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!