Hi, crawlers! Here’s the first set of changes for 0.20:

  • Monsters:
    • Draconian callers are now draconian stormcallers; they smite, summon drakes, and also invoke Upheaval, the Qazlal ability. Boom!
    • Snorg, Xtahua, and Bai Suzhen’s hides now have an inherent bonus enchantment.
    • Polymorphed uniques no longer keep their spells in certain obscure cases.
    • Ushabti breathe significantly less often.
    • Monsters’ melee attacks are now included in their descriptions.
    • Monster MR is reduced by lowered HD, from e.g. draining or malmutation.
    • The last great renaming of 2016? Sirens are now, excitingly, Merfolk Sirens.
  • Gods:
    • The Shining One’s conduct has been simplified: all stabs are now automatically prevented (no bonus damage), and poison damage is no longer specially forbidden. Cleansing Flame also does somewhat more damage to non-evil enemies.
    • Jiyva pacifies all slimes, even those that are actually shapeshifters.
    • Nemelex’s Pain card is now roughly twice as powerful.
    • Abyssal gold no longer counts toward Gozag’s entrance cost.
    • Qazlal no longer spawns damaging clouds on plants, e.g. while you’re trying to rest.
    • The Xom Cleave status will no longer last up to 2000 turns.
    • Dithmenos’s shadow can once again mimic diagonal and reaching attacks. (Broken as part of a bugfix two years ago.)
  • Spells:
    • Invisibility and Haste no longer cause extra hunger over time.
    • Confusing Touch is less effective, especially against high-HD enemies.
    • Poisonous Cloud is level 5 (was 6).
  • Odds of confusing enemies with a melee attack (with Confusing Touch or fungus form) are displayed while examining enemies with those statuses active.
  • Various badforms (e.g. wispform, fungus form) have been simplified, and porcupine form has been removed.
  • Console colours have been reworked to avoid invisible colours for certain low-capability consoles. Review options_guide.txt for new options, e.g. best_effort_brighten_background and _foreground.
  • Max charges for wands are always displayed: e.g. “a wand of confusion (?/48)”.
  • The Hat of the High Council has ascended to a higher plane.
  • Lair’s vaults have been exhaustively reviewed and revised. Please thank regret-index for all of the hard work!
  • Demonic guardians expire over time, not based on tension.
  • Vampire feeding, like chunk eating, now always takes a single turn. All the blood has oozed out of our corpses for the last time…
  • Fire clouds no longer expire faster over water (and likewise cold clouds over lava). Fire clouds on water also produce less steam.
  • Noise no longer breaks mesmerization and fear.
  • Mottled draconians (both player and monster) and draconian zealots are no more.
  • Simplified chaos effects.
  • Screaming at tentacles is forbidden.
  • Removed off-brand knock-offs of the Captain’s Cutlass.
  • The player can no longer crash the game by attempting to eat their hat.

Happy crawling, and don’t forget to take the survey if you haven’t already!