July 03, 2021 Longer size progression and increasing minimum densities

We’ve made it so the size of the quarry continues to increase longer into the hunt.

And we changed the monster density calculation -

Old equation: In each room, there will be 2 monsters + 0-X extra monsters, where X is the room count capped at 14.

New equation: In each room, there will be 2 monsters + X-Y extra monsters, where X is the room count / 6 (rounded down) and Y is the room count capped at 14.

It actually became even worse. Because of the non-zero floor of the enemy count, the number of monsters is sometimes so large at the middle of the hunt that the rooms are completely full. For example, one can encounter a full room at 30-40 kills, while before it happened only at 80-100 kills. Full rooms typically require to spend a lot of scrolls to survive, thus, there is nothing left for the late game.

The ghost hunt today was just terrible, probably one of the worst hunts ever. While I can easily get 100+ kills in almost any other hunt, I scored only 95 kills today after half a day of playing. It was absolutely imbalanced. You cannot use any pits as your cover, since ghost fly over them. You cannot shoot your bow, as ghosts can reappear just next tile to you and immediately attack. You cannot push them to the pit and make all neighbors panic. You cannot sit in a deep defense, because there are typically 3+ mages in all corners of the battle field and they just spam with fireballs or summons. Furthermore, +4 gear does not make you strong to kill a common (7, 7) ghost, as you are too weak even in adrenaline mode. I am not even mentioning being hit by a frog or firebug… Some of the following fixes should be done: 1. Killing reappearing ghost counts again, because it is in fact one more enemy to kill. 2. Starting gear should be at least +5, if not +6. Limit number of casters to 2 in a room. Dealing with 5 casters is such a pain, because they spam fireballs and do not let you make a single step.

I am glad devs actually listen to the player base. Today ghost hunt with +5 gear (instead of +4 gear last time) was about right.