New modes

Added vanilla modes from PWMAngband, which were previously inaccessible in Tangaria:

• Force Descent mode (diving title)
  You start in the regular Tangaria world. This mode forces player descent – upward staircases do not work. All downward staircases, including the one in town, transport the character one level below their previous maximum depth. Recalling from the dungeon works and brings the character to town. However, recalling from town sends the character one level below their previous maximum depth. The character cannot recall from quest levels until the quest is complete, but a warning is given before descending into a quest level. Any status effects that teleport the character up or down will always choose down.
• No Recall mode (ironfoot title)
  You start in the regular Tangaria world. Word of Recall scrolls and spells do not work.

Based on these two mini-modes, we now also have two new major ‘diehard’ modes – Ironman and Brave. Both includes both Force Descent and No Recall options with additional features.

Brave mode (brave title)
You appear in Carn Dûm and can explore the Angmar dungeon without the possibility to go back upstairs. You can buy items in shops before beginning your journey and even receive additional gold at the start. After entering the dungeon, you cannot go back to the starting town; you can only go deeper. However, in Brave mode, you can find new towns every 1000 ft where you can renew your supplies and rest.

To create a Brave character, press = during character creation and change both the birth_no_recall and birth_force_descend options to yes.

Ironman mode (ironman title)
You are kidnapped from Gondolin and taken to Morgoth’s jail. Before being delivered to the jail cell, you manage to escape and find yourself in the middle of Thangorodrim with minimal supplies. You are marked with a magical curse that draws you closer to the jailers, but you can resist it for a certain amount of time. Your goal is to find your way out and seek revenge.

In this daunting place, the adventure begins beneath the ominous shadow of Thangorodrim, in the very dungeons of Morgoth. Entrapped within these ancient, foreboding walls, the ultimate quest is to navigate a path to freedom. Adventurers face a tough challenge in an (almost) endless dungeon. It’s hard to leave once you’re in, and if you fail, there’s no coming back. Each corridor and chamber, a labyrinthine weave of peril, brings the heroes closer to escape, challenging their resolve at every turn. This escape from Morgoth’s stronghold is not just a journey of skill and courage, but also a race against time. As adventurers linger on each level, the ground beneath them trembles, and inevitably, they are plunged deeper into the abyss, into even more treacherous depths, adding a relentless urgency to their quest.

• On each dungeon level, you have a time limit before being thrown down. This timer decreases every turn and decreases twice as fast when moving. It leads to strategic thinking – planning your route for dungeon exploration. When you use stairs or are thrown down, the timer resets. The deeper you go, the longer the timer you have.
• You start without gold and there are no shops, but you receive additional supplies at the start.
• Every time you heal yourself with a potion, scroll or food, it restores a minimum of 30% of your HP.
• You have a high chance not to consume Phase Door scrolls (starting at 2/3, increasing towards the endgame).

To create an Ironman character, press = during character creation and change the ‘birth_ironman‘ option to yes.

Both Ironman and Brave modes have the following features:

• Ironman and Brave heroes cannot leave their locations, and players from regular Tangaria world cannot enter (to prevent cheating).
• Word of Recall scrolls function like Teleportation scrolls.
• Dungeons spawn only stairs leading down (no upstairs).
• Players restore plenty of satiation when drinking from fountains.
• Golem race can restore satiation by digging tunnels (more effective in the regular world).
• You can drop cursed items on the ground, not only on daylight surfaces (after a few attempts).
• You get additional Account points from playing Ironman or Brave modes.

As you may understand, playing in Ironman and Brave modes requires totally different playstyles. To play effectively as a Brave hero, you should explore each level thoroughly and take your time to gather gear in town. In contrast, Ironman is a fast-paced mode where you have to plan your journey with limited time and make decisions on where to spend your resources, the most valuable of which is time. Ironman mode might be interesting to players who are a bit tired of intensive item management and spending a lot of time in shops to find suitable items, as it swaps these for additional bonuses like more effective healing.

Hardcore mode (hardcore title)
In this mode, it is possible to play in the old ways, without Second Chance and extra low-HP heal. If you play a hardcore character, for every 10 levels up to 50, you will receive an extra account point.

To create hardcore character – on character creation press = and change birth_hardcore option to yes. This mode can be applied on top of all other modes.

Fruit bat (batty title)
Play as a fruit bat – this turns you into a fruit bat at birth, giving you up to +15 speed (gradually, starting with +2 speed at level 1 and +15 at level 50) at the cost of 40% of your maximum HPs. Also, now you can “run” as a batty without staggering. This mode can also be applied on top of all other modes.

Information about these modes can be found in the modes guide.

Other gameplay changes

• character wipe was performed to implement new modes. Your account points are preserved
• prevent generating too big lake on small lvls
• removed Stomach Water potion and Ancient Lore druid’s spell
• prevent destroying doors on surface
• Wight-King and Sauron buffed, Ulfang nerfed
• added possibility to add cooldown for racial abilities; for now it’s implemented for Pixie’s invisibility
• account score now gives more storage space for new players and nominal starting gold boni
• unsummon minions fix (it was possible after teleport to kill unaware mobs by minions)
• changed bad stuff which can happen when you drink from fountain
• reduced chance to stagger while polymorphed into fruit bat

Technical stuff

• fixed bug which prevented saving characters to ladder (sorry folks, during 1 month we didn’t saved anything there)
• don’t generate lake on stairscases (lake generated after stairs now)
• fix crush: teleport before finishing processing (new lvl should be generated not out of sequence)
• added animation for Boyan the Volkhv, Alchemy store, Stairs to newbie dungeon, House door with torch, Fireplace
• ref ladder path_build()
• do_slashfx_ascii()
• removed unused variables (ox, oy), comments opt ‘animation.prf’
• weather – check background tile
• shimmering fire slash fx ascii
• removed weather tester
• slash fx ASCII mode – timer 100ms
• build_lake() returns lake_size
• slashfx_move()
• fix disable music playback
• format color for msgt
• fixed excessive ambient sounds on entering dlvl 1
• added sound for getting into ironman mode
• allow dm `fly` upward in ironman
• code refactoring

PWMAngband

• Implement MORE_TOWNS as a dungeon flag
• Fix bug in stair generation
• Don’t restrict use of stairs for Dungeon Master
• Highlight players ‘@’ on mini map
• Make “highlight players on minimap” an option and prevent showing hostiles
• Add a clause to digging to mention weapon/digger
• Check unshifted shape rather than current shape when testing for Banish
• Replace s***de with retire
• Properly show level coordinates on tombstone/retirement screen if negative
• SDL2 client update
• Generalize handling of ^
• When appending spells to monster lore, set ref_race for expressions
• Don’t suppress vulnerabilities in artifact creation
• For instant artifact kinds, inherit the flags and element info of the tval
• Remove keys-gcu.prf
• Fix sounds amb_bell_metal
• Windows client SDL_mixer – Windows client now uses SDL sound (so excessive ‘.mp3’ files are removed)
• SDL2 client: be smarter about the minimum window size
• SDL: avoid discarded const warning