Summary

Type 'score damage'

Mental vulnerability removed from Fire, Cloud & Frost Giants

Light resistance removed from Felar

Water immunity replaced with 90% resistance for Storm Giants

Lightning resistance increased to 50% for Storm Giants

Holy & Negative vulnerability reduced to 15% from 33% for Cloud Giants

Orcs given 15% resistance to acid

Some race EXP penalties changed (Elf/Dark-Elf down to 400, Arial up to 300, Half-Elf, Half-Drow down to 0)

Arial intelligence reduced to 22 from 23

Class EXP penalties removed

Vulnerability, Resistance, Immunity Changes

These changes stemmed from a Santa Zulg post from Stunna asking about Cloud Giants vulns, and a discussion the coders have had for years about how poor our vulnerable/resist/immunity code is (Vuln + Resist = Resist). Since I wasn't getting a lot of interesting ideas in Santa Zulg I decided to tackle this monstrosity. In the end the code diff was 17,000+ lines. So what is this change really? We now have a sliding scale for vulnerability to immunity that allows us much more granularity than vuln = 33% more damage, resistance = 33% less damage. This also allows us to set varying degress of vulnerability (like cloud giants having only 15% vulnerability to holy & negative). You will be able to see your current resistances and vulnerabilities via the 'score damage' command.

score damage
Bash      : Resistant              33%  Pierce    : Resistant              33%  
Slash     : Resistant              33%  Fire      : Resistant              33%  
Cold      : Vulnerable            -33%  Lightning : Normal                      
Acid      : Normal                      Poison    : Normal                      
Negative  : Normal                      Holy      : Normal                      
Energy    : Normal                      Mental    : Normal                      
Disease   : Normal                      Drowning  : Normal                      
Light     : Normal                      

This also allows us to create skills/spells and equipment that can grant varying degrees of damage resistance. For example we can make skills like forgiving cruor scale with your level giving you more resistance the higher your level. This also means that you can wear more than one piece of gear that gives resistance to a damage type (a ring that gives some resistance to cold along with a dragon hide that gives resistance to cold).

For example:

the hide of the ancient blue dragon can be referred to as 'hide ancient blue'.
It is worth 10755 copper, and is of the 48th level of power.
It is armor worn on the body.
It is made of dragonscale and weighs 11 pounds 3 ounces.
When worn, it protects you against piercing for 16, bashing for 11,
  slashing for 16, magic for 3, and the elements for 0 points each.
When worn, it affects your lightning resistance by 50 points, 
  your save vs breath by -5 points, your hit roll by 1 point, 
  your damage roll by 1 point and your hp by 20 points.

As you can see the hide provides 50 points of lightning resistance. That doesn't mean 50% since there are diminishing returns on the amount of damage resistance you have via spells/skills/gear. For example 20 points = 20% resistance, 50 points = 40% resistance, and 70 points = 50% resistance. This is the first major step, and we have other plans that build off of this code. More changes will be coming in stages as it gets completed.

Experience Penalty Changes

With the resistance changes we had a discussion about experience penalties for both classes and races. Somewhere along the way we concluded that we really didn't want to use XP penalties to balance out classes, so we want to try this out. If it doesn't work we will revisit it, but I think we'd rather fix it by moving skills up/down, adding new skills, or tweaking existing skills to balance it out.

For elves we decided to drop the penalties a little. Automatic sneak is great, but it's not resistance to bash/slash/pierce great. We also made half-elves and half-drow like their human half with regard to exp penalty. Arials were the one race that had the most advantages with very little drawback so we bumped up the the penalty a little and also dropped their intelligence by one (existing arials get to keep their 23, but any new arials rolled get 22).

If you are affected by any experience changes the next time you log in your experience will be adjusted one of two ways: you'll end up at 1xp TNL because you had more XP than your current level, or you will reset to the base of your current level. Either way your exp will be in your current levels range.