#4248
When a python is resurrected, it gets a special message “The python stops pining for the fjords” as a Monty Python reference.
When a python is resurrected, it gets a special message “The python stops pining for the fjords” as a Monty Python reference.
You can attune pets to the Lyre of Orpheus (possibly only if you are a bard and it’s your own quest artifact). Attuned pets that die near the harp leave no corpse (so they can’t be resurrected twice via undead turning), but can be resurrected later by invoking it. This replaces its current invoke power.
For a more balanced implementation (so you can’t let multiple pets die over thousands of turns and then invoke it to get an instant army), it will only resurrect one pet, possibly allowing the player to pick which.
For a simpler implementation, only the last attuned pet to have died near the Lyre gets resurrected.
Zombies get weaker every time they revive, and possibly eventually get to a point where they just stop reviving.
Add a system for casting ritual spells: more powerful and more expensive spells which have some esoteric effects you can’t get otherwise. The main differences between ritual and normal spellcasting are that they consume valuable, hopefully non-renewable components, take a number of turns to cast instead of taking effect instantly, and may require you to be in or set up certain circumstances.
Various ritual spells that have been proposed:
Ritual spells come in spellbooks like usual, but aren’t stored in your spell list. Instead, reading the spellbook prompts you if you want to begin its ritual and tells you the necessary ingredients and circumstances you need to satisfy as preconditions. If you meet all the conditions and answer yes, you initiate the ritual. (For simplicity, this should probably burn up / expend all the components instantly.) You cannot begin a ritual while in the process of casting another ritual; this should probably be implemented as a precondition.
Apart from the component cost, rituals act as a constant drain on your Pw until the ritual is complete. If something distracts you in the middle of the ritual, you can go take care of it and then resume the ritual as long as you have the Pw left to finish it. (You could also drink gain energy during the ritual.) The only way for a ritual to fail, possibly backfiring with bad effects, is for you to run out of Pw while it is incomplete.
In addition to its preconditions, each ritual also has some postconditions: common to all rituals is that you have been casting the ritual for at least some length of time, but there may be others, such as standing on the square where you began the ritual, or have another item, or kill a monster, or something. There may also be other conditions such as “moving off the space where the ritual started breaks and halts the ritual”.
Every time you stop casting a ritual (whether it succeeded or failed), it increments the spellbook’s spestudied field; the book will eventually disintegrate after casting it a certain number of times.
When an item-using monster rises from the dead, it automatically picks up any useful items on its square.
Corpses dropped by zombies are always or often cursed. Removing the curse from them makes them less likely to revive. This could even be made as strict as every time a zombie drops a corpse and a revival timer is actually set on it (as opposed to a rotting-away timer), it is made cursed.
A new magical candle object. Zombie corpses within its light radius will not revive.
There is some interaction you can do at an altar when you bring a zombie corpse there (not sacrificing it, since it will be too old) that sets the soul of the creature free, which will stop it from reviving.
Corpse traps, which act like statue traps but instead revive a corpse that is on that square when the player steps onto it or otherwise interacts with the corpse.
When an undead turning beam is zapped over the corpse of an undead monster that’s set to revive, the corpse is either destroyed outright or the revive timer is canceled so it won’t revive. (In this second scenario, zapping the corpse again with no revive timer set on it could resurrect it like normal.)
Remove covetous warping entirely. However, a change like this would need to take into account that it makes the vast majority of boss fights a lot easier and more boring in that they would tend to consist just of the hero and boss standing next to each other hitting each other until the boss dies, so it would need to come with some improvements to boss fights, such as more interesting tactical AI where they will disengage momentarily and multiple forms (i.e. you “kill” it and then it becomes stronger before finally being defeated).
Add the turn a pet was created into the edog struct, so the game can measure how long and loyal of a relationship you have with it. Pets that stay tame for a long time get some combat buffs such as a damage boost or more hit points. They are also more likely to come back tame if killed and resurrected.
Note that if a pet is momentarily untamed and then retamed, it resets the “turn it became a pet” counter.
Whenever a zombie steps over a zombie corpse, it revives.
Cancelled trolls won’t rise from the dead.
A troll killed by fiery or acidic means (including Fire Brand) cannot revive.
Buff zombies, to make them more of a threat. Import FIQHack zombification (a zombie bite will place you 90-100 turns away from turning into a zombie, each additional bite decreases the timer by around 10 turns, but it will go away by itself if the timer doesn’t dip below 40); boost their difficulty, but keep their HD low; allow them to revive themselves less frequently than trolls, but also revive themselves whenever another zombie steps over their corpse.
In variants with reviving undead, you can apply a weapon downwards at a dead zombie’s corpse to destroy it so that it can’t revive. This may take several turns.
Allow taming of player monsters in bones with one prerequisite: you must tame its ghost, draw the ghost over the corpse, and then revive the corpse. To facilitate this, killing a player monster should always generate a ghost over the corpse, possibly with a gravestone and 80% of inventory being cursed.
Buff late-game undead, because undead’s significance in Gehennom tends to be pointless since they aren’t scary by the time the adventurer gets there.
Add a high level monster spell “raise dead”, which resurrects nearby corpses as hostile monsters.