Do we have a beginners guide anywhere? We ought to. Just something to help new players get past Jenny, addresses common issues, light on spoilers and scummy techniques and heavy on advice (such as "Plate armor is worthless, unless it came from Atavus.")
You might just be getting lucky, I'm not sure. I can't look at the source code (at least, not and understand it), but there's nothing wrong in the script files. The spawn rates are such that a carrot is 150 times more likely than a saal'thul, for any random item drop.
I think this is a known issue; at least, I've run into it. I don't remember how to correct it but I do remember it being very simple. The same issue also interferes with the 'w'alk command. Perhaps toggle numlock?
While I didn't get to play it, I loved the idea of Christmas trees in Attnam for Christmas. We already have the free banana as well. I think it would be amusing if we had a Christmas release each year with a different gag. (To avoid Christmas bloat we should probably remove old Christmas gags each year as well...)
Also, since relatively few people are actually going to be playing IVAN on Christmas itself, we might want to make the gag last from 3 days before until 3 days after.
Possible gags include Santa hats for enemies (and PCs), candy canes as weapons, elves in New Attnam, Santa replacing Huang Ming Pong, etc.........