Hi, crawlers! Welcome – to the second changelog of 2017! Even better than the first!

New item type: scarves! Scarves occupy the cloak slot. They give 0 AC and cannot be enchanted, but always generate with an ego. Scarf egos: rC+, Spirit Shield, Resistance, and rMsl. Scarves replace about 1/6 cloaks.

Spells: Replaced Delayed Fireball with a new spell: Ignition (L8 Fire). Ignition drops a fireball on every single enemy in line of sight. The player and their allies are immune. Have fun :) Repel Missiles is gone. It didn’t work especially well as a spell: rather than being an effect that required investment (an interesting strategic choice), it was essentially a permanent buff that applied to any non-Trog character that found it. As a spell that’s mainly cast out-of-combat, it didn’t work with the spell failure system, either; players were encouraged to take off armour, swap in wizardry items, etc to cast it. Everyone liked it, of course, since it had good lootfeel, but it’s better to provide that lootfeel without the accompanying annoyances. It’s an effect that works better as an item (e.g. the new scarf ego, or the Amulet of Air) than as a spell. Airstrike replaces Repel Missiles in the Book of Air. This should give AE a high-accuracy, lowish-damage spell to complement their other tools. Similarly, Force Lance replaces Battlesphere in the Book of Conjurations. This is an experiment to encourage use of e.g. Fulminant Prism, with which Force Lance has considerable synergy.

Unrands: Amulet of Bloodlust: MR++ (was MR+), Slay+6 (was +3). Encourage use of an exciting *Rage item. Sceptre of Torment: only has a chance of tormenting on-hit, rather than randomly over time. Simpler, and doesn’t encourage annoying swapping while out of combat. Shield of Ignorance: changed from +6 {AC+4, *Curse, rN+, Int-6} to +10 {rN+, Int-4}. Int-6 was too harsh for almost all potential users to consider it, and *Curse really didn’t accomplish anything. Sword of Cerebov: works on rDamnation monsters. Sword of Jihad: now the Zealot’s Sword. Replace a good but loaded word with a very good and non-loaded word.

Food: All food takes one turn to eat, including rations and royal jellies. Chunks only taking one turn to eat meant that the already-limited tactical implications of slow food were very limited, and the annoyances of getting interrupted while eating outweighed those. Removed: pizza and beef jerky, since they no longer had much purpose. The loss of pizza in particular is very sad… some day it will return in cheesy glory. The auto_butcher option now takes an optional hunger threshold parameter; check options_guide.txt for details.

Webs generated over the course of play (by e.g. jumping spiders or sacks of spiders) are no longer permanent. Once the monster or player they’re webbing escapes or dies, the web vanishes. This is to discourage certain degenerate behaviors involving luring jumping spiders around the game and using their webs to trivialize tough enemies; I realized it was theoretically possible when we first implemented permanent webs, but credit to Ultraviolent for actually putting it into practice and forcing me to get off my rump and fix it!

Elyvilon’s wrath is simpler. Instead of various irrelevant effects (e.g. minor poison miscasts), Ely just has a chance of applying lifesaving to enemies, healing those that were about to die.

Wands are now ID’d when you step on them, instead of on pickup.

Fixed a longstanding mouse cursor bug in local tiles, which annoyed quite a lot of people. Performance should be much better now!

Temple entrance vaults can spawn again. (Broken since last June… oops!)

The legendary titan, Antaeus, is no longer terrified of the level 3 spell ‘Conjure Flame’.

Monster Upheaval no longer increases in power with the player’s Invocations skill.

Frogs can now ribbit, croak, or, under very special circumstances, bellow.

Mushrooms caps have been banned.

Vampire mages now have ghost hands.