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.

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!