https://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/trunk-updates-1-may-2020
You miscast the trunk update. You are blasted with magical energy!!!
Hello crawlers. The 0.25 development cycle continues apace. Expect an announcement about a forthcoming release and tournament within the month.
This round of updates comes with an overhaul of the spell miscast system, to couple with the magic overhaul of this version. Miscasts have been thoroughly simplified, to the point that the effect of miscasting a spell can be included in its description! Read on for details and the scoop on the latest from the Iron City.
- Zot traps have had their effect flowchart replaced with an effect table with a more focused list of awful terrible things to do to the player.
- The Wu Jian Council met in executive session and tweaked some of their martial arts. Wall jumps move only to the ‘a’bility menu, movement triggering is no more. Whirlwind attacks no longer pin. Heavenly Storm has had its slaying mechanics simplified.
- With miscasts simplified Xom now finds them boring and has turned their attention to summoning more demons on low level players.
- As a prelude to the miscast changes several gods no longer use miscasts in their retribution. The new wraths are:
- Trog replaces fire miscasts with pure fireballs in her fiery rage.
- Lugonu exchanges translocations miscasts with a chance to banish, summon Abyssal things, or teleport the penitent to nearby monsters.
- Cheibriados replaces miscasts with a chime on their clock before putting the player to sleep at high tension, and stat damage at low tension.
- Fedhas’ elemental damage is now more focused: a corrosive bolt, a primal wave, or a thorn volley await those who would trample the flowers.
- Yredelemnul prefers the simplicity of a bolt of draining to necromancy miscasts.
- Kikubaaqudgha will still impose necromancy miscasts on those who attempt to use necromancy while under penance; for outright retribution they now apply the same ancient and terrible death curses used by mummies.
- The scythe of Curses also replaces necromancy miscasts with death curses .
- The distortion brand no longer teleports on hit; unwielding a distortion weapon has a chance to teleport the unwieldier to nearby monsters, contaminate, or banish.
- Regeneration items (troll armour, artifacts) must attune to a player before granting their effect. No more carrying TLA to swap while resting!
- Mummies have consulted the book of death and determined that necromancy miscasts no longer suit their vengeful needs. Death curses are now their own effect table, separate from miscasts. Kikubaaqudgha was involved as well, and still protects loyal followers from curses.
- New monster: nameless horror . Nameless horrors are brought into the world by summoning miscasts, have an antimagic attack and abjure other summons as a natural ability.
- Absolute Zero has been reduced to a fixed range of 5 (up to 6 with Vehumet), the noise now scales with power down to 0 at maximum power.
- Leda’s Liquefaction regains its slow movement penalty, but the caster remains immune to its effects on melee combat.
- Deflect Missiles has been removed. The tedious-but-optimal armour-wizardy-int dance has danced its last!
- Lesser Beckoning and Teleport Other now turn allies hostile.
- Tukima’s Dance cannot be used by Ru followers who have sacrificed Love.
- Two new Gauntlet maps are live: one presents a sequence of arenas, after each you can chose to press your luck or turn and face the minotaur. The other has a choke point in the sequence: there is only one middle arena in the three-arena-sequence to the minotaur.
- Miscast effects have been simplified. When miscasting a spell, the player receives magical contamination, and if the miscast is bad enough an additional effect that scales with the spell’s current failure chance. These effects vary by school as follows (compare to the old miscast effects, which could you even correctly lists all of them without a source dive?). For damaging effects the damage message is punctuated like other damage messages.
- Charms and Hexes : debuff and slow
- Summoning : durably summon a nameless horror
- Translocation : dimension anchor
- Transmutation : polymorph
- Conjuration : irresistible AC-ignoring damage
- Elemental schools : school flavored damage (Earth magic does fragmentation damage like Lee’s Rapid Destruction).
- Monsters on D:1 are now back asleep, after briefly getting into the coffee.
That’s all for now, so until next time happy crawling!
Desperate hands claw out at the trunk update. A nameless horror comes into view. The trunk update vanishes in a puff of smoke!
Zog my gog, I haven’t crawl’d for a spell. Time to update and see the many, many changes! 