Stone Soup 0.24 (20191024)

[maiki]

Pretty nice, I just copied this from https://allthe.codes/mirror/crawl/src/branch/master/crawl-ref/docs/changelog.txt.

@maiki

Vampire species simplified

@maiki

Vampire simplification: Player vampires no longer eat or drink blood, and
have exactly two blood states.

• Alive: Regenerates quickly, normal HP modifier, no undead bonuses, no
  batform, can transform and berserk normally.
• Bloodless: No regeneration with monsters in sight, -20% HP, stealth bonus,
  undead resistances, batform, no other transformations or berserk.
• Blood states are transitioned by an ability which costs delay; becoming
  bloodless incurs no penalty, becoming alive causes a temporary frail
  mutation.
• Bat form causes stat drain.

So, what’s the use of bat form? I only played a little bit with the .23 vamp, and understood the blood potion trade-off but wasn’t quite into it. Also, each time I bat-formed I went squish.

@maiki

Fedhas reimagined:

I run with Fedhas a few times, it’s fun and it’s own thing. Check out these changes:

@maiki

• Piety is gained exclusively from kills instead of through corpse decay.
• Fedhas abilities now create plant allies directly as temporary summons
  instead of creating permanent allies using plants. All abilities cost
  piety instead of food.

OMG quality-of-life improvement! Specifically the decaying corpse for piety and piety/food costs.

@maiki

Removed abilities: Fungal Bloom, Reproduction, Growth, Evolution, Rain.

@maiki

New abilities:

• 2*: Active ‘Wall of Briars’ ability to surround the player with briar
  patches. Hostile monsters will attack briars to reach you, taking
  damage.
• 3*: Active ‘Grow Ballistomycete’ ability to place a ballistomycete at
  any location within radius 2. The ballistomycete will fire spores
  that seek out foes and make a 1-radius damaging explosion that
  additionally confuses living creatures.
• 4*: Active ‘Overgrow’ ability to destroy any non-permarock walls in a
  3x3 area, replacing them with plant allies, mostly wandering
  mushrooms or burning bushes and sometimes ballistomycetes or oklob
  plants.
• 5*: Active ‘Grow Oklob’ ability to place an oklob plant at any location
  within radius 2.

Whoa! Those seem really awesome! Overgrow?! Turrets?! I want to run with that now.

@maiki

Trog and Okawaru now can gift unbranded boomerangs and javelins.

Ha, I haven’t seen a boomerang yet!

@maiki

Equipment melding no longer stops autoexplore and autotravel.

Just a funny sentiment. “Um, I think your armor is, um, merging with your torso…” “Yeah, but I’m going that way and I’ve got no time to think about that right now!”

@maiki

Scarves are now properly shown on player tiles.

Damn, they should have led with that!

@maiki

New unrand: Staff of Battle, a staff of conjuration that spawns a
battlesphere when a hostile monster is in view.

I haven’t even begun the spellcasting part of the game. But that staff sounds awesome.

@maiki

Gyre and Gimble now has the protection brand, enchantment of +7, and no
longer has Dex-3.

Well that makes this just about the raddest set of blades!

@maiki

Weapons with the holy wrath ego can now be cursed.

Yeah, a “curse” is just like, dungeon-glue. It requires a “remove curse” wipe; fortunately a single wipe will clean all the dungeon-glue from all non-glowing items…

@maiki

Randart rings no longer generate with both rCorr and *Corrode.

But they make the best mood rings!

@maiki

Throwing weapons have been streamlined.

Okay, every since I picked up my first stack of tomahawks I’ve been waiting for these changes.

@maiki

Blowguns are removed, needles are replaced with throwing darts.

@maiki

Dart effects scale with Throwing and Stealth skill.

Dope.

@maiki

• Darts of sleep, paralysis, confusion are removed.
• Darts of frenzy are renamed datura-tipped darts.
• A new dart brand, atropa is added. Atropa-tipped darts cause brief
  confusion and longer-lasting blindness in the target.

Okay. Reminds me of Final Fantasy.

@maiki

Tomahawks are renamed to boomerangs and always return.

Ha! Because I just… oh nevermind.

@maiki

Poison, returning, penetration, and exploding are no longer available
brands for tomahawks and javelins.

That’s a great cursed item, a tomahawk with all four. Instant TPK!

@maiki

Monsters can now use wands of clouds, iceblast, and scattershot.

They’re learning!

@maiki

Monsters clones created by Mara and rakshasa have the intended reduced HP of
the original monster instead of several times that value.

Mara is commenting on all the Crawl blogs about how they nerfed the monster clone ability.

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Hey, can I be in middle school real quick?

@maiki

Player ghosts can be shafted.

@maiki

Javelins always penetrate.