Hi, crawlers! Here’s the first set of changes for 0.20:

Monsters: Draconian callers are now draconian stormcallers; they smite, summon drakes, and also invoke Upheaval, the Qazlal ability. Boom! Snorg, Xtahua, and Bai Suzhen’s hides now have an inherent bonus enchantment. Polymorphed uniques no longer keep their spells in certain obscure cases. Ushabti breathe significantly less often. Monsters’ melee attacks are now included in their descriptions. Monster MR is reduced by lowered HD, from e.g. draining or malmutation. The last great renaming of 2016? Sirens are now, excitingly, Merfolk Sirens.

Gods: The Shining One’s conduct has been simplified: all stabs are now automatically prevented (no bonus damage), and poison damage is no longer specially forbidden. Cleansing Flame also does somewhat more damage to non-evil enemies. Jiyva pacifies all slimes, even those that are actually shapeshifters. Nemelex’s Pain card is now roughly twice as powerful. Abyssal gold no longer counts toward Gozag’s entrance cost. Qazlal no longer spawns damaging clouds on plants, e.g. while you’re trying to rest. The Xom Cleave status will no longer last up to 2000 turns. Dithmenos’s shadow can once again mimic diagonal and reaching attacks. (Broken as part of a bugfix two years ago.)

Spells: Invisibility and Haste no longer cause extra hunger over time. Confusing Touch is less effective, especially against high-HD enemies. Poisonous Cloud is level 5 (was 6).

Odds of confusing enemies with a melee attack (with Confusing Touch or fungus form) are displayed while examining enemies with those statuses active.

Various badforms (e.g. wispform, fungus form) have been simplified, and porcupine form has been removed.

Console colours have been reworked to avoid invisible colours for certain low-capability consoles. Review options_guide.txt for new options, e.g. best_effort_brighten_background and _foreground.

Max charges for wands are always displayed: e.g. “a wand of confusion (?/48)”.

The Hat of the High Council has ascended to a higher plane.

Lair’s vaults have been exhaustively reviewed and revised. Please thank regret-index for all of the hard work!

Demonic guardians expire over time, not based on tension.

Vampire feeding, like chunk eating, now always takes a single turn. All the blood has oozed out of our corpses for the last time…

Fire clouds no longer expire faster over water (and likewise cold clouds over lava). Fire clouds on water also produce less steam.

Noise no longer breaks mesmerization and fear.

Mottled draconians (both player and monster) and draconian zealots are no more.

Simplified chaos effects.

Screaming at tentacles is forbidden.

Removed off-brand knock-offs of the Captain’s Cutlass.

The player can no longer crash the game by attempting to eat their hat.

Happy crawling, and don’t forget to take the survey if you haven’t already!