Headline features:
* 250% more Balrogs!
* More than 20 new artefacts
* Extensive changes to special items
* Many changes to the monster list to give each type more character
Full Changelist:
Code:
- broke savefile compatibility
- getting silmarils
- it is now easier to cut out the first Silmaril
- your weapon can now break on either the second or the third Silmaril
- you no longer suffer the rapid attack penalties when cutting if you have that ability active
- elemental damage
- for pure elemental damage (breaths and things as opposed to melee with elements)
- you now get your resistance before your protection roll
- used to be the other way around
- you have always only had a limited amount of prot for such attacks
- e.g. rings of prot, hardiness, song of staying, (& shields for fire/cold)
- now these sources of prot actually matter a bit when you have resistance
- added elemental vulnerabilities
- these are very rare, and they lower your resistance by one level
- if it is a level below no resistance, you take double damage, then triple etc.
- monsters
- many changes, including the following...
- balrogs:
- added five more, giving a full complement of seven
- they are rare, but *very* dangerous
- giants:
- lowered perception substantially
- changed the colours, and flavour text and a few stats for Nan and Gilim
- orcs:
- improved Boldog's melee and damage by 1
- improved Orcobal's melee and damage by 1
- corrected 'Othrond' to 'Othrod'
- not sure where that mistake came from!
- gave him an extra 1 to melee to compensate him for the indignity
- cats:
- lowered cat warrior health by 2d4 (20%)
- lowered Umuiyan's health by 1d4, to put him into the progression
- moved Umuiyan from shortbow (1d7) to longbow (1d9)
- improved the archery score of cat assassins by 2
- lowered will substantially
- wolves:
- minor modifications of attack and evasion to put them into a unified pattern
- lowered the non-unique's health across the board (to 6d4, 8d4, 10d4, 12d4, 14d4)
- increased the health of Gorthaur and Carcharoth
- increased the damage of Gorthaur
- lowered the armour of wargs (from [2d4] to [1d4])
- trolls:
- increased health and melee slightly
- lowered will and perception substantially
- insects/centipedes:
- unified health to 2d4
- a decrease for centipedes and dragonflies
- an increase for hummerhorns
- these creatures gain their defence from evasion/prot rather than health
- (also worth noting: bats are 2d4 as well, birds are 1d4)
- spiders:
- increased the melee and damage of Ancient Spider attacks
- increased the melee and damage of Ungoliant's attacks
- increased the health of most late-game spiders
- increased Shelob's darkness radius and damage
- molds:
- made violet molds half as common as before
- now a quarter as common as other mold types
- humans and elves:
- reduced easterling archers' archery skill by 1
- improved easterling uniques' melee skill by 1
- increased Maeglin's melee and evasion
- serpents:
- added slightly erratic movement to all of them (25% chance)
- ancient serpents
- removed the elemental auras
- they were a bit confusing and too easy to force monsters to take damage
- now have [6d4] instead of [7d4]
- do an extra 2d4 breath damage do compensate
- dragons:
- can no longer make you forget the map
- this ability is now unique to Mewlips
- valar:
- increased Morgoth's will and perception after you knock his crown off
- due to him taking you more seriously as a threat
- and the need to challenge you!
- stone creatures no longer destroy staircases if they die on top of them
- Shadows and Hithraukar now pass under closed doors
- Shadows no longer pass through walls
- there are now no invisible wall-passing creatures!
- combat
- you now lose the stealth bonus against an enemy for the second/third attacks
if they are woken up by the first attack
- entrancement effects can no longer be 'chained'
- you cannot be entranced while already entranced
- you cannot be entranced if you haven't had a turn since last entranced
- fixed a message bug when throwing potions
- stealth
- monsters can now become less alert if they are out of sight and fail a check to spot you by more than 30
- they lose a point of alertness for every point more than 30 that they fail by
- they won't fall asleep though
- Vanish is now implemented as a +10 bonus to this check
- abilities
- Vanish: see above
- you can no longer get an Opportunist attack when knocking a monster back
- you now stop singing a song if you remove an item which was granting you that ability
- Charge has been made quite a bit weaker, and also more interesting
- it was by some distance the most overpowered ability, and should still be good
- it no longer doubles your weapon dice
- instead, your attack counts as if you have +3 Dex and +3 Str
- a bit like an opposite of rapid attack
- the ideal weapon for charging will thus be heavier than the ideal for normal attacks
- also charge no longer works if you are moving slowly (at speed 1)
- Zone of Control, Opportunist, Flanking, Controlled Retreat
- no longer work on unwary monsters or monsters during the 'truce'
- as this was almost always not what the player wanted
- a few fixes to Exchange Places
- can no longer be done unless the creature is visible (removes exploits)
- can no longer be done from within a web/pit
- now triggers traps if you end up in one
- Blocking now always works against all ranged attacks (fire breath, arrows, boulders etc)
- thanks to Angloki for the idea
- it still requires you to pass to get the bonus against melee attacks
- it is also now an alternate pre-requisite for controlled retreat
- fixed some oddities in the build up of the bonus to attack for Concentration
- i.e. it didn't work for certain free attacks you made in the opponent's turn
- now it builds the bonus by +1 if you made at least one attack since the start of your last turn
- Song of Aule now gives a bonus of Song/4 instead of Song/5
- who says we're just trying to make smithing less good?
- Crippling Shot now no longer works on critical resistant monsters
- smithing
- made forges appear a bit more regularly throughout the dungeon
- this should help a lot in avoiding games with too few forges
- increased the cost of the 'speed' attribute from 25 to 30 (at Psi's suggestion!)
- increased the cost of stat points by 20% (the base has moved from 10 to 12)
- increased the cost of damage sides by 25% (from 12 to 15)
- increased the cost of brands, slays, sharpness
- no longer get any benefits for putting penalties on items
- it seemed cool, but just lead to them being put on Gloves of Smithing an the like
- the one exception is Danger, which leads to quite a large difficulty reduction (-5)
- there is now a discount of 20% on the difficulties of robes, crowns, sceptres
- they now make good artefacts...
- you can now make all special item types including the bad ones
- the first forge is now guaranteed to be a normal forge with three charges
- to avoid the temptation to start-scum
- you are now asked to confirm spending points of smithing when making a masterpiece
- items
- fixed a bug where blowing a trumpet of blasting could *heal* you
- if your protection was higher than the earthquake damage
- staffs of self-knowledge now show attributes of your off-hand weapon (if any)
- dropped permanent lights now glow properly (at some point this stopped working)
- chest contents generation slightly simplified (more chance of jewellery now)
- removed halberds
- while undeniably cool, they are more a late medieval swiss weapon
- there are still glaives (which are mentioned in Tolkien) and Celebrist is now one
- changed the glaive stats to halfway between the old Glaive and Halberd
- renamed: 'leather gloves' to 'gloves', 'leather boots' to 'boots', 'steel greaves' to 'greaves'
- removed rings of attention/wrath
- enough wrath items already, especially with our other changes
- removed amulet of danger
- same reason, and there is a new cursed replacement amulet...
- removed rings of True Sight
- there are enough other True Sight types
- improved Mithril Helms and Mithril Greaves
- now all mithril items are better in at least one combat attribute
- not merely weight and ignoring acid
- {special} items
- adjusted the depths and rarities across the board
- added several new special item types, including cursed ones
- made some large changes to the special items types
- changed the single type slaying items (Orc Slaying etc)
- most now slay two types of monster and are named for a place
- Final Rest instead has Free Action on it
- note that 'of Gondolin' now refers to the orc/troll weapon
- since the blades from Gondolin in the books glowed when orcs were near
- the old 'of Gondolin' weapons are no more, though 'of Nargothrond' is similar
- removed (Avenger)
- though there is a new artefact shortsword with riposte
- added a sticky curse to (Vampiric)
- removed 'of Brilliance'
- these were introduced before slaying weapons glowed and it is inelegant to have both
- removed Boots of Slowness
- just too nasty
- removed Gloves of Agility
- special gloves were too similar to rings
- removed Gloves of Clumsiness
- changed Gloves of Weakness to Gloves of Treachery
- now with a nice bonus...
- changed name of Gloves of Power to Gloves of Strength
- added Gloves of Swordplay
- to compete with Gloves of Strength
- fixed a bug where some special weapons wielded from the floor wouldn't glow properly
- fixed the auto-identification of lanterns of brightness when refuelling them
- unified the True Sight types of helms and light sources
- so identifying one identifies them all
- this had slipped past me before
- artefacts
- added 21 new artefacts
- realised that quite a few of the artefact weapons were just too crazy and toned them back
- added descriptions for those artefacts which didn't have them
- set Calris aflame like all good Balrog swords should be, and made other changes to it
- we think it is really strong now and people are crazy not to be using it more...
- dungeon
- added some T-intersections in the corridors
- fixed two bugs in dungeon generation which could lead to doubled and tripled doors
- no rubble generated before 200 ft anymore
- traps
- made false floors half as common as other traps
- webs can no longer be generated in dead ends
- food
- it is now harder to get gorged (so it can't happen unless already 'full')
- the gorged effect wears off even faster
- interface
- added an onscreen main menu with all the interface commands
- it can be accessed with (m) or (Escape)
- the latter can be turned off if you find it annoying
- I intend this to be the main way to access many of these commands
- and in future versions I will remove direct access to some:
- e.g. Colours, Macros, Knowledge, Options, ...
- but not Character Sheet, Save, ...
- comment on the Angband Forum if you have concerns about this
- added back in the 'auto_more' option
- (I still wouldn't want to use it though!)
- stopped it wasting a turn when you try to pick something up and nothing is present
- also improved some interface oddities surrounding 'pick things up by default'
- stopped it wasting a turn when you decide not to make anything at a forge
- fixed bug with being warned about dropping your shield when you wouldn't have to do so
- added prompt warning you about being forced to drop your two handed weapon when wielding a shield
- the object knowledge screen now displays potion/herb/staff etc types that you have seen in previous games
- this is useful for the process of elimination...
- fixed some interface bugs for smithing:
- the name of an artefact is no longer reset when returning to the artefact submenu
- selecting menu options via their letters now works properly
- display
- the iron crown no longer shows up multiple times in the knowledge menu
- fixed some issues relating to Morgoth before and after being uncrowned
- staffs now display how many times they have been used when unidentified
- fixed a bug with the combat rolls window
- it wasn't displaying the old info correctly in many cases
- creating any object at a forge is now noted in the notes section
- including the stats and weight
- slight modification of messages for failing to tunnel
- fixed a bug where the player would identify their off-hand weapon when their main weapon struck truly
- platform specific
- linux version
- X11 now supports solid block walls and highlighted unwary/sleeping creatures
- X11 now supports the initial menu and more user friendly loading of characters
- GCU now makes the map quadrant of its virtual terms as large as possible
- thanks to bron for the patch!
- mac version
- can now easily open savefiles generated on other platforms (e.g. competition saves)
- challenge modes
- all of these were buggy!
- no artefact mode no longer generates monster-specific artefacts
- like Spear of Boldog etc
- straight down mode now works correctly
- disconnected stairs mode now works correctly
- behind the scenes
- notes are no longer temporarily stored in 'notes files'
- this should finally put an end to all the problems with these files!
- fixed some potential bugs in targetting, dungeon generation, hallucination
- thanks
- thanks go to many of the denizens of angband.oook.cz for their suggestions and bug finding
- this really does help to improve the game!
- thanks also go to our wonderful beta test team
- I have no idea how they played so many games so quickly