Dungeon Crawl: Difference between revisions

Not wanting to waste the game's potential, a group of people made an open source fork called ''Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup'' (look up Stone soup on Wikipedia if you feel that's an odd title), and their version is now [[Weird Al Effect|dominant]] (similar to the way Hack became [[Nethack]]). It is still updated as of 2012, with new versions released every few months.

 

 

Despite all this, there are two areas where it's actually much more merciful than most roguelikes: very few hazards can even weaken your equipment, and none can destroy outright anything other than scrolls and potions. Also, (with the sole exception of statdeath from artifacts) identifying items by using them very rarely causes any life-threatening consequences, and nothing other than weapons, armor, and jewelery can be cursed. The dev team has made avoiding cheap shots one of their highest priorities, and instant kills or unavoidable deaths are nearly unheard of.

* [[Back Stab]]: Stabbing is a skill available to all players, even those not using blades - you can 'stab' with a mace for example, which just means you're making an attack on a sleeping or distracted enemy. Stabbing attacks do more damage, in some cases getting up to [[For Massive Damage]] levels - we're talking one-hit kills on a sleeping ''hydra'' - but it depends on your Stabbing skill, and the weapon used; short blades are the best.

* [[Badass Bookworm]]: If one begins as a spellcaster but learns lots of fighting skills, then they've become one.

* [[Benevolent Boss]]: With the exception of [[Jerkass Gods|Xom]], all of the gods are fairly lenient (the good ones give you a chance to redeem yourself, and the evil ones are perfectly okay with anything as long as you show results).

* [[The Berserker]]: Berserker is a playable class. Like the real Viking ''berserkr''s, berserkers in Crawl wear only animal skins to begin with.

* [[Debug Room]]: Wizard mode, which gives you pretty much full control over your character and the game world.

* [[Destroyable Items]]: Scrolls are vulnerable to fire damage, and potions can be shattered by cold.

* [[Difficulty Levels]]: Winning with a Spriggan Enchanter worshiping Nemelex is pretty easy, but playing some races (Mummies, Ogres, Demigods) is, by design, much more difficult than others (Vampires, Trolls, Humans). There's also the "Wanderer" class, which starts you with a pitifully low level in a few skills chosen completely at random.

* [[Divine Intervention]]: All the good gods will occasionally protect you from damage that would have killed you. It's not a reliable way to escape death - at most it buys you one more turn.

* [[Disintegrator Ray]]: the wand of disintegration, which used to make monsters vaporize, and now makes them ''explode''. (It’s especially good against brittle monsters like statues).

* [[Dual Boss]]: Dowan and Duvessa, the elf twins! Dowan is a [[Squishy Wizard]] and Duvessa is a mighty warrior. If you find one twin, the other is sure to be on the same dungeon level somewhere.

* [[Dummied Out]]: The source code for regular Crawl shows a mutation that was never implemented ("Your chest, abdomen and neck are covered in intricate, arcane blue/green writing"). Supposedly, it was given by an "evil" god when a character converted to its religion.

* [[Dungeon Bypass]]: Often necessary. Sometimes the only way to escape a monster is to run for the stairs to the next level.

* [[Elemental Powers]]: This is one of Crawl's few plot points. Crawl has the classical elements of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, but in the time that Crawl takes place, Water elemental magic has somehow been forgotten. Instead, there is Ice magic, which is not the same. Water elementals do exist, however.

** Water magic still exists in the Shoals. Aquamancers are the only monsters who know how to use it.

* [[Energy Ball]]: Which size would you like? The small Magic Dart, the large Iskenderun's Mystic Blast or the huge Orb of Destruction?

* [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]: It's a roguelike.

* [[Featureless Protagonist]]: You get to choose your name, race, class, maybe a starting weapon, and that's about it. ''Crawl'' never asks the player to supply a gender or any other personalising details. Indeed, for the more humanoid races, the in-game description of them is 'You are rather mundane.'

* [[Fighter Mage Thief]]: Crawl divides all the character classes in five different groups - but there is great variation within each (except maybe Adventurer):

** Zealot - includes every class that starts with a religion: priests, berserkers, healers, and knights of some evil gods.

** Warrior-mage - includes combat-oriented magic classes, such as weapon-enchanting skalds, magical assassin stalkers and arcane marksmen.

*** "Good" gods also hold their followers to much higher standards, all of whom laundry lists of things that they dislike, most so called evil gods don't really care what their followers do, as long as they kill and sacrifice for them.

* [[Good Hurts Evil]]: Reciting Zin's scripts in front of certain evil creatures often results in this.

{{quote| You feel nature experimenting on you. Don't worry, failures die fast.}}

* [[Good Thing You Can Heal]]: Inversion: Deep Dwarves have a damage shaving feature that reduces all damage they take, but they [[Blessed With Suck|can't regain HP by themselves.]] They will need magical devices, potions, divine help or magic to heal. People don't play a whole lot of [[Red Shirt|Deep Dwarf Fighters]].

** Almost every spell in the Fire Magic school is designed as an offensive conjuration spell, except for two spells that are used defensively.

* [[Kung Fu Wizard]]: Transmuters get levels in unarmed combat, making them surprisingly good brawlers. This is to encourage them to use shape-shifting spells; in most non-human forms, unarmed combat is the only type of combat possible.

* [[Let's Fight Like Gentlemen]]: The Shining One demands this of any followers. In practice, this means that the character worhipping The Shining One is punished for using poison in combat and using unchivalrous stealth attacks against non-evil sapient monsters.

* [[Level Drain]]: Wights and wraiths can drain the player's experience, as can weapons and wands of draining. But the player can also use those weapons, and learn spells to drain enemies as well.

* [[Light Is Not Good]]: Angels are mostly just as bloodthirsty as demons, and have large haloes to make finding the player easier.

* [[Loads and Loads of Races]]: The latest version has 24 playable species, most with odd natural abilities/disadvantages (the large races, for example, cannot wear most of the armour in the game).

* [[MacGuffin]]: The Orb of Zot! It's apparently so valuable that it's held deep underground in a realm which you can't even get into without magic runes, guarded by hundreds of monsters... but nobody knows what it actually does, or what its powers are.

* [[MacGyvering]]: Many items and spells can be exploited beyond their obvious uses. One of the best examples is Conjure Flame - while the obvious use is blocking corridors with flames that hurt anything that dares to cross them, it can also be used for [[Smoke Out|creating lots of steam to break enemies' line-of-sight]], clearing forests, manipulating the spread of "flood-fill" cloud attacks such as Poison Cloud and of course, [[Kill It With Fire|killing stuff with fire]].

* [[Macrogame]]: The player may encounter ghosts of previous characters in the Dungeon. Ghosts have similar strengths and weaknesses as they had while alive.

* [[Magic Knight]]: Skalds start with skills in the melee weapon of their choice and self-buff spells. Reavers get (well, ''got''; they were [[Dummied Out|de-implemented]] after 0.8) blasting spells instead. Transmuters frequently shapeshift and beat monsters down with their newfound natural weapons. Worshipping Makhleb allows throwing around destructive blasts of power and summoning demons without having to worry about spell failure from heavy armor (the demon may decide to eat your face, however).

* [[Magic Pants]]: Clothing merges into a shapeshifted player's new form.

* [[Nominal Importance]]: The unique enemies have names, and when you see one you know you're in for a more difficult battle than normal.

** The randomly generated artifacts are a slight aversion of this, since they have real-looking names, but are not guaranteed to be important, or even worth having at all. It's not uncommon to find artifacts with abysmal stats or negative attributes, and many are cursed.

** For magic attacks, the most obvious non-elemental one is Magic Dart, which is simply a dart of pure irresistible magic that never misses its target. (magic resistance in Crawl only applies to enchantments, not magical energy) Elemental attacks can be resisted by appropriately elemental monsters.

** Eventually the game reaches a point where monsters are almost immune to any attacks that are not non-elemental. Fortunately for mages, all earth magic, a bit of air magic and three pure conjurations spells are non-elemental, and a few other spells are only partly resistable.

** But played straight in the case of the many varieties of dragon armour, which magically fits on every race.

** And robes, though one can amuse himself with mental images of a spriggan whose robe trails three feet behind him or an ogre whose robe doesn't reach his knees.

* [[One Stat to Rule Them All]]: Intelligence for any characters that desire any magical capabilities. The other two basic stats have little to no point unless you're a transmuter or your character is totally magic-free.

* [[One Up]]: Felids get an extra life every few levels - very unusual for a roguelike, but then Felids are an unusual race.

** [[Loads and Loads of Races|And playable]]. Demonspawn are a [[Jack of All Stats]] race not much unlike humans, with special mutations and the inability to worship the three good gods.

** In addition to playable demonspawn, there are dozens and dozens of NPC demons ranging from minor imps to large abominable devils with [[The Unpronounceable|unpronounceable]] names.

* [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same]]: Not quite, but still [[Loads and Loads of Races|playable]]. Deep Dwarves are tough and capable necromancers and priests, but they lack natural regeneration. The Mountain Dwarves that were present in earlier versions resemble the traditional dwarves more.

* [[Our Elves Are Better]]: [[Loads and Loads of Races|And playable]]. High Elves are pretty standard, Deep Elves are cave-dwelling [[Squishy Wizard|Squishy Wizards]] with incredibly magic power and laughable resilience, and Sludge Elves are jungle-dwelling [[Kung Fu Wizard|Kung Fu Wizards]].

* [[Scaled Up]]: The Dragon Form spell, which the player can obtain and use at high levels of transmutation magic.

* [[Schizophrenic Difficulty]]: The AI director vascillates between being a [[Monty Haul]] and (much more frequently) [[Killer Game Master]], with the consistency of a manic ten yea old on pixie sticks. Sometimes you get a dragon hide on the first floor, sometimes you get a ''dragon'' on the first floor. Some days its all rings and randarts, sometimes the AI just decides to spawn fifty jellies. Players learn to laugh about it, or cry.

** Some players may also go for speed runs(lowest number of turns, fastest real time), or ascend with the lowest level humanly possible.

* [[Shapeshifter Mode Lock]]: Vampires can change into bats, giving them increased dexterity. If, however, they have their dexterity drained while in bat form, it's possible to end up such that turning back into a vampire would leave them with zero or less, which would kill them. Therefore they're stuck in bat form until they can regain it.