New Game Plus enemy scaling

Enemies do not get a hidden multiplier in New Game Plus. Instead every enemy placed in a chapter stores four levels, one for each of the first four journeys, and the game simply spawns it at the level of the journey you are on. The level then goes through the same attribute curve as in the first playthrough, so "Journey 2" really means "the same enemy, 20 or 30 levels higher". Environmental damage (traps and boss ground attacks) has its own four-value columns. This page lists the numbers; the loot side is on New Game Plus loot and shops.

How the level is chosen#

• When a chapter area loads, the game reads the journey number, caps it at 4 and builds the key Level_1 to Level_4. Every monster spawn, summon and Dark Mist replica then reads that column from its StoryMonster row.
• Journey 5, 6 and so on use the journey 4 column. There is no journey cap on the save itself, only on the data (see New Game Plus#hm-the-journey-number-is-capped-in-the-data).
• The enemy's level does not depend on your hero's level. Your level and talents carry over, so in journey 2 you usually fight enemies that are far above the level they were designed for in journey 1, and you meet them with a character who already has everything.

Enemy levels by chapter#

Each chapter lists its ordinary enemies (rows that are not marked as bosses; "n" is the number of spawn rows). The mean is shown first and the lowest and highest level in brackets. A few helper rows stay at level 1 in every journey, which is why the lowest value is 1.

Over all 581 ordinary enemies of chapters 1 to 8 the median level is 10, 35, 62 and 74 for journeys 1 to 4 (means 9.5, 32.9, 52.5, 62.9; highest 21, 55, 73, 90). The jump from journey 1 to journey 2 is the biggest, about +23 levels on average, then about +20 and about +10. Heggem, the first chapter, is the most extreme: its enemies go from level 1 to the high 20s.

Almost every row has all four levels filled in (2,738 of 2,747 rows; the nine without are unused templates), so no enemy exists in only some journeys. A normal enemy can never have a lower level in a later journey in the same chapter.

What a level does to a stat#

An enemy's stats are not stored per enemy. They come from the model (for example a Crossbowman) and its level:

1. The model has seven base attribute points (Strength, Spirit, Brave, Dexterous, Tolerant, Generous, Hidden). For six of them the points are base + level - 1, capped at 99. The Hidden attribute never grows.
2. Each of the 42 properties (HP, physical attack, physical resistance and so on) is the sum, over the attributes, of a model weight times a value read from the enemy attribute table at that many points, divided by 1000.
3. The enemy's StoryMonsterProperty row (story id, monster id and grade) is then added as flat bonuses. Bosses use this for their phases and special rules.

As an example, here is a Crossbowman (model 20019, the most common ranged enemy) at different levels. Physical attack is the stat the enemy attack is built from (its moves add their own flat power on top, see Damage formula).

From level 1 to level 89 HP is multiplied by about 6.5, attack by about 9.8 and defence by about 4.7. Defence rises fast early and then flattens out, so high-level enemies are mostly tougher in HP and hit much harder, while their defence barely changes between journey 3 and journey 4. Values stop growing near level 90 because the attribute points hit the 99 cap (base 10 plus level minus 1).

Using the chapter means#

Putting the chapter means into that curve gives a feeling for the jump. For the Crossbowman at the mean level of Katib (level 9 in journey 1, 33 in journey 2, 57 in journey 3, 68 in journey 4) the data gives HP 346 / 758 / 1,238 / 1,448, attack 182 / 462 / 712 / 809 and physical defence 69 / 145 / 167 / 173 (calculated from the tables, chapter-mean rounded to a whole level).

How much more it hurts depends on your own defence, because the damage rule compares attack to defence. With Terrence's 63 physical defence (the example in Damage formula), an enemy attack stat of 101 gives a factor of 0.34 (about 34 damage per 100 attack) while 994 gives 0.94 (about 931), so a level-89 Crossbowman lands a hit roughly 27 times harder than a level-1 one at the same defence (illustration only; move power and your own gear change the real numbers).

Bosses#

Boss levels are in the same columns. The table gives the computed numbers for the first boss row of each chapter fight (HP, physical attack stat and physical defence of the spawn state, i.e. grade 1 of the property row, including its flat bonuses). Phase changes use other grades and are covered on each boss page.

Reading the table:

• Almost every boss ends near level 89 in journey 4, so the boss curve ends at the stat cap for its model. The First Messenger reaches level 90, Elena's second duel (6045) uses the same levels as her first (6077) (its flat bonuses were not compared, unverified).
• Edith has an enormous defence (3,680 at journey 1) but it does not come from a property row: her ES_StoryMonsterProperty row (story 4, monster 4060, grade 1) is all zeros, so the value comes from her model's own attribute data. Proxy Higgins shows 10,155 only in stage 1, the walking intro, where his grade-1 property row adds +9999 to Defence, Poise and Resilience; in the real fight his defence is 156 (stage 2) and 306 (stage 3) at journey 1. See Proxy Higgins#Stats.
• The table repeats numbers also given on the individual boss pages (for example the Maddened Ascetic page has the same HP row).
• Level 1 in journey 1 for the Maddened Ascetic is why the first boss is so easy to kill and why his journey 2 version has more than five times the HP.

Environmental damage#

Traps and boss "tricks" (area attacks that are not part of a creature's moves) have four damage values.

Fifty-nine of the sixty tricks take 1,000 durability from what they hit in every journey (one takes none), and the one projectile type in ShellData has 100 durability and no guard in all four, so only damage scales. The big wave (TrickData 10003) is a data quirk: it is stronger in journey 2 than in journeys 3 and 4.

Hidden mechanics#

• There is no enemy multiplier, only a level column. Everything scales through the level, so enemy defence and resistances rise with it as well as HP and attack. The growth has a cap: attributes stop at 99 points, so a model with base 10 stops improving at level 90.
• Trap damage by Dark Mist floor, not by journey. In the Dark Mist maze (Deep into the Dark Mist) traps and tricks use the journey columns but pick the column from the maze level (the floor's base level plus any mushroom offering, not the floor number inside an area): maze levels 1 to 7 use column 1, 8 to 14 column 2, 15 to 21 column 3, and 22 and above column 4. The story journey does not matter there (see Maze rewards#Traps and hazards). (ControllerMain:SetMazeTrapAndTrickData)
• Dark Mist side areas follow your hero. In the Dark Mist side areas (stories 101 to 105, scenes 20001 to 29999, entered through hidden wall passages and draining sanity while you are inside) the enemy level is the row's level plus your hero's level plus 10. The row's level is 4 / 8 / 13 / 11 in journey 1 but only 1 in journeys 2 to 4, so a carried-over level-70 hero meets level-81 enemies in journey 2. These replicas also get no StoryMonsterProperty flat bonuses (the code only looks them up outside Dark Mist scenes). See Sanity in special areas#Lost Valley.
• Two bosses riposte sooner in journey 2 and later. The game suppresses the counter-attack of Rosen Cavalier Patrick (while in his defence stance) and the Usurper (special stance) until the boss has blocked 1 (Patrick) or 2 (Usurper) of your hits. The suppression is coded as "story-type battle, not a Dark Mist maze boss, not a boss time challenge and journey counter 1 or lower" (IsSkillCounterAttackedStart in hero20017.lua:92-95 and hero20044.lua:68-71), so from journey 2 on, in the maze and in the Obsession Challenge they can counter from the first hit.
• Maze, Obsession Challenge and Dance of the Throne ignore the journey. Arcade forces the data column to journey 1 and uses its own monster property table; the maze uses the maze level (Maze rewards#Enemy scaling); challenge bosses use their challenge level (Obsession Challenge#Boss level and difficulty). Only the main story reads the journey.
• Levels never adapt to you. The only places where your hero's level feeds into an enemy's level are the Dark Mist side areas described above. Everywhere else the number is fixed in the table.

Sources#

• structdata/fs_savestory.lua:1956-1979 (SetLoop, GetLogicLoop, cap at BattleData.GameLoopMax); logic/battle/battledata.lua:45.
• controller/controllerstorymode.lua:1146-1150 (Level_<n> key), 2886-2912, 2986-3010, 3095-3110 (spawn level, Dark Mist level plus Altar Level plus SanLevelAdd=10, line 26).
• structdata/fs_herodata.lua:556-605 (GetPropertyAll, attribute points base + level - 1, enemy attribute table), structdata/ms_herodata.lua:6-62 (attribute and property names, cap 99); logic/playervalue/animalbase_value.lua:205-232 (flat StoryMonsterProperty adds).
• Tables: ES_StoryMonster (Level_1 to Level_4; 2,747 rows), ES_StoryMonsterProperty (story 1 monster 1030 and so on), ES_EnemyAttributeData (693 rows), ES_HeroData and ES_HeroPropertyData (model weights), ES_TrapData rows 10001-10008, ES_TrickData (60 rows, Damage_1 to Damage_4), ES_ShellData 10001.
• controller/controllermain.lua:4864-4885 (maze trap column by floor).
• logic/player/hero20017.lua:93-98, logic/player/hero20044.lua:68-74, gamedata/playerdefine/hero20017_define.lua:16, hero20044_define.lua:28.
• ES_StoryMonster _id 449 = 6077 (area 1, first Elena duel) and _id 418 = 6045 (area 2, second duel); ES_StoryMonsterProperty _id 255 (Edith, all zeros), _id 437 to 439 (Higgins grades 2, 1, 3: 0, +9999, +150).
• Boss and enemy numbers were calculated with the same formula from the tables (scripts under build/wiki/scripts/ngplus/); they match the figures on the boss pages where those exist.