Hi, crawlers! The tournament is over, so it’s time for trunk changes. Fair warning: there’s a lot of them! So I broke it up with some screenshots of the new tiles (described near the end), just for you.

• Gods:
  • Ukayaw the Reveler, god of ecstatic dance.
    • Tactical piety: gain piety by damaging enemies, lose piety extremely rapidly over time.
    • 1*: Stomp: deal damage to all adjacent enemies, increasing with their max HP and with your Invocations skill.
    • 2*: Line Pass: instantly pass through a contiguous line of enemies, confusing some.
    • Solo Time: On reaching 3*, all visible enemies are briefly paralysed, for a time increasing with Invocations skill.
    • Pain Bond: On reaching 4*, all visible enemies gain the Pain Bond status, causing them to share damage taken with other nearby Pain Bonded enemies. This can cascade!
    • 5*: Grand Finale: spend all piety to telefrag target intelligent monster. They explode.

  

  • Hepliaklqana the Forgotten, god of ancestral memory.
    • On joining, grants a permanent ancestor spirit that fights alongside you. The ancestor increases in power as you level up, and will reappear on a delay after dying or being trapped in the Abyss.
    • 0*: Recall: recall your ancestor. Works across different floors.
    • 2*: Remember Life: choose between Hexer, Knight or Battlemage classes for your ancestor.
      • Hexer: starts out with Slow, Confuse, and a dagger of draining. At XL 15, trades Slow for either Paralyse or Metabolic Englaciation (player’s choice). At XL 21, trades Confuse for Mass Confusion. At XL 27, swaps the dagger for an antimagic quickblade.
      • Knight: starts out with a shield, long blade, and bonus AC. At XL 15, swaps to either a flaming broad axe or demon trident (player’s choice). At XL 21, the shield becomes large & reflecting. At XL 27, the weapon switches to a speed ego.
      • Battlemage: starts out with Throw Frost, Stone Arrow, and a quarterstaff. At XL 15, trades Throw Frost for either Iceblast or Bolt of Magma (player’s choice). At XL 21, swaps the quarterstaff for a freezing lajatang. At XL 27, swaps Stone Arrow for Lehudib’s Crystal Spear.
    • 3*: Transference: swap your ancestor with another creature in LOS. The player is a creature in LOS.
    • 4*: Idealise: heal your ancestor, remove harmful status conditions, and apply the Idealise buff, which increases AC and doubles damage & spellpower for the duration. Duration & healing amount scale with Invocations.
    • 5*: Transference slows enemies adjacent to the target, for a duration dependent on Invocations power.
    • Piety gained by exploration.

  

  • Many divine abilities have had their hunger costs removed (ABCJMOP1) or increased (KTY).
  • Beogh’s water walking now lasts until you reach shore, even if you drop below the required piety, enter penance, etc. Funny though “drowning by using Smite too many times in a row” was.
  • Pakellas’s wrath no longer drains the player or their devices, but instead passively prevents device use for its duration.
  • Pakellas suppresses Vine Stalkers’ MP draining bite. (It still applies damage & antimagic.)
  • Pakellas no longer gifts potions of magic to mummies.
  • Dithmenos’s Shadow Step can now be used to step into invisible enemies’ invisible shadows.
  • Monsters hated by your god (e.g. wizards for Trog) can once again be temporarily enslaved.
  • Gozag will no longer attempt to bribe your own summons.
• Deep elf archers no longer fire in melee.
• Hellions no longer resist fire or are vulnerable to cold.
• Unrands:
  • The arbalest ‘Damnation’ no longer provides resistances, but does significantly more damage.
  • Firestarter and Frostbite now provide immunity to fire & cold clouds respectively; the duration of the latter’s clouds have increased.
  • The Staff of Olgreb now has a fixed +9 enchantment, rather than varying by the player’s Poison skill.
  • The Trident of the Octopus King now has twice as large an enchantment bonus per Octopus King ring worn; can *you* get the legendary +24 Trident?
  • The Sword of Zonguldrok no longer creates hostile dead (when an enemy dies due to something other than its attacks) or curses itself
  • The Mace of Variability no longer uncurses itself every turn.



• The amulet of harm is no longer evil.
• Corrosion slaying penalties now apply to unarmed & auxiliary (e.g. hoof) attacks.
• All monster-wielded (or dancing) branded weapons are now listed when they come into sight; this should be helpful for noticing, for example, that d:1 goblin with a dagger of electrocution.
• Spells:
  • Elemental enhancers (e.g. staves of earth, rings of fire) no longer penalise casting spells of the opposite element.
  • Cigotuvi’s Embrace no longer degrades when taking damage.
  • Simulacrum’s duration is somewhat reduced.
  • Dazzling Spray’s damage is slightly lower.
• Tiles:
  • Jewellery tiles have been completely replaced.
  • Mutant beasts (from the box of beasts) now have custom tiles that display their exact combination of traits.
  • Many more types of zombies, especially those of early-game creatures, now have custom tiles.
  • Many low-level demons have new tiles.
• X> once again finds the closest set of stairs by travel distance, rather than by grid distance.
• For the first time in three years, being in water not only claims to prevent player invisibility from working (because of the disturbance you leave), but actually does so.
• The player being silenced no longer prevents monsters from shouting.
• Muted monsters can once again bristle with rage.
• Sheep now bleat.
• Inscribing an item with “<ice>” no longer crashes the game.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! We’re in feature freeze right now, so here’s the last batch of changes for 0.18 trunk:

• Gods:
  • Pakellas now gifts exactly one weak wand, one strong wand, one charge-based evoker, and one XP evoker as characters advance in piety, rather than gifting an endless succession of evocables.
  • Lugonu’s Banish no longer has a power cap; instead of reaching maximum power at 10.5 Invocations, it scales smoothly up to 27 Invocations. It’s also somewhat harder to invoke.
  • Ru’s sacrifice descriptions are somewhat more verbose and, hopefully, more useful.
  • Enemies buffed by Gozag’s wrath remain buffed until slain.
• Monsters:
  • Shadow fiends have been renamed and rethemed to Tzitzimitl, Aztec skeletal demon-gods which threatened to devour the sun. Their defenses are slightly better than before, and their attacks create a ring of miasma around (but not on) the player’s tile, similarly to the late, lamented salamander firebrands.
  • Giant eyeballs are back! They can show up in Depths and Slime, accompanied by tough allies. They’ve also gone from slow to normal speed, but need to charge up twice before being able to paralyse the player, similar to orb spiders or salamander stormcallers.
  • Lich & ancient liches have spellbooks again, instead of per-lich randomly-generated spell lists.
  • Salamander stormcallers have traded their Sticky Flame for a higher rate of Fire Storm casting.
  • Iron Giants have been slowed to 80% speed.
  • Hell Hogs now spit Fireballs. Beware, or your bacon may be cooked…
  • Demonic, angelic, and ‘magical’ spells have all been merged into one category. This primarily affects descriptions.
  • Monsters can no longer use vampiric drain on gargoyles, nor heal from draining summoned creatures.
  • Monsters can no longer zap or evoke equipment while confused or fleeing.
• Items:
  • Rods are no longer treated as weapons; hitting someone with a magic rod is no longer more effective than hitting them with a rolled-up scroll. (Previously, they functioned as… clubs.) They can no longer be cursed.
  • Scrolls of enchant weapon & enchant armour no longer remove curses.
  • Ziggurat figurines can be used even after having sacrificed Evocations through Ru.
  • The lantern of shadows has faded, mysteriously, into the shadows.
  • Sniper can no longer miss. Its enchantment has been correspondingly downgraded to +9, from +15.
  • Arrows, bolts & sling bullets no longer have brands.
  • Poison needles scale with skill; they reach their old effectiveness at 8 Throwing, and improve from there.
• Throwing speed scales like weapon skills, rather than being like unarmed combat; it’s floored at 0.7 turns per toss, up from 0.5, but scales faster with skill.
• Wild/subdued magic are both much less dramatic; each level of the mutation has been reduced in severity to about 60% of what they were before. (E.g., wild magic 1 increases spellpower by 30%, instead of 50%.) Subdued magic’s effects on spell failure were reduced even further, to reinforce its status as a bad mutation.
• If you would starve with food in your inventory, you will automatically eat that food instead.
• rElec reduces damage by 2/3rds, rather than 3/4ths.
• ‘Defensive actions’ (dodging, blocking, etc) can now be listed in morgues.
• Wind Blast no longer misleadingly claims to ‘summon’ wind; instead, it correctly conjures wind, in accordance with Dungeon Crawl lore.
• The Abyss has been decisively deanthropomorphised.
• High score entries featuring mountain dwarves that died of stupidity no longer crash the game.

Happy crawling!

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!

Hi, crawlers! Spring has sprung, so here’s some changes for you:

• Wand changes:
  • Removed: Cold, Fire, Draining, Fireball, Frost, Invisibility, and Magic Darts.
  • New: Acid, which shoots a beam of corrosive acid. Roughly as powerful as Draining was.
  • New: Iceblast, which launches an explosive, partially physical explosion. Somewhat more powerful than Fireball was.
  • Monsters will no longer machine-gun their wands quite as often.
• Other removed items: Xom’s chesspieces, rods of destruction & the swarm, and potions of poison.
• Luckily, potions of degeneration are back! They now drain all stats by 1d3 points when consumed.
• Even more luckily, stats now regenerate faster at low XLs.
• Statue form, bat form & hydra form no longer have stat modifiers. Low-strength Vampires rejoice!
• Statue form also now gives somewhat more AC.
• Other spell changes:
  • Ozocubu’s Armour now gives ponderousness (+0.1 movement delay).
  • Passwall is now level 2 (previously, level 3).
  • Song of Slaying has been simplified; it now gives +slay with every kill, capping at +9 slay. (It was previously… complicated.)
  • Removed spells: Stoneskin, Condensation Shield, and Phase Shift.
• God changes:
  • Ashenzari now lets you directly curse items, rather than needing to create scrolls of curse armour/weapon/jewellery. This ability still consumes a scroll of remove curse.
  • Okawaru’s abilities (Heroism & Finesse) are now considerably lower duration at low Invocations, but cost less piety and scale to higher max durations.
  • If you would regenerate MP under Pakellas while already full, you can now get a potion of magic instead.
  • Sif now gives miscast protection at ** and amnesia at ****. (Previously, the reverse was true.)
  • Yredelemnul’s Enslave Soul now works on angels and demons.
• Swamp worms’ ambush predator functionality should now function correctly. Beware…
• The Captain’s Cutlass now does flat bonus damage when it disarms an enemy.

Thanks to chequers for helping to compile this post.

For those who are interested, there’s also two new experimental gods being tested – Ukayaw, God of Ecstatic Dance, and Hepliaklqana, God of Ancestral Memory. They can be played on CBRO or, for the antipodeans, CPO.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Some fresh changes for the new year:

• Items:
  • New unrand: the Warlock’s Mirror, a +3 buckler of reflection. Unlike other shields of reflection, it’s also capable of reflecting piercing beams, enchantments, and other effects. Watch as that neqoxec’s Malmutate bounces off and malmutates its caster!
  • New amulet type: amulets of harm, which increase damage done by and to the player by 25%.
  • New amulet type: amulets of magic regeneration, which increase player MP regeneration considerably after a short warmup period.
  • Weapon types no longer have hidden ‘strength weights’. Instead of dex and str both giving varying bonuses to damage, str now solely gives a bonus to-dam, and dex now solely gives a bonus to accuracy.
  • Potions of cure mutation are now dramatically (~50%) more common.
  • Potions of ambrosia now bypass clarity.
  • The amulet of corrosion resistance is now a ring.
  • Evocable +tele effects are gone. Rings of teleportation now only provide random teleportation.
  • Rings of invisibility have disappeared; they are no more.
  • Ditto, potions of degeneration. They will be missed by someone, somewhere, somehow.
• Monsters:
  • Natasha no longer becomes weaker upon revival.
  • Swamp worms are now amphibious and generate submerged, emerging to attack the player and never resubmerging.
  • Deep elf high priests now have an Aura of Brilliance spell that affects all allies in their view, making them cast spells more frequently and with more spell power.
  • Demonspawn warmongers’ Sap Magic has been simplified: it now has three levels, rather than scaling continuously, and the spellcasting chance penalty now expires at the same time as the Sap effect itself.
  • Demonspawn corruptors’ Corrupt Body and wretched stars’ Corrupting Pulse now tend to cause multiple levels of a single bad mutation, rather than single levels of multiple bad mutations.
  • Doom hounds’ howls now summon a variety of nasty things, rather than other doom hounds.
  • Trapdoor spiders have crawled out of the game.
• Spells:
  • Alistair’s Intoxication is now level 5 and gives Vertigo status instead of confusing the player or draining Int, and can sometimes affect rPois monsters.
  • The Infusion spell now ramps up to maximum power much more quickly, which should make it more useful past the first floor or two of the dungeon. (If still not too much longer than that.)
  • Spectral Weapon now bases the strength of the summoned weapon on spell power, instead of weapon skill.
  • Summoning tweaks: Shadow Creatures is now level 6, Monstrous Menagerie is now level 7.
• Gozag’s Call Merchant shops no longer secretly vary in quality by the floor they’re called to.

Happy crawling!

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

• New feature: ecumenical altars, appearing in the early Dungeon & allowing you to convert to a random god… if you dare!
• Controlled Teleportation has been removed. Rings of control teleport, the spell Control Teleport, and the book of Control are no more. Levels no longer have -cTele (meaning that you can now cBlink your way straight to the Orb of Zot on Zot 5, if you like), but the Orb of Zot now renders blinks completely uncontrolled while carried (making it somewhat trickier to get out again).
• Monster descriptions now list spells’ chance of affecting the player on the main description page, rather than requiring that the player view the detailed spell descriptions.
• Potions quaffed by monsters are now always explicitly identified, instead of ‘almost all of the time’.
• Ravens will be seen in Crawl – nevermore! Mainly because they were removed.
• Ghostly flame clouds have been renamed to spectral mist clouds, to avoid confusion with the completely unrelated ‘ghostly fireball’ effect.
• Ghostly fireballs no longer partially ignore AC.
• Unarmed attacks no longer receive an extra, small attack speed penalty while using shields.
• Zin’s Vitalization no longer provides nutrition, and also has a very small MP cost.
• Jiyva’s Slime Prayer now paralyses slimes for longer, and also has a very small MP cost.
• Friendly monsters bribed by Gozag’s ability are now permanently bribed, but will not leave the branch from whence they came.
• Sif no longer requires worshippers to know any spells before entering Sif’s service.
• Wanderers should no longer start out with completely useless items (!cure for mummies, ?tele for formicids…)
• Ice Cave necromancers no longer have a special chance to spawn with wands of fire.
• Hell beasts no longer have randomized speeds. (Quiz for the comments section: how many people knew that their speeds *were* randomized? Also, can you name the other two types of monsters which still have randomized speeds?)

Happy crawling!

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

• Chimerae have been removed; the box of beasts now produces ‘mutant beasts’, a new type of creature varying in strength & abilities. Each has a ‘tier’ of strength, varying by the evocations skill of the box’s user, and a random pair of ‘facets’ providing abilities, attacks & resistances. Check them out!
• Most spells and abilities have had their descriptions rewritten for consistency & clarity. Many thanks to MarvinPA for the painstaking work!
• AC now applies before elemental resistances when taking damage for clouds, as with other sources of resistible damage; this effectively makes them more dangerous in the late-game.
• Sticks to Snakes now takes arrows from the inventory, rather than requiring them to be wielded.
• Powered by Death now triggers on kills, not corpses.
• All scrolls & potions can now generate in stacks, even potions of XP, scrolls of acquirement, or a few others.
• Monsters will now pick up all scrolls & potions, not only ones they can actually use. (This only applies to items you haven’t seen yet, of course.)
• Most monsters have lost Teleport Self*; now only Maurice, Ribbit and Sonja can cast it. Rare and powerful magic…
• Weapon descriptions now list the skill level required to reach minimum attack delay.
• Slime wall damage no longer varies by depth.
• Deep dwarf player ghosts now lose their un-regeneration-ness on death; their ghostly ectoplasm reknits normally over time. Now they can finally fit in with the other ghosts…
• Moth of wrath zombies are now pluralized correctly.
• Friendly torpor snails now slow enemies. Rejoice, gastropedomaniacs!
• The Rod of Destruction no longer has a chance of producing bolts of crystal.
• Monsters casting Legendary Destruction no longer lose HP.
• You can no longer die by casting Vampiric Draining on a tile with an invisible demon on it.
• Forms which prevent spellcasting no longer also give a penalty to spell success chance.
• Pan has been removed. (Again.)

*perhaps they left it on the nightstand?

Happy crawling!

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

• Monster intelligence has been simplified from six levels to three. This has a limited number of gameplay effects. Some highlights:
  • High-intelligence monsters (e.g. deep elves, non-berserker spriggans, salamanders, Killer Klowns) are now in the same category as human-intelligence monsters, and so no longer have shaft immunity, walking-into-deep-water-while-confused-and-drowning immunity, better ability to estimate victims’ MR when deciding whether to hex them, or other esoteric effects.
  • Human-intelligence flying monsters no longer dip into water to extinguish sticky flames.
  • Starcursed masses no longer care about their victims’ intelligence.
  • Stupid monsters that suffer noisy miscast effects (as caused by Spellbinder, etc) no longer have a chance of thinking that someone else made the noise.
  • If Kirke porkalates something, and then you kill Kirke, whether or not that monster become permanently friendly no longer depends on whether it had human intelligence before it was porkalated.
• Air elementals no longer randomly ‘submerge’ in air.
• Fire elementals no longer fly (though they can still cross lava). They can also now cross shallow water, which means that my brilliant vault showing off their former inability to do so has been removed… It’s a messed up world we live in, and it’s tragic as heck, basically.
• Various unrandarts now more clearly indicate their effects in their names; e.g., the Captain’s Cutlass {speed, disarm}.
• The Sceptre of Torment is now a staff, not a mace. (The Sceptre of Asmodeus was already a staff.)
• The Dragonskin Cloak no longer gives rCorr.
• The *Corrode randart property has had its chance of triggering reduced from 10% to 3%.
• Corrosion no longer depends on the player holding a weapon or wearing armour.
• Black Mark (both the demonspawn mutation & monster spell) no longer has a ‘vampiric’ effect, and now applies one effect at a time (instead of two). The non-vampiric effects (antimagic/weakness/draining) are now stronger, to compensate.
• Gozag’s potion petition prices are now more variable.
• Uniques are now somewhat less likely to have wands, especially high-level, late-game uniques.
• ‘Sustain Abilities’ is now ‘Sustain Attributes’.
• You can now use a Crystal Ball of Energy with less than 2 intelligence.
• The chance of doors creaking when opened no longer depends on Dexterity.
• Confused monsters are no longer also bewildered.

Happy crawling!

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

• Cleaving now functions while confused. Ctrl-attacking does not (except when a tree); in compensation, you can no longer stumble into deep water/lava while confused.
• You can no longer open/close doors while confused.
• Jellies will no longer eat items you’ve seen, unless you follow Jiyva. (This does not include items at the bottoms of stacks which you haven’t stepped on – you haven’t seen those items yet!)
• The Serpent of Hell is now somewhat weaker.
• Apporting the Orb of Zot now causes the orb run to begin (spawns, etc). You can now apport the orb in Sprints.
• The Storm card can no longer summon twisters.
• With the default rc, getting drained by an invisible ghost moth or missed by an invisible creature’s attack should now stop autoexplore/resting.
• New negative randart property: *Drain, which causes drain when un-equipped.
• New negative randart property: *Confuse, which causes a chance of confusion when taking damage.
• New negative randart property: *Corrode, which causes a chance of corrosion when taking damage.
• The mountain dwarf population has doubled! Jorgrun is no longer a deep dwarf, and now regenerates normally.
• Faith is now useless for Gozagites.
• Giant spores no longer appear normally in the dungeon.
• Dropping items now takes 10 aut apiece (as most actions do), instead of 0.8.
• The Flight spell has flown away forever. Replacements: Silence in the Book of Dreams, Flame Tongue in the Book of the Dragon, Lightning Spire in the Book of the Sky, and nothing in the Book of Air.
• Cigotuvi’s Embrace is now somewhat stronger in most circumstances, but will probably no longer provide hundreds of points of AC/SH in ziggurats.
• The Horn of Geryon is now worth somewhat less gold.

Happy crawling!

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

• All range-based mechanics now treat diagonals identically to orthogonal directions. Line of sight, spell range, and other effects are now visually ‘square’. Many of those, including line of sight, are now slightly shorter. (This results in them covering roughly the same number of squares).
• Removed monsters: baby alligators, boring beetles, and goliath beetles. (To compensate for baby loss, alligators now come in pairs.)
• Removed curses: basic mummies’.
• Removed spells: Abjuration is gone. Aura of Abjuration is now level 5 and in the book of Summonings instead of the Grand Grimoire.
• Monstrous Menagerie is now in the Grand Grimoire in Aura of Abjuration’s place; it’s no longer in the book of Summonings or the book of Beasts.
• Summon Mana Viper has been moved from the book of Hinderance to fill Monstrous Menagerie’s place in the book of Summonings.
• Followers of good gods can no longer be Demonologists. (They get different high-level summoning titles.)
• ‘?’ should now work on the offline title screen.
• Player-made storm clouds no longer fire at four times the rate of those onscreen.
• Monsters can no longer zap empty wands & leave them with negative charges.
• Vine stalkers no longer have fur.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Here’s the latest news from crawl dev, plus a photo of a horrifying foodstuff (!?) that someone sent me today:

• Stat rot is now restored by gaining XP (like drain), rather than over time.
• The deterioration mutation is now two levels, instead of three, and causes a chance of losing stats when taking damage, rather than over time.
• Potions of restore ability have rotted away, and, coincidentally, were removed.
• To prepare for summer, Crawl is going on a diet: Snake, Spider, Swamp and Shoals are now all four levels long.
• Heavy armour no longer provides a speed penalty to Unarmed Combat and Throwing.
• New Ru sacrifice: Sacrifice Eye. Causes inaccuracy as if you were wearing two amulets of inaccuracy at once, which, like those, affects both melee, ranged and spells. Stacks with amulets of inaccuracy.
• New Ru sacrifice: Sacrifice Resistance. Provides rF- rC-.
• When following Gozag, gold that lands in deep water/lava now teleports into the player’s pockets.
• The wrath of Chei now slows the player’s movement until it expires.
• Killing demonspawn now give Yredremnulites piety, as with murdering other living beings.
• The Placid Magic card has been placidified; much as that is not a word, Placid Magic is no longer a card, since it’s been removed.
• Scrolls of random uselessness can no longer reassemble in your hands after being read. Please join me in mourning.
• Queen ants are now normal speed.
• The Spiny mutation is now considerably stronger.
• Corpses in deep water can no longer be animated.

Players may also be interested to hear that a legendary feature is back in testing…

Happy crawling!

Hello! It’s been a busy week for crawl dev. Here’s what’s new:

• Character:
  • When taking movement actions that last longer than a normal turn (10 arbitrary units of time), the game no longer caps the resulting hunger and hp/mp regeneration at 10-aut levels. This increases effectively increases hunger for slow-moving players. Nagas have been given Slow Metabolism 1 to compensate, and Chei’s metabolism slowing effectiveness has been increased.
  • The game will now warn before the player reads a scroll near enemies while blurry vision is active.
  • Very high levels of stealth are now less effective.
  • DrFi no longer gets extra aux armour.
  • You no longer get -5 EV for most multi-turn actions; only ascending and descending stairs, now.
  • You no longer get -5 EV for winning.
  • Poison immunity now makes you immune to poison.
  • Vampires can now drink from anything with blood, regardless of chunk type.
  • Vampires no longer get a very small amount of extra healing from vampire weapons under very specific conditions.
  • Kirke can no longer trap the player in vampire form.
• Monsters:
  • Poisonous chunks have been merged with rot chunks to form ‘inedible chunks’, which are inedible by all non-ghouls, regardless of rPois status. Several formerly poisonous monsters (e.g. beetles, snails) have had their meat cleaned up.
  • Unrelated monsters can now swap with each-other.
  • Ghouls no longer rot in melee.
  • Mummies have been mostly removed from D.
  • Some strange, rarely relevant monster-eating special cases have been removed; for example, death oozes no longer take damage for eating silver items (!).
  • Monsters will now zap empty wands, once.
• Spells:
  • Ignite Poison has been reworked. It’s now level 3 Tmut/Pois/Fire (from level 5 Tmut/Fire), and now only burns poisoned enemies & poisonous clouds. The damage to the former is dramatically higher than before, especially at low power.
  • Undead created by the Animate Skeleton and Animate Dead spells are now temporary, though with a long duration. (Yred’s invocations are unaffected.).
  • Sacrifice Love now blocks the use of minion spells. (Summoning, animate dead, etc.)
• Items:
  • New unrand: Maxwell’s Etheric Cage, which occasionally causes small amounts of contamination while worn. In exchange, it provides rElec and + MP. Our seventh head-slot unrand, and the first helmet unrand!
  • New unrand: the Crown of Eternal Torment, which provides rN+++, sInv, complete immunity to Torment, and -20% mhp. Embrace… torment!!!
  • The fencer’s gloves now give +4 to Long and Short Blades skills, rather than a flat +2 slay.
  • Scrolls of Holy Word now apply the Daze status effect, rather than stunning monsters directly. Daze is now more effective, and Holy Word now also does more damage.
  • The game should no longer crash whenever the player picks up gold or runes on the Android version.
• Gods:
  • Xom will no longer swap the player’s weapon with an enemy’s.
  • Gozag:
    • Potion Petition’s cost is now slightly higher, but no longer increases with use.
    • The joining fee has been decreased, especially early on.
    • Monsters without corpses (e.g. demons) now drop gold on death.
    • Exploding monsters no longer multiplies the amount of resulting gold.
• The player no longer needs to enter a name at character creation (when playing offline).

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! Here’s the latest and greatest:

• Character:
  • MP apts & scaling have been reworked again, and are slightly less linear (extra MP for the first few levels).
  • Healing effects now cure rot first, rather than last; while the player has rot, half of their healing goes toward curing the rot rather than healing them.
  • The Forlorn mutation is no more.
  • MP-powered wands is now a single-level mutation (down from 3).
• Monsters:
  • New monster: Salamander stormcaller, fire cultists appearing in late D and Vaults. They chant for a few turns before calling down a Fire Storm on their enemies. (They also have a few other fire spells.)
  • New monster: Entropy weaver, creepy humanoids appearing in Spider, Vaults and Depths. They chant for a few turns before heavily corroding their enemies’ equipment.
  • The concept of ‘confusion-immune’ monsters has been removed; everything that’s not magic immune is now confusable. This includes e.g. gargoyles & thorn hunters.
  • Nergalle no longer recasts Death’s Door when no enemies are nearby, and takes ten times longer to recover from exhaustion after it expires.
  • Monster-summoned Spellforged Servitors are now dramatically weaker.
  • Pale & grey draconians no longer appear outside a few vaults.
  • Phantasmal warriors have +50% base damage (up to the same as large abominations), to compensate for losing SH+AC piercing.
  • Monsters with spines now all work the same way as Hell Sentinels previously did (a 1/3 chance when attacked in melee of doing 5d4 AC-reduced damage). This is mainly a buff to porcupines, which also have significantly increased melee damage (now somewhere between sheep & yak damage).
  • Tough monsters should generally no longer waste their time with terrible wands.
  • Giant mites have been shrunken right out of the game.
• Spells:
  • Enslavement has been removed. It’s been replaced by Tukima’s Dance in the Enchanter book, and Gell’s Gravitas in the Arcane Marksman book.
  • Gell’s Gravitas is now level 3, smite-targeted, and no longer confuses enemies.
  • Tukima’s Dance is now somewhat more powerful.
  • Being in water now prevents catching on sticky flame.
• Items:
  • Staves of power now give a flat +15 MP, rather than 5 + 40% of your base MP.
  • Troll leather armour now provides regeneration for trolls. Be the troll troll…
  • Exploding tomahawks now spawn.
• Gods:
  • Trog no longer accepts corpse sacrifices. (Piety from kills & piety decay have been improved to compensate.)
  • Gozag’s gold distraction effect is now a duration on the player that refreshes whenever more corpse-gold is found (made), rather than being an effect centered on the gold piles themselves.
  • A prompt is now given before casting most spells that would anger your god.
  • The success chance for Banishment is now shown properly for all values of Invocations skill.
  • Beogh’s chance of providing blessings has been considerably reduced – it was accidentally increased by 50% in January in a commit that intended to halve it.
  • The Shining One no longer blesses allies’ weapons and armour. Angel summoning is now cheaper.
• Shadow Traps have been removed.
• Picking up the Orb of Zot now increases the time until a teleport goes off.
• Xv now allows examining from the ‘map screen’ (just as xv does).
• EV penalties from constriction & multi-turn actions are now displayed in the game UI.
• Multi-turn macros should no longer reduce EV.
• Spacing in all messages has been improved to the Gallic standard.
• Beogh now reacts properly when a Beoghite player is slain by a hostile orc priest.
• Natasha can now talk in her sleep.
• Harold can no longer talk after exploding.

Happy crawling!

Hi, crawlers! The tournament is officially over (results up soon!), and development of 0.17 has officially begun. Here’s what’s new since 0.16.0 came out:

• Monsters:
  • Most uniques (mainly those that can spawn in D) have had their XP and placement adjusted. In general, their XP has been increased (by anywhere from 50% to 150%), and they’ve been prevented from spawning in areas that were late enough to make them no longer challenging. (E.g., Fannar in Elf.)
  • Phantasmal Warriors’ attacks no longer pierce SH & AC.
  • Silent Spectres are now much rarer in Crypt, no longer spawning outside vaults.
  • Unborn have been merged into death knights; the latter now have Agony, Haunt, and Injury Mirror, and the former no longer exist.
  • Revenants no longer ignore silence.
  • Monster rElec has been changed; rElec++ has been removed, and monsters that had it now either have rElec+ or rElec+++ (immunity).
  • Mnoleg’s attacks have been simplified.
• Spells:
  • Summon Guardian Golem is now level 3 (previously 4).
  • Sure Blade has been removed.
  • Blade Hands has its offhand attack back (accidentally lost it at the start of 0.16 development), and Dragon Form now has one too. Beware the rising dragon punch!
• Items:
  • The Cloak of Flash has been merged into the Cloak of Starlight; the latter now has a +2 enchantment and gives Stlth– (from Stlth-).
  • Wands of fireball, lightning, and draining now have 15 max charges, up from 9 for the former & 12 for the latter two.
  • -Cast should no longer appear on non-armour randarts.
  • Staves of power no longer store power for a short while after being unwielded.
  • Quicksilver Dragon Armour has had its base armour reduced by one, from 10 to 9.
  • Potions of decay have been removed.
  • Gnoll sergeants no longer have a special chance to spawn with potions of curing or heal wounds.
  • Staves of summoning no longer have a chance of abjuring on hit.
  • Warding now affects ranged attacks from summoned enemies, in addition to melee attacks.
  • Faith no longer makes your god more likely to save you.
• Gods:
  • Finesse no longer causes contamination. (It previously caused slightly less contamination than dissipated naturally per-turn.)
  • Shadow Step no longer works on harmless plants (‘plant’, ‘fungus’, ‘bush’…).
  • Beogh’s Smite ability now scales more strongly with Invocations.
  • Lugonu no longer accepts corpse sacrifices. (Piety gains from kills has increased.)
• All races’ evocations aptitudes have been reduced by 1.
• MP limits have been reworked & simplified; you now get 0.9 max MP for each experience level, and the lowest highest of (0.9 MP per level of spellcasting, 0.54 for each level of Invocations, or 0.45 for each level of Invocations). The preceding is already out of date – rapid balance changes…
• Species that cannot wear armour can no longer get the ‘ill-fitting armour’ mutation.
• Throwing wielded items is no longer three times faster than normal.
• Krakens no longer spew ink continuously.
• The rod of shadows can no longer summon friendly pan lords.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers!

Crawl 0.16 has entered the beta phase; it is now playable on CBRO and CXC, and should be available on other servers soon. Local beta binaries should also be available in the immediate future.

See also the 0.16 changelog and the 0.16 tournament announcement.