NetHack receives second update since 2003

In an effort to collate the improvements of the last two years, the NetHack DevTeam have released an official 3.6.1 patch for NetHack. The ASCII graphics roguelike which was initially released in 1987 received the 3.6.0 update back in December 2015, and since then DevTeam has been incrementally publishing fixes and updates through the Git repository. Now, they have decided that 3.6.1 will be the final 3.6.x version and have officially released the collated changes on their website.

There are over 500 changes to the game added in 3.6.1, such as:

• Naming Sting or Orcrist now breaks illiterate conduct
• Poison breath leaves a trail of poison gas
• Allow knife and stiletto as possible tin opening tools
• New status line conditions Stone Strngl Deaf Lev Fly Ride
• Swallowers can't re-engulf hero immediately after spitting him/her out
• Allow taming monkeys and apes with bananas
• Ray bounceback chance depends on the wall type
• Undead #turning takes less time at higher experience level
• Peacefuls may react when you attack other peacefuls
• Prevent diagonal jumping through open doorways
• Give feedback just before timed levitation runs out
• Blinded hero or monster who eats a nurse corpse will have blindness cured
• Wielding *bane have additional effects
• "Elbereth" must now be the only engraved text on a square to function
• "Elbereth" now erodes based on attacks by the player, not monsters scared

A complete list can be found in the release documentation, though DevTeam warn that this is "very granular" and could spoil new features so read at your own risk.

NetHack 3.6.1 also brings the end of support for the Amiga, Atari, Macintosh Classic, BeOS, OS/2, 16-bit MS-DOS and Floppy disk platforms unless someone steps forward to maintain them. The DevTeam hope to start using ANSI C features, which necessitates the dropping of platforms that predate those standards.