Hi, crawlers!

First, fair warning: a very large rewrite of monster spellcasting & special abilities landed in trunk this morning. This lets us do some very cool things (some of which are already in!), but it’s also a large amount of new code, which is going to have a corresponding number of new bugs. For the next day or two, trunk will be a little more unstable than usual.

One thing you can do to help, as always, is to report any bugs you find on the official bugtracker. We get notified whenever a new bug is filed, and while we can’t promise we’ll fix everything immediately, we do our best!

With all that said, let’s get to the week’s new features!

  • Mennas can now occasionally be found wandering through Pandemonium. His Confusion ‘recitation’ has been replaced with Mass Confusion.
  • The Great Lords of Pandemonium – that is, Cerebov, Lom Lobon, etc – will reappear on later floors of Pandemonium once their rune is stolen, unless and until the player kills them.
  • Lom Lobon (and, to a lesser extent, Gloorx Vloq) are much more likely to spend their time casting spells rather than attacking in melee.
  • Player ghosts and spellforged servitors can now know more than six spells.
  • New items:
    • Shadow dragon armour. 10 AC and 15 ER, the same as Storm Dragon Armour, but instead of rElec, shadow dragon armour gives Stlth++++. (The weight of the armour naturally subtracts exactly Stlth+++, leaving players wearing this armour at Stlth+ above what they would have with no armour at all.)
    • Quicksilver dragon armour. 10 AC, 6 ER, and MR+; however, it cannot be enchanted with scrolls of enchant armour, and is always +0.
  • Scale Mail now only has 10 ER, down from 11.
  • Dithmenos now specifically hates fire (owing to a very old divine grudge), rather than ‘fire and illuminating effects’. The glimmering light of a Corona will no longer bring down the dread wrath of Dithmenos upon worshippers.
  • A new malmutation: “MP-powered wands”, which increases the power of your wands, but makes them cost MP with every zap.
  • New tiles: Irradiate, Hydra Form, Octopode & Felid Blade Hands (if that’s the right word?), triple swords, and more.
  • Various skill titles have been rearranged or replaced; notably, Cheibriados’s invocations titles have been completely rewritten from scratch.
  • Hydra Form, like most forms, now has a special message when praying at altars.
  • The legendary serpent Jörmungandr is now selectable by tiles players. (“tile_player_tile=tile:mons_jormungandr”.) Beware his ophidian wrath!
  • Wumpuses can occasionally be heard roaring in the distance.

Happy crawling!