Hi, crawlers! Last changelog of the year:

• New trap: the Shadow Trap, appearing from d:3 downward. Any non-summoned creature that moves into it will summon a small group of shadow creatures from the current level, which are always hostile to the player.
• Traps are now more common in most parts of the game, and considerably less common in Slime.
• Elemental evocables now stack.
• ?/ has been considerably improved, and a new ?/c(L)oud option has been added.
• When examining features with clouds over them, both the description of the feature & the cloud are now displayed.
• Maxwell’s Patent Armour has been moved back toward its old egos; it now has rCorr rElec instead of Resistance.
• Cleaving’s damage to secondary targets has been reduced from 75% to 70%.
• A number of rock wall tiles have been replaced or reworked; in particular, Sewers no longer have acid wall tiles.
• Megazigs no longer sometimes place the player in the centre of the floor.
• The MP cost of the wand-power mutation has been halved; it now costs 3 MP per wand use per level, down from 6.
• Ru now applies antimagic to enemies, rather than Muting them.
• Dithmenos no longer sometimes considers steam to be a source of fire.
• Ironheart Preservers now have significantly worse defenses, but significantly more HP. This may make it worthwhile to bother actually attacking them.
• Call Imp now becomes stronger at high power, instead of becoming weaker.
• Linux and OS X no longer double all numpad inputs.
• ?/K no longer lists the skills “Stabbing”, “Traps”, “rat”, and “bat”.
• Chokoban has been upgraded.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Another quiet week:

• Spells & abilities that check enemy MR now display their success chance in the targeting interface.
• Examining monsters’ spells now allows you to see their chance of affecting you with MR-checking spells.
• Ru’s Draw Out Power drain has increased by 20%, and the odds of Apocalypse applying status effects has increased from 3/5 to 3/4.
• Troves that ask for the Horn of Geryon now actually take it, instead of just requesting that you present it.
• Ashenzari no longer suppresses blurry vision.
• Hydra Form’s duration has been increased considerably; it’s now roughly the same as Blade Hands’.
• Dragon Form no longer enhances Dragon’s Call.
• The rock walls of the stone huts in Shoals:5 now actually look like rock in Tiles.
• Elemental weapon brands now only have their damage multiplied by 1.5x for each level of negative resistance the target has (e.g. rC-), down from 2x. This is consistent with the extra damage that all other sources of elemental damage get.
• Orcish allies no longer cast Animate Dead for Beoghites.
• The Iron Rod’s scaling with spellpower has been considerably reduced; it probably no longer one-shots the toughest monsters in the game.
• The Arc Blade’s discharge effect has been fixed; it now arcs repeatedly to multiple targets rather than only affecting one, making it considerably more powerful.
• Sif now gives penance for destroying books, again.

Happy crawling, and enjoy the holidays!

Hi, crawlers! It’s been a quiet week for changes:

• Monster spells can now be examined through the xv screen, in the same way as with books & rods (that is, by hitting a letter corresponding to the spell). At present, this lets you see the description and range of their spells.
• Cigotuvi’s Embrace has been reworked; the rate at which corpses fall off is now based purely on the number currently stacked on the player, and spellpower instead increases the amount of AC+SH per corpse, from a base of 0.5 AC+SH per corpse to a cap of 1.5 AC+SH at the new max of 100 power. Skeletons now count the same as other corpses for Cigotuvi’s purposes.
• Gell’s Gravitas now has a small chance of confusing creatures pulled by it, based on spellpower and on victims’ MR.
• A new “item_slot” rcfile has been added, to allow you to specify which letter correspond to which items by default. Works like the spell_slot option.
• Quite a lot of tiles have been tweaked; notably the Singularity & Sublimation of Blood spell icons, but also many many monsters, which now incorporate advanced artistic techniques such as ‘perspective’. Check out hippogrives!
• Xom’s mood meter has been added to webtiles.
• Shard shrike packs can no longer spawn as hell effects in Cocytus; in general, the Cocytus hell effect spawn list has been reworked.
• Lava snakes can spit again. (They accidentally lost the ability to spit several months ago.)
• Chaos Champions can no longer give the player Resistance for 4000 turns.
• Gyre & Gimble can now strike up to 16 times in a single attack. (With the help of the Blade card.)
• Artefacts may now again be named “of the Doge”.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Some fun new toys to play with this week:

• New artefact: Gyre and Gimble, two quickblades linked by a chain. It takes two hands to wield, but strikes twice for every attack. Dual-wielding is finally here………
• New spell: Gell’s Gravitas, L6 Hexes/Translocations. Targets a creature & hurls all other nearby creatures toward it, causing damage to whichever ones collide. “Basically a one-turn Singularity”.
• The ‘blurry vision’ mutation no longer causes scroll-reading to occasionally fail. Instead, it adds a delay before the player finishes reading the scroll (and gains the benefits): one turn per level of the mutation.
• All non-shortblade weapons now stab equally well (or poorly), excepting felid claws, which now stab as well as shortblades. Clubs no longer have a chance of confusing ‘stabbed’ enemies. Ogre Enchanters and Assassins no longer start with clubs.
• Armour penalties to dodging have been smoothed; there is no longer a breakpoint at which Dodging goes from giving zero EV to the normal rate. Instead, armour decreases the rate at which Dodging gives you EV. Sample numbers are here.
• The Book of Wizardry has been removed; its spells have been redistributed.
• Monsters created by Phantom Mirrors are now only two-thirds as strong as the original.
• Orange rats have been renamed to hell rats, and are now demonic. They also glow in the dark.
• The arbalest “Hellfire” has had its hellfire-explosion damage roughly doubled.
• When active, Gozag’s gold now sparkles.
• It is once again possible for bardings of flying to generate, after they were accidentally removed earlier this year.
• Orc wizards can no longer confuse the player for 30+ turns.
• The lords of Pandemonium can now buzz and croak.
• Players in hell can no longer hear gut-wrenching screams while Silenced.
• Goblins no longer continue their peaceful slumber after being hurled through the air.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Last week was a little quieter, possibly because of some of our US devs visiting friends and family for the holiday weekend, rather than toiling away in the Crawl mines as they know they should. Still, a few changes to report:

• Potions of confusion have been befuddled out of existence. In their place sit Potions of Ambrosia, which grant considerable health & magic regeneration for a short period, along with confusion. If the confusion is prevented (by e.g. clarity) or cured, the regeneration immediately ends.
• Liches (and their ancient & antique friends) now have a much wider variety of spells available, rather than being restricted to a handful of spellbooks.
• Singularity is now considerably stronger at low spellpower, and less powerful at very long range.
• Makhleb now gives somewhat more piety for kills, and no longer accepts corpse sacrifice.
• Xom now has a ‘mood meter’, looking suspiciously like the piety meter for other, more boring gods. (And yet somehow different…)
• Gozag’s “shining gold” visual effect is now only present on the tile of the gold itself, rather than on surrounding tiles. In console, it’s now a different colour from normal gold.
• Gozag’s “duplication” ability can now duplicate stacks of items.
• A wide variety of quotes have been added, mainly for spells.
• Pandemonium lords now come in a riotous variety of colour; they have a number of new tiles, and their text descriptions now match up with the tiles.
• The Plane Papyrus has been renamed to the Akashic Record.
• Various other tile tweaks; all potion tiles have been replaced, goblins & pals were reworked, the Seraph is now considerably taller, and wretched stars now have a worrying glow about them, among other changes.
• Irradiate now offers a warning before harming allies.
• The game no longer crashes whenever the player takes cloud damage.
• Delayed Fireball is now back to being two schools, after a brief, yet torrid romance with the mysterious “Utility” school.
• It is no longer possible to hit monsters so hard that their souls are completely obliterated.
• Messaging has been improved for attempting to close doors on Orbs of Destruction.
• Orb spiders no longer have poisonous bites.
• Trees can no longer enter malign portals.

Happy crawling!