Hi, crawlers! Here’s the first set of changes for 0.20:
- Monsters:
- Draconian callers are now draconian stormcallers; they smite, summon drakes, and also invoke Upheaval, the Qazlal ability. Boom!
- Snorg, Xtahua, and Bai Suzhen’s hides now have an inherent bonus enchantment.
- Polymorphed uniques no longer keep their spells in certain obscure cases.
- Ushabti breathe significantly less often.
- Monsters’ melee attacks are now included in their descriptions.
- Monster MR is reduced by lowered HD, from e.g. draining or malmutation.
- The last great renaming of 2016? Sirens are now, excitingly, Merfolk Sirens.
- Gods:
- The Shining One’s conduct has been simplified: all stabs are now automatically prevented (no bonus damage), and poison damage is no longer specially forbidden. Cleansing Flame also does somewhat more damage to non-evil enemies.
- Jiyva pacifies all slimes, even those that are actually shapeshifters.
- Nemelex’s Pain card is now roughly twice as powerful.
- Abyssal gold no longer counts toward Gozag’s entrance cost.
- Qazlal no longer spawns damaging clouds on plants, e.g. while you’re trying to rest.
- The Xom Cleave status will no longer last up to 2000 turns.
- Dithmenos’s shadow can once again mimic diagonal and reaching attacks. (Broken as part of a bugfix two years ago.)
- Spells:
- Invisibility and Haste no longer cause extra hunger over time.
- Confusing Touch is less effective, especially against high-HD enemies.
- Poisonous Cloud is level 5 (was 6).
- Odds of confusing enemies with a melee attack (with Confusing Touch or fungus form) are displayed while examining enemies with those statuses active.
- Various badforms (e.g. wispform, fungus form) have been simplified, and porcupine form has been removed.
- Console colours have been reworked to avoid invisible colours for certain low-capability consoles. Review options_guide.txt for new options, e.g. best_effort_brighten_background and _foreground.
- Max charges for wands are always displayed: e.g. “a wand of confusion (?/48)”.
- The Hat of the High Council has ascended to a higher plane.
- Lair’s vaults have been exhaustively reviewed and revised. Please thank regret-index for all of the hard work!
- Demonic guardians expire over time, not based on tension.
- Vampire feeding, like chunk eating, now always takes a single turn. All the blood has oozed out of our corpses for the last time…
- Fire clouds no longer expire faster over water (and likewise cold clouds over lava). Fire clouds on water also produce less steam.
- Noise no longer breaks mesmerization and fear.
- Mottled draconians (both player and monster) and draconian zealots are no more.
- Simplified chaos effects.
- Screaming at tentacles is forbidden.
- Removed off-brand knock-offs of the Captain’s Cutlass.
- The player can no longer crash the game by attempting to eat their hat.
Happy crawling, and don’t forget to take the survey if you haven’t already!
