Angband Releases: 4.1.0

Downloads

Background

The plan for 4.1.0 was to reform some areas of the game which desperately needed it. The new changes were discussed in detail as they were implemented, and playtested extensively, so that by the time of release there was a reasonable consensus that the game was moving in the right direction. Version 4.1.0 was released on Sunday the 25th of June 2017.

Summary of Changes

Traps

The general philosophy is that all players will hit traps at some time
Magical trap detection has been removed, except as a spell for mages
Active searching has been removed
Characters have one chance to detect a trap, on seeing the grid it is on; this chance is dependent on searching skill
Traps are either physical or magical, and there is a corresponding split in the player disarming skill
Many new traps have been introduced, and old ones amended
Traps are placed almost exclusively at corridor intersections or other chokepoints
Trap density in vaults is reduced by 75%

Identify

ID is now "rune-based"; once an object properry is recognised once, it will always be recognised on all future items
The only forms of magical identify are scrolls and the mage spell, both of which identify a single unknown rune
All scrolls, potions, mushrooms are identified on their first use
Most wands, staffs and rods are identified on first use, the main exceptions being when they affect monsters and are tested in the absence of monsters
Ego item names become known once all the relevant runes are known

Player knowledge

Changes to previously known terrain outside the player's field of view (doors opening, etc) are no longer immediately known by the player
Secret doors are now always found on stepping adjacent (or at a distance by the mage spell)

Dungeon generation

A new generation algorithm has been introduced, and appears roughly as often as the classical generation algorithm
There are many new vaults in the new algorithm, and also new room types - huge rooms, rooms of chambers, and interesting rooms (like small vaults)
There is also an infrequently occurring generation type, the "moria level", which features large rough-edged rooms and many orcs, trolls and ogres
Lava has changed from being a visual curiosity in town in 4.0.x to being generated in the dungeon; it will burn those without fire immunity
Another new type of terrain has been introduced: passable rubble, which behaves like regular rubble except it can be walked through

Monsters

Monster breaths are now cone-shaped starting at the monster, instead of being indistinguishable from ball spells
Monster pathfinding has been improved (mostly), with monsters tracking explicitly by sight, sound or scent
The relationship between player stealth and monsters waking has changed

Random artifacts

Lights, rings and amulets are now fully randomised instead of based closely on the standard special artifacts
The artifact set generation algorithm has been changed so that random artifacts no longer correspond to individual standard artifacts, but rather are generated so as to get a statistically similar distribution
Calculation of object power has been simplified
Generating a set of random artifacts now actually writes a data file like artifact.txt, which can be used for future games

Curses

Sticky curses have been removed completely
A large number of new curses have been introduced
Items can have multiple curses
Curse removal targets individual known curses on items
Failed curse removal causes an item to become fragile
Fragile items have a chance to be destroyed on future failed curse removals

Status effects

Monster status effects have been redone to rebalance reliability and effectiveness, so that they may actually be interesting to use
New types of status-inducing spells and magic devices have been included

Other

Much more detail has been moved out to text files in lib/gamedata
Many underlying code improvements