.
  • Flux talisman: starting talisman for Shapeshifters. Over multiple hits,
    contaminates enemies with magical radiation until they explode.
  • Serpent talisman: transforms the player into a big, constricting python.
  • Maw talisman: melds the body slot, transforming it into a devouring maw.
    Launches auxiliary chomp attacks and heals the player by devouring foes.
  • Blade talisman: gives the player blade hands and also a blade body,
    reducing AC from body armour at lower Shapeshifting skill.
  • Statue talisman: turns the player into a slow-moving, durable statue.
  • Dragon-blood talisman: turns the player into a fire-breathing dragon.
  • Storm talisman: turns the player into living lightning.
  • Talisman of death: turns the player into an undead abomination, blighting
    foes on hit and tormenting them to heal.
• New item: sack of spiders, an XP-charged evoker which webs foes and
  summons creepy-crawlies. Alternates with boxes of beasts.
• Potions of flight replaced with enlightenment, which also give Will+.
• Scrolls of magic mapping replaced with revelation, which also give X-ray
  vision and sInv for one turn.
• New weapon: orcbow, between a shortbow and an arbalest in strength.
• Hand crossbows are now hand cannons, alchemically belching smoke and death.
• Ranged weapons' damage, delay and accuracy have been adjusted.
• Quick blades now hit twice for every swing, with a higher attack delay.
• Boomerangs of dispersal have been replaced with darts.
• Condenser vanes are now more effective at low power.
• Spectral weapons now share 70% of damage taken (from 50%).
• Staves of earth now check only 1x AC, but deal 1/3rd damage to fliers.
• The 'chaos' brand has a new set of possible effects.
• Wands of light no longer affect undead, plant and nonliving monsters.
• Wands of quicksilver can no longer be self-targeted.
• Troll leather armour now has slightly less base AC.
• Removed books: Sky, Rime and Transfigurations.
• Removed: silver boomerangs and xom's chesspieces.

Monsters

• Uniques:
  • New: Jeremiah, a peaceful barachi trapped between sleep and waking.
    Their dreams leak into reality in a stream of beautiful butterflies.
  • Returned and revamped: Norris, a death cultist who surfs into battle with a
    gang of skysharks.
  • Maurice is now a vine stalker, with high regen and antimagic bites.
  • Erica is now an octopode, with constriction and a more focused spell set.
  • Frederick holds an orb, has a new spell set, and is much stronger.
  • Boris now sprays clouds of misery instead of casting Invisibility.
  • Xtahua and Mnoleg are considerably stronger.
• Other new and returned monsters:
  • Arcanists, fairly dangerous vitrifying wizards.
  • Bombardier beetles, an early monster that shoots sticky flame.
  • Brain worms, which eat magic and minds alike.
  • Burial acolytes, masters of the Ossuary.
  • Crocodiles, which drag victims backward.
  • Formless jellyfish, which constrict and sting for single-turn paralysis.
  • Glass eyes, which vitrify victims to make them fragile as glass.
  • Kobold blastminers, who blast enemies with alchemical cannons and get sent
    flying backwards by the recoil.
  • Laughing skulls, whose painful laughter grows stronger in numbers.
  • Protean progenitors, which split into shapeshifting fragments when slain.
  • Weeping skulls, which spray clouds of misery.
• Other changes to individual monsters:
  • Alligators and reapers are a bit weaker, but drag victims backward.
  • Ufetubi, tengu warriors, and draconian monks now slip behind their foes
    before meleeing.
  • Tengu reavers now have rMsl.
  • 'Wizard' has been renamed to 'occultist' and has a new spell set.
  • Worms have turned into ribbon worms, doing less damage but ensnaring.
  • Great orbs of eyes have a new spell set, and are slightly stronger.
  • Cacodemons now Vitrify instead of casting Slow/Confuse.
  • Killer Klowns now Vitrify instead of Polymorphing.
  • Monsters which cast Energy Bolt now instead cast Bolt of Devastation,
    which applies Will/2 temporarily.
  • Concentrate Venom (from naga mages and Amaemon) is more effective.
  • Naga ritualists are much more powerful.
  • Nagas' spit is now more powerful.
  • Deep Elf Elementalists now cast LRD instead of Awaken Earth.
  • Deep Elf Death Mages are tougher and summon many more lost souls.
  • Red very ugly things now do direct fire damage instead of sticky flame.
  • Sun moths have a different spellset and melee attack effects.
  • Wargs are now notably stronger and faster.
  • Abominations' speed is no longer randomized.
• Attacks of opportunity have been reworked.
  • Monsters now have a chance to attack when moving into melee with a player
    who just moved away. Previously, this triggered immediately when the
    player moved away, didn't use any of the monster's time, and couldn't
    trigger for monsters slower than the player.
  • Monsters have a slight chance to fall behind or catch up while following
    the player.
• Other behavioral changes:
  • Giant monsters can now be ensnared by webs and nets.
  • Jellies can no longer be netted or constricted.
  • Allied undead no longer become angry when damaged.
  • Allies match your speed when no foes are nearby.
  • Polymorphing monsters no longer heals them.
  • Monsters no longer use up charges when zapping wands.
  • Monsters can no longer use scrolls or potions.
• Some monsters now have special dialogue after killing the player.
• Flying skulls have been removed.

Species

• Ogres have been renamed to Oni.
  • They heal twice as much from potions, and launch a 'drunken brawling'
    melee attack against all adjacent foes when drinking healing potions.
  • Some apts have been improved or tweaked.
  • They now have Horns 1.
• Armataurs:
  • At XL7 and higher, armataurs now regenerate HP and MP when rampaging.
  • Their 'double potion' effect has been removed.
  • Their max HP is reduced.
• Felids now get an extra life at XL 1, and don't lose XLs on dying.
  They also have higher base health, but no longer have fast movement.
• Tengu now have inherent Acrobat (+15 EV after moving/waiting) at XL 1.
  They now gain +4 EV at XL7 instead of a 20% EV bonus and fast movement.
• Humans now heal while exploring, but their XP apt is now average.
• Mummies now get their first necromancy enhancer at XL 1, not 3.
• Vine Stalkers now get regeneration at XL 1, not 4.
• Djinn now use all magic skills, instead of only Spellcasting. Djinn can
  only choose to train all magic skills or none.
• Ghouls start with an additional +4 Int and +1 MP.
• Formicids can no longer be involuntarily shafted.
• Meteorans have been removed.

Spells

• Poison Magic and Transmutations have merged into a new Alchemy school.
  • Poisonous Vapours has been replaced by Mercury Vapours, which can now
    inflict Weak on the target and other creatures nearby, but has short range.
  • Sticky Flame is now L4 Fire/Alch (was L4 Fire/Conj), does much more
    damage, but can be shaken off by non-forced movement.
  • Ignite Poison is now L4 Fire/Alch (was L3 Fire/Poison/Tmut).
  • Leda's Liquefaction is now L4 Earth / Alch (was L4 Earth / Hexes)
  • Sting is now Conj/Alch (was Pois/Tmut), and has more range and damage.
  • Fulminant Prism is now Conj/Alch (was Conj/Hex).
• New spells:
  • Jinxbite (L2 Hex): deals additional Will-checking damage to foes attacked
    while its duration lasts, but also halves the caster's will.
  • Sigil of Binding (L3 Hex): creates two magical traps nearby, which
    temporarily bind hapless victims in place.
  • Brom's Barrelling Boulder (L4 Earth/Conj): creates a boulder, which crushes
    and knocks back foes and explodes when hitting walls.
  • Martyr's Knell: L4 Summ/Necro. Summons a shade that absorbs damage taken
    by other allies. Becomes a flayed ghost on death.
• Replaced spells:
  • Fugue of the Fallen (replacing Wereblood): Now L3 Necro (was L2 Tmut),
    triggers on ally kills as well as the player's, inflicts pain on nearby
    foes at max power, caps at +7 (was +9), and no longer gives minor healing.
  • Blazeheart Golem (replacing Guardian Golem): Now L4 Summ/Fire (was L3
    Summ/Hex). Now has slow, powerful, self-damaging melee, and blows up one
    turn after dying. Only functions when the player is adjacent.
  • Dimensional Bullseye (replacing Portal Projectile): targets a foe and
    teleports all shots fired at other foes to also hit the chosen unfortunate.
  • Curse of Agony (replacing Agony). Hexed foes have their health halved after
    each of the next two melee attacks the caster lands against them.
  • Bombard (replacing Iron Shot). Sometimes knocks back the caster.
  • Sculpt Simulacrum (replacing Simulacrum). L6 Ice/Alch (was L6 Ice/Necro).
    Creates simulacra of an adjacent foe after a few turns.
• Call Canine Familiar now summons inugami, dog spirits which scale with power.
  Recasting the spell heals the dogs and gives them a free cleaving attack, but
  if the inugami is defeated, it can't be resummoned for some time.
• Passwall is now L3 Earth (was L2 Earth/Tmut). It now has fixed range and gives
  temporary AC.
• Petrify can now chain its effect on up to two other adjacent foes, but has
  its range reduced to 6.
• Summon Ice Beast is now L3 (was L4).
• Plasma Beam no longer has limited range, but does 10% less damage.
• Arcjolt now initially arcs to foes within two tiles of the caster.
• Static Discharge now does more damage, but checks half AC instead of none.
• Hailstorm does more damage at low power and less at high power.
• Swiftness now works in water.
• Cigotuvi's Dreadful Rot now drains the user much less.
• Borgnjor's Vile Clutch (and Fastroot) now work on invisible enemies.
• Borgnjor's Vile Clutch does less damage.
• Blastmotes now explode when waited in.
• Spellforged Servitor requires conjurations to be <=20% fail (was 50%).
• Many summons now have a shorter duration.
• Removed: Beastly Appendage, Spider Form, Ice Form, Blade Hands, Statue
  Form, Dragon Form, Storm Form, Necromutation.

Tiles and Other Art

• New art for existing game elements:
  • Monsters:
    • Ancient liches.
    • Blink frogs.
    • Deep elf death mages.
    • Dragons.
    • Rakshasas.
    • Shrike simulacrula.
    • Barachi and Oni (decorative).
  • Unrands: Eos, Sniper, Starlight, Dragonskin, Ratskin and the Thief.
  • Short sword and eveningstar artefacts.
  • All bardings.
  • Volatile Blastmotes (spell icon and clouds).
  • Dragon form.
  • Many mutation icons.
  • Stone walls and floors in the Depths.
  • Dithmenos's altar.
  • The Orb of Zot.
• New Eustachio splash screen.
• Player body variants are randomized at the start of each game.

This release includes some bugfixes for menu-related crashes.

• Fix zooming on local tiles
• Many other bug and documentation fixes

Debian packages for Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup 0.30.0.

Stone Soup 0.30 (20230505)

Highlights

• New background: Reavers, spellswords with powerful but situational
  Conjurations.
• Palentongas reworked into Armataurs, with innate rampage and an affinity
  for potions.
• A variety of exciting new spells for warriors and wizards alike.
• Many new and reworked artefacts, both random and fixed.
• Lugonu made more available and tempting to unfortunates cast into the Abyss.

Branches, Environment

• It is now possible to enter the Vaults without holding a rune. However,
  a rune is still required to leave.
• Slime walls now apply corrosion to the player, rather than dealing damage.
  Jiyva's Oozemancy ability still deals damage as before.
• Thunderstorms now deal much more damage.

Character

• New background: Reaver.
  • Reavers are warrior-mages, primarily focused on melee combat but with
    situational Conjurations for tough situations.
  • Reavers begin with two new spells, Kiss of Death and Momentum Strike,
    as well as a revised version of the Hailstorm spell.
• Species rework: Palentonga -> Armataur.
  • Like Palentongas, Armataurs are large, scaled mammals, wearing bardings
    instead of boots.
  • Armataurs lose the Rolling Charge and Curl abilities. They gain Rollpage
    (innate Rampage) and long tongues, which double the effects of potions but
    slow down scroll reading.
  • Armataurs' aptitudes have been adjusted.
• Background changes:
  • Monks now start with an orb of light.
  • Warpers replace Gell's Gravitas with Vhi's Electric Charge.
  • Hedge Wizards have Conjure Flame replaced by Cigotuvi's Dreadful Rot.
  • Fire Elementalists have Conjure Flame replaced by Volatile Blastmotes.
  • Ice Elementalists have Hailstorm replaced by Summon Ice Beast.
  • The 'Arcane Marksman' background has been renamed to 'Hexslinger'.
  • Removed the Abyssal Knight background.
• Miscellaneous species changes:
  • Mummies gain innate Faith, giving them extra piety gain.
  • Large species move at normal speed through shallow water.
  • Formicids can now shaft themselves in the Tomb of the Ancients.
  • Species size no longer affects SH.
  • Pale draconians' breath is no longer usable twice as often as others'.
• rF- and rC- are added to the 'bad mutations' pool.
• All players regenerate an extra 0.2 HP/turn.
• Will is now capped at +++++.
• It is now possible to stack two levels of Harm.
• Reaching the end of the Zot clock now causes a smaller amount of permanent
  max HP loss (similar to Borgnjor's Revivication), rather than temp HP drain.

Gods

• Lugonu:
  • Banishment is now available at ** piety (from ***), has a lower failure
    chance, and causes malmutation when resisted.
  • When the player suffers the wrath of another god, Lugonu now responds by
    banishing some number of hostile monsters nearby.
  • Lugonu's altars are more common in the Abyss, and the piety bonus for
    converting to Lugonu in the Abyss has been increased.
  • The Bend Space ability has been removed.
• Ashenzari:
  • Skill boost reduced.
  • Trap detection moved to 4* (was at 0*).
  • Removed Astral Vision (automatically seeing through walls).
• When worshipping at a faded altar, the player is given a preview of three
  gods the altar might belong to.
• Xom's mutation gifts are no longer limited to a small pool of options.
• Gozag's corpse-to-gold effect now blocks enemies from creating simulacra,
  and the duration of the distraction effect is no longer based on corpse size.
• Fedhas protects trees from being set on fire by the player.
• Okawaru's Heroism and Finesse abilities cost more piety.
• Hepliaklqana's Knight now attacks 50% more slowly.
• Good gods will now suppress evil clouds from Condenser Vanes.

Interface and Options

• Two new menus that unify all equip and unequip actions:
  • The Equip menu (e) combines wield, wear, and put on commands for equipping
    weapons, armour, and jewellery, respectively.
  • The Unequip menu (c) allows to unwield, take off, or remove any equipped
    item.
  • Tab toggles between equip and unequip.
• Character overview ('%') screen:
  • Displays much more information about items, moving niche statuses downward.
  • No longer shows .s for low Stealth values.
• Damage ratings are now shown via @, including those for unarmed combat.
• An indicator is now displayed when movement would cause a Rampage.
• Bumping a foe while holding a ranged weapon shoots instead of bashing.
• The piety cost of divine invocations is now shown more clearly.
• Spells' maximum damage is now displayed in their descriptions.
• Unrands (pre-defined artefacts) have a distinct colour by default.
• Almost all unrands with special behavior now have a corresponding inscription.
• Many weapon brands now provide more quantitative damage information.
• Up to 100 waypoints can now be placed (up from 10).
• New show_blood option allows disabling blood spatters and bloody corpses.
• Webtiles muting commands are reworked into a block mechanism; see /help in
  webtiles chat for more details.

Items

• New brand: Heavy.
  • Heavy weapons have +80% base damage and +50% attack delay.
  • Both melee and ranged weapons can be Heavy.
• Elemental evokers:
  • Lightning rods now do 50% more damage.
  • Elemental evokers now recharge faster in the early game and slower later.
  • Each elemental evoker can now generate at most once in a given game.
  • Jiyva jellies can no longer eat elemental evokers.
  • Condensation Vanes and Tremorstones can no longer both generate in one game.
  • Phials of floods have their range and effect duration reduced.
• Evocable invisibility and blink no longer have an MP cost.
• Spells have been reshuffled between books, and a new Maxwell's Memoranda book
  has been added.
• Shield penalties are now reduced by Str rather than by players' size.
• Orb, scarf, and magical staff artefacts can now appear.
• Orbs of energy now give -Wiz in exchange for a chance to refund MP when
  spells are cast, with no chance of backlash.
• Scrolls of butterflies now blow back nearby creatures and create many more
  butterflies. They now alternate with scrolls of summoning instead of fog.
• Rings of evasion are now +5 (were +4).
• All ranged weapons can now generate with electrocution, antimagic, and
  draining brands. Venom ranged weapons no longer appear.
• Ranged weapons are now quieter.
• Longbows, arbalests and hand crossbows have had their stats slightly tweaked.
• Throwing weapons now deal extra damage when they break.
• The spectral brand now matches the player's accuracy and damage, the latter
  reduced by 30% (ala cleaving).
• Short sword attack delay reduced.
• Removed the 'vorpal' brand.

Monsters

• New monsters:
  • Sleepcap: native to the early Dungeon, sleepcaps may inflict sleep on hit,
    making the player take massive damage from whoever attacks next.
  • Skyshark: appearing in late Lair and early Shoals, skysharks become
    enraged on drawing blood - first becoming Mighty, then Berserk!
• Demonic Crawlers lose the Warning Cry ability and elemental resistances in
  exchange for higher damage and very fast regeneration.
• Doom Hounds' Howl is now resistable by Will.
• Many monsters do somewhat less damage.
• Walking Tomes are now unable to cast while silenced.
• Ironbound Frosthearts' Creeping Frost spell is now fully resistable by rC.
• Fleeing monsters will no longer avoid harmful clouds.
• Monsters, notably Asterion, can now use spectral weapons.

Spells

• New spells:
  • Kiss of Death (L1 Conj/Necro): does high draining damage to an adjacent
    enemy, at the cost of significant max HP drain to the caster.
  • Momentum Strike (L2 Conj/Tloc). Redirects the caster's momentum for a
    damaging attack that doesn't require line of fire, but locks the caster in
    place for some turns after a hit (and cannot be recast until this expires).
  • Cigotuvi's Dreadful Rot (L2 Necro/Air/Pois). Rots away the caster's flesh
    to create a cloud of deadly miasma on their tile.
  • Volatile Blastmotes (L3 Fire/Tloc). Creates an explosive cloud on the
    caster's tile, usable as a land mine or tricky tool.
  • Vhi's Electric Charge (L3 Tloc/Air). Launches the caster at a nearby foe
    and launches a crackling melee attack, phasing through creatures en route.
  • Arcjolt (L5 Air/Conj). Electrocutes everything adjacent to the caster,
    everything adjacent to those creatures, etc, etc, in a chain.
  • Plasma Beam (L6 Fire/Air): Fires a bolt of lightning and another bolt of
    fire, both at the most distant foe.
• Hailstorm moved to L3 (from L4) and can now miss.
• Call Imp now always and only calls a spear-wielding cerulean imp.
• Manifold Assault moved to L4 (from L5) and does half as many attacks with
  UC as with a weapon.
• Lesser Beckoning moved to L2 (from L3) and is now better at low power.
• Battlespheres now fire when any destructive spell is cast, not just Conj.
• Ozocubu's Refrigeration's damage has been increased.
• Slow no longer has bonus hex power.
• Irradiate now only has a 50% chance of malmutating affected creatures.
• The Scorch, Simulacrum and Static Discharge spells have been weakened.
• Removed: Conjure Flame, Corpse Rot and Lightning Bolt.

Tiles and Other Art

• New tiles for player draconians.
• More icons for mutations.
• Several new splash screens.
• A new icon for Monstrous Menagerie.
• New art for many monsters, including Prince Ribbit and X-shaped simulacra.
• New art for many unrands, including the Elemental Staff and Wrath of Trog.
• New holiday-exclusive tiles for Sigmund, ogres and hats.

Unrands

• New unrands:
  • The Hermit's Pendant, an amulet of faith that sets the wearer's Invocations
    skill to 14 and their Evocations skill to 0.
  • The Consecrated Labrys, a holy axe with sInv, Flight, and an enchantment
    that grows larger while more dangerous enemies are in view.
  • The Slick Slippers, which make all damaging melee attacks trample their
    wearer backward. They provide immunity to constriction, engulfing, etc.
  • The Force Lance, a Heavy +5 lance (ala Wyrmbane) which has a 1/3 chance of
    knocking back foes when landing a damaging blow.
  • The Storm Queen's Shield, a +5 kite shield of rElec and flight which
    fires electrical retaliation at those it blocks.
  • The toga "Victory", a robe which gains AC, Int and Slay as the wearer
    slays dangerous foes, but loses everything if they drink or read near foes.
• Orbs:
  • The Staff of Dispater is now an orb with +AC and *Corrode.
  • The Staff of Battle is now an orb. It now enhances all destructive spells
    (matching Vehumet's categorization), but de-enhances other spells.
  • The Staff of Wucad Mu is now an orb, with double the MP refund chance of a
    normal orb of energy.
• Devorpalization:
  • Sniper is now +27 and Heavy (was +9 and Vorpal).
  • The Dark Maul is now Heavy (was Vorpal), and has its base stats adjusted.
  • Other formerly Vorpal unrands have been adjusted individually.

• The Mad Mage's Maulers lose Int-3 and RegenMP, gain -Cast and MPVamp (gain
  MP from damage dealt), and deal twice as much damage when spending MP.
• The Ring of the Hare is now +10 (was +8).
• Majin-Bo is now one-handed and deals much more damage in melee.
• The sceptre of Asmodeus is now an eveningstar that summons demons on-hit.
• The Elemental Staff now provides weaker resistances.
• The Lochaber Axe now causes HP Drain on unequip.
• Removed Morg.

0.30 beta release, in preparation for the final 0.30 release on or around 5/5.

Debian packages for 0.29.1, autogenerated thanks to https://github.com/crawl/crawl/pull/2188!

For the regular release, see: https://github.com/crawl/crawl/releases/tag/0.29.1

Quick bugfix release after the tournament. CI should now build linux packages as well as mac/win, thanks to #2188. Debian packages here: https://github.com/crawl/crawl/releases/tag/0.29.1-debian

Stone Soup 0.29.1 (20220911)

Bugfix release

• 20+ bug and documentation fixes
• Improvements to linux packaging support infrastructure

Stone Soup 0.29.0 (20220823)

Highlights

• New Meteoran species - powerful, but with heavy time pressure.
• Ranged weapons have been extensively redesigned and streamlined.
• Necromancy and Kikubaaqudgha have been overhauled and powered up.
• Many backgrounds have extra consumables to handle early tricky situations.
• The Abyss is deeper and more rewarding.

Branches, Environment

• The Abyss has been reworked.
  • Piety and experience are once again awarded in the Abyss.
  • When the abyssal rune generates, it's announced and appears on the map.
  • New decorative 'runelight' features now indicate the rune is close by.
  • The Abyss is now 7 levels deep, with the depths beyond A:5 continuously
    swarming the player with dangerous foes.
  • When entering the abyss by any means, the player is sent at least as deep
    as their previous deepest abyss depth.
• Dungeon shafts try not to send the player directly into monsters' sight.
• All descents of new stairs and hatches are now fast, not just one per floor.
• The Lair is now 5 levels long (was 6).
• Zombies and skeletons are removed from normal Dungeon spawns.
• Temple sizes now range from 6 to 21 altars, with a small chance of rare
  temples with 0, 1, or 22 temple-god altars.
• The Zot clock now only instantly kills the player if they're extremely badly
  drained. Otherwise, it applies very heavy draining and refreshes the clock.
• 'Hell effect' events fire on entering floors, instead of on a timer.

Character

• New species: Meteoran, stars fallen to earth in human form. Features:
  • Strong attributes and very strong skill aptitudes.
  • Exploration healing, regaining HP and MP when viewing new territory.
  • Passive mapping of the dungeon around them.
  • Hunted by darkness: only 600 turns per floor until Zot catches them
    (instead of the usual 6,000).
• Many backgrounds start with new consumable items:
  • All 'mage' backgrounds now start with a potion of magic.
  • Gladiators add a single throwing weapon (javelin, large rock, or boomerang)
    to their starting kit.
  • Monks start with a potion of ambrosia.
  • Hunters gain a scroll of immolation.
  • Brigands get an additional poisoned & curare dart.
  • Chaos Knights start with a piece from Xom's chessboard.
  • Artificers trade their chesspiece for five iceblast charges.
  • Wanderers get an additional random potion or scroll.
  • Abyssal Knights start with more piety and standing on the abyss exit.
  • Transmuters start with a potion of lignification.
  • Warpers start with two more dispersal boomerangs (a total of 7).
  • Enchanters start with a second potion of invisibility.
• Ranged weapon skills and starts are streamlined (see also "Items" below):
  • The Bows, Crossbows, and Slings skills are combined into a single Ranged
    Combat skill. Most species have aptitudes equal to their best previous
    ranged aptitude.
  • Hunters always start with a shortbow, and no longer have a short sword.
    They have higher dexterity and lower strength and intelligence.
  • Arcane Marksmen always start with a +1 sling.
• Necromancers start with the new spell Necrotize instead of Animate Skeleton
  and Pain.
• Some species were tweaked:
  • Merfolk polearms aptitude is decreased to +3, and long blades aptitude
    increased to +2.
  • Mummy necromancy enhancers now arrive at XL 3 and 13.
  • Demonspawn demonic touch damage is doubled.
  • Formicids' base dexterity is increased by 3.
  • Formicids can again wield giant (spiked) clubs.
  • Palentongas' base strength is increased by 2, and their roll attack noise
    is reduced by two-thirds.
  • Spriggans can no longer wield triple crossbows.

• Some mutations were tweaked:
  • Positive stat mutations now give +4 to the primary stat and -1 to the
    other two, instead of only giving +2 to the primary.
  • The -Scroll and -Potion mutations are now regular 2-tier mutations in
    the bad mutation pool. The Ru sacrifice corresponds to the 2nd tier.
  • Teleportitis and Berserkitis are reduced to 2-tier mutations
• Deep Dwarves are removed.

Gods

• Kikubaaqudgha is overhauled:
  • Corpse Delivery is removed and replaced with Unearth Wretches, which
    summons paralysed, 1 HP, 0 Will monsters that die in a few turns.
    Necromantic fodder...
  • Torment no longer requires a corpse sacrifice.
  • The pain brand can be applied to ranged weapons.
• Lugonu's Bend Space is adjusted. It no longer does damage, and makes a better
  effort to blink monsters away from the destination.
• Uskayaw grants piety for damaging enemy summons.
• Ru's Sacrifice Experience now only takes one XL (was two).
• Various Ru sacrifices (including Experience) have their piety values tweaked.

Interface and Options

• Common menu navigation commands are mapped via CMD_MENU_... commands, and
  can be rebound by bindkey options (local tiles/console only)
• Keycodes for rebinding keys are now the same across all builds.
• Keybinds, macros, and keymaps now accept human-readable key names for many
  special keys (e.g. "F1", "NP." for numpad ., etc.)
• Numpad keys can now be bound separately in all builds.
• Improvements to specific menus:
  • The Fire menu now allows selecting any item with a targeter. This includes
    items that don't show the targeter by default but do have a useful targeter,
    such as scrolls of fear.
  • In menus for equipping and using items, a toggle allows switching between
    item type.
  • In most menus that list items, or allow describing a menu entry, entries can
    be described without changing the menu mode by using the ' key, or by
    right clicking (tiles only).
  • Item type hotkeys in the inventory now scroll, instead of select.
  • The * menu for Firing is now used to select items to toss away.
• The branch overview menu now shows zot clock values when they are low.
• tile_sidebar_pixels option: allows resizing local tiles sidebar icons.

Items

• Ranged weapons are streamlined (see also "Character" above):
  • Launchers no longer use ammunition.
  • Launcher attack delay is increased by armour penalties.
  • Fustibali are removed. Hunting slings are renamed to slings.
  • Launchers have had their stats adjusted across the board. In particular,
    hand crossbows are made much rarer and more powerful.
  • Launchers all use the Ranged Combat skill.
• Launcher, long blade, and short blade damage scale with Dex instead of Str.
• New concept: "alternate items". Some item types are grouped into 'sets',
  and only one type from each 'set' can generate in a game. Background
  starting items ignore this.
  • New item: scroll of butterflies, which summons a large cloud of
    butterflies. Alternates with scrolls of fog.
  • New wand: Light. Fires a damaging bolt of blinding light, blinding on hit.
    Alternates with acid and quicksilver.
  • New wand: Quicksilver: Fires a quicksilver bolt, dispelling magical effects
    from targets it hits. Alternates with acid and light.
  • New wand: Roots: Fires a 3x3 ball of roots, constricting enemies in the
    radius. Alternates with iceblast.
  • Wands of paralysis now alternate with wands of charming.
• 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.
• New unrands:
  • The +8 trishula "Condemnation" {holy, Anguish Fly rN+}. Inflicts 4-8 turns
    of Anguish on those hit, making them take damage when dealing it.
  • The +3 mountain boots {steadfast, rC+}. Prevents the player from being
    involuntarily moved by physical means (trampling, shafts, harpoons, etc.).
  • New unrand: the +5 lochaber axe, which cleaves through all foes in reaching
    range. Uses the higher of the player's Polearms and Axes skill.
• Items can have vault-redefined skins. Yuif now has hammers again (renamed
  maces). Sigmund and Reapers' scythes are now renamed halberds.
• +MP items remove MP when they are taken off.
• Stones always mulch when thrown.
• Unrandart tweaks:
  • the Glaive of the Guard is reduced to +5.
  • the arbalest "Damnation"'s explosions now do 2d14 damage (was 3d14).
  • Gyre & Gimble are increased to +12.
  • The Woodcutter's axe is now a battleaxe.
  • the amulet of Vitality now gives two pips each of Regen and RegenMP, and is
    now evil.
• Scrolls of holy word are removed.

Monsters

• New uniques:
  • Amaemon the Diabolical Poisoner, a poison-themed demonspawn unique
    appearing with a band of orange demons in mid-D, early Lair, and Orc:1.
  • Lodul the Thundrous, an ironbound thunderhulk sent to patrol outside the
    Vaults. Appears in late D with a band of fellow ogres.
  • Zenata, Seeker of Sheza. Summons dancing weapons and casts Resonance
    Strike, doing extra damage when constructs are adjacent to the target.
    Wields a valuable weapon. Appears searching Vaults:1-4, Elf, and Crypt.
  • Parghit the Mighty, an "alt-timeline" version of Pargi with extremely high
    regeneration and enchanted golden dragon scales. Appears in late Depths and
    Zot.
  • Josephina the Ice-Lich, an "alt-timeline" version of Josephine with
    Seracfall and a band of simulacra along side Ghostly Fireball. Appears in
    Depths, Zot, and Crypt.
  • Grunn the Punished, an "alt-timeline" undead version of Grum, with a pack
    of doom hounds. Appears in Depths, Crypt, and Zot.
  • Vv the Exile, an fire/ice spellcaster with Creeping Frost, Eruption, and
    Pyroclastic Surge. Appears in Depths, Crypt, and Zot.
• Monster move energy is no longer randomized.
• Monsters gain a 1/3 chance to gain a free attack on a player moving away from
  them. Wu Jian martial attacks & rampaging give immunity, and monsters that
  don't move fast enough to follow you can't attack.
• New monster: starflower, a stationary plant with harpoon shot and reaching
  distortion melee. Found guarding valuable places in the abyss.
• Gnoll shamans are renamed gnoll bouda, and have a new spell set.
• Animated Armour now flies.
• Monster wand power is reduced.

Spells

• Necromancy reworked:
  • 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).
  • Animate Dead reworked: for a duration after being cast, the dead have a
    power-dependent chance of rising as allied zombies. The zombies are
    permanent until the player leaves the level or re-casts 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.
  • Corpse Rot is now Level 4 Necromancy/Poison/Air. For a duration after being
    cast, dead monsters have a chance of producing deadly miasma.
  • Death Channel cannot be re-cast while active.
• Sandblast no longer uses stones as ammo. Instead, it takes half again as long
  to cast as a normal spell. Its range and accuracy are increased.
• Airstrike's damage bonus from empty space around the target is doubled.
• Irradiate now causes dangerous contamination in 3-4 casts (was 4-5).
• Flame Wave and Sticky Flame now do roughly 25% more damage.
• Ozocubu's Refrigeration and Freezing Ramparts now check AC, but do more
  damage. Refrigeration also now does reduced damage to creatures adjacent to
  others, but no longer applies -Potion to the caster.
• Hex miscasts now only slow the player, instead of also cancelling effects.
• Removed: Animate Skeleton, Pain, Excruciating Wounds.

Tiles

• Some mutations now have associated art.
• Many more status effects (e.g. Dazed, rF-) now have associated icons.
• Monsters with Reflect (e.g. from a shield) now display an icon.
• All species now have new statue form tiles.
• Many new alternate tiles for Djinni and Nagas.
• The Lernaean Hydra now has unique tiles when skeletonized.
• Borgnjor's Mausoleum and Tukima's Studio have new environmental art.
• Runed door tiles have been reworked for greater visibility.

This is a beta prerelease for the upcoming 0.29 release.

Stone Soup 0.28.0 (20220203)

Highlights

• New Cinder Acolyte background, followers of the dying god Ignis.
• The Hells burn with new fury, filled with new monsters and effects.
• Yredelemnul completely redesigned; Okawaru and Jiyva significantly changed.
• The Spider's Nest respun - many new monsters and maps lurk within.
• Magical orbs added as a new category of off-hand equipment.

Branches, Environment

• You will learn to fear the Hells!
  • Branch-wide persistent effects:
    • Dis: ongoing -8 Corrosion.
    • Cocytus: potions cannot be used.
    • Gehenna: scrolls cannot be used.
    • Tartarus: willpower halved.
  • Timed effects are now the same for all Hells: temporary mutation, hp drain, attribute drain, and noise.
  • Floors 1-6 of each hell sub-branch are considerably smaller, and place only one pair of stairs.
  • Each hell subbranch's spawn tables are adjusted to produce more depth appropriate monsters and less chaff. (See also 'Monsters'.)
• Six new Wizard's Laboratories are added: Eringya's Formal Garden, Tukima's Studio, Yara's Duelist Academy, Borgnjor's Mausoleum, Maxwell's Workshop, and Alistair's Party Mansion.
• Abyss:
  • The Abyss no longer generates random items, and kills in the abyss grant no experience or conventional piety. (Uskayaw and Yredelemnul continue to grant their special kinds of piety).
  • Collecting the abyssal rune of zot grants two XP potions worth of experience.
  • The chance of an Abyss teleport sending the player deeper is increased, as are the rune, stair, and exit generation rates.
• Sewer maps have been re-balanced and randomized, and two new sewers added.
• Bailey maps have been re-balanced and randomized, and three new baileys added.
• Spider has two new end maps, an "Endless Swarm" map featuring broodmothers and a "Bug Friends" map featuring all non-spider insects.
• Spider is a normal noise level again.
• Artefacts can now generate on D:2-3.
• Ziggurats no longer require runes of zot to enter.
• Exploration-based shaft traps can now happen a maximum of once per branch.

Character

• Backgrounds:
  • New background: Cinder Acolyte, an Ignis zealot. Starts worshipping Ignis, along with Scorch and a -1 flame branded weapon of choice.
  • Fire Elementalist's starting spells are revised, and are now: Foxfire, Scorch, Conjure Flame, Inner Flame, and Flame Wave. (See 'Spells'.)
  • The Enchanter background no longer starts with the Corona spell, and instead starts with a potion of invisibility.
  • The Fighter background now starts with a buckler instead of a kite shield.
  • The Abyssal Knight background now starts with 5/2/5 Str/Int/Dex (was 4/4/4).
• Player-chosen attribute increases now happen every 6 XLs, starting at XL 3,
  and increase a stat by 2. Demigods are unchanged.
• The experience cost of high-level skills is reduced.
• Late game XP gains are reduced.
• Formicids now dig at normal movement speed. Each cell dug causes HP drain.
• Each level of the evolution mutation now provides exactly two 'good' random mutation, activating once per XL.
• New bad mutation: devolution. Mechanically similar to evolution but dispenses bad mutations and activates once every 1/4th of an XL.
• New Demonspawn Mutations:
  • Weakening Stinger: gives a tail aux attack. Level 3 blocks the cloak slot and applies Weak on hit.
  • Demonic Touch: adds AC-ignoring damage to off-hand punch attacks. Level 3 blocks the glove slot and applies Vuln (halved Will) on hit.
• Aux attacks now trigger with a chance based on XL.
• The chance to offhand punch now starts at 5% and increases to 50% with Unarmed Combat skill.
• Clarity from any source no longer blocks berserk from random rage.
• 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.
• Wanderers have more useful starting skills and new item possibilities.

Gods

• New (non-temple) God: Ignis, the Dying Flame.
  • Ignis altars do not generate normally, Ignis can only be worshipped from a faded altar or from the new Cinder Acolyte zealot start.
  • Ignis worshippers normally start at 5* piety.
  • Ignis has no piety gain and no piety decay.
  • Ignis grants the following:
    • Passive rF+ (fire resistance).
    • 'Fiery Armour': +7AC and fire damage to melee attackers for its duration.
    • 'Foxfire Swarm': Conjures foxfires on every open space in radius 2, which launch one-shot fire attacks ala the 'Foxfire' spell.
    • 'Rising Flame': After 2-4 turns, sends the player through the ceiling (up one floor). Can only be used once.
• Yredelemnul:
  • Piety now solely based on the number and strength of allied zombies in sight.
  • Passive reaping: slain living, demonic, and holy monsters have a chance to automatically rise from the dead as undead allies.
  • Zombies cannot leave the level and expire when the player leaves the level.
  • Yredelemnul grants the following active abilities:
    • 0*: Recall Undead Harvest: recalls undead allies to you.
    • 2*: Dark Bargain. Trade 2 zombies for a long-duration undead summon. Scales with invocations.
    • 4*: Drain Life. Same as previous drain life, but also costs 3 zombies.
    • 5*: Bind Soul. Formerly known as 'Enslave Soul', but also costs 4 zombies. A bound soul is permanent and can follow the player between floors.
  • Removed animate remains/dead and injury mirror abilities.
  • Kills by Yredremnul allies now grant full experience.
• Okawaru becomes the god of single combat.
  • New ability: Duel, granted at 5*. 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* (from 5*).
  • Worshippers may no longer have allies of any kind.
• Jiyva:
  • New active 'Oozemancy' 3* ability. Temporarily turns nearby walls within radius 4 into slime-covered walls that do acid damage to adjacent monsters.
  • Mutations now changed in bursts: existing mutations decay, then new ones are added several levels at once.
  • Piety now granted solely for exploring, and only outside the Slime Pits.
  • Now grants passive regeneration of HP and MP at a high rate.
  • Passive rCorr is now granted at 2*, and jelly spawning on hit at 5*.
  • Removed: attribute shuffling, the 'cure mutation' ability, and healing/mp restoration from jelly item eating.
• Elyvilon:
  • Pacification grants full XP and works on intelligent plants.
  • Lifesaving is now completely passive, with an extra piety gated chance on top of the basic good god lifesaving chance and a cooldown.
  • Purification is moved to 1* and reduced in cost.
  • Greater Healing is renamed to Heal Self and moved to 3*.
  • Lesser Healing is removed.
• Cheibriados permits berserk while suppressing the extra speed.
• Cheibriados now slows poison on worship and grants bend time at 1*.
• Ashenzari's passive trap protection and item identification is moved to 1*.
• The Shining One now gives Divine Shield at 1* and Cleansing Flame at 3*.

Interface and Options

• WebTiles now has a clickable action panel, similar to the local tiles
  inventory panel. This UI element by default shows tactically-relevant
  consumables, and comes with a number of configuration options (see the
  various action_panel... options, or right-click on the X).
• Mutation descriptions can now be inspected in the mut(A)tion menu.
• Most abilities now have targeters (similar to spell targeters). These are
  configurable via the force_ability_targeter option, and spell targeter
  configuration is moved to force_spell_targeter.
• Many improvements to menus and popups:
  • Arrow key navigation and selection is available in many more menus. This can be disabled with the new option menu_arrow_control for the classic roguelike experience. Shift-arrows replace arrows as the binding to scroll by a single line. (Console users: not all terminals support these keycodes on default settings.)
  • The quiver menu has a mode that uses hotkeys from the items/spells/abilities it is showing.
  • The stash search menu more clearly differentiates items that can be traveled to, and has a number of interface improvements. The closest (travelable) search result is always available via the enter key.
  • Description popups have been improved and actions in these popups are now activatable using the mouse on webtiles.
  • Improvements and bugfixes to many other menus.
• WebTiles mouse support is expanded.
• WebTiles supports virtual keyboards on touch devices, configurable via the tile_web_mobile_input_helper option. There have also been a number of improvements to rendering on touch devices. (Caveat: these changes are aimed at tablets, not phones.)
• Console:
  • A new console option bold_brightens_foreground=force lets bold be applied to bright foreground colors even in 16-color mode.
  • A popup accessible via ! in the help screen shows current terminal and console settings, and attempts to indicate misconfiguration. (PuTTY users may find this particularly helpful.)
• A small number of options are automatically saved across games based on their value in the relevant in-game user interface. These include default_manual_training, quiver_menu_focus (for the new quiver menu modes), and several of the action panel settings, which can be edited by right-clicking on the panel close button.
• On MacOS local games, a game menu option will reveal the rc file in the Finder.
• The inventory-full autopickup prompt now has an "(A)lways ignore" choice.
• Webtiles chat can be closed, as well as opened, via F12.

Items

• New item type: orbs, occupying the shield slot.
  • Orbs give no SH and impose no shield penalty, but always come with an ego.
  • Orb egos are all new:
    • Light: a radius 3 halo.
    • Wrath: *Rage (20% chance to berserk on melee hit).
    • Mayhem: chance to frenzy a monster in sight after a kill, causing them to wildly attack friends and foes alike ala the Discord spell.
    • Guile: reduces Will by ++ for both the wearer and those they try to hex.
    • energy: gives a source of passive channeling, which gives a chance to refund the MP of a cast spell and a chance to backfire. Backfires cause confusion or Int drain. Scales with Evocations.
• New glove ego: infusion, spending 1 MP per melee hit to add extra damage.
• New unrand: the +3 Mad Mage's Maulers {Infuse+∞ RegenMP Int-3}. These use all
  available MP to give proportional bonus damage to a melee hit.
• New unrand: the dreamshard necklace {*Dream}. On receiving a lethal or
  near-lethal hit, the dreamshard necklace shatters, averting the blow, healing
  the player, releasing dream allies, and fog. Otherwise does nothing.
• New "early-game" unrandarts, unlikely to appear after the early game:
  • Delatra's gloves. These gloves heal the wearer for drinking unknown potions and give the wearer MP for reading unknown scrolls.
  • The woodcutter's axe is a vorpal +8 war axe that always swings at 10 aut regardless of skill and speed modifiers.
  • The staff of the Meek is a +7 quarterstaff of protection that gives extra 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.
• Shields and armour:
  • Shield penalties scale linearly with skill, completely disappearing at skill 27. The size of the penalty depends on the shield's encumbrance rating and species size factors.
  • Shields are no longer affected by Str, only Dex.
  • Armour and shields no longer impose to-hit penalties.
• Riposte is removed from long blades and base damage is increased.
• The skill requirements for minimum delay for executioner's axes and bardiches are reduced to 24; for triple swords the requirement is reduced to 22.
• *Rage now causes berserk on 20% of hits. This chance stacks linearly among items and with the berserkitis mutation. Certain unrands grant a higher chance.
• Evokable berserk is removed as an artefact property.
• The generation of throwing ammunition is reduced.
• Wand generation is reduced.
• The electrocution brand triggers 25% less often.
• One '+' of regen is reduced to 0.8 HP/turn (was 1.0 HP/turn).
• MPRegen amulets are buffed to 0.4 MP/turn (was 0.25 MP/turn).
• The archery ego is renamed to 'hurling' and now only applies to throwing.
• Unrandart tweaks:
  • The staff of Battle now triggers the battlesphere on melee hits (in addition to the usual spell trigger).
  • The robe of Clouds' thunder cloud ability is now passive, placing storm clouds on enemies within range 2 each turn.
  • Leech no longer has *Rage, and now has Harm and Drain.
  • The necklace of bloodlust now gives a 50% chance to go berserk on hit.
  • The Zealot's sword now gives a 20% chance to go berserk on hit (up from
    5%).
  • The hat of the bear spirit gives a 20% chance to go berserk on hit, increases the bonus HP from going berserk, and reduces the slow duration after. It no longer has rN+.
  • The ring of the Mage is now a ring of Wizardry and Archmagi.
  • The autumn katana loses Clarity and gains a chance to manifold assault on hit.
  • The glaive of Prune turns the wielder into a prune when paralysed, petrified, or asleep, halving the damage received for the duration.
  • Lear's Hauberk is reduced to +18 (was +27).
  • The trident of the Octopus King loses +Will.
  • Wucad Mu now counts as two sources of channeling. This means it is twice as likely to refund MP and the probability of backfiring is squared.
  • The robe of Misfortune loses Contam and Drain.

Monsters

• New unique: Mlioglotl. A unique horror with the power to corrupt the level, changing terrain and summoning other abyssal horrors, as well as cause fear. Appears in the S-branches and rarely in the abyssal lair end.
• New Hell monsters (with subbranch):
  • Wendigo, collapses simulacra into painful iceblasts (Coc)
  • Nargun, hits hard and petrify (Coc)
  • Quicksilver elemental, with antimagic and quicksilver bolts (Dis)
  • Crystal echidna, throws barbs and crystal bolts (Dis)
  • Creeping inferno, which explodes into a Fire Storm (Geh)
  • Stoker, keeps at range and calls creeping infernos (Geh)
  • Searing wretch, a hard hitting fighter that strips fire resistance (Geh)
  • Tainted leviathan, a giant with a ring of miasma and mesmerise (Tar)
  • Putrid mouth, a ghost with poisonous melee and miasma breath (Tar)
• New Spider monsters:
  • Pharaoh ants are undead that drain and bind souls on death.
  • Steelbarb worms are fast, regenerate, resist fire and apply barbs in melee.
  • Jorogumo are tough, ensnare, cast bolt of draining and have hornet poison melee.
  • Broodmothers summon spiders and bite to summon spiders.
  • Culicivora join spider packs with a vampiric bite and heal other.
  • Sun moths are holy with a single tile halo, sticky flame, and energy bolt.
  • Radroaches are armoured roaches that cast irradiate, greatly contaminating
    the player.
• New monsters: walking tomes, which summon living spells that cast themselves at the player. Appear in Depths and the Tukima's Studio wizlab.
• Demonspawn warmongers' Sap Magic effect now causes a short term -Cast after casting a spell.
• All derived undead retain their reach, constriction, and trample attacks.
• Red Devils now apply barbs on hit, instead of hopping back.
• Wretched Stars only apply one temporary mutation per use of corrupting pulse, and use the spell less often.
• Demonic and holy monsters are now susceptible to fear, berserk, alistairs intoxication, and ballistomycete spores.
• Monsters have a chance to break a door permanently when opening it. This chance is higher if the mosnter is berserk.
• Classed draconians have a fixed colour per job.
• When Dowan dies Duvessa goes berserk permanently; when Duvessa dies Dowan gains haste permanently.
• If Jiyva dies Dissolution's summon eyeballs is replaced with a cantrip.
• Kills by and of player-frenzied monsters now grant XP.
• Ironbound Beastmasters are removed.

Spells

• Kills by summoned allies now grant full experience.
• Spell summon caps are reduced:
  • Summon Small Mammal, Summon Hydra, and Monstrous Menagerie are capped at 2.
  • Haunt is capped at 8.
  • All other summon spells except Summon Horrible Things and Dragon's Call are capped at 1.
• New spell: Summon Cactus Giant (L6 Summonings). Summons a giant which attacks very slowly but has enormous spines, impaling melee attackers.
• New spell: Scorch (L2 Fire). Hits a random enemy within 3 tiles, dealing fire damage and (if damage is dealt) applying short term rF- to the foe.
• New spell: Flame Wave (L4 Conjuration/Fire). Burns adjacent creatures, then when channeled by hitting '.' (like Searing Ray), repeatedly hits enemies in an increasing radius.
• New spell: Enfeeble (L7 Hexes). Enfeeble irresistibly applies weakness and antimagic to a single foe. Targets that fail a Willpower check are also dazed and blinded.
• New spell: Anguish (L4 Hexes/Necromancy). All enemies in sight must pass a Will check or gain the new Anguished status effect. Whenever Anguished monsters deal damage, they take the same amount of damage right back.
• Yara's Violent Unravelling can now unravel summons, killing them immediately and turning them into explosions. It is now smite targeted.
• Inner Flame is now smite targeted.
• Corpse Rot now scales with spell power, placing more clouds per corpse and reaching up to range 2 with sufficient clouds.
• Death Channel now works on demonic and holy creatures. It also now works on corpseless living creatures.
• Metabolic Englaciation has a minimum slow duration when successful.
• Eringya's Noxious Bog now places a bog under the caster, as well as on cells with only one adjacent wall. The caster is now immune to their own bog.
• Slow is now level 1 with a lower power cap.
• Searing Ray and Storm Form have reduced power scaling.
• Storm Form's blinkbolt ability is now always LOS range.
• Passage of Golubria now has a range that scales with spell power.
• Blink now has a cooldown that scales with spell power.
• Lesser Beckoning's power cap is reduced to 100 and range reduced to 5.
• Bolt of Magma, Corona, Shadow Creatures, and Invisibility are now monster
  only.

Testing out marking betas as pre-releases.

Stone Soup 0.27.1 (20210820)

Bugfix and balance release

• The frequency of D:1 jackals is reduced.
• Sigmund and Robin are nerfed gently.
• Maxwell's Capacitative Coupling now has LOS range.
• 80 other fixes, tweaks, copy-edits, and interface improvements.

Stone Soup 0.27.0 (20210730)

Highlights

• New species: Djinni.
• Many new spells and spellbooks.
• New monster sets and end maps for many branches.
• Ashenzari completely redesigned and reworked.
• Cursed items removed.

Branches, Environment

• Altar changes:
  • A faded altar places with a very high chance on D:1-3.
  • A single random altar to a Temple god places with low chance on D:2.
  • Other guaranteed Temple god altars have been shifted to D:3-10, from D:2-9.
• Shops can now place on D:1-3.
• Dungeon, Depths, Vaults, and the Vestibule of Hell spawn tables are adjusted
  to produce more depth appropriate monsters and less chaff.
• Branch ending maps:
  • New "Abyssal Woods" Lair ending featuring demonic trees and abyss-themed
    monsters.
  • The "Jungle Book" Lair ending has been redesigned to have an undead theme
    featuring necromancers and undead animals.
  • New "Lost City" Shoals ending featuring a ruined temple theme with
    minotaurs and sphinxes.
  • New "Storm Temple" Shoals ending featuring electricity-themed monsters and
    many possible layouts.
  • New "Quicksilver Temple" Snake ending featuring quicksilver dragons.
• All Ice Cave maps have been rebalanced to have more varied layouts,
  monsters, and loot.
• Many new vaults featuring unrand items, shops, and ecumenical altars, as
  well new monster and decorative vaults for many branches.
• New terrain: demonic trees. Demonic trees appear in the Abyss and Pan and
  can be placed by vaults. They behave like trees, but when burned produce a
  single cloud of chaos instead of a spreading forest fire.
• Net traps trigger less often.
• Storm clouds no longer make noise.
• After completing one Ziggurat, the player is immune to the malevolence of Zot.
• Swamp is now loud, so noise travels less far.
• Guaranteed demonic rune vaults announce the presence of the demonic rune.
• Gadget shops are removed.
• Ossuaries no longer have dart and spear traps.

Character

• New species: Djinni, floating spirits formed from smokeless fire.
  • Djinni have no MP; their spells cost HP instead.
  • Djinni cannot learn spells from books; they learn spells as they level up.
  • Diinni cannot train spell schools; they use the Spellcasting skill alone.
• Demonspawn mutation changes:
  • New facet: malevolent magic. This facet gives a chance to paralyse enemies
    in a radius around the player equal to the mutation rank whenever a spell
    is cast. At the highest rank, this also applies to wands.
  • New facet: corrupting presence. The first two ranks of this facet give a
    chance to corrode, and then malmutate when the player damages a monster.
    The third rank gives an active ability Word of Chaos that blinks away
    every monster in los and may also disable them.
  • The Black Mark facet is revised to a disabling facet, offering a hex
    enhancer at rank 1, followed by black mark at rank 2, then a permanent
    radius 1 silence annulus around the player at rank 3.
  • The Hurl Damnation facet now gives "Demonic Will" at rank 1, providing
    Will+ and dealing damnation damage to monsters that try but fail to hex
    the player, and torment resistance at rank 2.
  • Mana link is re-ordered, providing MP Regen in the first rank, and spirit
    shield in the second. The third rank, mana link itself, is unchanged.
  • Foul stench provides stench at every rank as well as miasma immunity.
  • Later ranks of the spiny facet are now much more impactful.
  • Ignite blood ignites blood at every rank, with power scaling with rank.
  • Demonic Guardian now summons a guardian when the player takes damage. The
    tier of the guardian scales partially with experience level.
  • Icemail provides a condensation shield worth 4SH at the first rank, and
    ice mail AC spread over the next two.
  • Most types of scales mutations are now Demonspawn only.
  • Iridescent scales and passive freeze are removed from the Demonspawn pool
    and are available as random mutations for both demonspawn and other species.
• Poison damage applies much more quickly.
• Strength now gives a simple, linear bonus to damage.
• Hidden stepdowns on dexterity and evasion are removed, making characters with
  large amounts of dexterity and dodging skill more effective. As a result,
  Spriggans' dodging apt is reduced to +3 and base dexterity reduced by one.
• New good mutation: noise dampening, which halves noise in the players LOS.
• Bone plates, thin skeletal structure, and sturdy frame no longer conflict.
• The blurry vision mutation is removed; Ru's -Scroll mutation can occur as a
  random mutation in its place.
• Shoutitis and No Potion Heal are reduced to 2 levels from 3.
• Wisp form no longer blinks randomly.
• Guaranteed damage reduction is now a property derived from AC, with
  higher AC values from any source guaranteeing a certain base amount of
  protection from melee damage and mundane projectiles.
• Most sources of flight (including species, transformations, and equipment)
  are permanent and neither expire nor can be cancelled; reasons to land have
  also been removed.
• Berserk ending no longer causes paralysis.
• The blink mutation is removed.
• Other species changes:
  • Demigods' stat gains on level-up are doubled. Their base stats are reduced.
  • Gnoll base stats are reduced to 7/7/7.
  • Palentonga HP apt is reduced to +0.
• Mage and Warrior-Mage starting spell changes:
  • Air elementalists no longer start with Lightning Bolt.
  • Arcane Marksmen no longer start with Leda's Liquefaction.
  • Earth Elementalists no longer start with Lee's Rapid Deconstruction.
  • Summoners and Ice Elementalists no longer start with Summon Ice beast.
  • Venom Mages no longer start with Ignite Poison.
• Halflings are removed.

Gods

• Ashenzari is completely overhauled.
  • At regular intervals, Ashenzari provides the player with a choice of curses
    to apply to their equipment. These grant a skill boost based on the type of
    curse accepted, increase the player's piety, and prevent the player from
    un-equipping the cursed item.
  • At any time, the player can choose to shatter a cursed item, destroying it
    and losing associated piety and skill boosts.
  • Ashenzari grants the following benefits:
    • Scaling with piety: skill boosts from curses, item and monster detection,
      passive mapping.
    • 0* Item identification, portal detection, and exploration trap protection.
    • 2* See Invisible
    • 3* Clarity
    • 4* Seeing through walls within a size-2 radius, scaling to radius 4 at 6*.
• Ru sacrifice changes:
  • Several piety values are rebalanced.
  • Sacrifice Experience, in addition to removing one XL, now causes future XLs
    to be more expensive as if the player was still at their old XL.
  • Sacrifice words & drink now give bonus piety when taken together.
• The player and Hepliaklqana ancestors can fire through one-another.
• Hepliaklqana only grants an ancestor once the player reaches 1* piety. The HP
  penalty for worship is also delayed until 1*.
• A new Jiyva mutation allows players to engulf foes in ooze in melee.
• Makhleb's Major Destruction now fires all bolt-type spells and is stronger.
• Makhleb's passive heal on kill is reduced in strength.
• The Elixir card no longer heals allies and always regenerates both health and
  magic, with duration scaling with power.
• The Foxfire card is renamed to the Swarm and now summons bees.
• Okawaru no longer punishes betraying allies.
• Trog's Berserk ability has a piety-scaled chance to fail.
• Heavenly Storm grants bonus EV and is a bit quieter.
• Yredelemnul accepts nonliving worshippers again, and permits the use of
  statue form.
• Cheibriados no longer hates quick blades.
• Zin's Sanctuary no longer applies holy word.

Monsters

• New Slime monsters:
  • rockslime, a high-AC, flame-resistant slime that tramples and hits hard.
  • quicksilver ooze, a magic-immune ooze with engulfing and antimagic attacks.
• New Vaults monsters:
  • ironbound frostheart, which freeze enemies that are adjacent to walls.
  • ironbound thunderhulk, which blast distant enemies with lightning from
    above. (They can't hit nearby enemies, however.)
  • ironbound beastmaster, which speed up their lindwurm and dire elephant
    companions.
• Snake monster changes:
  • New monster: salamander tyrant, a volcano-stoking spellcaster with a
    weakening gaze.
  • Naga mages cast 'concentrate venom' (allowing venomous allies to inflict
    asphyxiating curare) instead of Force Lance.
  • Naga and naga warriors have increased base damage.
  • Naga warriors cast battlecry.
  • Nagaraja cast Dimension Anchor instead of Teleport Other.
• Oozes are renamed endoplasms, and cast freeze (but are weaker).
• Phantoms now blink their attack victims with them on hit, and have less HP.
  They no longer blink randomly.
• Ancient Liches have been split: they now focus on conjurations, while new
  Dread Liches specialize in demon summoning and paralysis.
• Deep elf mages have likewise been split into pyromancers and zephyrmancers.
• Every other spellcasting monster now uses just a single set of spells.
• Psyche has a new spellbook with Polymorph, Chain of Chaos, Invisibility, and
  Cantrip.
• Air elementals no longer have a tornado, instead gaining Stunning Blast. This
  inflicts 1 turn of paralysis on hit, though rElec makes this less likely.
• Big kobolds are re-named kobold brigands. Kobold brigands always spawn with
  darts, either poison or curare.
• Monsters' melee attack speed is no longer slowed by the weapons they wield.
  Many early-game monsters have had their base damage lowered to compensate.
• Monsters with ranged attacks now have unlimited ammunition. (Except nets.)
• Dancing ranged weapons can now appear (in specific circumstances).
• When Boris spawns on the orb run, he comes hasted and with a brilliance aura.
• Draconian knights and Fannar no longer cast Ozocubu's Armour and have
  higher base AC.
• Worker ants, soldier ants, queen ants, leopard geckos, eyes of draining,
  and death oozes are removed.

Interface and options

• Ranged targeters now display accuracy.
• Monster to-hit chance is now shown in xv.
• The in-game macro creation and editing interfaces have been greatly improved:
  • The old interface has now been fully menuized, so editing all happens within
    the menu, and is designed for a smoother process.
  • A new quick-entry menu for macros is available, bound to ctrl-e.
• An in-game menu is available on the F1 key for access to saving, help, and
  macros.
• Form information is shown in the A view.
• The shopping list can now be opened by a range of currency symbols.
• Wait-to-cast spells (Searing Ray, and the new Maxwell's Capacitive Coupling)
  now fully work with autofire when quivered; autofire will trigger the wait
  command as appropriate.
• Spells and potions can be quivered and have informative targeters where
  relevant.
• Other miscellaneous quiver UI improvements:
  • Two new options for controlling the quiver: fire_order_ability and
    fire_order_spell. These give you full control over non-items when cycling
    the quiver.
  • Berserk is now excluded from the fire order by default, and won't autoquiver
    on Berserker starts.
  • Changing a quivered item's letter will not remove it from the quiver.
  • Improvements to inscriptions: @Qn inscriptions on items are supported at
    the Q menu. Behaviour of !Q, =f, and =F has been improved.
• Portal and zot alerts are now included by default in runrest_stop, and zot
  clock alerts force-interrupt all delays.
• The "allow_extended_colours" console option now defaults to true, since
  modern terminals uniformly support more than 8 terminal colors.
• New local tiles option, tile_window_ratio. This lets the initial window
  size be constrained by an x:y ratio, providing better defaults for ultra-wide
  monitors.

Items

• Spellbook changes:
  • Spellbooks generate more frequently and are always identified.
  • 30 new types of fixed book are added.
  • Fixed books now only have 2-4 spells each (down from 4-6 each.)
  • Randomly generated spellbooks also have fewer spells.
  • Mage and Warrior-Mage classes no longer start with a specific spellbook.
    Their starting spell sets are based on the book they previously started
    with, but with changes as described above in the "Characters" section.
• Cursed items no longer generate. Ashenzari is the only source of curses.
  • The *Curse property on unrands is removed. the Scythe of Curses and obsidian
    axe now have *Drain. The property is removed from the Necklace of Bloodlust.
  • The obsidian axe can no longer be unwielded while mesmerised.
  • Mundane negative-enchant items no longer generate. (Negative enchants are
    still possible on randarts, or in certain vaults.)
• Wand changes:
  • Wands of random effects are replaced with pieces from Xom's chessboard,
    which apply a random effect to a random visible enemy when evoked. They
    recharge with XP.
  • Wands of disintegrate are renamed to wands of mindburst. They no longer
    affect mindless creatures.
  • Wands of enslavement are now called wands of charming.
• Equipment is identified once the player is in reach, without needing to be
  worn.
• All sources of regeneration now heal 1 HP per normal turn (formerly 0.4).
  • Trolls now have slightly more inherent regen and slightly less AC.
  • Vine Stalkers gain their full innate regeneration earlier.
• The spectral brand has been redesigned. It now triggers on every attack,
  creating a spectral copy of the weapon which makes an additional attack (if
  there's open space next to the wielder and in reach of their target). The
  copy vanishes once the player does anything other than attack. This effect no
  longer depends on Evocations skill.
• Shields slow melee attacks much more at low Shields skill levels.
• Other unrand changes:
  • Vampire's Tooth's enchantment is reduced to +8 (from +11).
  • The amulet of the Air loses EV+5 and gains an Air magic enhancer.
  • Bolts fired by Damnation only explode and mulch on hit.
  • The staff of Wucad-Mu refunds MP more often, and refunds MP even when it
    backfires.
  • The Wrath of Trog now extends berserk and gains Rampage.
  • The Robe of Folly now provides permanent brilliance, but sets Will to 0.
    It also gets +8 Int (from +4) and +4 enchant (from +3).
• Manuals, like spellbooks and runes, no longer take up an inventory slot.
• Broad axe's base delay is returned to 1.6, from 1.7.
• Rare scrolls, books, manuals, and enhancer staves can now spawn early.
• Hats and gloves can now get the stealth ego.
• Archmagi can now appear as an artefact property on randart robes.
• The *Slow artefact property now stacks.
• Scarves of shadows are no longer spell de-enhancers.
• Rings of attention, rings of stealth, rings of teleportation, amulets of
  inaccuracy, scrolls of remove curse, scrolls of random uselessness, and
  boots of running are removed.

Spells

• New Spell: Storm Form, a level 7 Transmutations/Air spell that transforms
  the player into a raging, lightning-filled tempest:
  • Melee attacks are electrified and strike all adjacent foes. Damage
    increases with spellpower and unarmed combat skill.
  • Grants the ability to Blinkbolt: launch yourself towards a foe to inflict
    heavy damage, also damaging any monsters along the way.
  • Grants increased evasion, rElec, and poison immunity. The evasion
    increases with spellpower.
  • Melds all equipment except jewellery.
• New spell: Animate Armour, a level 4 Summon/Earth spell which draws out the
  spirit of the caster's armour to fight alongside them. The heavier the
  armour, the more powerful the spirit.
• New spell: Manifold Assault, a level 5 translocations spell which attacks
  random foes in sight with the attacker's wielded weapon. Spellpower increases
  the number of foes that can be struck with one cast.
• Absolute Zero has been redesigned. It's now called Maxwell's Capacitive
  Coupling, a level 8 Air spell. When cast, the player must wait in place for
  a random number of turns (reduced by spellpower) until the capacitor
  finishes charging, which instantly vaporizes the nearest monster.
• Chain Lighting has been redesigned. It is now level 9 and is dramatically
  more powerful, arcing between visible foes for massive damage that partially
  ignores AC and rElec.
• Tornado has been renamed to Polar Vortex. It is now a Level 9 Ice spell, and
  its damage has been increased by 33% but is partially resistable by rC.
• Other spell level adjustments:
  • Ozocubu's Refrigeration is now level 7 (from 6).
  • Freezing Cloud is now level 5 (from 6).
  • Static Discharge is now level 2 (from 3).
  • Swiftness is now level 3 (from 2).
• Airstrike no longer gets bonus damage against flying creatures (including
  the player). Instead, it deals bonus damage based on the number of empty
  spaces next to the target.
• Stone arrow damage is increased.
• Wereblood now heals 1d3 when an adjacent monster is killed.
• Tukima's Dance can now be used on monsters wielding ranged weapons.
• Poisonous Vapours now directly poisons the target, rather than making a cloud.
• Hailstorm now affects icy creatures.
• Monstrous Menagerie no longer summons harpies.
• Ozocubu's Armour and Frozen Ramparts now end under any location change.
• Blade Hands' stealth penalty for Felids is removed.
• Hydra Form, Summon Demon, and Summon Greater Demon are removed.

Stone Soup 0.26.1 (20210203)

Bugfix Release

• ctrl-attack again no longer works while confused.
• Console display flickering is reduced.
• It is no longer possible to obtain infinite nets from net traps.
• Various vault placement balance adjustments and teleport closet fixes.
• 95 other fixes, tweaks, copy-edits, and interface improvements.

Stone Soup 0.26.0 (20210108)

Highlights

• New species: Palentonga.
• New background: Delver.
• Food and hunger are removed.
• Swamp has many new monsters and other changes.
• Spells, wands, and abilities can be quivered, fired, and autotargeted with an
  extension of the ranged quiver/autofight interface.

Monsters

• New Swamp monsters:
  • Will-o-the-wisps, unearthly gases that launches powerful Foxfires.
  • Goliath frogs, licking foes from afar with their acidic tongues.
  • Eleionomae, swamp nymphs that travel through and heal from trees.
  • Bloated husks, filled to explosively bursting with putrescent gas.
  • Bunyips, fast-moving, hard-hitting, screaming mysteries.
  • Fenstrider witches, terrifying hex-hurling toxic sorceresses.
• Bog bodies cast much more powerfully and have a stronger cold attack.
• New (?) monster: boulder beetle, rolling quickly to deliver huge hits.
• Insect glyphs have been reorganized.
• Pikel's slaves have been rethemed to lemures. They now disappear upon
  Pikel's death.
• Spiny Frogs are renamed Cane Toads, for a more authentic Australian
  experience.
• Pandemonium lords' possible spells and melee flavours have been expanded.
  They can now sometimes generate a ring of dangerous clouds.
• Monsters' blood scent and web sense have been removed.
• Crocodiles, porcupines, hippogriffs, and hungry ghosts are removed.
• Monsters don't forget about the player while the player is off level.
• Most plants, fungi, and other plant like things that don't attack now wither
  in 3-5 turns after they're hit. The exceptions are bushes and briars.
• Monsters that formerly had rot-inducing melee attacks now have drain attacks.

Character

• Hunger (and eating) are removed.
• Drain now temporarily reduces max HP instead of skills. Rot no longer exists
  as a mechanic.
• New species: Palentonga, six-limbed scaled mammals with a rolling charge.
• Deep Elves' Bows aptitude is increased to +3.
• Kobolds now have the Nightstalker 3 mutation, reducing LOS and providing
  bonus stealth. (Demonspawn can no longer gain Nightstalker.)
• Ghouls heal on kill instead of by eating chunks. They also no longer rot
  over time.
• Centaurs are removed.
• The Charms skill (and the Skald background) are removed.
• New demonspawn mutations: sharp scales & big brain.
• Transmuters no longer start with arrows, and Wereblood replaces Sticks to
  Snakes in the starting book.
• The Wizard background is renamed "Hedge Wizard", gaining a dagger and a
  less int-focused set of starting attributes. The Conjurer background takes
  Wizards' old attributes.
• The Assassin background is renamed "Brigand".
• New background: Delver, starting on D:5 with a variety of escape tools.
• Artificers now start with better defensive skills, no weapon skill, and a
  club in place of the short sword and short blade skill.
• Banishing monsters grants full XP.
• Contamination decays three times faster.
• Wanderers have a chance to start with any of the misc evokers.
• Evocations skill no longer grants MaxMP.

Items

• New scarf ego: Shadows. Scarves of shadows reduce line of sight by 1; this
  stacks with other LOS altering effects; as well as act as a negative spell
  enhancer.
• New weapon ego: Spectral. The spectral ego appears on [giant [spiked]] clubs,
  quarterstaffs, lajatangs, and two-handed randarts of any base type. On hit
  the ego spawns a spectral weapon to fight along side the user whose strength
  scales with Evocations skill.
• New boots ego: Rampaging. Boots of rampaging cause the wearer to take an
  extra step for no cost---only when moving in the direction of a foe. The
  rampaging ego can also appear on any kind of artefact armour.
• New misc evocable: Condenser Vane. A condenser vane is an XP-charged evoker
  that creates clouds around hostile monsters (skipping allies). The cloud
  quality scales with evocations.
• New item: potion of attraction, which pulls nearby enemies closer.
• Unrandart Changes:
  • The Salamander Hide Armour no longer gives *Rage, it now is a fire spell
    enhancer with rF++, rC--, flame cloud immunity, and a ring of flame clouds
    effect.
  • The ratskin cloak is changed from +Rats to *Rats, spawning rats when the
    player is hit.
  • Wucad Mu no longer provides evocable channeling. Instead, with a chance
    depending on evocations, it refunds the MP cost of the spell. There is a
    chance of confusion or intelligence drain (which scales on spell cost and
    evocations skill) when a spell is refunded.
  • The cloak of the Thief is changed from +Fog to *Fog, creating fog when the
    player is hit.
  • The Majin-Bo loses Archmagi, and instead gives a chance for any cast spell
    to be vampiric, healing the caster for damage done to living creatures.
  • The shield of Resistance is now a +2 kite shield {rF++ rC++ MR++}.
  • Glaive of the Guard now has both the spectral weapon and electricity egos.
    It no longer has sInv nor +Rage.
  • Cloak of Starlight gains *Dazzle, which sometimes dazzles foes like the
    Dazzling Flash spell on successful dodge. It no longer has rElec and rC+.
  • The Sword of Power is now +5, vorpal, and sometimes fires a powerful but
    low-accuracy damage beam with a chance based on the player's current HP.
• Phantom mirrors and boxes of beasts now recharge with XP.
• Wands of polymorph now show what monsters might become when targeted.
• Amulets are now slow to equip (like armour), and many amulets no longer have
  attunement logic. Faith, Regen, and MPRegen retain their swap drawbacks.
• Bardings are merged into a single item type.
• Staves of earth deal higher damage, but with the shrapnel effect of being
  affected 3 times by AC.
• Staves of conjuration deal bonus irresistable damage that checks AC.
• The full contents of item piles are revealed on sight.
• Potions of stabbing, wands of clouds, and staves of energy, summoning, and
  wizardry are removed.

Branches, Environment

• Swamp's levels are now smaller, and many weak monsters no longer appear.
• Crimson and shadow imps are now much less common in the Dungeon. White imps
  and ufetubi take their place.
• Shadows and wights no longer appear in the Crypt spawn list, replaced with
  flying skulls, necromancers, and wraiths.
• Spider is now quiet.
• The malevolent force of Zot will find players that tarry far too long in one
  place.
• Gauntlet monsters now generate awake, and those other than the minotaur
  don't pick up loot.
• Net traps are now permanent and the nets always mulch.

Spells

• The Charms skill and school have been removed.
  • Ozocubu's Armour is now Ice only, Swiftness is now Air only, Death's Door
    is now Necromancy only and Level 9.
  • Excruciating Wounds is now Necromancy only, prevents unwielding your weapon
    for the duration, and applies a Wizardry penalty as well as noise.
  • Battlesphere is now Conjurations only, and its targeting has been adjusted
    to work with all Conjurations school spells other than Servitor.
  • Song of Slaying is now Transmutations and renamed Wereblood; the noise is
    reduced somewhat.
• Animate Skeleton and Animate Dead creations now have strength scaling with
  spellpower; Animate Skeleton has a power cap. Both creations have a shorter
  lifespan. Additionally, these spells can't be cast if corpses are not nearby.
• Animate Skeleton now animates the nearest skeleton, and does not require you
  to stand on the corpse.
• Frozen Ramparts has its effect end upon player movement.
• Death Channel spectral things have a shorter duration and fade if Death
  Channel expires.
• Infestation scarabs have a shorter duration.
• Vampiric Draining's damage is no longer limited by how much it heals.
• Eringya's Toxic Bog now places bogs in all squares within a range of 4 where
  there is no adjacent solid feature.
• Beastly Appendage now melds helmets and boots, and gives two levels of both
  Horns and Talons (octopodes keep their tentacle spike) instead of randomly
  choosing.
• Irradiate now checks monster AC but does slightly more damage.
• Alistair's Intoxication prompts when nothing in view can be affected, always
  applies Vertigo when successful, and has a higher power cap.
• Conjure Ball Lightning's scaling with spellpower has been simplified.
• Beam spells and wands no longer have their range reduced by hitting things.
• All temporary allies dismiss when you leave the level.
• Translocations miscasts now inflict -Move which prevents walking in addition
  to translocating.
• Aura of Abjuration, Darkness, Infusion, Recall, Ring of Flames, Shroud of
  Golubria, Spectral Weapon, Sticks to Snakes, and Summon Butterflies are
  removed.

Gods

• Gozag no longer gives a free potion petition on worship.
• Nemelex's deck gifting begins at higher piety.
• Nemelex' Shaft card is removed, and the Exile card no longer has a chance
  to self banish.

Interface

• The "quiver" feature is generalized and can now hold spells, evokables, and
  abilities. The fire interface can be used to target any quiverable
  action, and quiverable actions can be autofired via shift+tab/p. Existing
  autofight ranged settings such as autofight_throw are generalized to handle
  new quiverables. The ] key swaps between the two most recent quivered
  actions. See the options guide for more information on new and updated
  options: autofight_throw, autofight_stop, automagic_stop,
  fail_severity_to_quiver, launcher_autoquiver, fire_order. See the manual
  section 4, subsection "Attacking and firing" for a summary of the relevant
  key bindings.
• Launchers can now be fired independently of the quiver; use v to target
  (like reaching weapons) or regular autofight commands to autotarget.
• Static targeters are added for spells and abilities that indicate which cells
  will be affected, along with a new option to configure which of these are
  shown while casting, force_targeter.
• Player wand damage, spell damage, and spell accuracy is now displayed in the
  UI.
• Viewing a monster with xv now shows to-hit chance with your current weapon.
• Monsters' spell damage is shown in xv.
• Examining cells with multiple interesting things now gives a selection menu.
• The "view stack/pickup key" ; can be pressed twice to force autopickup even
  in unsafe situations.
• The ^x view description is now available from all targeting prompts, and
  when used while targeting lists valid targets in range.
• Any floor can be annotated from anywhere in the ! interface.
• Spellpower is now displayed as a percentage of max spellpower.
• Macro updates: Macros/keybinds can be viewed via the ~ menu in-game. RC file
  keybind settings support escape codes.
• Updated uption: travel_open_doors now has a setting that tries to avoid
  opening doors during autotravel.
• New option: travel_one_unsafe_move. Setting this option to true causes
  auto-travel to make one move towards its goal before conducting the usual
  safety checks.
• New option: monster_item_view_features. This is a regex list option, features
  that match patterns on this list will be displayed in the ^x view
  description.
• New option: always_show_zot. When enabled, the remaining time until Zot finds
  the player is always shown, rather than when there are only 1500 turns left.
• New options: tile_overlay_col and tile_overlay_alpha_percent control the
  appearance of the message window in local tiles.

Lua

• Three new hooks, chk_ability_choice, chk_spell_choice, and c_message can be
  used to answer the ability and spell menu prompts and to react to messages.
• A new api is introduced for targeted fire of spells, items, and abilities as
  a less brittle alternative to sending keys. See lua functions:
  crawl.do_targeted_command, spells.cast, item.fire, you.activate_ability,
  you.quiver_valid, and you.quiver_enabled.
• Other new functions: you.memorise (memorise a spell by name),
  spells.power_perc (get spellpower for a spell as a percentage)

Stone Soup 0.25.1 (20200717)

Bugfix Release

• 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 in 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.

Stone Soup 0.25.0 (20200612)

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
    fir 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

• The seed selection dialogue has been ported to webtiles and is enabled on
  select servers.
• auto_butcher has been changed to default to always (from the previous value
  of very hungry).
• 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.
• New morgue section: screenshots. When notes are taken with : an ascii
  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.
• A new option, game_scale, allows for global pixel scaling to make dcss more
  usable on large and/or high-resolution monitors. (Values in the range of 2-4
  will be helpful for upscaling for 2k-4k monitors.)
• The behavior of tile_filter_scaling=false has been improved to work on all
  tiles in the game, for better pixelated effects.
• Webtiles now supports showing save info in the lobby; see CAO for this feature
  in action.

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+, as well as numerous other backend/technical improvements.
• The catch2 testing framework is now integrated into the project and is
  enabled in our CI testing.
• GitHub actions have been configured to replace Travis CI testing.