Hi, crawlers! Here’s what’s been going on during the feature freeze:

• Gozag changes:
  • Gozag’s wrath now lasts until the player accrues a considerable amount of XP (like Ashenzari’s wrath), instead of being based on a number of punishments.
  • Gozag’s wrath no longer turns items to gold, or taxes gold that’s picked up.
  • Gozag’s wrath can now bribe more kinds of enemies, and no longer gives them invisibility.
  • Odds of Gozag preventing quaffing under wrath is up from 20% to 33%.
  • The first use of Gozag’s potion petition is now free.
  • Duplicate is no longer offered.
• Monsters can no longer be distracted by your allies if you follow TSO. (Thus preventing annoying situations where you can’t attack an enemy, since it’s busy fighting your angel pal…)
• Gell’s Gravitas is now level 5 (down from 6), and its confusion effect lasts somewhat longer.
• Player ghosts now should have the proper rate of remembering spells again. (It was considerably too low for the last few months, owing to a badly named function.)
• rMut now properly gives 90% mutation protection again, instead of 81%. (Broken since mid-September of last year.)
• Ancient zymes’ melee attacks no longer drain stats.
• rPois- randarts no longer generate.
• Monster spriggans no longer have weird resistances (rPois for druids, rElec for air mages, rF & rC for the Enchantress)
• rHellfire has been removed from most monsters that do not actually cast Hellfire, with the exception of Cerebov. Also, Cerebov is now magic immune.
• Many previously magic-immune enemies are no longer: notably, most plants, eyes, mummies, and angels.
• The Royal Jelly now spews jellies when polymorphed.
• Descriptions for body armour now list the AC that they provide after Armour skill is taken into effect.
• The Orb of Zot now always degrades controlled blink to semicontrolled blink (previously had a 50% chance of turning it into uncontrolled blink).
• Xom is no longer amused when the player destroys the Orb of Zot. (It is impossible to destroy the Orb of Zot.)
• Bazaars no longer ever contain oklobs.
• THE GIAGGOSTUONO is now available for player tile use. (As “giaggostuono”.) Beware!
• Fleshy orifices have been made a little more obvious.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! The feature freeze came down last week (Tuesday the 3rd); that means we’re focusing on bugfixing and small balance changes for roughly the next month, until the release of 0.16 (which should hopefully be early March.)

Anyway, here’s some changes:

• Card changes:
  • The Storm card can no longer create a twister & storm clouds at the same time (thus blowing you into the clouds & killing you), and can no longer create elemental wellsprings.
  • The Water card is back; it now creates temporary shallow water & summoned wellspring allies.
  • The Repulsiveness card will now always create at least one friendly ugly thing if it creates any hostile ugly things.
• The Abyss that Abyssal Knights start out in has been tweaked. It can now generate stairs down; it’s once again possible to get a rune without leaving the abyss. (In theory!)
• Monsters can now shout even if they’re already awake; in practice, this means the “tossing stones at wandering monsters” tech is considerably weaker.
• Zombies, skeletons & other non-healing monsters can no longer be healed by any effect. (Including e.g. Ghostly Fireball.)
• Josephine’s band of zombies & skeletons has been replaced by a band of wraiths.
• The Dark Maul has had its enchantment & base damage increased; it should be more usable now.
• Monstrous menagerie has had its summon cap decreased from 4 to 3.
• Fake languages can now only be stacked up to 3 times. ‘Butt’ is now parameterizeable.
• Friendly monsters should chatter a bit less.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Changes:

• Ely rework:
  • Piety gain now comes from exploration, not pacification or weapon destruction.
  • Abilities have been reworked: Lesser & Greater Heal Self are now 1* and 4* abilities respectively (and have been renamed), Greater Heal Other is now 2*, 3* is Purification, and Lesser Heal Other has been removed. The “Heal Self” abilities have been renamed to just “Lesser/Greater Healing”.
  • Wands of Heal Wounds can no longer be used to pacify monsters.
  • The Healer background has been removed.
• Other removals: the spell Forceful Dismissal, the spear of the Botono, and rN- effects.
• Tomb monster tweaks:
  • Death Scarabs no longer cause draining (or rN-).
  • Bennu no longer have sticky flame.
  • Ushabti now only create negative energy clouds, not miasma.
  • Anubis guards no longer have Control Undead.
• Shadow traps now deactivate temporarily after being triggered.
• Display of artefact weapons in non-webtiles HUDs has been tweaked; the names no longer display if it would cause the line to become too long.
• Elemental evokers no longer stack.
• Meatsprint lost souls have been renamed to wretched souls, so as to avoid ambiguity with the completely unrelated monster, non-meatsprint lost souls.
• Dispersal & Gell’s Gravitas have had their confusion effects slightly buffed.
• The lantern of shadows now drains MP while wielded, and summoned shadows disappear after reaching 0 MP or unwielding the lantern. It no longer recolours the environment in console.
• Large rocks no longer have a randomized throwing range.
• Steel ammo now mulches at the same rate as normal ammo.
• Two new Ru sacrifices: “sacrifice skill”, reducing all skill apts by 1 point (and adjusting your existing skills accordingly), and “sacrifice experience”, costing you 2 XL and reducing the XL cap by 2. (So max level becomes 25.)
• Beogh now has the same chance of blessing followers after a kill, regardless of whether you or your followers made that kill. (Previously, the odds of a blessing were dramatically higher for kills made by followers.)
• The ‘pizza=’ rcfile option has been added back & improved, after over two years in rcfile exile. As the famous pizza chef once said: Have It Your Way.

Happy crawling!