Hi crawlers! Sorry for the downtime earlier this week; the database died, and then the backup database died while attempting to restore the primary. Thankfully, our admin was able to recover almost everything. So here’s a fresh pile of changes, seized from the heart of a dying sun!

• Beogh gifting has been somewhat revised:
  • Beogh will now improve allies’ equipment, enchanting them and improving their base type. (The latter would sometimes occur before, but very rarely.)
  • And he’ll gift weapons, armour, shields, and ammo to orcs who lack them.
  • And he’ll bless weapons and armour that the player has gifted.
  • And he’ll give some extra ammo to any orc that the player chooses to gift a ranged weapon to.
  • And orcs won’t drop their melee weapons when the player gives them a ranged weapon, or vice versa.
• The Trident of the Octopus King now gets an additional +1 for each Ring of the Octopus King its wielder wears, up to a maximum of +16. (But good luck getting that!)
• Godless hill orcs can now convert to Beogh with ‘p’ when orc priests are nearby, as an alternative to using the option from the abilities menu.
• The Deck of Wonders is back to giving mainly strategic effects (e.g. Helix, Mercenary, etc), rather than duplicating the Deck of Battle.
• New monster: torpor snails, found in Lair and Spider. Their enemies are slowed on sight, somewhat like ancient zymes.
• Weapons and armour which aren’t visibly enchanted no longer have enchantments higher than +0.
• The Staff of Air now activates its extra melee damage as often as other elemental staves.
• Brown oozes and pulsating lumps have oozed off to the great slime pit in the sky.
• The dragonslaying brand has been slain. (Except for Wyrmbane, of course.)
• Scrolls of Enchant Weapon are now rarer, and always succeed on use.
• Most randomly-placed teleport traps now disappear after one use.
• Lost souls now make enemies into ghosts instead of specters.
• Skullcrusher now gives +7 STR.

0.15 will be released in mid-August.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! A whole pile of changes, just waiting for some enterprising adventurer to seize them:

• Weapon enchantments and slaying bonuses (from artefacts and rings of slaying) have been merged into one number, which gives both +accuracy and +damage. Enchant Weapon scrolls have likewise been merged into a single type. Various unrands have been adjusted to account for this.
• Monster item pickup:
• Monsters will no longer pick up items that players have seen.
• Friendly monsters will no longer pick up any items at all. (And, accordingly, the old ctrl-t functionality has been removed.)
• Beogh has a new ***** piety ability, allowing the player to gift items directly to named followers.
• Beogh now improves allies’ equipment by blessing them.
• Mercenaries now start with slightly better items.
• Ctrl-T now toggles displaying enemies’ weapons’ glyphs while playing console.
• Cross-training now gives a direct bonus to skills, rather than providing an aptitude bonus.
• Anti-training has been removed.
• New monster: Ghost crabs, appearing in the Crypt and Tartarus. The clouds of ghostly flame they breathe summon dangerous specters into fleeting existence.
• Giant fireflies have flickered out of existence; spriggan riders now buzz into battle on deadly wasp mounts.
• Halfling and kobold stats have been tweaked; halflings now have more str and less int/dex, and kobolds now have slightly more dex and slightly less str.
• TSO no longer blasts you with cleansing fire when you kill holy monsters.
• Simulacrum now works on a single corpse at the caster’s feet, creating several simulacrula from it. Monsters instead have an animate-dead like version that works on all corpses in LOS and produces half as many simulacrula.
• Sublimation of Blood no longer uses chunks; it now only draws from the caster’s HP.
• Temporary brand spells (Excruciating Wounds and Warp Weapon) can now be used on branded non-artefact weapons to temporarily re-brand them.
• The Sack of Spiders now places webs directly onto enemies, rather than spreading them randomly around the area.
• The Frost card has been removed, and replaced with Hammer; Flame has been renamed to Cloud, and now produces either fire or freezing clouds.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! Fresh changes, right from the spriggan’s oven:

• Shields have been rebalanced:
• The effects of SH have been doubled; each point of SH now gives twice as much block chance as previously, making it very roughly equivalent to EV point-for-point.
• All sources of SH have been halved, except for shield enchantments.
• Large shields can now be enchanted up to +8; normal ‘shields’ can be enchanted up to +5. (Bucklers still cap at +3.)
• Unrand shields have been tweaked. The Large Shield of Ignorance is now +6 (a small buff); the Shield of the Gong is now +18 (a larger buff); the Shield of Resistance is now +2 (a small nerf).
• Uniques are now announced by title when first appearing onscreen. Beware: Sigmund the Dreaded awaits!
• Darts have darted away forever. Warpers now start with tomahawks of dispersal instead.
• Confusing Touch has had its duration increased (though multiple casts no longer stack), and causes your attacks to do no damage while it’s in effect. Once it successfully confuses an enemy, the duration ends. It’s now level 2.
• Giant Slugs and Elephant Slugs have gone to the great vegetable garden in the sky. Gastronok survives, now the last member of his species. His eyestalks quiver in a fashion both noble and tragic.
• Curse Skulls have returned to their natural, immobile state.
• The amulet of conservation and cloak of preservation are gone, now that item destruction is no more.
• Maxwell’s Patent Armour now gives rF+ rC+ instead of conservation.
• Acquirement no longer avoids giving you items you’re currently carrying (e.g. lamps of fire, etc)
• Iron Trolls no longer appear outside Dis. (But watch this space!)
• Spellforged Servitors will no longer turn on the player when damaged by their own conjured ball lightning. Or ever.
• You can now cast Inner Flame on allies without angering them.

Happy crawling!