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!