Powder Release 105: specific skill requests open

The newest release for Powder is finally out, and like the previous versions this release is packed with a lot of updates. Some of these updates include the option to using 32×32 tileset for higher Powder resolution. The complete changelog in the full article.

Download: Powder Release 105 for the DS
Download: Powder Release 105 for the PSP

Jeff Lait is back with another release of the seemingly never-ending roguelike Powder, and like the previous versions this update is packed with a plethora of updates. Release 105 comes with new weapons (lightning rapier and ice mace), as well as an option to use a 32×32 tile set that will enable players to run Powder with a considerably higher resolution.

Here’s the usual lengthy changelog (grab your sandwich now):

• [All but GBA]: When you load a game, the fact you have loaded it is immediately saved. This means you can no longer power down before you die to avoid save scumming. (Eilu, Zach Firth)
• Familiars always leave corpses to facilitate their resurrection.
• Petrified creatures count to your kill total
• You are only punished for the death of a familiar when the death becomes irrevocable.
• The party guilty for creating traps, lava, etc, is now tracked so proper responsibility can be assigned. (Andrew Poandl)
• Dodge Skill’s “foes” properly ‘ified. (David Damerell)
• Extra flavour text from Eilu.
• Ricochet skill for arrows. (Furrot)
• You can climb trees. (Adam Boyd)
• When a bitmap has to many colours, it now fails more gracefully. (Ibson the Grey)
• An embarassing mistake in combat calcs has been fixed. It is now the attacker’s skill, not the defender’s, used to roll attack bonus. This will mean weapon skills are more necessary and make monsters more threatening since they always default to 2 stars.
• Jumping out of a pit only moves you one square. (Irashtar)
• Incorrect there in helm of draining description (Mark Rushakoff)
• Adjusted some monster sizes to better reflect how I envision them. Hopefully this doesn’t affect food nutrition balance too much. (David Damerell)
• When you die your options are saved even if you don’t make the high score table. (Zappa Penguin)
• Knock no longer closes the door if an item or creature blocks it.
• Knock cast on doors with creatures on them will knock them back and damage them slightly. (Lim-Dul)
• Light radius for creatures on fire increased to 2 from 1 to make it a bit less subtle. (R. Dan Henry)
• [Start] and [Select] can be used to enter and shift respectively on the on-screen keyboard. (Zappa Penguin)
• You can eat water elementals, but be warned there might still be some life in them. (Eilu)
• Polying into or polying back into gargantuan forms will crush any walls that would entrap you. (Korgoth)
• Flaming swords slightly nerfed to 1d3 fire damage to prevent them from being such an obvious weapon choice.
• New item: lightning rapier. (Terje)
• New item: ice mace.
• Imps summoned by demons that you summon will no longer attack you provided the demon still lives.
• Monsters should now open doors if they are smart enough. (Derek Ray)
• New monster: Kobold Thief.
• You can now wish to learn a skill directly rather than having to acquire the specific book.
• “wizard’s hands” in chilling touch description, “an uber-storm” for a living frost, along with an extra hyphen in that description. Description of Pax clarified to resolve ambiguous sentence and disarm skill description has an s returned to it. Finally, another lost s added to the flesh golem description. (R. Dan Henry)
• “You gain insight into the nature of foo.” now has a full stop. (David Damerell)
• Ibson the Grey has produced a new 32×32 tileset based on the rltiles to give you some high resolution POWDER experience. Since this isn’t the 16×16 res, it doesn’t come packaged with POWDER but has to be installed manually from the artpack.

The homebrew developer also announced that Powder is now open for skill requests, where players can “wish” for certain skills, similar to the way people can wish for spells.

It’s always a good idea to check out the readme files before installing the game, to avoid any complications. If you encounter any errors or bugs in Powder, do hit the Via link to inform the homebrew developer.

Download: Powder Release 105 for the DS
Download: Powder Release 105 for the PSP