Hi crawlers! Fresh trunk changes, coming your way. Look out!

• New spell: Irradiate (L5 Conj/Tmut). Blasts adjacent foes with pure magical radiation, doing heavy damage and frequently malmutating the unfortunate victims. Also, contaminates the caster; 2-4 casts of the spell will put you into yellow (dangerous) contamination. Found in the Book of Transfigurations and the Book of Alchemy.
• Monster malmutations are now temporary, but more significant. Good news for Beoghites…?
• Ice Form has been moved from the Book of Transfigurations to the Book of Ice.
• Ice, Dragon, Tree, and Fungus forms no longer meld octopode rings.
• Instead of starting with a level 1 spell memorized, wanderers get a randart spellbook with a couple of low-level spells in it.
• Wanderers can start with an elemental evoker or a box of beasts in place of a wand.
• Jump attack (and the boots of jumping) are no more.
• Magic immunity no longer confers confusion immunity to monsters.
• Frederick has realized his true potential; he is now a Demigod. Grovel at his boots, pitiful god-havers!
• Player ghosts now have their weapon brands displayed. Never again will you have to hunt down morgue files to check if that AK ghost has a distortion weapon!
• Ghosts of characters that died while paralyzed no longer have 0 EV.
• Corrosion resistance can now appear on randart armour.
• Cloaks of darkness have been renamed to cloaks of invisibility.
• Gold dragon armour has been reduced from 25 to 23 EVP, the same as crystal plate.
• Unarmed combat delay penalties from armour have been substantially de-randomized; they’re now consistently around the average of the old values.
• Monsters with drowning attacks (water nymphs, drowned souls, etc) can no longer kill players who are in Death’s Door. (However, falling into deep water still can.)
• Chain Lightning can no longer arc out of LOS.
• ‘Monster spells’ (e.g. Ghostly Fireball) can now be displayed in the spell finder. (?/S)
• New options for tiles players: tile_weapon_offsets and tile_shield_offsets, allowing players using custom tiles (with tile_player_tile) to precisely adjust the placement of their equipment.
• New tiles for double and triple swords, among other things.
• Players can no longer wear the Amulet of Vitality on their tentacles.
• Major balance change: Abandon God is now available even when the player is silenced.
• Octopode players are now properly informed when their tentacles begin to smoulder.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! Ready to devour some fresh trunk changes? (Ha ha! It is a Hydra Form joke.) All joking aside – if you are not ready, please do not read the below. Thanks.

• New spell: Hydra Form. Attacks all adjacent enemies and devours the slain for nutrition and healing. Found in the Book of Transfigurations and a new book, the Fen Folio.
• Monster AC, EV, and MR are now displayed as bars in their description. (When examined, or through ?/M.)
• Wand changes:
  • Wand type (not charge count) is auto-ID’d on pickup.
  • Zapping wands that don’t have their charge charge count identifies wastes several charges.
  • Many weak wands have had their max charge count increased.
• Claymores have been renamed to triple swords; bastard swords have been renamed to double swords. Mega excite.
• Regeneration has been moved from rings to amulets; accordingly, the Ring of Vitality is now the Amulet of Vitality.
• The Hat of the Alchemist is now -2 (rElec rPois rF rC rN MR rMut rCorr). Beware the AC cost…
• Cleaving attacks (from axes and Hydra Form) try to hit all adjacent enemies, rather than being blocked by walls. (How many people reading this actually knew that axes cleaving could be blocked by walls…?)
• Demigod tweaks: They now gain 2x stats every third level, rather than one stat on 2/3 levels. They also now have innate Sustain Abilities.
• Iron devils have been upgraded to rust devils, which do less damage but corrode with their touch.
• Derived undead (zombies, skeletons, &c) now have their full names displayed. (E.g., “orc warrior zombie”.)
• More potion tiles & randart helmet & robe tiles should now show up in-game.
• Formicids can no longer move in treeform by tunneling through rock; nor, similarly, can they shaft themselves while in treeform.
• It is no longer possible to receive the message “you meow your recitation at the orc.”

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! It’s been a while, but now that the tournament is over, the 0.16 season has kicked off with a bang. Here’s what’s new so far in trunk!

• New god: Ru the Awakened, a new temple god, lord of sacrifice and power!
  • Periodically offers the player a choice of three permanent sacrifices in exchange for piety. All abilities scale with piety; piety never decreases.
  • Leaving Ru incurs no wrath, but leaves all your sacrifices in place (permanently).
  • 1*: Enemies may fail to attack you, or even attack each other or themselves instead.
  • 2*: Enemies that hurt you may be punished with status effects.
  • 3*: Draw Out Power: restore health and mana to yourself, break free of webs and constriction, and cure confusion and petrification. Inflicts minor self-drain and exhaustion.
  • 4*: Power Leap: Blinks you three tiles and deals high AOE damage at your destination. Costs exhaustion.
  • 5*: Apocalypse: Deals very high damage to all monsters in LOS and inflicts statuses. Costs heavy drain and exhaustion.
• Monster changes:
  • Mermaids have been renamed to sirens; sirens have been renamed to merfolk avatars.
  • Mimics now cackle and vanish (forever) when discovered. This optimizes their psychological damage potential (PDP).
  • The Serpent of Hell is considerably tougher; it now has three heads which can attack and/or breathe separately, and can also summon (dragon-shaped) backup.
  • Mnoleg now has a pair of tentacles, acting similarly to eldritch tentacles.
  • New monster: elemental wellsprings, appearing in Cocytus. They fire powerful waves of water which produce hostile water elementals – but deplete their own ‘health’ in the process.
  • New monster: bennu, the divine phoenix, appearing in Tomb. Attacks with fire, draining, and holy; when killed, explodes into ghostly flame and instantly returns to life (once).
  • Curse skulls now move – fast!
• Completing a ziggurat (by exiting from the top floor, zig:27) makes all subsequent zigs harder. Dare you face the terror of the Megazig?
• Ziggurats now only require two runes to enter, instead of three.
• A Hall of Blades area (not branch) is now guaranteed on Elf:2.
• Demigods now gain one stat of their choice on 2/3 levels (2,3,5,6…26,27), instead of gaining one stat of their choice on every third level and one random stat on every other level.
• All species can now choose ‘unarmed’ when playing backgrounds that allow a weapon choice.
• Necromutated characters can now memorize spells normally, even ones that undead characters are unable to cast.
• Dragon Form now provides a spell power & success chance enhancer for Dragon’s Call.
• The captain’s cutlass is now +5 (was +10) and can disarm enemies.
• TSO’s Divine Shield no longer benefits from Shields skill.
• Zin’s Hell effect protection has been halved; it now caps out at a 50% chance to block the terrors of Hell at max piety, down from 100%.
• Zin’s Recite is now more effective at very low Invocations.
• A third page has been added to the god description (^) screen, listing causes and effects of divine wrath.
• Some effects (Shatter, banishment, etc.) now display animations.
• Stealth is now displayed as a bar in the % screen. (The old ‘stealth words’) are still visible with @.)
• Monsters no longer appear on the minimap.
• The init file now allows you to specify an arbitrary monster tile for your character to be displayed as. Play as the Royal Jelly you always knew you were!
• Porcupine-shaped players now have blood.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! This week, I’ll write up the latest changes to trunk and 0.15. It’s pretty quiet, since there’s a feature freeze in preparation for 0.15′s release, but we still have a few things.

• Ugly things have gotten… a bit uglier. ( •_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■) Ugly things now have the stats (hp, damage, etc) that very ugly things used to have; very ugly things have been upgraded to be, well, a bit like miniature elemental dire elephants. To compensate, ugly things no longer spawn in bands before D:13.
• Potions of resistance now grant acid/corrosion resistance.
• A number of enemies have been upgraded (sidegraded?) with a new ‘corrosive bolt’ spell; Deep Elf Sorcerers, Tengu Reavers, and Liches.
• A great number of new tiles have been added:
• All projectiles have been reworked to be more distinctive from melee weapons.
• Hand crossbows have a new set of sprites, replacing some decade-old placeholder programming art.
• Robes have a large set of new, varied sprites.
• Various enemies have had their sprites upgraded; Frances, thrashing horrors, and torpor snails.
• Nemelex invocation icons have been upgraded to the new style.
• Various miscellaneous spells have new icons.
• Mutagenic clouds now give nontrivial levels of glow; they’ll now cause yellow contam within 2-4 turns, from the previous minimum of 5 turns and average of 9.
• The Spectral Weapon description (for both spell & item) now actually mentions the injury bond effect.
• Ranged weapons have been slightly tweaked; shortbows & hand crossbows are very slightly stronger, triple crossbows are very slightly weaker.
• ?/S no longer provides advice on warding off the evil eye.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers!

Crawl 0.15 has entered the beta phase; it is now playable on CBRO, CSZO, and CAO, and should be available on other servers soon. Local beta binaries should also be available in the immediate future.

See also the 0.15 changelog.

The tournament will be announced… soon!

Hi crawlers! This week, I’ll write up the latest changes to trunk, plus one fact about world geography.

• Spells that previously operated on spell skill directly have been changed to use spellpower. This affects Death’s Door, Passwall, Sticks to Snakes, Condensation Shield, Ozocubu’s Armour, Stoneskin, Ice Form, and Statue Form.
• Shatter now always affects the full LOS, rather than sometimes affecting a smaller radius at low Earth Magic skill.
• Statue Form no longer gives -10 EV.
• Sublimation of Blood now actually only draws from the caster’s body, rather than using chunks. Really, this time.
• rPois now gives a consistent 66% resistance against poison effects. This includes ‘being poisoned’ (down from 90%), ‘being hit with curare’ (down from 80%), and ‘direct poison damage’ (up from 50%). “Strong poison” (from e.g. redbacks) is now affected by rPois normally, instead of automatically piercing it at half strength. Wasp poison can also now partially pierce rPois, with a chance to cause slowing when it would have otherwise caused paralysis.
• rCorr now gives only 50% resistance against the corrosion status effect, instead of 90%.
• The Mace of Brilliance has become a star – specifically, the +1 Eveningstar “Brilliance”.
• To drive from Tripoli, Libya to Kano, Nigeria, would require traveling roughly the same distance as a trip from Barcelona, Spain to Moscow, Russia.
• Torpor Snail slow now ends as soon as they die or break LOS. Their frequency has been reduced considerably in Lair & Spider (now that they’ve had some good testing), and they’ve been moved in small numbers to a few other places.
• Spriggan air mages no longer cast Haste.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! Another week, another set of crawl changes.

• Draining no longer permanently reduces monsters’ stats (“hit dice”); instead, it now applies a temporary “drained” status, which reduces their hit dice while in effect for most purposes. This means, among other things, that draining attacks will no longer reduce the XP you get for killing monsters even slightly.
• Draining weapons now trigger slightly less often, but will always apply “drained” to monsters when they do. (The old effect only activated for 20% of “draining” hits.)
• A few more ranged weapon tweaks, tidying up after last week. Sling bullet & crossbow damage slightly down; longbow base delay, also slightly down.
• Similarly, deep elf master archers & centaur warriors are now slightly stronger (to adjust for their weapons being weakened), and Joseph is slightly weakened (similarly).
• Various sprites added; ghost crabs, triple crossbows & hand crossbows (the latter being a placeholder). Greatslings sprite still pending, possibly because everyone’s arguing over the name.
• Sprite revamps: in addition to the continuing work on ability & spell icons, there are new sprites for the Hellfire effect (purple, to make it clearer that it’s Not Actually Fire), Shadow Demons, and the demon blade Leech.
• New tiles option: tile_show_player_species, to display the player using the monster tile for their race instead of the normal sprite. (Note that this won’t display any equipment other the weapon & shield you’re using, and not even that for a few races.)
• Dispelling effects (the potion of cancellation, purple draconian/quicksilver dragon breath…) now reduces transformation durations to one turn instead of cancelling them instantly, to reduce instant deaths.
• New Gozag wrath effect: a 1/5 chance of potion drinking to simply fail.
• Donning & doffing armour now always takes 5 turns.
• Grey draconians have lost their former “trample monsters that are in a water tile while standing in deep water after successfully hitting with a tail-slap” ability.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! Things have been pretty quiet until the last few days; lots of behind-the-scenes work, not much exciting to report. That’s happily over now, though, so here’s the latest changes in trunk!

• Big ranged weapon changes! The second half of the Great Ranged-Combat Rebalance:
• Slings have been split into two types: hunting slings, which replace the old basic sling type, and a new rare ‘greatsling’ type. Both have had their damage increased considerably.
• Crossbows have also been split up into multiple weapons. The hand crossbow returns as a starting weapon for crossbow hunters; “crossbows” have been renamed to arbalests, and adjusted to fill a mid/late-game role. There are rumors of a third, rare & powerful crossbow type…
• Bows have had their delay increased somewhat; shortbows now have slightly lower base damage, longbows somewhat higher.
• Various unrands have been adjusted as appropriate. Punk is now a +7 greatsling; Hellfire is now an arbalest; Sniper is a “heavy crossbow”, with a base delay of 27.
• Scrolls of vulnerability have been split in half. Status effect removal has been moved onto a new item type, “potions of cancellation”, which replace potions of paralysis. Scrolls of vulnerability now only have the “halve magic resistance on all visible creatures” effect.
• Mimics are now somewhat more polite; they will no longer mimic doors, statues, fountains, or hatches.
• The hoof mutation no longer gives extra damage or a stealth penalty when covered by boots.
• Ashenzari now considers Felids fully bound when all three jewellery slots are cursed.
• Undead monsters will now fall to pieces in deep water, instead of hiding invisibly.
• Big fish, sharks, and lava worms have swum off to the great aquarium in the sky.
• Potions of strong poison have taken the poison pill; they are no more.
• Flying creatures no longer have a 2/3 chance to dodge throwing nets.
• Brown (contaminated) chunks are gone, replaced with normal chunks.
• Qazlal no longer provides a permanent resistance gift at 6* piety.
• Pigs now have trotters.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! Sorry for the downtime earlier this week; the database died, and then the backup database died while attempting to restore the primary. Thankfully, our admin was able to recover almost everything. So here’s a fresh pile of changes, seized from the heart of a dying sun!

• Beogh gifting has been somewhat revised:
  • Beogh will now improve allies’ equipment, enchanting them and improving their base type. (The latter would sometimes occur before, but very rarely.)
  • And he’ll gift weapons, armour, shields, and ammo to orcs who lack them.
  • And he’ll bless weapons and armour that the player has gifted.
  • And he’ll give some extra ammo to any orc that the player chooses to gift a ranged weapon to.
  • And orcs won’t drop their melee weapons when the player gives them a ranged weapon, or vice versa.
• The Trident of the Octopus King now gets an additional +1 for each Ring of the Octopus King its wielder wears, up to a maximum of +16. (But good luck getting that!)
• Godless hill orcs can now convert to Beogh with ‘p’ when orc priests are nearby, as an alternative to using the option from the abilities menu.
• The Deck of Wonders is back to giving mainly strategic effects (e.g. Helix, Mercenary, etc), rather than duplicating the Deck of Battle.
• New monster: torpor snails, found in Lair and Spider. Their enemies are slowed on sight, somewhat like ancient zymes.
• Weapons and armour which aren’t visibly enchanted no longer have enchantments higher than +0.
• The Staff of Air now activates its extra melee damage as often as other elemental staves.
• Brown oozes and pulsating lumps have oozed off to the great slime pit in the sky.
• The dragonslaying brand has been slain. (Except for Wyrmbane, of course.)
• Scrolls of Enchant Weapon are now rarer, and always succeed on use.
• Most randomly-placed teleport traps now disappear after one use.
• Lost souls now make enemies into ghosts instead of specters.
• Skullcrusher now gives +7 STR.

0.15 will be released in mid-August.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! A whole pile of changes, just waiting for some enterprising adventurer to seize them:

• Weapon enchantments and slaying bonuses (from artefacts and rings of slaying) have been merged into one number, which gives both +accuracy and +damage. Enchant Weapon scrolls have likewise been merged into a single type. Various unrands have been adjusted to account for this.
• Monster item pickup:
• Monsters will no longer pick up items that players have seen.
• Friendly monsters will no longer pick up any items at all. (And, accordingly, the old ctrl-t functionality has been removed.)
• Beogh has a new ***** piety ability, allowing the player to gift items directly to named followers.
• Beogh now improves allies’ equipment by blessing them.
• Mercenaries now start with slightly better items.
• Ctrl-T now toggles displaying enemies’ weapons’ glyphs while playing console.
• Cross-training now gives a direct bonus to skills, rather than providing an aptitude bonus.
• Anti-training has been removed.
• New monster: Ghost crabs, appearing in the Crypt and Tartarus. The clouds of ghostly flame they breathe summon dangerous specters into fleeting existence.
• Giant fireflies have flickered out of existence; spriggan riders now buzz into battle on deadly wasp mounts.
• Halfling and kobold stats have been tweaked; halflings now have more str and less int/dex, and kobolds now have slightly more dex and slightly less str.
• TSO no longer blasts you with cleansing fire when you kill holy monsters.
• Simulacrum now works on a single corpse at the caster’s feet, creating several simulacrula from it. Monsters instead have an animate-dead like version that works on all corpses in LOS and produces half as many simulacrula.
• Sublimation of Blood no longer uses chunks; it now only draws from the caster’s HP.
• Temporary brand spells (Excruciating Wounds and Warp Weapon) can now be used on branded non-artefact weapons to temporarily re-brand them.
• The Sack of Spiders now places webs directly onto enemies, rather than spreading them randomly around the area.
• The Frost card has been removed, and replaced with Hammer; Flame has been renamed to Cloud, and now produces either fire or freezing clouds.

Happy crawling!

Hi crawlers! Fresh changes, right from the spriggan’s oven:

• Shields have been rebalanced:
• The effects of SH have been doubled; each point of SH now gives twice as much block chance as previously, making it very roughly equivalent to EV point-for-point.
• All sources of SH have been halved, except for shield enchantments.
• Large shields can now be enchanted up to +8; normal ‘shields’ can be enchanted up to +5. (Bucklers still cap at +3.)
• Unrand shields have been tweaked. The Large Shield of Ignorance is now +6 (a small buff); the Shield of the Gong is now +18 (a larger buff); the Shield of Resistance is now +2 (a small nerf).
• Uniques are now announced by title when first appearing onscreen. Beware: Sigmund the Dreaded awaits!
• Darts have darted away forever. Warpers now start with tomahawks of dispersal instead.
• Confusing Touch has had its duration increased (though multiple casts no longer stack), and causes your attacks to do no damage while it’s in effect. Once it successfully confuses an enemy, the duration ends. It’s now level 2.
• Giant Slugs and Elephant Slugs have gone to the great vegetable garden in the sky. Gastronok survives, now the last member of his species. His eyestalks quiver in a fashion both noble and tragic.
• Curse Skulls have returned to their natural, immobile state.
• The amulet of conservation and cloak of preservation are gone, now that item destruction is no more.
• Maxwell’s Patent Armour now gives rF+ rC+ instead of conservation.
• Acquirement no longer avoids giving you items you’re currently carrying (e.g. lamps of fire, etc)
• Iron Trolls no longer appear outside Dis. (But watch this space!)
• Spellforged Servitors will no longer turn on the player when damaged by their own conjured ball lightning. Or ever.
• You can now cast Inner Flame on allies without angering them.

Happy crawling!