Hi, crawlers! Lots of fun changes this week:

  • Enemy-held weapons now have their brands ID’d on sight.
  • The Death Knight background has been removed.
  • New item: the Iron Rod, which fires a spray of shrapnel in a wide arc. Extremely effective against agile, low-AC enemies, but ineffective against armoured enemies or at a distance.
  • Nemelex & deck changes:
    • New cards:
      • Elements, which summons three beasts of the four elements.
      • Rangers, which summons two or three ranged-missile users.
      • Placid Magic, which removes all status effects and applies heavy antimagic to all creatures in sight, including the user. (Dazing enemy spellcasters as if they’d been hit with antimagic weapons repeatedly.
    • Revamped destruction cards:
      • Storm has replaced rain and swiftness with summoning air elementals, an elemental wellspring, or thunder clouds alongside a wind blast.
      • Pain has lost Torment; it can now instead summon flay your foes alive.
      • Venom has lost Sting for earlier Venom Bolts and Poison Arrows, but at low power will briefly make the user vulnerable to poison.
      • Degeneration now applies a temporary malmutated effect to targets, along with polymorphing them to creatures with lower HD. Undead are dazed.
      • Vitriol now can provide Corrosive Bolts at higher power.
      • Orb bursts will now attempt to home on monsters they might reasonably hit.
    • Revamped battle cards:
      • Potion has strictly-negative effects taken out, and will also apply its effects to allies if possible.
      • Blade now solely gives a cleaving status. It doesn’t stack with the reaching of polearms or the original cleaving of axes, but otherwise applies to all forms of armed & unarmed combat.
      • Helm can apply Stoneskin or Shroud of Golubria effects to allies at high power.
      • Elixir gives a small amount of temporary vitality to your allies, alongside its restorative effects to the user.
      • Shadow gives the darkness status (reduced LOS) instead of invisibility.
      • Dowsing is now significantly stronger in duration and range.
    • Revamped summoning cards:
      • Pentagram now summons a more constrained set of demons (stronger at lower power and weaker at high power), and an additional accompanying hell hound, rakshasa, or pandemonium lord.
      • Dance has replaced its short swords with quarterstaves and its dire flails with executioner’s axes. It also has a chance of summoning a randart.
      • Foxfire has lost butterflies and gained ravens.
      • Repulsiveness can now summon both an ugly thing and a very ugly thing.
    • Revamped emergency cards:
      • Cloud surrounds all hostile monsters with varying types of clouds, instead of randomly scattering clouds in all valid places in sight.
      • Shaft now randomly places shafts under other monsters as well.
      • Tomb can now raise rock walls on stone stairs and deep water.
      • Velocity will always apply a overall-positive effect (with allies present).
      • Banshee now drains victims, in addition to causing fear.
      • Solitude can now cause Disjunction at high power.
    • Dowsing is no longer in the deck of battle.
    • Decks of war have lost their set of destruction cards.
    • The Cloud card has moved from decks of destruction to decks of emergency.
    • Mercenaries now have slightly better kit, and mercenaries that your god would dislike are not offered.
    • In general, cards that your god would dislike will have their dislikeable effects suppressed. (E.g., Venom for TSO.)
    • Removed cards: Metamorphosis, Herd, Bones.
  • Monster tweaks:
    • Draconian & deep elf knights are considerably stronger (and have had their spell sets changed up).
    • Caustic shrikes are now a little weaker and a little rarer.
    • Revenants are no longer affected by Silence.
    • Enemy necromancers can now cast Inner Flame.
    • Pan Lord spells have been considerably reworked.
    • Anubis Guards now have Control Undead.
    • Hell Beast HD, AC, and EV are no longer randomized (and are set to the max value they could have had before). Their speed is still randomized.
    • Sphinxes are now sometimes (presumably) androsphinxes.
    • Basilisks are now little.
    • Green rats are now known as river rats. Beware their swimming prowess…!
  • All gods now give piety for kills made by followers (undead and otherwise) in the exact same way as for kills made by the player.
  • Vampires now bottle blood with (c), instead of (a)(a). They can now bottle blood from level 1 onward.
  • Different types of melee attacks (slashing, piercing, blunt, etc) no longer cause different amount of noise. (Melee noise still varies by damage done.)
  • Summon Greater Demon now provides a more() by default when the summoned demon stops being charmed.
  • Ziggurats now have a reliable supply of restore abilities potions, and a very small number of beneficial mutations potions.
  • The rod of striking has been removed.
  • Monsters now return to their original forms in death. (Like poor Prince Ribbit.)
  • Runed doors & Lugonu’s Corruption are now noted in level annotations, by default.
  • Ctrl-f can now find runed doors.
  • Qazlal’s Disaster Area is now stronger at low invocations.
  • Felid Monks have been buffed.
  • Mimics are now immune to telepathy.
  • High-pitched whines have been removed.
  • The game will no longer claim that skeletons can be bottled.

Happy crawling!