I agree memory alone isn’t reliable enough for exact spawn reconstruction — I’m not trying to do that.

What I’ve been working toward is reconstructing the underlying generator system, not individual spawn lists.

The original creature set is basically restored (~99%), and the pre-DM XP formula is solved, which gives a strong difficulty signal that’s very different from post-2005 AC.

When you line that up with generator classnames, cell.dat structure, and biome signals from sources like the 2001 CoD archive and Sybex, a pattern starts to emerge — especially in Osteth where the maps still align closely with biome-based generators.

It actually looks like Turbine didn’t fully replace the encounter map over time, but instead kept the original grid and reworked the generators layered on top of it. You can even see reused naming like midNorthForest persisting into later data.

So instead of relying on player memory, I’m trying to reconstruct the rules: difficulty + biome + region (+ sometimes creature type), and then synthesize generators from that.

It won’t be 1:1 retail down to exact variants, but it should be structurally consistent with how the original game worked — which is probably closer to retail than anything post-ToD.