We are pleased to announce the release of Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup 0.31 “The Alchemy of Forms”!

DCSS 0.31 features some major spell school and starting background changes, a variety of new spells, many dangerous new monsters, and some major species changes.

The Transmutations forms spells have been moved into talisman items, which allow permanently shifting into forms based on the new Shapeshifting skill. The remaining Transmutations spells and the Poison Magic spells have been merged into a new Alchemy school. The Shapeshifter and Alchemist starting backgrounds replace Transmuter and Venom Mage, respectively. To support these changes, this release adds 4 new spells, sees 7 spells reworked into improved replacements, and has many tweaks to the levels and schools.

The new Oni species replaces Ogres. Oni love a good drunken brawl, gaining double effect when drinking any potion that restore HP or MP, and also perform an immediate cleaving melee attack. They are otherwise similar to Ogres, but also have horns and some increased apts. Starting at XL 7, Armataurs now regenerate HP and MP while rampaging. They also lose their double potion effect, and no longer read scrolls slowly. Felids now have an extra life at XL 1 and don’t lose XLs when dying. Tengu have an inherent acrobat effect (like the amulet) at XL 1, and gain 4 EV at XL 7 instead of gaining an EV bonus and fast movement. Humans gain the exploration healing effect formerly found on Meteorans, which are no more. Instead, players of any species can now rush to find gems stashed at the end of many branches as achievement items.