History Main / DungeonCrawl

* FallenAngel: Profane Servitors, ex-Angels/Daevas corrupted by Yredelemnul. Has immunity to Holy damage. Mush stronger than regular Angels, complete with an aura that shields everything that tries to kill you. Worshiping Yredelemnul only protects you from the aura.

* FlamingSword: Flaming is a brand some weapons can have, including swords.

* GenieInABottle: An efreet, actually. It doesn't give you wishes. And it might kill you.

* GoodNewsBadNews: The bad news come first, and the good news are hardly comforting:

* HolyHalo: The Shining One's followers eventually receive one. It serves several purposes: monsters inside the halo are easier to hit, invisible creatures turn visible and one's stealth is crippled (which isn't that bad, given that The Shining One dislikes stealth attacks anyway). Holy [=NPCs=] such as angels have similar halos.

* KatanasAreJustBetter: ''Crawl'' seems to agree. The katana is the best long blade of its kind (better than the scimitar, long sword, and falchion). The only better long blades are demon blades (which are supernatural), great swords (which are just really big swords), and double and triple swords (which are just silly, and also explicitly said to be magical).
** Katanas were removed in later versions, however; the only remaining katana is an artifact (though a rather good one).
* KillItWithFire: Recommended if you're going to try to fight a hydra with a bladed weapon. A FlamingSword will stop the hydra growing more heads. Also a good way to kill ice-based monsters.

* LifeDrain: the level 3 spell Vampiric Draining does this - it drains life from enemies and adds it to your health. Weapons can also be vampiric, healing and feeding the wielder when they hit.
* LifeMeter: nicely shows just how much damage that last hit did.

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

* ChainLightning: Inserted as a level 8 Air/Conjurations spell in the game. There is also a less powerful spell Static Discharge, which causes an electric shock which jumps to nearby enemies. And sometimes the person who cast it.

** Unlike the original Crawl, Stone Soup provides various information in forms of colored text, including the types of corpses/mutations, artifact identifiers, prohibition of items(dark grey items cannot be used at all, while lavender items are prohibited by your choice of god), etc.

* CombatTentacles: The playable octopode race can their tentacles to slap and squeeze enemies to death. This ability is also available to players who can cast beastly appendage as well as a few nasty enemies...

* DeathOfAThousandCuts: zombies are vulnerable to this, since they can't regenerate; you can hit them a bunch of times, escape, heal up, hit them some more until they die. This doesn't work on most other enemies because they heal.

* DualBoss: Dowan and Duvessa, the elf twins! Dowan is a SquishyWizard and Duvessa is a mighty warrior. If you find one twin, the other is sure to be on the same dungeon level somewhere.

* EarlyBirdBoss: The infamous Sigmund can show up as early as the second floor. When most players are still using [[WithThisHerring robes and daggers]] Sigmund can bring invisibility, confusion, flame spells, and a massive stat boosted scythe to the party. Get used to him being the last thing you see. In more recent versions, they made Grinder, a minor demon with a bunch of elemental resistances (most notably, resisting Mephitic Cloud) and a paralysing attack show up as early as the third floor.

* ElementalEmbodiment: Crawl's elements can appear in embodied forms. The spell Summon Elemental lets the player create these, although a quantity of that element is required.

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

* SkippableBoss: All of them. The recommended strategy on almost every unique is "Run away unless you KNOW they can't ruin your day, and come back when you're ten levels higher." The uniques considered most deadly are the ones who are ''hard to run away from", either by being fast, having ranged attacks or casting debiliatingstatus effects.

* MagicMisfire: Of every shape and color. They range from harmless (an ice mage getting a bit frosty, an enchanter making the dirt glow) to {{YASD}} (a necromancer rotting from the inside out, a translocator getting stuck in [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace Abyss]]. Even minor failures can become dangerous as magical contamination builds up in the caster, ending in a [[YourHeadAsplode violent terminus]] for those too desperate or stupid to stop casting.

* EarlyBirdBoss: The infamous Sigmund can show up as early as the first floor, or as the ''first enemy'' for that matter. When most players are still using [[WithThisHerring robes and daggers]] Sigmund can bring invisibility, confusion, fireballs and a massive stat boosted scythe to the party. Get used to him being the last thing you see. In more recent versions, they made Grinder, a minor demon with a bunch of elemental resistances (most notably, resisting Mephitic Cloud) and a paralysing attack show up as early as the second floor.

* DifficultyLevels: 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 also used to be a "Wanderer" class, which started you with a pitifully low level in a few skills chosen completely at random.

* DifficultyLevels: 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.

* EarlyBirdBoss: The infamous Sigmund can show up as early as the first floor, or as the ''first enemy'' for that matter. When most players are still using [[WithThisHerring robes and daggers]] Sigmund can bring invisibility, confusion, fireballs and a massive stat boosted scythe to the party. Get used to him being the last thing you see.

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.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures: The game will stop you from doing certain things that would otherwise outright kill you (walking into deep water, auto-moving while starving), and will ask for confirmation on potentially risky actions (moving adjacent to deep water while confused, stepping into dangerous traps while badly injured). You're still likely to die for a thousand other reasons, but at least the game is rooting for you.

** [[OlderThanTheyThink Maybe Linley's a]] [[WeirdAlYankovic Weird Al]] [[OlderThanTheyThink fan.]]

* BloodKnight: While many gods like the killing of certain enemies, a few are ''only'' happy if the player is killing everything they come across. For fighters Trog will bestow [[TheBerserker berserker strength]] and protect his followers from its [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique harmful effects]] as long as they keep a steady stream of death and corpses coming his way. Casters have Vehumet, who doesn't even care about the corpses part, probably because his [[WaveMotionGun preferred]] [[FantasticNuke methods]] [[LudicrousGibs don't leave any]].

* BoringButPractical:

** The latter is also available in form of a healing wand. More favored than potions because they cannot be destroyed, but exceedingly rare and difficult to recharge.

* LightIsNotGood: Angels are mostly just as bloodthirsty as demons, and have large haloes to make finding the player easier.

* MagicKnight: Skalds start with skills in the melee weapon of their choice and self-buff spells. Reavers get (well, ''got''; they were [[DummiedOut 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).

* NintendoHard: This game ''is'' going to kill you, and when you make a new character the ghost of your dead character is going to kill ''him''.

** Cheibriados is the god of time, he just wants his followers to take it easy and enjoy every single second. Trying to speed up insults him, since you obviously don't appreciated it if you are moving as fast as you can. Jiyva fits this to a T however.

* OurCentaursAreDifferent: [[LoadsAndLoadsOfRaces And playable]]. They're fast, and deadly archers, but they don't get much protection from armor, and they need to eat more food than most due to their size.

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[[caption-width-right:250:[[{{YASD}} KeSu-01 Slain by a goblin.]]]]

* OneStatToRuleThemAll: Intelligence. The other two basic stats have little to no point unless you're a transmuter or your character is totally magic-free.

** Ogres, both NPCs and player characters. They hit hard and have some natural protection, but can't wear most armor and aren't very good dodgers due to their size, rendering them very vulnerable against stronger enemies.

* HolyHalo: The Shining One's followers eventually receive one. It serves several purposes: monsters inside the halo are easier to hit, invisible creatures turn visible and one's stealth is crippled (which isn't that bad, given that The Shining One dislikes stealth attacks anyway). Holy NPCs such as angels have similar halos.

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 [[WeirdAlEffect dominant]] (similar to the way Hack became NetHack). It is still updated as of 2011, with new versions released every few months.

* FishOutOfWater: Most obviously applies to merfolk (semi-literally; they can get by just as well on land as in water), but the game makes a small plot point of some of the player species being unsuited for a dungeon (since they enter it from ground level). For example, the only playable orc species is the hill orc, while all the ones in the dungeon are cave orcs. Kenku (bird people) also seem highly unsuitable for a dungeon, but that just makes it more fun.

* PowerFloats: Kenku, the bird people race, don't have wings, but they get the ability to magically fly at level 5, and get permanent flight at level 15.

* PlayerPreferredPattern: it is joked that most people play Mountain Dwarf Fighters of Okawaru, which supposedly is the easiest to advance with. This had presumably changed since the heavy armor nerf in 0.6, and mountain dwarves are out altogether in 0.10.

* SiblingRivalry: Edmund is jealous of his older brother Sigmund, and for a reason: Sigmund is a notorious killer of junior adventurers while Edmund is more close to an average brute with an expensive flail and a [[InformedAbility good ability with sums]].

* HumansAreAverage: Mostly played straight (humans get no special abilities, and average apitudes), but they're tied with [[OurOrcsAreDifferent hill orcs]], [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent kobolds]] and {{halfling}}s for fastest XP gain in the game. This is a very useful thing.

** Fighter - includes anything with focus on plain combat, from heavily armored warriors to {{BarefistedMonk}}s and stealthy assassins.