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

• It’s now possible to make progress through the Abyss via murder. Killing monsters will eventually generate an exit from the Abyss; further kills will generate stairs down, if you’re looking to fetch the abyssal rune before leaving. The speed at which this occurs depends on the XP value of the monsters killed and on your current level, so a single kill at very low level will often generate an exit.
• Large abominations have some extremely cool new tiles, thanks to CanOfWorms. Check them out the next time you take an Abyssal jaunt!
• Hellfire is now Damnation. It no longer melts ice armour or triggers Dith’s fire conduct, but is otherwise unchanged.
• Explosions can now ignite trees; Fireball, for example, can now ignite trees with its explosion, not just with the center of the fireball itself. The Rod of Ignition can also now burn trees.
• New option: autofight_warning, disabling autofight (tab) if successive commands are received too quickly. Should be helpful in cases of lag or accident.
• Monsters should be less likely to ‘flip-flop’ between emerging from behind a corner to take pot-shots at the player & retreating back behind that corner.
• Ally AI will no longer lock up when ordered to attack a monster that’s invisible to them.
• D:1 gnolls no longer have a chance of spawning with a pile of throwing nets.
• The ‘roused’ and ‘battle-frenzied’ monster status effects have been removed and replaced with Might. This is mainly a simplification and should have relatively little impact on gameplay, with the possible exception of spriggan druids’ death effect; the latter’s duration has been shortened to partially compensate.
• Status effect descriptions have been moved from the manual to an in-game lookup tool, ?/s(T)atus. Existing descriptions have been reworded & clarified, and more have been added.
• To reduce visual clutter, the tile_show_demon_tier option is now off by default, meaning that demon tiles no longer have pentagrams added.
• Tar:7 should be somewhat more threatening to any character who worries about packs of shadow fiends.
• Zot:5 no longer has a 1/3 chance of spawning extra-huge numbers of traps.
• Some of the easier wizlabs have been buffed; the Cloud Mage has a nastier spellset and more friends, and Cigotuvi’s Monster is now a mutant beast, not a tentacled monstrosity.
• Maxwell’s Etheric Cage now multiplies received magical contamination, rather than intermittently generating chunks of contamination.
• Ongoing spell effects (r/dMsl, delayed fireball) are now removed after forgetting the spell.
• Tukima’s Dance’s power multiplier has been reduced.
• Player breath weapon ranges have been belatedly adjusted for squarelos.
• Ru’s Sacrifice Courage now gives a penalty to slaying, rather than giving a bonus to damage.
• It is no longer possible to use Pakellas to supercharge non-evocables. Relatedly, you can no longer create +72 clubs.
• It is no longer possible to unequip a Fragile item without destroying it. (By putting it in your quiver and tossing it away.)

Happy crawling!

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!