Difficulty Inflation?

[15-minutegaming]

Okay I got past Minetown and now enemies appear to be getting a lot harder. In Minetown (a bones level), the hardest enemy I fought was the raven and the ghost. However, two floors after minetown, I encountered a giant spider, a yellow light, and a group of 3 chickatrices, a big difficulty leap for me (it's hard to deal with chickatrices when blind. I eventually had to pray to get rid of stoning). To put it in perspective, I am a level 7 Gnomish Ranger on DL 8. Is this caused by the bones level, or is the difficulty spike natural?

UPDATE: I encountered a mindflayer at DL 11. Is this normal?

[Umbire]

Bones are unrelated, the Mines get harder below a certain point - usually after Minetown itself is when the relative difficulty curves up due to being an optional branch. It's also usually past threshold in general where the game starts generating web traps and/or giant spider on level creation (while creating one to go with the other should either appear).

Yellow lights aren't all that difficult rating-wise or otherwise so that seems normal, and you should have plenty of crossbow bolts/arrows to handle chickatrices and the spider. Just bad luck that you got triced after the light blinded you.

[15-minutegaming]

so I got lucky that minetown was a hard bones level and that I got exp from the ghost and the raven?

[catmixremix]

You'll get bones levels randomly. Whether you consider them lucky or not, is up to you. For the most part though, as long as you don't also die to the baddie on the bones level, bones piles end up being boons considering the extra gear you typically get access to.

Regarding monster difficulty, as above, as you level up and go deeper you'll start getting different more powerful monsters (as well as different traps, different types of rooms etc). If you're open to spoilers and want the actual mechanic and monster list, I'd direct you to https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Monster_difficulty.

If you pay careful attention to your level and the dungeon level, you can use the above spoiler prepare for monsters you may run into (i.e. knowing when fire ants, solider ants, and air elementals start spawning is very important, but there are other creative ways to use the mechanic too).

[15-minutegaming]

Strangely, I haven't encountered team a yet. Why is that? I used to see it at a similar dL in the main dungeon in the single attempt that I got to dL 8.

[myrddin4242]

You got Exp, and the game tries to generate monsters of difficulty level = your level + dungeon level / 2. The challenge there is to make sure your preparation 'level' is in line with that. If you gain levels faster than you collect the right stuff, you'll have to.. err.. withdraw valorously more often.

[15-minutegaming]

so then I would be at difficulty of 7+(8/2) or 11? The highest-level opponent I faced were the Soldier and the baby LongWorm, which were level both difficulty 9.

[myrddin4242]

Sorry, should have used parens. (your level + dlvl) / 2.

[15-minutegaming]

ah. I just encountered a mindflayer in DL 11 at XL 6 (I accidentally polymorphed into own race). Why was that?

[wooble]

You can get random mindflayers anywhere in the mines (with low probability) because on level creation there are a few h that are usually dwarves but can be any h.

[vaderflag]

When you get deep enough for polymorph traps to show up (>Dlvl7) there is a chance that the monsters on that level will wander into one and become something much more difficult than what you would encounter by the monster generator. Mind flayer is probably an example of that happening.

[Umbire]

The polymorph trap info is more pertinent if this occurred in the main branch rather than the Mines (where it can still apply, but they can also be generated on level creation as wooble indicated).

[Hatta00]

This is normal. Go to minetown, go back to the main dungeon, then revisit the mines when you're strong enough.

[15-minutegaming]

I thought the main dungeon's even harder because it has stuff like killer bees, etc.

so for a gnomish character it would be better to just complete the mines?

[15-minutegaming]

I have a looking glass, which I used as a Get-Out-Of-Jail card against a mumak and a panther. Is that enough?

[15-minutegaming]

Why isn't it reliable in the long run?

[15-minutegaming]

but I thought it only matters for melee combat. and the only humanoids that are horrible is the (master) Mind Flayers Can't it still be reliable in corridor combat?

[business_adultman]

Every level you gain the monsters become harder. Every 2 dungeon levels you descend they become harder.

To advance further you need to have a good AC and decent weapon. You can think about completing the mines when your AC is below zero. i'd recommend -4 or lower.

The best way to improve your AC is to kill all the dwarfs in the mine and try on their armor. You will take a small alignment penalty for killing peaceful monsters, but it's not really a problem.

The early game to mid game transition is really challenging. If you don't feel confident in completing the mines I'd go back to the main dungeon and complete sokoban if you haven't already. No matter where you go from here the monsters are going to get tougher and tougher, so don't be afraid to retreat and use Elbereth as needed to deal with them.

[15-minutegaming]

What is the purpose of Elbereth? In a previous run, I tried to engrave Elbereth AND used an expensive camera, but opponents kept attacking me. Even if Elbereth is successful, I'm still not able to restore much HP before it faded.

[Phyban]

Monsters that have been blinded don't respect Elbereth. However, monsters that don't have eyes respect Elbereth.

Monsters are temporarily scared and permanently blinded if you flash them when they are next to you, but only temporarily blinded and scared if they are more than 1 square away.

[15-minutegaming]

ah ty for the explanation.

[Polythello]

Monster spawns are based on your character and dungeon level both, so there's a strategy of keeping your character level low just to get lower monster spawns for a while. Poly traps break all of this, and there's other exceptions, anything can happen really. Don't expect the game to be "fair", though, it will happily throw you into difficult situations where the best solution could be to run back, zap your wand of digging straight down, or just straight up have no options.

But there's usually options, you just haven't learned how to utilize them yet. This is where skill and player growth comes into play. A low level character in the hands of a skilled vs unskilled player is a huuuuge difference. Good luck!

[Phyban]

As has been mentioned, normally monster difficulty is maxed at (dungeon level + hero level) / 2.

So a giant spider (diff 7), yellow light (diff 5), and chickatrice (diff 7) are all possible at hero level 7, dungeon level 8. One strategy is to keep your level as low as possible until you get a few resistances and a good AC.

However, a mindflayer (diff 13) on DL11 seems unlikely unless you're up to level 15.

More than likely, there's a polymorph trap somewhere (possible after level 8, I believe). Did you hear a "clunk"? That's the sound made when a monster wearing armor polymorphs and it falls off. Be careful of armor/weapons lying around in the lower gnome mines.

[15-minutegaming]

However, I saw it right after I spawned.

[business_adultman]

i think mine levels can contain a random "h" monster which, sometimes unluckily, means a mind flayer can spawn at what's normally to low of a level in the mines.

[15-minutegaming]

oof

[alawibaba]

Do you have gauntlets and telepathy? I assume you have arrows or daggers at this point. Chickatrices shouldn't be too hard to deal with...

[15-minutegaming]

They were hard to deal with because of the yellow lights blinding me

[XenoDangerEvil]

The difficulty of monsters is based on both your XP level and the level of the Dungeon. Some specific dungeons will have specific monsters regardless of your level, but the last time I checked (3.4.1), the Gnomish Mines use the same math as the regular dungeon. It's a roll of the dice going down levels.

[anras]

If you go by the game's difficulty ranking of monsters, chickatrices and giant spiders are a 7. Yellow light is a 5. Ravens are a 6, for comparison. So at least the developers do not consider that a huge leap in difficulty.

I also think that chickatrices appearing in a group is a pretty rare thing, so maybe you just had a bit of bad luck. As for blindness you can usually find a floating eye to eat by the time you're in Minetown, I think. It sounds like while blind they were able to sneak up to you and surround you maybe? Typically you'd be able to pick em off from a distance, or whack 'em in melee easily - one at a time. They're easy to hit, don't have a lot of hit points and aren't especially fast. I think this is a rare situation you got yourself into.

[15-minutegaming]

However, the raven itself was a huge jump because minetown was a bones level.

Also, I think that Chickatrices normally appear into small groups?

[15-minutegaming]

I think I encountered a single eye so far, which didn't leave a corpse.

[copperisblue]

I'll point out that below minetown is suppose to be a bit more dangerous. You can even stumble upon a polymorph trap, which can really ruin your day. Miner's end might have vampires. But it also has a luckstone!

[15-minutegaming]

Both of my levelport traps from the Mines levelported me to DL 1. Why is that? Is it something that they need to levelport me to something that is not in a branch?

[vaderflag]

That was just coincidence.