changelog-ca.md

v1.6

• Removed temple.

  • Makes choosing from a spawned altar much more significant.
  • There are no guarantees that a guardian will ever spawn in a game, so holding out too long for one can be a bad decision.

• Added rune curses

  • Fiery rune (for cerebov): occasionally your fire resistance is ignored.
  • Magical rune (for lom lobon): occasionally your spells fizzle.
  • Dark rune (for gloorx vloq): see invisible takes a few turns to kick in.
  • Iron rune (for Dis): armour becomes less effective.
  • Obisidian rune (for Gehenna): fire damage against enemies is reduced.

• Added species specific stamina aptitudes, alongside health and magic aptitudes that already existed.

• Yred's animate undead and remains ability are converted to passive abilities. When monsters are killed and leave a corpse, they occasionally come back to life as an undead servant with a temporary lifespan.

• Demonspawn mutations are spread over 40 levels now instead of 27. They are also given more to compensate.

• Brilliance potion also boost magic resistance, to give it some value for fighters.

• Stop portal timers when you are not on the same floor.

• Abyss is now 7 floors

• Zot no longer requires any runes to get in. You can beat the game with 0 runes.

• Branches rearranged a bit:

  • Dungeon:7
    • Temple
  • Lair:7
    • Snake
    • Swamp
    • Shoals
  • Orc:7
    • Spider
    • Elf
    • Dwarf
  • Forest:7
    • Crypt
    • Slime
    • Vaults
  • Depths:7
    • Hells
    • Pan
    • Abyss
    • Zig
    • Tomb
  • Zot:7

v1.5.6

• Vine Stalker nerf

  • Took health regen mutation from 3 to 1, so they regen health more slowly than a cave troll.

• Changing weapons no longer takes any time.

• Made carnivore and herbivore mutations more meaningful.

  • Carnivore increases stamina gained from stamina potions, but reduces magic from magic potions.
  • Herbivore does the opposite.

• Limit the number of uniques that can be generated on one floor

  • Easy / Standard mode can only have 1 unique per floor.
  • Challenge can have 2.
  • Nightmare doesn't have a limit.

• Added quick casting mutation

  • Increases spellcasting speed.

• Added amulet of quick casting

  • Doubles casting speed.

• Implemented more rune curses:

  • You can see the list of curses in effect with the ["] key.
  • glowing rune: experience gains are cut in half.
  • demonic rune: shop prices are multiplied by 3.
  • elven rune: monster spellpower increased by 33%.
  • slimy rune: you no longer can lose mutations by getting mutated, even if heavily mutated. Cure mutation potions fail 1/3 of the time.
  • abyssal rune: 50% more monsters spawn. Bands are 33% bigger too.
  • gossamer rune: bad effects last 33% longer.
  • serpentine rune: magic and stamina costs are 33% higher.
  • decaying rune: higher chance of rotting when you over exert yourself.
  • barnacled rune: monsters have 33% more energy.
  • dwarven rune: enemy ac is 33% more effective.
  • creeping rune: when monsters are killed, they occasionally come back to haunt the player. Only if they drop a corpse though, so strategies that reduce the number of corpses will also reduce this effect.
  • silver rune: less items are spawned, but monsters are more likely to be equipped with better items.
  • golden rune: slower normal movement speed, quick mode is unaffected.

• Some rune branches will require one or more runes before you can get in.

  • Randomly chosen at beginnng of game.

v1.5.4

• Shield equipping / removal takes 0.5 turn instead of 5, like weapon swaps.

• Crosstraining removed

  • Now that the fighting skill takes care of a lot of "crosstraining" concepts, there is no need for another crosstraining path. This helps to make the weapon skill investment choice more meaningful. Humans can still crosstrain.

• Spell school effects are no longer based on an average of spell skills, but instead on the maximum.

  • This decouples spell difficulty from school accessibility.
    • If we want a spell to be harder to train, we just move it up a level.
    • If we want a spell to be usable to more spell schools, we add a school to it, which can be done without making it twice as hard to train.
  • This makes spellcasting a little more like fighting, where you can easily get away with training one weapon skill, and if you want a little more flexibility you can train another, instead of forcing a player to train multiple skills just to utilize one "weapon".
  • Now a spell having more than one school makes it easier = more accessible to mages of different backgrounds.
  • High powered spells should be more specialized, so just training one school doesn't allow easy access to all highest level spells.
  • Mid level spells should have the highest diversity, so a conjurer, for example, can have easy access to a wide selection of powerful mid level spells.
  • Low level spells should also be specialized, giving specialists something to work with early on.
  • Added more schools to more spells to take advantage of this new mechanic.
  • Made all spellcasting a little bit harder to compensate.
  • Added Light and Darkness spell schools to better fit a variety of spells.

• Guardian Spirit changes

  • Renamed to Magic Shield.
  • Stamina Shield added also, both mutation and amulet.
  • Three levels instead of one, and it can be seen in the [%] resistance screen.
  • Amulet gives 1 level of the ability.
  • Level 1 gives 25% damage shaving, 2 gives 50%, 3 gives 75%, and the value is randomized.
  • Based on the MP / SP you currently have, instead of max, so it protects you better and consumes more MP / SP when you are full, and when you are low, the shield does very little (making it less likely to force you into tired mode).
  • You can stack them, for example if you have a vine stalker which has spirit shield 2, with a stamina shield amulet. But the amount shaved for the amulet is only a percentage of the damage that remains. So a 50% + 50% savings doesn't give 100% savings, it gives 75% (50% of the remaining 50% damage).

• Yred changes

  • His animated undead timeout after a while, but will follow the player between floors.

• Exhaustion separated from "tired" mode

  • Exhaustion works as it did in vanilla, preventing you from executing an exhausting action again until it's gone.
  • When you drop below 5 sp or mp, you are tired.
  • In tired mode, your basic attributes are a little worse than normal mode.
  • You are no longer tired once you have at least 5 mp and 5 sp.
  • There is a chance to rot player hp based on amount of sp or mp spent while exhausted.
  • It should be easy enough to manage SP / MP to avoid being tired.
    • If you are having a very hard time not playing in "tired" mode, tell me, that means something is out of balance.
  • Tired mode won't apply if you have exertion modes disabled (if you have exertion_disabled=true in your rc file).

• Minions will not follow you down stairs if you [t]ell them to [w]ait. Then telling them to [f]ollow will enable them to follow you down the stairs again.

• Vampire changes

  • Blood potions spawn when corpses are dropped for vampires.
  • Vampires rot instead of mutating if their hunger is below Full.
  • They don't become less hungry when attacking anymore, forcing occasional uses of blood potions.

• Enchantments can pass through friendlies now.

  • Particularly, pain can go through undead minions to hit your foes.

• Mummies gain stamina and magic regen at XL 1, 6, and 12. Since they can't use potions, and they don't have the main benefit that they get in vanilla crawl to compensate, this will somewhat make up for it.

• Added a strategies.md file to explain basic strategies to help people unfamiliar with the many different rules that apply to this fork. It's highly recommended that you read this file and keep up with changes that are made to it, even if you have been playing on this fork for a while, since things change so quickly here.

• Macros always save when the game is saved. No more extra prompts at random times when trying to save.

• Undead minions will reduce max mp and follow player down stairs like summons. But if you descend the stairs and hostiles are present, then the undead will collapse back into corpses which may be reanimated later.

• Can't gain experience in abyss anymore. You can still gain piety, lose drain, etc, though.

• Added "light" weapon brand, making weapons weigh half as much, allowing them to be swung for half of the SP cost.

• Moving around in focus mode no longer consumes stamina.

• Moving around in heavy armour with a large shield increases stamina costs.

  • Only in quick mode, when flying, or in focus mode while sneaking.
  • Examples:
    • With no heavy armour or shield penalties, you use 2 SP per movement in quick mode.
    • With crystal plate armour and a large shield, 8 str, 0 armour skill, 0 shield skill, you use 10 SP per move.
    • With chain mail, shield, 20 str, 10 armour skill, 10 shield skill, you use 8 SP per move.
    • With chain mail, 10 str, 0 armour, you use 6 SP per move.
    • With chain mail, 20 str, 20 armour, you use 4 SP per move.
    • With ring mail, 20 str, 10 armour, you use 2 SP per move.

• Min attack speed for all weapons achieved when dex + fighting = 60. Removed squaring function, so you get further faster.

  • At dex + fighting = 30, you'd be halfway to min delay.

• Min spellcasting speed is achieved when dex + spellcasting = 60.

• In labyrinth, if you are a minotaur, map rot doesn't happen (the map doesn't fade away).

• To Hit Chance and Be Hit Chance now displayed in right stats panel

  • To Hit Chance shows how likely it was for the player to hit the last monster it attempted to hit.
  • Be Hit Chance shows how likely it was for the player to be hit from the last monster who hit the player.

• Fighting and Spellcasting factors changed. See cheatsheet under "Fighting" and "Spellcasting" for details.

v1.5.2

• Simplified spell power calculations

  • Like spell failure, spell power now has equalized factors.
  • Adding a point to intelligence will have the same impact on spell power as raising the average spell school level by 1 point, under all circumstances.

• Simplified orb run

  • Once you enter Zot, you can't leave without the orb.
  • Once you leave Zot with the orb, the game is over. You won!
  • Zot is 7 floors now.
  • Depths is 7 floors now.

• Simplified spell failure

  • Now all failure factors (dex, spellcasting, spell schools) have equal effect on spell failure.
    • So adding one point in dex always has exactly the same effect as adding one point in spellcasting or one point in average spell schools (which if there are two schools for the spell, technically requires 2 points to have the same effect as one point of dex).
  • Many spell failure rates are different now than might be expected. Don't think it's a bad thing just because they are different. Instead, try out the difference and see how it works. If it creates a specific case that limits player options more than it produces, then tell me and we'll tweak it.

• When summoning more than one monster with a single spell cast, all summons after the first only cost 1/3 as much.

• You can now disable exertion modes

  • Put this in your rc file: exertion_disabled = true
  • Quick mode is still available, but focus and power modes won't be if you have this option set.

• Switching between exertion or quick modes costs 0 turns.

• Retreat simplification (instant rest)

  • Instead of making it optimal for a player to retreat and recharge after every monster killed, the player is instantly fully recharged as soon as they have killed all nearby monsters.
  • If the player kills the last known monster, and there is another just beyond the edge of LOS, it is brought to edge of LOS instead of player instant-resting.
  • If instarest doesn't happen, that means there is an invisible monster nearby or you have seen a monster, but haven't actually killed it, and it has moved out of LOS. In this case you'll have to rest the old-fashioned way.

• Rune curse effects are now shown in rune list (show with '{').

• Players can unsummon individual summoned friendlies by using the 'x' command, selecting the monster, and then pressing 'q'.

• Players can fire missiles through friendly summons, but when they do, their spell failure is checked for the spell that summoned the creature. If it fails, the creature is unsummoned.

  • Friendly fire does not work through other friendlies, such as animated dead and simulacrum.

• Set hp rot caps based on difficulty.

  • Easy mode can't rot to less than 80% of hp.
  • Standard: 60%
  • Challenge: 40%
  • Nightmare: 20%

• Spells may be cast even when mp is empty.

  • Except for spells which reduce max mp instead of consuming mp (like transmutations and summons).

• Focus mode now increases ac, sh, and ev slightly

  • By paying closer attention to incoming attacks, a player can optimize their armour (making sure the enemy hits the more fortified places) or increase their chance of dodging the attacks.

• Power mode now doubles cost of action, whether it is MP or SP (before it only had an SP cost)

• Focus mode now doubles cost of action, whether it is MP or SP (before it only had an MP cost)

  • This means that spellcasters in power mode no longer consume SP when casting a spell, but instead must pay double the spell cost.

• Monster HD slightly adjusted based on difficulty level

  • Easy: -1
  • Standard: 0 (unchanged)
  • Challenge: +1
  • Nightmare: +2

v1.5.1

• Exertion mode cost is based on action cost instead of a flat cost.

  • For example, if an attack costs 8 SP in normal exertion mode, and the player is in power mode, it will instead cost 16 SP (+100%). If they are in focus mode, it would cost 8 SP + 8 MP.
  • If a player casts a spell costing 10 MP in normal mode, if they were in power mode it would cost 10 MP + 10 SP. In focus mode, it would cost 20 MP.

• Maces have higher base damage, because they have the highest weight of all weapons, and cost the most stamina to use.

• Drinking an experience potion no longer pull up a menu to choose skills. So allocate your training before you drink it.

• Inner Flame is smite targetted now.

• Elyvilon improvements

  • Healing targeting shows pacification chance when a monster is selected.
  • Lesser and Greater healing may be applied to player or monster.
    • When applied to monster, the ability will cost hp from the player.
    • When applied to player, the ability costs piety.

• Each spell costs a minimum of 5 mp, and it's easier to reduce the mp cost than before.

• You can only have a maximum of 5 summons total between all spells.

• Spirit shield

  • Since players have much more magic now, to keep spirit shield from being too powerful, it behaves as if you have half as much max mp. So if you have 50 max hp, and 100 max mp, half of your damage would come from hp, and half would come from mp (since it acts as if you had 50 mp).

• Unlimited ammo

  • If you fire a ranged weapon without ammo, the unbranded ammo fires.
  • Unbranded ammo no longer spawns.
  • Branded ammo still spawn in higher quantities than before, but always mulches.
  • You can switch to unbranded ammo by hitting the quiver command 'Q', and then '-', just like weilding nothing.

• One shot kill protection

  • Player isn't allowed to receive more than some percentage of damage between times when the player can act.
    • This means, even if paralyzed, there is a limit to how much damage can be done before the player gets a chance to do something about it.
  • Nightmare mode: 80% damage per turn max. This means that they are guaranteed to have 1 turn to respond to any threat if they are at full health.
  • Challenge mode: 40% damage per turn max. Guarantees 2 turns.
  • Standard mode: 20% damage per turn max. Guarantees 3 turns.
  • Example: in nightmare mode, a player has full health and comes across a pack of death yaks and a basilisk. The player has 50 health. The player tries to attack the basilisk, but fails to kill it. The basilisk paralyzes the player. The death yaks get a few free rounds of damage to the player while they are paralyzed, causing 100 damage. Normally the player would be dead at this point, but since 100 damage is more than 80% of 50, only the 80% damage is allowed (40 points of damage) that round. Then the player gets a chance to read a blink scroll and maybe escape.
  • This isn't going to make up for chronically bad habits, but it will reduces the chances of players who are playing well from dying because of a freak RNG roll.
  • This may be disabled with: disable_instakill_protection = true

• Labyrinth allows auto-explore

  • It's not super reliable, but I find that is removes some tedium without making it totally trivial.

• Increased Fighting and/or Spellcasting skills for all starting jobs that use them by 1, to make it a little easier for characters to get off the ground with the recent changes.

• Orc branch has been doubled in size, to 8 floors

  • The "boss" level is still on floor 4.
  • Floors 5-8 don't give experience for kills, although they will restore drain and charge evocables.

• Turned off monster spawning.

  • Increased initial floor population by 20% to compensate.
  • Monsters still spawn in Abyss and during orb run.

• Deactivated ghosts.

  • I have a better solution, but for now this will help.

• Magic potions restore 40, 30, 20 points depending on difficulty mode.

• Stamina potions restore 40, 30, 20 points depending on difficulty mode.

• Spell factors:

  • Spell failure: dexterity, spellcasting, spell schools
  • Spell power: intelligence, spell schools
  • Spell cost: intelligence, spellcasting

• Removed all food, and created stamina potions. You can now sacrifice stamina potions to evoke fedhas' abilities.

• Quick mode doesn't use stamina if monsters aren't around.

v1.5

• Stamina overhaul

  • Extremely brief summary: you won't be able to swing around a broad axe as a spriggan with 5 str just as well as an ogre with 25 str any more. Trying to swing that broad axe as a spriggan will exhaust the player almost immediately, whereas and ogre with some minimal fighting skill (say 3) can use it quite a few times before getting tired. But even for an ogre, throwing a large rock is going to be expensive stamina-wise.
  • Normal mode fighting actions cost stamina points (SP).
  • SP cost of attack is based on fighting skill, strength, weapon weight.
    • Heavier weapons will cost more stamina to swing than lighter ones.
  • Spells only cost magic points (MP), no more spell hunger.
  • MP cost is based on spellcasting, intelligence, spell level.
  • You can see how much spells cost in the 'S' spell list.
  • Fixed size MP pool like SP pool. Does not go up with experience level (XL).
  • Power and Focus mode doubles the SP or MP costs of an action.
    • In addition to increasing damage by 33%, power mode now increases attack speed by the same.
  • Careful mode renamed to focus mode.
  • Escape mode was removed and in it's place a separate quick / normal mode
    • This can operate independently of exertion mode, i.e. you can have Quick mode + Focus or Quick + Power mode.
    • Quick mode has the benefits of the old escape mode, which are faster movement speed. But there is also an additional stamina cost. Stealth is also dramatically reduced.
    • Normal mode doesn't have those benefits, but it doesn't have the additional stamina cost.
    • Quick mode no longer gives an evasion boost, only a speed boost.
    • Quick mode no longer has a stealth penalty.
    • Quick mode no longer has a movement penalty when changing directions.
  • If you run out of stamina in power mode, and it switches you back to normal mode, once you've recovered 50% of your SP, the game will automatically switch you back to power mode. Same applies to Focus mode.
  • Switching any modes costs 0 turns.

• Summary of exertion modes: (existing info merged with changes from this update)

  • Normal mode
    • Melee and ranged attacks require SP based on weapon weight, player strength, and fighting skill.
      • Weapon skill does not affect SP cost.
    • Spell casting costs MP based on spell level, player intelligence, and spellcasting skill.
      • Spell school skills do not affect MP cost.
    • Damage, accuracy, stealth, spellpower, spell success, and attack speed are reduced from vanilla crawl levels, based on difficulty mode being played.
  • Power mode (same as normal mode except for the following)
    • +33% damage
    • +33% spellpower increase
    • +15% attack speed
    • -3 SP per attack or spell cast
  • Focus mode (same as normal mode except for the following)
    • +33% attack accuracy
    • +33% stealth
    • -15% spell failure chance or 1/2 failure chance, whichever is worse
    • -5 MP per movement or attack or spell cast

• Summary of Quick mode: (this can be on or off independently of the player's exertion mode)

  • Slow mode (normal state)
    • Movement delay is 1.1 for all species + slowing down effects, mutations, etc.
      • So a naga still is 1.3 speed because of the slow mutation they possess
  • Quick mode
    • Movement delay is based on species, artifact properties, mutations, spells in effect (haste, swiftness)
      • Standard species movement delay in quick mode is 0.9
    • -5 SP per movement
    • SP does not regenerate

• Keyboard changes

  • instead of 's' to open spell list, now you press 'S'
  • 'g' will switch to quick speed mode (go)
  • 's' will switch to normal speed mode (slow)
  • other stamina keys that are the same as the previous version:
    • 'e' turns on power mode. (exert)
    • 'c' changes back to normal mode. (cancel)
    • 'E' turns on focus mode. (E...xamine?)

• Spell failure

  • Spell failure is reduced by dexterity, as well as spellcasting and spell schools.
  • Significant simplification of failure calculations.
  • All spells are between 1 and 99% failure.
  • It's easier to get a level 9 spell down to 80% failure rate than in vanilla.
  • It's harder to get a level 9 spell down to 20% failure rate than in vanilla.

• New branch layout

  • Dungeon (15 floors)
    • Orcish Mines (7) (only 4 floors provide XP, 4th floor is boss level)
    • Lair (7)
      • Swamp (4)
      • Shoals (4)
      • Spider (4)
      • Snake (4)
    • Forest (7)
      • Crypt (4)
      • Slime (4)
      • Elven Halls (4)
      • Dwarven Fortress (4)
    • Vaults (4)
    • Depths (5)
      • Zig (27)
      • Abyss (4)
      • Vestibule
        • Dis (7)
        • Gehenna (7)
        • Cocytus (7)
        • Tartarus (7)
      • Pandemonium (~25)
      • Zot (4)