Hi crawlers! With the close of the tournament, let’s find out what has changed in trunk since 0.17.

• Gods
  • New god: Pakellas the Inventive. Pakellas is a temple god, with an altar either in Temple or on D:2-9.
    • Grants MP on kills (at about half the rate of Vehumet) and passive wand charge identification.
    • Blocks MP regeneration and hates channeling (staff of energy, crystal ball of energy, the Staff of Wucad Mu, and Sublimation of Blood).
    • Piety on kills.
    • 1*: Quick Charge: spend 2/3 your current MP pool to add some charges to a wand or rod proportional to your Evocations, your current MP pool, and the capacity of the device.
    • At 2*, Pakellas gifts you a wand once (of any type other than heal wounds, hasting, and teleportation).
    • 3*: Device Surge: on your next use of an evocable item, spends 1-9 MP to apply one to three enhancers to its power output, with maximum MP and number of enhancers dependent on piety.
    • Starting at 4*, Pakellas occasionally gifts rods, wands, and miscellaneous evokables (always starting with a rod unless you are a felid).
    • 6*capstone: Supercharge: sets a rod to +10 (18/18), or sets a wand’s capacity to 50% above normal for that wand type (in addition to recharging it – this has the effect of improving Quick Charge’s efficiency on the wand).
  • Xom now chaos brands more weapon gifts, and can chaos brand ranged weapons again.
  • Finesse is no longer blocked by stasis.
  • Jiyva altars in Dungeon no longer appear as early in Dungeon.
  • Cheibriados now blocks chaos effects from hasting the player.
  • Piety given for a Ru sacrifice is more explicitly stated.
  • Abandoning Yredelemnul now destroys your zombie minions.
  • Followers of Elyvilon can pacify insects (again).
  • Zin’s Recite is now only interrupted if the player is silenced or incapacitated (or goes berserk).
• Branches, Environment
  • The enemies in the Elven Halls ending vault are now less likely to be lured out of the vault.
  • Ziggurat portals no longer appear in Pan.
• Character
  • A new mutation: Sturdy Frame, reducing base ER by 2/4/6 and thus making heavy armour easier to wear. Can be a demonspawn mutation.
  • The player no longer takes an accuracy penalty for fighting while invisible but without SInv (also true of monsters).
  • Formicids now have 0 Throwing aptitude (was -2).
  • Taking a known shaft now has a 2/3 chance of shafting one floor and 1/3 of two floors.
• Items
  • New items:
    • The amulet of dismissal, which has a chance of teleporting away enemies that attack you in melee combat, and contaminates the player when it is removed.
    • The +8 frozen axe “Frostbite” {freezing cloud, *Noise +Fly rC+}, an executioner’s axe with a chance of placing freezing clouds on enemies it strikes.
    • The +12 armour of Talos {ponderous, rF+}, a troll/ogre-sized suit of plate mail.
    • A figurine of a ziggurat – evoke to create a ziggurat portal. Appears on Zig:27 of all ziggurats and in the Tomb:3 loot.
    • Pieces from Xom’s chessboard – evoke to randomly swap the positions of you and all enemies and LOS, or (on failure) to trigger a Xom effect.
  • The robe of vines is now +2, Regen+7.
  • The Majin-Bo now speaks occasionally.
  • The amulet of Cekugob is now an amulet of dismissal.
  • Removing an amulet of regeneration now causes 2-7 hp of rot.
  • A new property can now generate on random artefacts: Fragile, which destroys the item when it is removed.
  • Amulets of faith now grant a 25% bonus to piety, not a 33% bonus.
  • Removed items:
    • Amulets of resist mutation and warding.
• Monsters
  • New monsters:
    • Spark wasps, lethally electric swarming insects that appear singularly in Spider and in packs in Depths.
    • Iron giants, with all the resilience that iron implies and the ability to throw you into the pack of giants they lead.
    • Doom hounds, lurking in Tartarus who can howl to summon a pack of their brethren.
  • Mnoleg gains Random Bolt and Dig.
  • Gloorx Vloq gains Summon Executioners and Black Mark.
  • Juggernauts now have two less damaging attacks instead of one powerful attack.
  • Jellies and death oozes cannot be blinded.
  • Jumping spiders and mana vipers can be blinded.
  • Jumping spiders cannot see invisible.
  • Giant eyeballs and golden eyes can now see invisible.
  • Salamander stormcallers’ chant does not need to be continuous; they now only need to try to cast Fire Storm at their target three times for it to trigger.
  • Entropy weavers’ corrosion is now instant and smite-targeted, but only applies one level of corrosion.
  • Ice devils are now tier 4 demons, with lowered HD to match.
  • Hellwings now have the swoop attack formerly possessed by blue devils.
  • Orange demons have their attacks split – they now have a reaching poison sting and a melee-only weakness attack.
  • Salamander mystics lose Localised Ignite Poison.
  • Natasha, deep elf knights, and salamander stormcallers can no longer cast Conjure Flame.
  • Spectral mist can no longer summon completely random spectral enemies.
  • Banishment from powerful monsters can now send you deeper into the Abyss than Abyss:1.
  • Removed monsters:
    • Octopode crushers.
    • (Plain) spiders.
    • Salamander firebrands.
    • Blue devils.
    • Brain worms.
• Spells
  • New spell: Yara’s Violent Unravelling (L5 Hexes/Transumations). Dispels all cancellable effects on the target and, if any were dispelled, causes a damaging explosion of mutagenic energy around the victim.
  • Hydra Form now has a fixed number of heads.
• Interface
  • Earth elementalists now have their stones start on b.
  • Characters starting with a primary ranged weapon now have their melee weapon on b by default.
  • An option is added to the butchering prompt to allow butchering only (e)dible corpses.
  • Auto-eat now triggers for ghouls if they are rotted.
  • The religion screen now shows all god powers, with currently accessible powers (per level of piety) being highlighted.

Time to start the experiments… happy crawling!

Welcome dungeon crawlers one and all! It’s been over two months since our last update. Things have been a bit slower around the Dungeon as of late, but in such a long time we’ve managed to accrue quite a list of notable changes:

• Gods
• Gozag
• Branch bribing works on any intelligent monster in the branch, based on HD and a branch factor.
• Branch allies are permanent, but won’t leave their home branch.
• You can bribe the Dungeon, Depths, Tomb, Crypt, and Pan now! Greed is good.
• Ashenzari
• Reskilling ability now costs less piety and works faster, and can reduce skill levels to 0.
• The Scrying ability is granted at 1* piety, the passive skill boost at 2*, and SInv at 3*.
• Xom makes fewer chaos clouds. You’re welcome.
• Ru’s Sacrifice Eye gives only one amulet’s worth of inaccuracy penalty.
• All altar-based abilities have been moved to the ability menu, and are hence immediately usable when granted: Zin’s Donate Gold and Cure All Mutations, Kiku’s Bless Weapon and Gift Necronomicon, Lugonu’s Bless Weapon, and The Shining One’s Bless Weapon.
• Monsters
• New monster: Juggernauts, terrifying giants that lurk in Depths. They move quickly and deliver fantastically punishing blows, but must rest after each attack. Don’t get jugged!
• Death cobs now have a hunger draining attack and deal significant damage. Don’t get cobbed!
• Hunger draining attacks on Hungry Ghosts and Death Cobs apply whenever the attack hits, not only if damage is done.
• Polyphemus can literally (1st definition) throw his Yaks at the player. We’re just as amazed as you are.
• Salamander genus monsters now all move normal speed and are fast in lava. Because that’s how it is in nature.
• Demonspawn Warmongers no longer cast Grand Avatar and can sometimes generate with a shield.
• Salamander Stormcallers’ Firestorm spell does more damage.
• Monsters have lost some relatively ineffective spells like Animate Dead, Simulacrum, and Hellwings no longer have Teleport Other.
• Polar bears, Black Bears, and your common backyard Kraken no longer try to flee at low HP.
• Wolves and Wargs have been taking howling classes and can now howl competently.
• Wandering Mushrooms no longer spawn as hostile monsters, but you can still make them through Fedhas.
• Lots of new tiles for things like Giants, Smoke demons, Crocodiles, Quokkas, and terrible 3-headed serpents that lurk in the very Hells beneath.
• Player and Dungeon (for they are one…)
• Corrosion applies -4 to both AC and Slaying instead of -5 and -3 respectively.
• Most random feature mimics are gone, save for those mimicing shops and portals.
• Spells
• Darkness is now level 5 instead of level 6! That’s an entire spell level of terrific savings!
• Casting Haunt no longer causes Sickness. We were….sick of it.
• Casting Malign Gateway no longer drains Int. We hope….you get the hInt.
• The Corpse Rot spell rots all corpses in LOS, not just those 5 tiles away.
• Ozocubu’s Armor and Stoneskin now no longer give respective bonuses to Ice Form and Statue Form.
• The Singularity spell is no more. Don’t worry about the Moon Troll, he’s been practicing his Caustic Bolt.
• Items
• The Sack of Spiders has a better spider distribution that’s been certified by spider actuaries. It makes more appropriate spiders at the low and high ends of evocations and fewer ally-nuking orb spiders.
• The Crown of Eternal Torment is gone. May discussions as to whether it was OP or Meme torment us no more…
• The Ephemeral Infusion effect is no more. The Elixir card now directly heals allies, and Demonspawn Bloodsaints don’t need it, since they no longer lose HP when casting Legendary Destruction.
• High-level spellbooks no longer restrict learning or identification based on spell skills.
• The contamination over time from Maxwell’s Cage has been reduced by 20%.

We’ll try to have at least monthly updates from now on. Don’t forget to let it end in Hellfire!

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!

Hey crawl universe, here’s a short list of updates for this week:

• WizLabs:
• New WizLab: Lehudib’s Moon Base, where players can fight the legendary Moon Troll and obtain moon troll leather armour and other superb moon loot. That’s right, it all happens on the Moon!
• The less popular Tukima’s Studio and Eringya’s Formal Garden WizLabs are gone.
• Character:
  • The Rot status is gone; now rot is applied immediately.
  • Being stat-drained while at 0 in a stat no longer directly damages the player.
  • Undead stats: Mummies get one of Str, Int, or Dex every 5 levels, and Vampires get either Int or Dex every 5 levels. That’s right, a Mu buff!
  • Player headbutt aux attack no longer applies a small stun (that’s right, a Mi nerf!), and the hooves aux kick no longer bypasses AC.
  • Teleportitis only triggers when it would land the player in LOS of an enemy. It triggers slightly more often as a result, but never in Labs or the Abyss.
• Monsters:
  • Worms are less vulnerable to some forms of kiting, having more regen in exchange for less max hp.
  • Bog bodies can no longer rot corpses.
  • Liches of all shapes and sizes can no longer have the Shadow Creatures spell. That’s right, a Lich nerf!
  • Goliath beetles don’t generate randomly, now only appearing in dungeon vaults.
• Spells:
  • The Freeze spell no longer stuns enemies. That’s right, an IE nerf!
• Items:
  • Curare needles no longer take your (or monster’s) breath away.
• Gods:
  • Cheibriados’ slouch damage is now based on monster move speed. That’s right, a Chei buff!
  • Ashenzari now grants the Scrying ability at a mere 2* piety.

Now Go! Bring the Dev Team Glory in Combat!

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!