Angband Changelog

What's new in Angband 4.2.0

• Summary of Changes:
• Classes:
• Two new realms of magic have been added, nature and shadow, to the existing divine and arcane realms.
• Nature realm relies on harnessing the power of the earth, and is opposite to the arcane realm, which uses craft and cunning.
• Divine realm uses harmony and light, and is opposite to the shadow realm which aligns with darkness, power and sacrifice.
• Rangers now use nature magic, like the new Druid class
• Necromancers are the major shadow caster class
• Blackguards are fighters enhanced by shadow magic
• Pure casters (mages, priests, druids, necromancers) use five books (down from nine)
• Hybrid casters (rogues, paladins, rangers, blackguards) use two or three books
• Classes no longer have different rates of gaining experience
• Monsters:
• Each base monster type has had its game niche reconsidered, and there has been a general push to use Tolkien-inspired monsters where appropriate. Some of the major changes include:
• Ainur - most of these now align with one of the great Valar, and have corresponding powers
• Dragons - these have mostly been made stronger and deeper
• Humanoids - dark elves have been replaced with dwarves, gnomes with Drúedain
• Hydras - each hydra type is like the previous type with a new head and attack added
• People - the association of some of these with player classes has been expanded to include the new classes
• Snakes - some of these are now dangerous
• Spiders - more dangerous and deeper, with unique abilities
• Trees/Ents - these are new, tough to kill enemies
• Wights/Wraiths - wights are all now shallower than wraiths, and the Ringwraiths are much deeper
• Game Mechanics:
• In the course of the class and monster changes, many new mechanics have been introduced, with some of the major ones being:
• Player and monster shapechanges
• Variable light and darkness are created by monsters, player gear and player spells, and the player has a meter to measure the light level on their square
• Mages can drain mana from magic devices
• Rogues can steal from monsters
• Temporary brands and slays (Priests, Paladins, Blackguards)
• Necromancers can see in the dark, and can cast less well in light
• Healing of hitpoints every turn for a time (Druids)
• Control of a monster, including making it attack other monsters (Necromancers)
• Shield bashes (Warriors, Paladins, Blackguards)
• Decoys which monsters will attack instead of the player (Rangers)
• Blackguards can go into a state of bloodlust which improves their combat at a price
• Monsters can whip or spit on the player from nearby
• Monster groups act more as a group, with leaders and sometimes bodyguards
• Innate spells (e.g. breaths) and cast spells (e.g. bolts) have separate frequencies
• Deeper in the dungeon shallow monsters are less likely to appear
• Monsters can teleport to the player
• Spiders can weave webs
• Monsters can have innate darkness around them
• Traps added that trigger on leaving their square
• Ringwraiths can inflict the Black Breath
• Monster spells can have different levels depending on monster spell power
• The player now has a hunger meter, and food is more important
• As with classes, all races gain experience at the same rate, except for humans who are faster, and high-elves who are slower
• The Temple has been replaced with a Bookseller who sells books of all realms
• Code Improvements:
• There have also been some improvements to the codebase, both visible and invisible to the player. The main ones are:
• Addition of an SDL2 front end
• Change to mostly using a single grid rather than x and y coordinates in much of the code
• More readability of datafiles
• Some font improvements
• Some new tiles
• A new online (rather than in-game) help system
• A new experimental (and so far unbalanced) birth option for percentage damage
• An option to start a new game after dying instead of closing the game and re-opening
• Many fixes to bugs and memory leaks