Current projects/0.13 update project

Project goals

• The priority goal of this project is to go through the changelog below and cross out lines once the updates have been incorporated into the appropriate wiki article, or if they don't require any changes. If you think a page is up to date, make sure to add Template:version013 (i.e. {{version012}}) to the page.
• Secondly, articles tagged with Category:Crystal Ball Articles should be removed from the category after being updated (unless they refer to 0.14 or trunk material). There may be some sentences that need to be changed from future to past tense.
• Finally, there is new artwork that needs to be updated as (lower priority). Instructions are in the link.

Contributors

• Flun
• Sildraith
• CommanderC
• Add name here

0.13 Changelog

0.13 highlights

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• A new race: Gargoyles.
• A reimagined Skald background.
• A thorough rework of the monster set in Crypt.
• Improvements to many evokable items.
• A new item: sack of spiders.
• Massively overhauled layout generators.
• Summonings school: per-spell limits and no stair following or pulling.
• New Sprint map: linesprint.

Branches, environment

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• A new Sprint map: "|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||" by st (otherwise known as linesprint).
• Branches now have exactly one exit stair (except the Dungeon, which can, but is not guaranteed, to have more).
• Many new layouts have been added to most branches, including unique layouts for branches that didn't have them; and numerous tweaks and improvements to existing layouts.
• Vaults can now be placed at the centre of some layouts prepared to accept them there.
• All portal vaults entrances that time out are now announced.
• Temple overflow altars can now contain multiple altars.
• New shop type: gadget shops, which sell evokable items.
• Mechanical traps do not spawn outside of vaults.
• Zot trap effects are now only a subset of the full set of miscasts, and have some new unique effects - draining of wand charges and Word of Recall (as per ironbrand convokers).

Character

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• A new race: Gargoyles, with low natural HP but an impressive host of resistances and the ability to fly at XL14.
• Sludge elves are no more.
• The Skald background gets a reworked spell book with four new spells:
  • Infusion grants additional melee damage costing MP with each strike;
  • Song of Slaying grants an incremental slaying bonus with every monster killed (of sufficient threat level);
  • Spectral Weapon creates an allied spectral clone of your weapon which strikes enemies in melee when you do.
  • Song of Shielding has a similar effect to spirit shield, trading HP loss for MP loss.
• Priests are no more.
• The nausea status effect from eating contaminated chunks has been removed; contaminated chunks now give less nutrition for characters that can't handle them.
• Stabbing skill is no more; stabs now depend upon the average of the character's stealth and weapon skill.
• The Traps skill is no more; all characters detect traps as though they had (XL/3) Traps skill.
• Chaos knights start with a +0 chaos weapon instead of a +2 normal weapon.
• New tier 2 demonspawn mutation - "magic shield", giving spirit shield at level one, improved magic regeneration at level two, and regenerating mana in place of health as a function of current magic level at level three.
• Deaths to acid, self-targetting, and sticky flame now credit the appropriate monster/spell.
• Draining a stat to zero can no longer directly kill the player; instead, further stat drain damages the player. The effects of a stat being at zero (fainting, slow actions, etc.) persist.
• Ogre hunters and artificers now start with a club instead of a short sword.

Monsters

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• New/reworked Crypt monsters:
  • Wraiths, shadow wraiths, and eidolons drain speed instead of XP.
  • Eidolons deal more melee damage and can cast Bolt of Draining.
  • Phantasmal warriors can temporarily reduce their target's magic resistance and can blink closer to their foes.
  • Flayed ghosts gain a smite-targeted flaying attack, dealing temporary damage that scales with XP and goes away when the flayed ghost is killed and/or enough time passes.
  • Ancient champions, formerly a vault-specific monster, are now full randomly-generated monsters, coming with a band of skeletal warriors 50% of the time.
  • Vampire mages cast Vampiric Draining more often, and have slightly higher HD and HP; they also come with a band of vampires.
  • Rotting hulks are now plague shamblers, capable of inflicting a "retching" status effect that prevents food consumption; they generate a cloud of miasma on death.
  • Spectral things move at their full base monster speed.
  • Deep dwarf death knights gain slightly better attack power and starting equipment, and now come with a band of undead.
  • Flying skulls get a slight HP boost and a larger attack power boost.
  • Ghouls inflict rot half as often.
  • Curse skulls are capable of out-of-LOS movement, similar to wandering mushrooms, but preferring to place themselves where a player needs to move the most to actually reach them.
  • New monster: revenants, possessing a ghostly fireball attack and capable of creating clouds of ghostly flame, which do not harm undead and occasionally summon spectral things.
  • New monster: lost souls, who sacrifice themselves to heal nearby undead creatures or assume the shape of a nearby killed living creature; they can be summoned by deep elf death mages.
  • Necromancers don't come with necrophages, but do come with simulacra.
  • Unborn deep dwarves are now just unborn.
  • New monster: jiangshi, who move in short burts (like sixfirhies) and possess a vampiric melee attack.
• New forest-themed monsters:
  • Spriggan assassins and spriggan enchanters, who attempt to disable the player with blowguns and hexes respectively before moving in for the kill.
  • Fauns, who hex the player before attacking from afar, and their larger brethren satyrs, who can empower their nearby allies.
  • Dryads, who can awaken the forest and summon vines to pull their enemies closer to trees.
  • Wind drakes, who can breathe powerful blasts of wind and airstrike the player.
  • Thorn lotuses, plants adrift on the water that pepper the player with thorns fired from afar.
  • Thorn hunters, who fire volleys of thorns and create briar patches to impede their foes' movements.
  • Spirit wolves, who can howl to summon additional spirit wolves at periodic intervals.
  • Ancient bears, a bear to rival a dire elephant with fire resistance.
  • Water nymphs, who can teleport their target to their home water area and strike down the player with said water.
  • Treants, slow-moving, tough plants home to a nest of wasps.
• Other new monsters:
  • Tengu reavers, skilled with both steel and spells; appearing in the late dungeon and in Vaults.
  • Elemental wellsprings, aquatic enemies that fire primal waves at their foes while they're busy dealing with water elementals.
  • Deathcaps, summonable by curse toes - tougher wandering mushrooms with Drain Life.
• New unique: Sojobo, king of the tengu.
• Jory now spawns normally in the late dungeon, instead of being limited to vaults.
• Adjustments to some tier 4 demons:
  • Orange demons' sting has a 50% chance of inflicting a Weakness status, which reduces the player's attack damage.
  • Blue devils have a swooping attack, where they can immediately move adjacent to the player and attack from up to four tiles away.
  • Red devils can now hop backwards from adjacent foes to make use of their now-guaranteed polearms' reaching attacks.
• Adjustments to the elementals:
  • Water elementals have an asphyxiation attack which lasts as long as their target is next to them, and have slightly increased AC and HP.
  • Fire elementals (and fire vortices) deal pure fire damage.
• Updated spell set for several monsters:
  • Draconian shifters:
    • Banishment is dropped.
    • A new monster spell: Dimension Anchor, which temporarily prevents teleportation, blinking, and Phase Shift.
    • A new monster spell: Blink Allies Encircling, which blinks nearby allies around the target.
    • Controlled Blink is replaced with Blink Away as an emergency spell.
  • Spriggan air mages:
    • Drop Swiftness.
    • New spell: Control Winds, which manipulates clouds (including putting out fores fires immediately), and improves allied ranged weapon accuracy.
  • Spriggan druids:
    • Drop Summon Caniforms.
    • New spells: Haste Plants, which hastes nearby plant-like enemies, and Druid's Call, which calls wildlife from elsewhere on the level to aid the druid.
  • The Enchantress:
    • Banishment is banished.
    • Gains Dimension Anchor (see draconian shifter entry above), Strip Resistance (lowers the magic resistance of the target), and Mass Confusion.
  • Curse toes:
    • No more Summon Undead.
  • Deep elf summoners:
    • Summon Demon replaced with Summon Vermin, which summons orange rats, spiders, and some other things.
  • Deep elf priests/Deep elf high priests:
    • A new spell "Malign Offering", which steals HP from the target to give to their allies.
  • Deep elf mages:
    • Entirely new spellsets:
      • Freeze, Throw Icicle, Summon Ice Beast;
      • Bolt of Magma, Stone Arrow, Petrify;
      • Iskenderun's Mystic Blast, Slow, Venom Bolt, Blink;
      • Flame Tongue, Throw Flame, Sticky Flame, Fireball;
      • Magic Dart, Force Lance, Iskenderun's Mystic Blast, Iskenderun's Battlesphere.
  • Deep elf conjurers:
    • Only one spellset (Bolt of Fire, Bolt of Cold, Lightning Bolt, Bolt of Draining); the spell set with sticky flame has been removed.
  • Gloorx Vloq:
    • No longer has Invisibility as an emergency spell.
• Speed adjustments to several monsters:
  • Speed 8: spiny worms, snapping turtles, guardian mummies (all previously speed 9).
  • Speed 10: jellies (previously 9).
• Shadows can now turn invisible, allowing them to move faster and land a guaranteed stab attack on enemies.
• The retribution effect for killing an apis now inflicts Weakness on the player, instead of healing nearby hostiles.
• Giant fireflies can now signal nearby awake monsters in a manner similar to shouting.
• Vault wardens can seal stairways in addition to doors.
• Zombies no longer appear excessively out of depth in the early dungeon.
• Orb run monster spawns no longer include weak monsters, and now include Orb Guardians.
• Monster actions are now taken in order of speed, rather than any given monster taking all of its actions at once.
• Removed monsters:
  • Laboratory rats.
  • War dogs (replaced by wolves with essentially matching stats).
  • Deep dwarf scions, deep dwarf necromancers, and deep dwarf artificers.
  • Deep elf soldiers.
  • A large number of vault-specific monsters.
• Imps and other weak monsters no longer appear in Pandemonium.
• Nergalle appears earlier in the dungeon.
• Lamia no longer comes with a band of minions.
• Creatures other than natural creatures can now be frenzied; this causes them to attack anything in sight. The berserking effect of frenzy (might and haste effects) is limited to natural creatures.

Spells

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• New spells:
  • Searing Ray, a level 2 conjuration replacing Force Lance in the Book of Conjurations that deals damage over several consecutive turns.
  • Discord, a level 8 Hexes spell that attempts to frenzy all monsters in sight.
• Summon Small Mammals now only ever summons one mammal, and is renamed to Summon Small Mammal as a consequence.
• 100% of teleports on the orb run are delays (up from 50%).
• Haunt adjustments:
  • Summons now fixate on their target.
  • Flayed ghosts are no longer summoned.
  • Friendlies are no longer targettable.
• Olgreb's Toxic Radiance now poisons continuously over several turns (and deals impact damage); it also ignores the caster's poison resistance (if any).
• Dragon Form is pure Transmutations (was Tmut/Fire for all but Draconians).
• Force Lance is now level 5 (was level 2), with boosted range and damage to match.
• Fulminant Prism now caps at 200 spellpower.
• Swiftness can be cast in water; it doesn't operate in water, but it grants the status (which operates as expected when out of the water).
• Summonings caps are introduced. This acts on a per-spell basis, each spell has a fixed numerical limit for the number of summons active at any time. Going over this limit means your oldest summons will expire in a very short number of turns. Applies only to non-necromantic non-permanent summons.
• Temporary summons will no longer follow the player down stairs.
• Temporary summons expire when the player moves to a different level.

Items

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• The elemental evocation items have been reworked:
  • All no longer depend on elemental magic skill or nearby terrain, can summon multiple elementals, and have an XP-based recharge timer.
  • The lamp of fire fires up to three trails of flame in a given direction.
  • The fan of air elementals is now the fan of gales, and blows back nearby enemies.
  • The stone of earth elementals is now the stone of tremors; it causes rubble to fall from nearby rock, stone, or permarock walls to damage creatures adjacent to them, and has a chance to shaft creatures;
  • A new elemental evoker item - the phial of floods; it generates a wave of water which temporarily leaves a pool of water behind, and summons water elementals.
• The dependence of armour penalties on strength has been adjusted; there are no longer magic strength numbers for lowest possible penalties.
• Potions of gain <ability> have been replaced by potions of beneficial mutation, which grant the player a single beneficial mutation.
• the Scroll of vorpalise weapon is now called Scroll of brand weapon, and can rebrand weapons that already have a permanent brand affixed.
• the Scroll of immolation has been reworked to Inner Flame everything in LOS.
• Lear's chain mail is now Lear's hauberk - a +27 chain mail that covers all armour slots other than shields and cloaks.
• The staff of energy eliminates 100% of spell hunger again, and includes the now-gone staff of channeling as well.
• The staff of power scales with your maximum magic power.
• Box of beasts has been reworked:
  • Has a fixed, random number of charges between 5 and 15 inclusive.
  • 1/3 chance to fail on usage with no bad effects.
  • When successful, generates a chimera; a new monster with three heads. Each head can be a different beast, picked from a list which provides better/stronger beasts at higher Evocations skill. The heads determine the attacks and abilities available to the monster.
• New "sack of spiders" item:
  • Fixed charges between 5 and 15 inclusive.
  • On evoking, creates webs around you and releases spiders.
  • Number of webs and type/number of spiders scales with evocations.
• Splint mail has been removed; chain mail is now 8 AC to compensate.
• Needles of sickness have been removed.
• Manuals do not need to be read to be activated; they're always on while in inventory.
• The rod of striking now functions as a melee weapon - it expends charges to deal additional damage in melee.
• Boots of running have a -1 movement delay (was -2).
• The lantern of shadows' rate of shadow spawning scales with evocations, and the resulting shadows now wander instead of following the player.
• New unrand: the +4 moon troll leather armour {Spirit MP+5 Regen}.
• Adjustments to unrands:
  • Arga is now a broad axe.
  • Bullseye is now a large shield.
  • The shield of the Gong no longer has guardian spirit; it is otherwise unchanged.
  • The knife of Accuracy and boots of the Assassin are no more.
  • The lightning scales are now +6 (was +3).
• Hammers do not generate outside of vaults.

Gods

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• Yredelemnul no longer gifts rotting hulks / plague shamblers.
• Hill orcs encountering an orc priest for the first time are offered the chance to convert to Beogh on the spot.
• Zin's Recite no longer paralyses the player; the player can take any action that doesn't involve the mouth while reciting.

Interface

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• For online play, explore_delay and travel_delay are instananeous by default.
• Dungeon features with variable-colour tiles now display those colours in tiles (e.g. walls in the Abyss, the Elven Halls, and the Pan disco hall).
• Examining a monster will display the spells monsters of its type are capable of using.

Technical

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• A port to OpenSolaris (Dyson/Illumos).
• MSVC compilation once again possible (Visual Studio [Express] 2012)