A few observations

[kaypy]

Just some notes from trying v4:

Was the "It dies. It flees in terror!" glitch supposed to be fixed? (I seem to recall something about fixing it somewhere) Anyhow, I just ran into it in g2372c43, but under rather rare circumstances.

The order of events (as I piece it together) was:
Target is hit by rift
Target hurt to fleeing point
Target relocated further along rift beam
Target hit by (the same) rift again
Target killed.

Messages:
Shelob, Spider of Darkness disappears!
Shelob, Spider of Darkness dies.
Shelob, Spider of Darkness flees in terror!

Aside from that, I also wanted to note that the whole artifact spellbooks and automatic drops thing works a whole lot better than I had anticipated.

Expected result: Always play with artifacts enabled to ensure books are obtainable before fighting <unique>
Actual result: Hmm. I've got a <powerful consumable> or two, I bet I could dive down a bit and take out <unique>...

My remaining worry about the whole spellbooks thing* is that it does add a new level of monster knowledge- there's a big difference between burning consumables for a guaranteed reward and offing random uniques...

edit: Oh, one other thing I nearly forgot: Can I add a vote for "make some obvious indicator that an item has more than the abilities associated with its name"- as near as I can tell I either need to
a) rely utterly on getting my first attempt to set up squelch settings absolutely right
or
b) [I]nspect absolutely every item I come across

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* other than that I cant speak for priestly balance, not having tried that yet...