You feel the power of the Orb delaying this trunk update!

Hello crawlers, and welcome to another update from the fires of Geh:7. This stretch has seen a mix of gameplay and infrastructure changes, both with contributions from the community, as well as bug fixes and tweaks from Goratrix, chequers, and Implojin. If you’d like to help out in the effort of developing crawl come by ##crawl-dev or check out our GitHub for how to contribute!

On the gameplay side:

• Palentonga’s HP aptitude has been increased to +1
• staves of earth now deal higher damage, but with the shrapnel effect of being affected 3 times by AC.
• staves of conjuration now deal irresistible damage that checks AC (taking Earth’s old effect).
• staves of summoning and wizardry are removed.
• The Controlled Blink spell has blinked right out of the game, and is removed.
• Blink scrolls no longer cause Contam.
• The Orb’s translocations interference is reduced: blink scrolls can be used in Zot and on the Orb run, as can Passage of Golubria. However, passages are shorter lived and less accurate under the Orb’s influence.
• The various plants and fungi of the dungeon are now much weaker, once hit they begin to wither and die in 3-5 turns. The exceptions are bushes and briars, made of stouter stuff.

On the infrastructure side:

• wjchen sent us a community contribution to improve WebTiles glyphs mode font handling. This introduces two new options for customization, glyph_mode_font and glyph_mode_font_size, for all you WebTiles glyphs players.
• The window drawing loop has seen some optimizations.

The trunk update comes into view, it is surrounded by clouds of flame!

Hello crawlers, and welcome to another round of trunk updates from the frigid winter wastes of Falls Creek Coc:7.

This week has seen a fair share of bug fixing, including from community members Goratrix and Naruni. If you’d like to help out in the effort of developing crawl come by ##crawl-dev or check out our GitHub for how to contribute!

Let’s take a look at what else has been woven into the next illusion version:

• Gauntlet monsters now generate awake
• A new round of unrand revisions has begun in earnest:
• Wucad Mu no longer provides evocable channeling. Instead, with a chance depending on evocations, it refunds the MP cost of the spell. There is a chance of confusion or intelligence drain (which scales on spell cost and evocations skill) when a spell is refunded.
• The cloak of the Thief is changed from +Fog to *Fog, creating fog when the player is hit.
• The Majin-Bo loses Archmagi, and instead gives a chance for any cast spell to be vampiric, healing the caster for damage done to living creatures.
• The shield of Resistance is now a +2 kite shield {rF++ rC++ MR++}.
• Rampaging can now appear as an artefact property on all armour types. Enjoy your rampaging octopodes, courtesy of Implojin!
• Staves of energy are removed.
• chequers has finished his project to add cloud rings to Pandemonium lords. There’s now a chance that pan lords will come with a ring of one of the following clouds: flame, ice, thunder, chaos, mutation, draining, acid, or miasma. The chance is much higher for melee pan lords, and the cloud will often flavorfully match the pan lord’s melee brand. Watch out for Faroclos, armed with a chaotic touch and surrounded by clouds of chaos!
• Not content to let chequers have all the fun, first-time contributor amcnicky sent in some new Pandemonium lord tiles.

There’s much more planned before we arrive at 0.26, so stay tuned for the latest and don’t hesitate to get involved yourself. Until next time, happy crawling!

The trunk update sneers, “Beg for mercy, thou defiled idle-headed gnoll-tail!”

Clouds of trunk updates condense around you!

Hello crawlers, and welcome to another round of trunk updates, fresh from the Citadel in the Iron City.

The biggest change this week is the introduction of the malevolent chronology of Zot. One of food’s many (badly executed) purposes was a forward progress clock; in the absence of any such clock tedious optimal strategies crept in, of the kind that we on the devteam categorically prefer to prevent (check out the philosophy section of the manual for an elaboration). The Zot clock is a rather loose clock, but should you tarry too long Zot will find you, and rapidly end you. The hope is that this clock is sufficiently loose that only the most egregious behavior gets caught by it. Since this is trunk there will be further tuning.

Read on for the remainder of the tweaks, shifts, and ever seething chaos of trunk

• Contamination now decays three times faster.
• Scarves of shadows now only reduce LOS by 1, instead of a multiplicative factor.
• The rat skin cloak is changed from evocable +Rats to a passive *Rats, summoning rats when the wearer is hit.
• Ripostes no longer trigger hydra-head chopping, *Rage, or Minotaur headbutts.
• Phantom Mirrors and Boxes of Beasts now recharge on XP, mirrors have a single charge and boxes have three charges.
• A new misc evoker condenser vanes replace wands of clouds. Condenser Vanes have 4 charges and create clouds on and around monsters in view, with the clouds scaling in power similar to the old wand of clouds.
• Wanderers now have a chance to start with any of the XP charged misc evokers.