Trunk Updates 11 Jan 2023

Happy new year, crawlers! It’s been a little longer than usual since the last updates post, so this post will be a little longer than usual, too. To get you started, here’s a cool new splash screen from PhilosopherOpposite:

And off we go!

• New background: Reaver.
  • Reavers are warrior-mages, primarily focused on melee combat but with
    situational Conjurations for tough situations.
  • New starting spell: Kiss of Death (L1 Conj/Necro). Does high draining damage to an adjacent enemy, at the cost of significant max HP drain to the caster.
  • New starting spell: Momentum Strike (L2 Conj/Tloc). Redirects the caster’s momentum for a damaging attack that doesn’t require line of fire, but locks the caster in place for some turns after a hit. (It cannot be recast until this effect expires.)
  • Reavers also start with Hailstorm, which is now L3 (formerly L4) and can now miss. Ice Elementalists lose Hailstorm, but get Summon Ice Beast in exchange.
• Species rework: Palentongas have become Armataurs.
  • Like Palentongas, Armataurs are large, scaled mammals, wearing bardings
    instead of boots.
  • New species innate: Long Tongue, which doubles the effects of drinking potions, but makes reading scrolls take 50% longer.
  • New species innate: Rolling (innate Rampage – extra movement when moving toward enemies).
  • Rolling Charge is now a spell, Vhi’s Electric Charge (L3 Tloc/Air). It sends the caster charging toward a nearby foe to deliver an electrified strike, phasing through targets in the way. Warpers now start with Vhi’s Electric Charge instead of Gell’s Gravitas.
  • Armataurs lose the Rolling Charge and Curl abilities.
  • Armataurs’ aptitude have been adjusted across the board.
  • See these commits for more explanation of the reasoning behind the changes.
• God rework: Lugonu has been substantially revised, with the goal of being a much more tempting pick for players unlucky enough to have been banished to the Abyss.
  • The Banishment ability is now available at ** piety (was ***). It fails less often, and when it is resisted, the victim will be malmutated instead, making them more vulnerable in future. (This does not apply to other sources of banishment, such as the monster spell or weapons of distortion.)
  • When another god’s wrath descends upon a worshipper, Lugonu now scornfully responds by banishing several nearby foes.
  • Altars to Lugonu are more than three times as common in the Abyss.
  • Converting to Lugonu in the Abyss now gives even more bonus piety.
  • The Abyssal Knight background and the Bend Space ability have been removed. (For more explanation of why, see these commits.)
• New brand: Heavy.
  • Heavy weapons have +80% base damage and +50% attack delay. (This has proven to be pretty strong, so don’t be surprised if this gets toned down slightly before release.)
  • Both melee and ranged weapons can be Heavy.
  • The Vorpal brand has been removed. It simply wasn’t very exciting. Flaming and Freezing remain as very simple damage multiplier brands.
  • The Dark Maul and Sniper are both now Heavy instead of Vorpal, and have had various stat adjustments. (Sniper is now +27.) Other formerly Vorpal unrands have changed or lost brands and gained enchantment as needed.
• New unrands:
  • The Hermit’s Pendant, an amulet of faith that sets the wearer’s Invocations skill to 14 and their Evocations skill to 0. (Only for as long as you continue wearing the amulet, of course.)
  • The Force Lance, a Heavy +5 lance (a spear with +2 base damage, like Wyrmbane). When it lands a damaging hit, there’s a 1/3 chance of the target being knocked back, suffering extra damage if it collides with anything.
  • The Slick Slippers, which make all damaging melee attacks trample their wearer backward. They also provide immunity to constriction, engulfing, webbing and netting!
• New spells:
  • Cigotuvi’s Dreadful Rot (L2 Necro/Air/Pois). Rots away the caster’s flesh to create a cloud of deadly miasma on their tile. Great for escapes, but also very fun with effects like Lesser Beckoning and potions of attraction! Replaces Conjure Flame in the Hedge Wizard starting spell set.
  • Kindle Blastsparks (L3 Fire/Air/Tloc). Creates a cloud of ‘blastsparks’ on the caster’s tile, which explode when any creature moves into them or when they are hit by fire damage. Usable as a land mine, as a way to create distance from enemies, or for other fun tricks. Replaces Conjure Flame in the Fire Elementalist starting spell set.
  • Arcjolt (L5 Conj/Air). Electrocutes everything adjacent to the caster, everything adjacent to those creatures, etc, etc, in a chain.
  • (And of course Reavers’ Kiss of Death and Momentum Strike are both new, too – see above!)
• Further item-related changes:
  • The Mad Mage’s Maulers have been reworked. They lose Int-3 and RegenMP and gain -Cast and MPVamp, causing the wearer to gain MP when they strike foes in melee. They now add as much damage when spending MP in melee, matching the normal infusion ego’s ratio of MP to bonus damage.
  • Rings of evasion are now +5 instead of +4, to be closer in value to other rings (eg AC/Dexterity). The Ring of the Hare, accordingly, goes from +8 to +10.
  • Majin-Bo is now a one-handed staff instead of a two-handed quarterstaff. (The HP vamp and not being able to wield an enhancer staff is plenty of drawback.)
  • Scrolls of butterflies now create dramatically more butterflies. They now alternate with scrolls of summoning instead of scrolls of fog, since the latter have a more unique and irreplacable effect. Watch this space!
  • All ranged weapons can now generate with electrocution, antimagic, and draining brands. Venom ranged weapons no longer appear.
  • Short sword attack delay reduced.
  • Evocable invisibilty and blink no longer have an MP cost.
  • Spells have been reshuffled between books, and a new Maxwell’s Memoranda book has been added.
  • Hand crossbows are very slightly weaker and slower.
  • The Lochaber Axe now causes temporary HP drain on unequip.
• Further character-related changes:
  • Arcane Marksmen (Markspersons?) have been renamed to Hexslingers, for stylistic and pun reasons.
  • Base regeneration increased by 0.2 HP/turn, to make resting faster in the early game.
  • Mummies have innate Faith, giving extra piety gain.
  • Reaching the end of the Zot clock now causes a smaller amount of permanent max HP loss (similar to Borgnjor’s Revivication), rather than temp HP drain. The Zot clock can no longer directly kill the player. (This change is intended to simplify the mechanic and to move away from a weird/nonstandard use of HP draining.)
  • Large species move at normal speed through shallow water.
  • rF- and rC- are added to the ‘bad mutations’ pool.
  • Will is now capped at +++++. (When affected by the Will/2 status, the cap is applied before halving.)
  • Pale draconians’ breath is no longer usable twice as often as others’.
  • Formicids can now shaft themselves in the Tomb of the Ancients.
• Further god-related changes:
  • When worshipping at a faded altar, the player is given a preview of three gods the altar might belong to. (Then you can back out if you don’t like the options, without suffering wrath.) Care to take a gamble on that altar to Sif Muna, Vehumet, or Trog?
  • Gozag’s corpse-to-gold effect now blocks enemies from creating simulacra.
  • Fedhas protects trees from being set on fire by the player.
  • Okawaru’s Heroism and Finesse abilities cost more piety.
  • Removed Ashenzari’s Astral Vision (automatically seeing through walls). It was very annoying for autotravel/resting/etc, had a surprising number of bugs, and Ashenzari was quite strong enough without it. Maybe we’ll try to add a fixed version back in someday as a potion or such.
• Further monster-related changes:
  • Demonic Crawlers lose their Warning Cry ability, their omni-elemental resistances, and some Willpower. In exchange, they get higher damage and very fast regeneration. This is intended to make Spider overall easier (by making it easier to sneak around), to reduce overlap with Swamp’s Bunyips (and their Warning Cry), and to experiment more with fast regenerating monsters.
  • Doom Hounds’ Howl is now resistable by Will.
  • Many monsters (boulder beetles, two-headed ogres, various orcs…) do less damage.
  • Walking Tomes are now unable to cast while silenced.
  • Ironbound Frosthearts’ Creeping Frost spell is now fully resistable by rC.

Many thanks also to Sastreii for contributing many new tiles over this period, including spell icons, artefact art, new draconian sprites, and more.

Thanks to all the community members who’ve contributed over the last 6 months: robertxgray, Zhang Kai, Monkooky, 张凯, pdpol, Roadster Tracker, Rytis Petronis, Perry Fraser, scarf, bfaires, Aliscans, mainiacjoe, Benjamin S Wolf, Ernest Antanishinm, yrdzrfxndfvh, Alex, RypoFalem, Samantha Tobias, Michael Del Monte, Marcelo Henrique Cerri, Josh Braendel, Duong Hoang, and kd7uiy.

To send you off, here’s another new splash screen, this one from Micah C:

Happy crawling!