Trivia / Dungeon Crawl

• Dummied Out
  • The source code for Linley's Dungeon Crawl shows a mutation that was never implemented: "Your chest, abdomen and neck are covered in intricate, arcane blue/green writing". Supposedly, it would be given by an unknown evil god when a character converted to its religion.
  • The unique specter Terpsichore was briefly considered for inclusion in 0.8 of Stone Soup; her one gimmick was a spell that caused every weapon within line of sight to animate and attack the player. Ultimately it was decided that she wouldn't work, as her power was too unbalanced. (If there weren't any weapons nearby for her to animate she was defenseless and would be nothing more than easy EXP, but if there were more than one or two weapons nearby she would slaughter the player in seconds.) As a result she was first dummied out and later removed entirely.
  • This has since occurred with other creatures, like polymoths or chaos butterflies.
  • Waaaay back when the game was still Linley's Dungeon Crawl, before the introduction of gods, there was a Holy spell school which included such spell effects as healing, smiting, curing status effects, and restoring drained stats. When gods were introduced the spells were dummied out and their effects given to other things. Smiting, healing, and status curing became abilities given by the good gods and stat restoration was relegated to a potion effect only. As of 0.19, Cure Poison, the last remnant of the Holy spells, has been dummied out.
• What Could Have Been: Especially in recent versions, Crawl has had a very large number of things put into trunk builds with the intention of being used, but then never fully implemented into any stable version. Some of these are actually quite interesting.
  • Near the end of Linley's time working on Crawl he worked on a set of mutations called the "marked" mutations. The intent was that the evil gods (or perhaps one specific evil god) would immediately grant their followers one of these mutations, starting with either blue sigils on the hands or a green sigil on the chest and expanding to blue writing over the hands, arms, and shoulders or green writing over the chest, abdomen, and neck. The only known effect of the condition was that the three good gods would always refuse worship from any "marked" character. Linley never finished the concept before he gave up the game for adoption, and the Stone Soup team ditched the concept almost immediately.
  • As mentioned in the entry for Dummied Out, there was going to be a unique spectre called Terpsichore. Her one gimmick was a spell that caused every weapon within line of sight to animate and attack the player. Ultimately it was decided that she wouldn't work, as her power was too unbalanced. (If there weren't any weapons nearby for her to animate she was defenseless and would be nothing more than easy EXP, but if there were more than one or two weapons nearby she would slaughter the player in seconds.) As a result she was first dummied out and later removed entirely.
  • One of the biggest Could-Have-Beens is the Enchanted Forest. It was considered as an alternating branch with the Crypt, the same way the Shoals alternate with the Swamp and the Snake Pits alternate with the Spider's Nest, and it was filled with spriggans, treants and other plant monsters, and various animals. In the end it was just too unbalanced. Worshippers of Fedhas Madash would have a relatively easy time since all plant monsters would instantly ally with them. Fire specialists could simply burn the forest down, killing most of the enemies in the process and then walk straight to the end. Other characters would have much more trouble with the branch which was overall much more difficult than the Crypts, the branch it was meant to alternate with. The Enchanted Forest was scrapped and many of the independent elements found new homes in other branches. Most of the plant monsters were moved to the Swamp, the satyrs and fauns were moved to the Shoals, and the spriggans can now be found wandering around the Dungeon.
  • The Djinni race was in development for a while but was eventually decided to never be included in any official release. The race's most unique trait was that they didn't have HP or MP, instead having a single stat called Essence. Their other major trait is that they were immune to all forms of fire, including the normally unresistable Hellfire and Holy Fire. It was ultimately decided that the Djinni's immunity to fire was too unbalanced and the Essence system was too different from the way the other races worked for them to be viable. They did get something of a spiritual successor in the Vine Stalker race, which has a permanent Mana Shield effect.
    • As of 0.27, Djinni are a playable race (replacing Halflings). They have no mana, with all spells being Cast from Hit Points. In addition, they innately very resistant to fire, weak to cold, and immune to poison. They also cannot learn spells normally, only getting spells that their class would start with, and one spell every few levels. But, all spells are cast using the spellcasting skill, rather than any specific magic skill.
  • The Lava Orc race as well was officially announced as "not going to happen" with the release of 0.15. Described as Rock Monsters that look like ash-colored orcs, lava orcs had a unique aspect in their tension meter. In tense situations they would get enraged and slowly heat up into living magma, enhancing their fiery aspects and burning everything around them. They could also swim through lava (and were the only playable race capable of doing so) which would have the side effect of instantly heating themselves to maximum. Their damaging aura eventually proved too difficult to balance and so they were given up on.