Did y'all change how OOD spawning works?

[Richter_Belmont]

In my last several games on trunk I've seen several monsters that don't normally show up that early. I'm used to, say, Sigmund, Terence, Jessica, or Edmund (and sometimes some combination of the three) showing up on D:2 or D:3, but the last few games I've seen black bear packs on D:2, water mocassins on D:3, and Ijyb and Eustachio both spawning in sight of one of the upstairs on D:3. Did the dev team recently change monster spawning to be meaner, or is this just confirmation bias and I've been extraordinarily unlucky?

[Jabberwocky]

My guess is that as with all the other cases like this it's a clustering illusion.

[Galefury]

Nothing changed.

Have you been taking more turns in early D? Newly spawned monsters have a chance to be OOD or even horribly OOD (anything that can spawn in D is possible) which increases with the number of turns spent on the level. If you take more turns, you will see more OOD spawns (on average).

Or it could just be clustering illusion.

[crate]

My bet is those black bears were connected to a trog altar.

[XuaXua]

it's a clustering illusion.

That sounds like one of Mara's abilities.

[nordetsa]

Unfortunately it never seems like an illusion to me and I keep believing something must have been done to the monster spawning system.

[Jabberwocky]

Generally, the point of illusions is that they seem real.

[KoboldLord]

Unfortunately it never seems like an illusion to me and I keep believing something must have been done to the monster spawning system.

None of the OP's examples are even slightly unusual. You can easily find the bear vault with the Trog altar in the listings. Water moccasins are normal on D3. Both Ijyb and Eustachio spawn normally on D3, and if you happen to draw both at once there's a pretty good chance they'll randomly end up in the same open area.

There certainly could be a bug somewhere, but these things you say you've never seen before are things that I've seen dozens of times over the course of many games.

[ebarrett]

Well, to be honest, OOD spawning has changed a few times over the years, though not recently. It has been infinitely less harsh than it used to be for quite a while now - legends speak of entering the dungeon in sight of yaktaur captains and such.

As for the OP, apparently he can't tell an OOD spawn from his elbow, so whatever.