Hi crawlers! This week, I’ll write up the latest changes to trunk and 0.15. It’s pretty quiet, since there’s a feature freeze in preparation for 0.15′s release, but we still have a few things.
- Ugly things have gotten… a bit uglier. ( •_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■) Ugly things now have the stats (hp, damage, etc) that very ugly things used to have; very ugly things have been upgraded to be, well, a bit like miniature elemental dire elephants. To compensate, ugly things no longer spawn in bands before D:13.
- Potions of resistance now grant acid/corrosion resistance.
- A number of enemies have been upgraded (sidegraded?) with a new ‘corrosive bolt’ spell; Deep Elf Sorcerers, Tengu Reavers, and Liches.
- A great number of new tiles have been added:
- All projectiles have been reworked to be more distinctive from melee weapons.
- Hand crossbows have a new set of sprites, replacing some decade-old placeholder programming art.
- Robes have a large set of new, varied sprites.
- Various enemies have had their sprites upgraded; Frances, thrashing horrors, and torpor snails.
- Nemelex invocation icons have been upgraded to the new style.
- Various miscellaneous spells have new icons.
- Mutagenic clouds now give nontrivial levels of glow; they’ll now cause yellow contam within 2-4 turns, from the previous minimum of 5 turns and average of 9.
- The Spectral Weapon description (for both spell & item) now actually mentions the injury bond effect.
- Ranged weapons have been slightly tweaked; shortbows & hand crossbows are very slightly stronger, triple crossbows are very slightly weaker.
- ?/S no longer provides advice on warding off the evil eye.
Happy crawling!
1. Comment by Tristian
15/Aug/2014 at 06:51
Loving the additions and changes…
But I hate the loss of item weight.
Ogres are strong, Deep Elves/Felids are weak… there should be a difference in how much they can carry.
I’m not a big guy… My father -in-law is stocky…….. I’m strong and I’m tough, but he can pack a heavier load than I can.
I’m the Kobold to his Ogre.
Get my point here?
2. Comment by Skyspire
17/Aug/2014 at 05:05
I agree. Felids and Spriggans should not be allowed to carry around as much weight as an ogre. It doesn’t make sense. Its just huge buff to casters and weak races.
3. Comment by kek
20/Aug/2014 at 01:19
Crawl demands suspension of disbelief in many ways so I see no problem with ogres and elves carrying the same amount. The problem is that the amount is too big right now! 30+ items?!
4. Comment by e1999
20/Aug/2014 at 14:26
having to constantly stash things adds nothing to the game unless you rarely get winning characters.
its just tedium to the max.
5. Comment by warren
20/Aug/2014 at 20:13
The reason for “game balance” is to have every decision be a trade-off. The recent changes have eliminated much of the game balance and made it much closer to a hack, slash, and loot game like all the others out there.
I am not asking for item destruction to come back, it was annoying and frustrating. But inventory weight would be a good way to restore some game balance. It would also restore some of the diversity of experience between the play style of different races.
6. Comment by Plaintextman
27/Aug/2014 at 10:55
Carrying weight capacity isn’t just about tedium, though I guess through the mid-game it can tend toward that on low-str builds. Like the item count limit, carry weight is about carefully deciding what you can and what you can’t take along with you deep into a certain branch, and about deciding what loot you leave behind in an Abyss or Pan raid. That said, I play high-strength characters most of the time, and this consideration of what to take and what to leave is IMO enforced by the item count limit in a somewhat less annoying way. Still, I hope carrying weight stays in some form or another. Perhaps by rethinking item weight, such as making most items lighter and eg. artifact armours inherently heavier.