Hi, crawlers! This week has been simply magical, by which I mean, full of spells. New spells. Two new spells. And a bunch of other changes:

• New spells:
  • Cigotuvi’s Embrace, a L5 Necromancy spell that turns corpses into temporary AC & SH. The corpses slowly slough off over time & (sometimes) when the player is hit or blocks an attack. Found in the Book of Unlife and (sometimes) in Kikubaaqudgha’s second gift.
  • Singularity, a L9 Translocations spell that summons an all-devouring interdimensional maw. Nearby enemies are sucked inward & damaged, moreso the closer they get. Found in the Plane Papyrus, a high-level Translocations book containing Dispersal, Controlled Blink, Malign Gateway, Disjunction, and of course Singularity. (Various other books have been adjusted slightly.)
• Force Lance is now L4 Conjurations/Translocations, slightly more accurate, and better at knocking back enemies. Flying enemies are especially vulnerable.
• Dispersal now affects a wider area, and has a chance of confusing affected creatures.
• Twisted Resurrection has been removed.
• New enemies:
  • Robin of the Strong Arm, a hobgoblin unique appearing in the very early Dungeon. She’s stronger than your average hobgoblin, and accompanied by her own personal army of hobgoblins & goblins, the latter of which she will happily hurl at her enemies. Duck!
  • Shard Shrikes, batty monsters that appear in Cocytus. They spit Throw Icicle, resist and attack with cold, and flock in small bands. They have 2 AC, but are only literally made of glass in certain non-canonical fanfictions.
• Seraphim are now considerably more dangerous: damage doubled, speed increased by 50%, and a new spellset, including Hunting Cry, Summon Holies, Injury Bond and Cleansing Flame.
• Seraphim now occasionally appear on the orb run.
• Ghost crabs have scuttled sideways all the way from Crypt to Swamp.
• Insubstantial wisps are now slightly more fragile & less numerous, but have Static Discharge.
• Hellwings now have Cigotuvi’s Embrace, and spawn with it active.
• If the player clears a ziggurat and enters another, they may occasionally find themselves in the center of the floor rather than the edge. The odds of this increase with depth and number of ziggurats cleared.
• Zin’s Recite is no longer usable if no enemies with low enough HD are visible. Recite invulnerability is now mentioned in monster descriptions.
• Gozag will no longer offer the player shops that are entirely useless for their race.
• Ctrl-direction now always attacks, rather than sometimes opening or closing doors, or removing traps.
• In Zot Defense, the player can now place traps on top of other traps.
• Butchering and bottling blood now only takes a single turn.
• Powered by Death now works with all corpses.
• The Wild Magic card now afflicts enemies with miscast effects, rather than the player, and restores the player’s MP for each enemy affected. It’s moved from the Deck of Punishment (back to) the Deck of Wonders.
• When in shadow form, the player can no longer be petrified.
• Monsters can no longer block their own attacks.
• Butterfly colours have been disambiguated.
• The legendary weapons “Glorpy”, “Loopy”, and “Plog” may now appear.
• Gozag’s shopkeepers have had their genders randomized.
• Insects are no longer referred to as ‘she’.
• Electric golems can no longer breathe.
• Monsters no longer believe that rN+ armour allows them to see invisible.
• Angels no longer have demonic powers.
• Bats can now memorize spells.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Lots of fun changes this week:

• Enemy-held weapons now have their brands ID’d on sight.
• The Death Knight background has been removed.
• New item: the Iron Rod, which fires a spray of shrapnel in a wide arc. Extremely effective against agile, low-AC enemies, but ineffective against armoured enemies or at a distance.
• Nemelex & deck changes:
  • New cards:
    • Elements, which summons three beasts of the four elements.
    • Rangers, which summons two or three ranged-missile users.
    • Placid Magic, which removes all status effects and applies heavy antimagic to all creatures in sight, including the user. (Dazing enemy spellcasters as if they’d been hit with antimagic weapons repeatedly.
  • Revamped destruction cards:
    • Storm has replaced rain and swiftness with summoning air elementals, an elemental wellspring, or thunder clouds alongside a wind blast.
    • Pain has lost Torment; it can now instead summon flay your foes alive.
    • Venom has lost Sting for earlier Venom Bolts and Poison Arrows, but at low power will briefly make the user vulnerable to poison.
    • Degeneration now applies a temporary malmutated effect to targets, along with polymorphing them to creatures with lower HD. Undead are dazed.
    • Vitriol now can provide Corrosive Bolts at higher power.
    • Orb bursts will now attempt to home on monsters they might reasonably hit.
  • Revamped battle cards:
    • Potion has strictly-negative effects taken out, and will also apply its effects to allies if possible.
    • Blade now solely gives a cleaving status. It doesn’t stack with the reaching of polearms or the original cleaving of axes, but otherwise applies to all forms of armed & unarmed combat.
    • Helm can apply Stoneskin or Shroud of Golubria effects to allies at high power.
    • Elixir gives a small amount of temporary vitality to your allies, alongside its restorative effects to the user.
    • Shadow gives the darkness status (reduced LOS) instead of invisibility.
    • Dowsing is now significantly stronger in duration and range.
  • Revamped summoning cards:
    • Pentagram now summons a more constrained set of demons (stronger at lower power and weaker at high power), and an additional accompanying hell hound, rakshasa, or pandemonium lord.
    • Dance has replaced its short swords with quarterstaves and its dire flails with executioner’s axes. It also has a chance of summoning a randart.
    • Foxfire has lost butterflies and gained ravens.
    • Repulsiveness can now summon both an ugly thing and a very ugly thing.
  • Revamped emergency cards:
    • Cloud surrounds all hostile monsters with varying types of clouds, instead of randomly scattering clouds in all valid places in sight.
    • Shaft now randomly places shafts under other monsters as well.
    • Tomb can now raise rock walls on stone stairs and deep water.
    • Velocity will always apply a overall-positive effect (with allies present).
    • Banshee now drains victims, in addition to causing fear.
    • Solitude can now cause Disjunction at high power.
  • Dowsing is no longer in the deck of battle.
  • Decks of war have lost their set of destruction cards.
  • The Cloud card has moved from decks of destruction to decks of emergency.
  • Mercenaries now have slightly better kit, and mercenaries that your god would dislike are not offered.
  • In general, cards that your god would dislike will have their dislikeable effects suppressed. (E.g., Venom for TSO.)
  • Removed cards: Metamorphosis, Herd, Bones.
• Monster tweaks:
  • Draconian & deep elf knights are considerably stronger (and have had their spell sets changed up).
  • Caustic shrikes are now a little weaker and a little rarer.
  • Revenants are no longer affected by Silence.
  • Enemy necromancers can now cast Inner Flame.
  • Pan Lord spells have been considerably reworked.
  • Anubis Guards now have Control Undead.
  • Hell Beast HD, AC, and EV are no longer randomized (and are set to the max value they could have had before). Their speed is still randomized.
  • Sphinxes are now sometimes (presumably) androsphinxes.
  • Basilisks are now little.
  • Green rats are now known as river rats. Beware their swimming prowess…!
• All gods now give piety for kills made by followers (undead and otherwise) in the exact same way as for kills made by the player.
• Vampires now bottle blood with (c), instead of (a)(a). They can now bottle blood from level 1 onward.
• Different types of melee attacks (slashing, piercing, blunt, etc) no longer cause different amount of noise. (Melee noise still varies by damage done.)
• Summon Greater Demon now provides a more() by default when the summoned demon stops being charmed.
• Ziggurats now have a reliable supply of restore abilities potions, and a very small number of beneficial mutations potions.
• The rod of striking has been removed.
• Monsters now return to their original forms in death. (Like poor Prince Ribbit.)
• Runed doors & Lugonu’s Corruption are now noted in level annotations, by default.
• Ctrl-f can now find runed doors.
• Qazlal’s Disaster Area is now stronger at low invocations.
• Felid Monks have been buffed.
• Mimics are now immune to telepathy.
• High-pitched whines have been removed.
• The game will no longer claim that skeletons can be bottled.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! More behind-the-scenes work this week (we’ve finally switched to C++11!), not so many new features. Still, we’ve got a few:

• Gozag changes:
  • Monsters slain while following Gozag will now always drop gold if they would normally have a chance of leaving a corpse.
  • Gold from monsters now depends significantly less on their body mass.
  • Gozag shop item quality has been considerably improved.
  • Food has been moved from a potion petition (porridge/blood) to a guaranteed food shop offer in each use of Call Merchant. Vampires get blood shops; Ghouls get corpse shops. (Butchers?)
  • Potion Petition no longer contains negative effects.
• Potions of blood no longer give nutrition to non-vampires.
• Porridge has been removed.
• Okawaru no longer asks for corpse sacrifice; piety from kills has increased, and piety loss over time has decreased.
• Followers of Kikubaaqudgha and Nemelex Xobeh now get their respective special titles when their highest skill is Necromancy or Evocations (respectively).
• Snake now has an extremely cool set of new mosaic floor tiles – check them out!
• In Dis, the Serpent of Hell now has a reaching attack. Other Serpents of Hell have been weakened slightly.
• Players’ movement speed now maps directly to their ghosts’ movement speed, rather than action speed. (E.g., spriggan ghosts or ghosts of characters wearing boots of running now only travel faster, rather than also attacking, spellcasting, etc faster.)
• Condensation Shield is now melted when blocking a fire attack, not when failing to block one.
• The player can now be corroded when blocking an attack with a shield.
• The Transparent Skin mutation now gives -enemy accuracy at all levels, not just at level 3.
• Killer Klowns corpses are now as colourful in death as they were in life.
• Anubis Guards will no longer be slain by the traps of the Tomb they guard. (Likewise, Death Scarabs.)
• Monsters that aren’t Donald can now talk outside Dungeon. (Fixing a bug introduced in January of 2010.)
• Ghosts in console are no longer represented by ‘ ‘.
• Insults have been considerably improved, you decrepit pissant boot-licking toady!
• Cats now like fish.

Happy crawling!

(And be sure to check out our new servers, if you missed them last week.)

In the last year, a whole host of new servers have come online for play.

• CKR, in Korea. Webtiles only.
• CBRO, in Georgia, USA. Webtiles and console.
• LLD, in Japan. Webtiles only.
• CXC, in France. Webtiles and console.
• CPO, in Australia. Webtiles and console.

The full server list is available here, as well as instructions for getting started.

Many thanks to the people who have kindly volunteered to host these – and happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Lots of refactoring this week, with the usual mess of bugs; not so many feature changes. That said, here’s the list:

• New monster: Caustic Shrikes, appearing in the nastiest parts of Depths. They come in packs, hit hard, resist fire and cold, and cover you with acid. Also, they’re twice as fast as you. Caution is recommended.
• New item: phantom mirrors, one-use evocables. When used, they create a temporary friendly clone of a targeted monster.
• Irradiate now does somewhat more damage at low power, and somewhat less at high power. The malmutation effect (for enemies) is now guaranteed.
• Rust devils do somewhat less damage, but their corrosion now triggers every time they hit.
• Death scarabs now do considerably more damage.
• Silver statues are now obsidian, instead. (This has no mechanical effects.)
• Rings of slaying are now capped at +6, not +8 or +144.
• Blessed Blades are, tragically, gone.
• Card changes:
  • All decks can now be evoked from the inventory.
  • Nemelex’s Draw One and Peek at Two have drawn their last breaths.
  • The Metamorphosis card has magically transformed into nothing at all; it is no more.
  • Dowsing is no longer in the Deck of Battle.
• Mennas no longer mumbles.
• Norris now follows the one true god, GOD_NAMELESS.
• Prince Ribbit no longer turns back into a frog when raised from the dead.
• Monsters casting Freeze now check their targets’ cold resistance, rather than their own.

Happy crawling!