And I know why. According to tweakDB, every monster in the game has it's HP multiplied by 1.35 per floor, so a Diggle you meet on Floor 3 is meaningfully more HPfull than one you meet on Floor 1. Wizardlands are defined as Floor Zero. That means that the only HP Wizardlands mobs have is their base HP -- not that noticeable when you're facing down Sickly Diggles, but if you go to a DL8+ Wizardlands, you'll notice that you're suddenly one-shotting mobs that used to take you 3-4 turns to take out. I haven't played much with it, but I'm relatively certain that Diggle Hell and Mysterious Portals have this same problem. I don't know what the solution might be, but it probably deserves some attention.
Really? I thought Wizardlands were supposed to be all extra-challenge, not "let's make level-appropriate XP for a clearly less dangerous endeavo(u)r than what we were just doing in the normal dungeon".
Just to follow up, the same is in deed true of Mysterious Portals; I'm not positive about Diggle hell but I'm fairly certain it is there as well. I usually exploit the hell out of this but the monsters are still hitting you for as hard as they normally would, which makes them very dangerous for characters who are lower level/power than they should be when facing those monsters.
Maybe it is to make up for the really low leveling rate in the mid floors. That way you can curbstomp the wizardlands at that level. I dunno. I have gotten into the terrible habit of saving all the wizardlands I record and never visiting them because well... I am not sure why.
Yeah, I did that until I stopped. Now every time I see a graffiti, I just go there right away, pummel my way effortlessly through it, and come out the other side halfway through whatever level I was building toward.
early game, if you can find some strong ranged items, and have a couple of invis pots/inky hoglanterns for emergencies, you can run into a Mysterious Portal and come out 3-4 levels higher. it is still a bit of a challenge though.
I have to agree with the Wizardlands argument, mobs do seem to be somewhat weaker there, although I'm not complaining, it does bring a nice, short break from fighting the appropriately levelled mobs. Still, the Wizardlands still have their sources of danger. I got brutalised by Evil Clone twins on a few occasions, I'm not too eager to pull random levers since then. With Mysterious Portals, however, I have very differing experiences. They usually prove to be quite challenging whenever I stumble into them. Oh, and one made The Dungeon Collapse Suddenly, but that's another issue.
This has been a known "feature" of Mysterious Portals since before there were wizardlands. There are a couple threads around here dating back to late spring or early summer of last year (IIRC), explaining how it works in relation to Mysterious Portals. The x1.35 you mention is actually a global scalar based on difficulty setting. The actual boost to monster HP is two lines below that in the file (or was, last time I looked). So on Easy the HP of a diggle is ((Base Stats) + (3 x Dungeon Floor)) x 1.1. On Going Rogue it's ((Base Stats) + (9 x Dungeon Floor)) x 1.35. So an Unfriendly AI appearing in a Wizardland or Mysterious Portal is missing over 100 HP from it's "normal" version. In addition, monsters from the Chest of Evil get bonus damage based on floor level. This comes in a single lump added in one random damage type. The size of the lump is (1 x Dungeon Floor) on Easy, up to (3 x Dungeon Floor) on Going Rogue. I remember back when all of this came up, there was someone (who always played on EE) who thought the rest of us were crazy for talking about how hard the CoE monsters were. + 9 to 15 is nowhere near as harrowing as + 27 to 45 . Both are of course far worse than the + 0 that a CoE monster in a wizardland or mysterious portal would get. This floor = 0 problem is also why some of the late-game wizardland rooms will spontaneously have a pack of really low-level monsters, because the "monster" and "horde" commands in room definitions spawn creatures appropriate to the floor you're on.
really, you only apply the multiplier once? 'Cause from the way the tweakDB text reads, it sounds like it's more like ((base stats) + (3 x dungeon floor x 1.35)). Not that I disbelieve you, your comprehension of dungeon mechanics far outstrips mine.
That would explain the ridiculous amounts of tank monsters have on later floors. I still think that's actually a problem as player scaling cannot keep up.
Naah, you would. Arboreal Elementals and Preserved Witches are way more threatening than muscle diggles without having absurd HP buffs in their ability to kill you quickly/completely blind you/stun you/thaumite you etc. The player doesn't get much stronger at that point either, so the buffs to the monsters as is does the trick.
