The following changes were made for GW-Angband 2.8.3v2:

  * Player combat rules are significantly altered.  Instead of getting
    a number of "blows per round" and a number of "shots per round",
    the player has an energy cost associated with each blow or shot.
    This number is based primarily on DEX, but modified by class,
    experience level and (for melee weapons only) the ratio of the
    player's STR over the weapon's weight.

  * A new option -- maximum desired blows per attack -- allows characters
    to swing more than once per attack, to reduce tedium and give a
    greater degree of compatibility with Angband.

  * "Extra Attacks" and "Extra Shots" weapons now give a 10% energy cost
     reduction (for each plus) -- which makes them *much* less powerful.
     They've now been renamed to "Quickness", and their monetary values
     have been reduced.

  * Priest and paladin prayers have been rewritten to follow a scheme
    closer to that of the mage/ranger/rogue spells.  Some spells
    (especially redundant ones) have been dropped, some new spells have
    been added, and some old spells have been improved.  A few spells
    have been downgraded, too.  (I won't bother listing them all here;
    see the help file spells.txt for details.)

  * Leon Marrick's wand and rod stacking has been included.  There are
    some minor differences between the Oangband and GW-Angband
    implementations, but most players probably won't notice them.

  * Keldon Jones's improved monster AI (version 0.1.1) has been included.
    I simply couldn't stand watching the novice rangers act like Keystone
    Kops any longer.

  * Tim Baker's easy patch (version 1.2) has been included.

  * Eric Bock's scroll patch has been included.

  * Stores will try to keep more items in stock.  Word of Recall scrolls
    have returned to the Temple (though they're not as common there as
    they are at the Alchemist's).

  * Chests produce less gold and more items; all chest items are at least
    "good".

  * Paladins get a (level)% melee damage bonus vs. undead and demons (applied
    last).

  * The "complex" random number generator has been replaced by a different
    algorithm (the Mersenne Twister).  Note that this is one of two
    different RNGs used in Angband; the "simple" one has not changed,
    which means that the town level, the object "flavors", and the random
    artifacts (all of which use the "simple" RNG) should not be affected
    when importing saved games from older versions.  I hope. :-)

    As a side effect of this change, the RNG state is no longer saved
    in the save file.  This means that the "anti-save-file-scumming"
    protection of recent Angband versions will not occur.  (There is
    some debate as to whether this is good or bad.)

    The Mersenne Twister source code is distributed under the terms of
    the GNU Library General Public License; see the file LGPL in this
    directory for details.  Therefore, GW-Angband 2.8.3v2 is considered a
    "work that uses the Library" and is distributed under the terms of
    section 6 of the LGPL.

  * The amount of mana a character can hold based on INT/WIS uses
    a smoother distribution curve.  (No more sudden leap of power
    at 18/50.)  Characters will get a little more mana at the high
    end of the scale.

  * Rogues have been tweaked a bit, to be less pitiful with certain spells
    (and slightly worse at others).  They now get Stinking Cloud, but
    at a fairly high level (at which point it's more of a utility spell
    than an attack spell).

  * Certain potions and scrolls are now considered "good".

  * An attempt has been made to increase the randomness of long-range teleport
    effects (to decrease the frequency of consecutive teleports "bouncing"
    the player between two or three different spots).

  * The temple will now buy more kinds of objects from the player.

  * Most attack wands and rods have had their damage ratings doubled.

  * All the recharging spells/prayers vary in effectiveness with the player's
    level.  (Scrolls are still constant.)

  * Meteor Swarm has been fixed (I added a function which projects
    non-jumping ball effects, but that wasn't *quite* enough, so I added
    another function which projects mutiple non-jumping balls all at
    the same target).

  * Potions of Restore Mana and Staves of the Magi are more rare.  Staves
    of the Magi cannot be recharged.

  * Some of the high-level Mage attack spells have been made cheaper
    (lower spell point cost).  Genocide has been made more expensive.
    Ice Storm has been made slightly more powerful (to compete with
    Explosion).  Lightning Bolt does a bit less damage, but always beams.

  * All object-based sources of lightning bolts project beams instead of
    bolts (and damage has been slightly reduced to compensate).

  * Giant salamanders are no longer worth more XP than baby red dragons.

  * All dragons/drakes/wyrms (except baby dragons) have had their melee
    attack damage doubled.

  * Living creatures hit by gravity damage have a 50% chance of resisting
    the short-range teleport effect.  (This reduces the abusivenss of
    certain tactics with the Rift spell.)

  * Mages (and Rangers) get the Rune of Protection spell, in a dungeon book.
    However, the glyph feature isn't as powerful as in Angband -- it
    prevents monster movement, but not monster melee attacks (the monsters
    may reach a claw/tentacle/etc. over the edge -- they just can't step
    through it).