Hi, crawlers! We’re in feature freeze right now, so here’s the last batch of changes for 0.18 trunk:
- Gods:
- Pakellas now gifts exactly one weak wand, one strong wand, one charge-based evoker, and one XP evoker as characters advance in piety, rather than gifting an endless succession of evocables.
- Lugonu’s Banish no longer has a power cap; instead of reaching maximum power at 10.5 Invocations, it scales smoothly up to 27 Invocations. It’s also somewhat harder to invoke.
- Ru’s sacrifice descriptions are somewhat more verbose and, hopefully, more useful.
- Enemies buffed by Gozag’s wrath remain buffed until slain.
- Monsters:
- Shadow fiends have been renamed and rethemed to Tzitzimitl, Aztec skeletal demon-gods which threatened to devour the sun. Their defenses are slightly better than before, and their attacks create a ring of miasma around (but not on) the player’s tile, similarly to the late, lamented salamander firebrands.
- Giant eyeballs are back! They can show up in Depths and Slime, accompanied by tough allies. They’ve also gone from slow to normal speed, but need to charge up twice before being able to paralyse the player, similar to orb spiders or salamander stormcallers.
- Lich & ancient liches have spellbooks again, instead of per-lich randomly-generated spell lists.
- Salamander stormcallers have traded their Sticky Flame for a higher rate of Fire Storm casting.
- Iron Giants have been slowed to 80% speed.
- Hell Hogs now spit Fireballs. Beware, or your bacon may be cooked…
- Demonic, angelic, and ‘magical’ spells have all been merged into one category. This primarily affects descriptions.
- Monsters can no longer use vampiric drain on gargoyles, nor heal from draining summoned creatures.
- Monsters can no longer zap or evoke equipment while confused or fleeing.
- Items:
- Rods are no longer treated as weapons; hitting someone with a magic rod is no longer more effective than hitting them with a rolled-up scroll. (Previously, they functioned as… clubs.) They can no longer be cursed.
- Scrolls of enchant weapon & enchant armour no longer remove curses.
- Ziggurat figurines can be used even after having sacrificed Evocations through Ru.
- The lantern of shadows has faded, mysteriously, into the shadows.
- Sniper can no longer miss. Its enchantment has been correspondingly downgraded to +9, from +15.
- Arrows, bolts & sling bullets no longer have brands.
- Poison needles scale with skill; they reach their old effectiveness at 8 Throwing, and improve from there.
- Throwing speed scales like weapon skills, rather than being like unarmed combat; it’s floored at 0.7 turns per toss, up from 0.5, but scales faster with skill.
- Wild/subdued magic are both much less dramatic; each level of the mutation has been reduced in severity to about 60% of what they were before. (E.g., wild magic 1 increases spellpower by 30%, instead of 50%.) Subdued magic’s effects on spell failure were reduced even further, to reinforce its status as a bad mutation.
- If you would starve with food in your inventory, you will automatically eat that food instead.
- rElec reduces damage by 2/3rds, rather than 3/4ths.
- ‘Defensive actions’ (dodging, blocking, etc) can now be listed in morgues.
- Wind Blast no longer misleadingly claims to ‘summon’ wind; instead, it correctly conjures wind, in accordance with Dungeon Crawl lore.
- The Abyss has been decisively deanthropomorphised.
- High score entries featuring mountain dwarves that died of stupidity no longer crash the game.
Happy crawling!
1. Comment by Frank
21/Apr/2016 at 13:28
“Arrows, bolts & sling bullets no longer have brands”
Thank you.
My inventory will not be as clogged as it used to.
2. Comment by pratamawirya
21/Apr/2016 at 17:28
“The Abyss has been decisively deanthropomorphised.” What’s that supposed to mean?
3. Comment by Jon
21/Apr/2016 at 18:01
“High score entries featuring mountain dwarves that died of stupidity no longer crash the game” — I’m so tired of all these changes that reduce strategy and complexity. I barely recognize Crawl anymore!
4. Comment by Chiseanne
21/Apr/2016 at 22:27
I totally agree to Jon. Instead of making this richer in feature and more interesting they just nerf everything fun and reduce complexity. One day they will merge all weapons into only one all-purpose weapon called “The weapon!” Not happy with the way the developement goes.
5. Comment by PleasingFungus
22/Apr/2016 at 07:01
@pratamawirya: A message that anthropomorphised the Abyss (“The substance of the Abyss twists in disgust”) was changed. It’s a very trivial change.
6. Comment by pratamawirya
22/Apr/2016 at 07:31
“High score entries featuring mountain dwarves that died of stupidity no longer crash the game.” Wait, what does this have to do with strategy and complexity…?
7. Comment by kuniqs
22/Apr/2016 at 16:23
It’s a joke
8. Comment by xordid
22/Apr/2016 at 22:24
The wooooosh in this comment section is palpable. :) Looking forward to these changes, quite honestly.
9. Comment by toastedzergling
23/Apr/2016 at 00:32
Does this mean the .18 tournament is around the corner!?
10. Comment by freynir
23/Apr/2016 at 05:08
“High scores…”- there is possibilty to die from stupidity, for higly experienced/scored persons sometimes its generated crash
11. Comment by Undefined
24/Apr/2016 at 16:46
Ah, I’m gonna miss removing curse with enchantment scrolls.
12. Comment by Maxim
24/Apr/2016 at 22:44
What? Why have you removed disperal arrows?
13. Comment by aaa
25/Apr/2016 at 03:15
About the item
-Enemies buffed by Gozag’s wrath remain buffed until slain:
worship Gozag first -> abandon him -> worship Beogh -> encounter buffed Saint Roka -> tame him -> PROFIT!!
The item SHOULD be fixed to:
-Enemies buffed by Gozag’s wrath remain buffed until slain AND ENSLAVED
14. Comment by PleasingFungus
25/Apr/2016 at 08:46
@aaa: if you can actually pull that off, you deserve your buffed saint roka, imho.
15. Comment by PleasingFungus
25/Apr/2016 at 08:49
@Maxim: The reasoning is in the commit.
16. Comment by ololoev
27/Apr/2016 at 11:05
>rElec reduces damage by 2/3rds, rather than 3/4ths.
Please explain this, res in “resistible /= (3 * res + 1) / 2 + bonus_res;” was changed from 2 to 1 for having rElec? Also, I can’t see how one can get 2/3 from the formula above.
17. Comment by bregath
27/Apr/2016 at 14:42
Are there any chances to see those changes in downloadable Crawl?
18. Comment by aaa
29/Apr/2016 at 04:27
@bregath: git pull the full source and compile it
19. Comment by PleasingFungus
5/May/2016 at 05:45
@ololev: Yes.
Before: (3 * 2 + 1) / 2 + 1 = 7 / 2 + 1 = 3 + 1 = 4; damage is divided by 4, a.k.a. reduced by 3/4ths.
After: (3 * 1 + 1) / 2 + 1 = 4 / 2 + 1 = 2 + 1 = 3; damage is divided by 3, a.k.a. reduced by 2/3rds.