Hi, crawlers! Here’s the latest changes from trunk:

  • Beogh no longer gives piety for sacrificing dead orcs’ bodies. Instead, they can be brought back from the dead with a new 6* ability, Resurrection. Hostile orcs will be converted by the experience. Saint Roka may be tough to persuade to your side, but he’s considerably less so once he’s dead…
  • Also, orcs will no longer drop items that you’ve gifted them, even if they preferred whatever weapon/armour they had before.
  • Monster changes:
    • New monster: Dart Slug, a slow D:1 monster with a ranged attack. It probably won’t kill you, but it’ll be very funny if it does.
    • New monster: Howler Monkey, an early D monster that’s fairly weak, but makes a heck of a lot of noise. On later levels, they spawn in packs.
    • New monster: Rime Drake, replacing fire drakes. Very similar, but instead of fire, they breathe Flash Freeze, a single-target cold-damage spell that slows victims’ movements for a few turns after they’re hit.
    • Flash Freeze can sometimes miss, though if Antaeus is casting it, it probably won’t.
    • Pandemonium lord generation has been considerably reworked, hopefully resulting in more distinctive foes.
    • Nymphs will flood any type of adjacent walkable terrain, including shops and stairs. They’re also significantly more fragile.
    • Shock serpents’ discharge now only strikes whatever hit it, rather than all enemies (but not any of the serpent’s allies!) in a wide area.
    • Deep Elf High Priests and Sorcerers no longer cast Summon Demon.
  • New command: “?#” lets you browse your character dump in-game.
  • Qazlal’s wrath can now summon a range of elemental-themed creatures, rather than just elementals of subtly-varying HD.
  • Gozag no longer demands any service fee in sprint, rather than demanding a significant fraction of all gold on the entire map to join.
  • Covering a ziggurat in gold with Gozag no longer causes enemies to be completely paralyzed.
  • “Megazigs” (ziggurats entered after fully clearing previous ziggurat(s)) are now considerably nastier, and should give a bit more of a challenge to players & characters who are capable of fully clearing multiple ziggurats.
  • Ziggurats no longer all have the same layout in a given game.
  • The rMut artefact property now works the same as the mutation: a 2/3rd chance of preventing mutations, down from 9/10.
  • Mass Confusion is no longer a player-castable spell.
  • Passwall’s range is now fixed for a given spellpower (& displayed on the spell screen), rather than being random per-cast.
  • Needles of slowing have been removed.
  • Blowguns no longer have extra power when ‘stabbing’ unaware targets.
  • Monsters can no longer pick up items from stacks you’ve seen, even if you haven’t seen the specific items that they’re trying to pick up.
  • However, Maurice can now pick things up from the floor. Even things you’ve seen! Is he cheating…?
  • It’s no longer possible to evolve a permanently petrified plant into a permanently petrified oklob.
  • Spectral shapeshifters can now once again turn into something other than spectral ghost crabs.
  • Vampires can no longer drink ghosts’ blood.
  • Bribed demons can no longer escape Hell.
  • Dumb monsters can no longer shout.
  • Dead monsters can no longer shout.

Thanks to chequers for helping to compile this post.

Happy crawling!