Stone Soup 0.25.0 (20200612)
----------------------------
Highlights
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* 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.
