Dungeon Master Forum

How does the game work out whether imported champions are too powerful for the dungeon and adjust it's difficulty? Also, how is the "party effectiveness" calculated in the import champions screen?

I ask because I am designing a dungeon which is quite tough. It is designed for post-CSB champions and is filled with ultra strong monsters. However, when I import my champions from the end of CSB into my tough dungeon (they are all about Level 3 Master everything) the party effectiveness shows as zero percent (0%) as I import each champion on the import screen.
However, even though this screen indicates that my party will be totally hopeless against the dungeon (which isn't true), when I "enter dungeon" with this zero percent effective party it immediately comes up with a message saying "your party is too tough for this dungeon, the dungeon has been adjusted to Level 3 Master" and then I find my entire party doing 2 points damage to monsters with a diamond sword in the first room and being killed in 2 hits from the monsters.

What gives?

Aha! It would appear that the import party effectiveness percentage is somehow calculated from characters in mirrors in the dungeon. Can someone confirm this?

The problem is that my dungeon has no mirrors - it is only for imported parties. I had imagined that the party effectiveness was calculated from the strength of monsters and monster generators in the dungeon - which would be more logical.

Can somebody (george?) please tell me how the percentage is calculated

Chaos Awakes wrote:Aha! It would appear that the import party effectiveness percentage is somehow calculated from characters in mirrors in the dungeon. Can someone confirm this?

Yep.

Chaos Awakes wrote: The problem is that my dungeon has no mirrors - it is only for imported parties. I had imagined that the party effectiveness was calculated from the strength of monsters and monster generators in the dungeon - which would be more logical.

Can somebody (george?) please tell me how the percentage is calculated

The engine calculates a score for each mirror character based on their attributes. It then takes the 4 best scores (or if there are fewer than 4 mirrors, then only those ones) and calls that 100%.

When you import characters, it uses the same algorithm over your new characters and compares totals to get the percentage.

The point of all of this being that if you try to import characters that are stronger than the strongest combination of mirror characters, then the engine makes the dungeon harder to compensate. Of course this assumes that the dungeon designer uses mirror characters that are balanced for the dungeon.

Finally, getting round to your question, you should just add a mirror character that are of the right level for your dungeon. Just put them in an inaccesible area of the dungeon so your imported characters can't ever select them.

Please just ask if you have any questions or if you feel the balance is wrong and needs tweaking.

Sounds good to me. I still haven't really worked out how strong all the monsters should be, but I'm working on the puzzles at the moment anyway.

Thank you GG for unlocking one of the design secrets, do you have any others like that for the budding dungeon planner to consider ?