unfortunately, the game considers giant geckos "easy", same as rats, from turn 1.
Eyesburn wrote:HardboiledGargoyle wrote:lich
hydra
orc knight
ogre
hobgoblin
this is misleading and would only confuse new players
sorry, what? How is it more misleading/confusing than monsters who change colors the way they do now? tbf I wasn't careful with the palette there. The game could use a broader progression of colors, say: grey, white, green, yellow, red, purple, then deep blue, with transition colors in-between. Players could then link colors to certain concepts like "tough early", "mid-game popcorn", "ultimate nasty". Like, "you've done mines, you can tab yellow now", "green? that's out of depth here, better avoid".
This would allow relying on memory and past experience to
some degree. E.g. there are quite a few monsters that are usually popcorn, but occasionally appear out of depth. The way current threat indicators work, they incline you to think of them as "easy", and disincline you from thinking of them as a so-and-so-tier threat, making it really natural to thoughtlessly start tabbing a pre-lair griffon or something, or on the contrary, beware ogres and such for an unreasonably long time.