HispaZargon's Difficulty Calculation Model (HZ-DCM)

[Kurgan]

Very useful, and I look forward to seeing how other new quests are put through the calculator!

[HispaZargon]

Thanks. I will update it during the incoming months, probably.

[SaoirseIRL]

Yeaaaah, tooo muuuch wooork!!! hahaha.... I have counted quest by quest each monster and trap, and I have also considered as better as I could all their stats and game mechanics, of course including characters and special monsters, everything but with some hypotheses and simplifications of course... I have also calculated for each quest which are the rooms or map areas where heroes will find at the same time the higher concentration of monsters difficulty points, which I think it is another difficulty indicator (there are quests not too difficult in total number of monsters but you could find many of them in a couple of rooms, which is quite more difficult than finding them one by one through the map)- I also have comparisons of difficulty between EU and NA maps, monster stats and rules for the same quest in order to check how much difficult is NA edition versus EU one... but such stuff may be for other threads.

And, of course there are many ways to enhance the group of heroes... one of them could be allow them to hire mercenaries not only in BQP or WOM.

Hi HispaZargon,

I'm currently building together a quest book with 8 or 9 quests. I'd like to try and rate their balance and difficulty off your model and compare for example to 'The Trial' to get an idea of how they challenging they are. Is your calculation model available somewhere?

[HispaZargon]

Hi not yet, but you can send me a PM with the info and I could check it for you.

[Kurgan]

People on HQF discord are asking about your system, HZ! I am sending them your way...

[gootchute]

I too would like to know how the method works.

I seem to remember a thread long abo that gave a numerical difficulty rating to each quest, based on monsters and traps, but i cannot find it. Can anyone direct me to it?

[HispaZargon]

I too would like to know how the method works.

Hi, I have plans to publish it in the future. Nevertheless, the model is still a very early version of what I intend to achieve with it.

I seem to remember a thread long abo that gave a numerical difficulty rating to each quest, based on monsters and traps, but i cannot find it. Can anyone direct me to it?

Here are three other related threads, maybe you can find there the one you are looking for:

- Questimator - An Excel and VBA-based difficulty approximator
- Base Quests in four difficulty steps
- Monster "point values"

[gootchute]

Thanks for the links, I did a deep dive and managed to find them as well.

[HispaZargon]

Hi,

I have already analyzed the difficulty of Rise of the Dread Moon expansion using my preliminar model. BEWARE, MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD

I have estimated that Total Difficulty of the expansion is 114416 DPs. Here you have other results I obtained for some other expansions under HQ21 rules, for comparison purposes:

- Basic Game (14 Quests): 60012 DPs
- Kellar's Keep (10 Quests): 56842 DPs
- Return of the Witch Lord (10 Quests): 61980 DPs
- The Mage of the Mirror (9 Quests): 136336 (Ogres with 5 BPs)
- The Frozen Horror (9 Quests): 169040 DPs

And here you have a chart where you can see how the difficulty is being increased through Quests of Rise of the Dread Moon expansion. Notice that I have considered Quests 9 & 10 as a unique Quest for Difficulty evaluation because like in The Mage of the Mirror and The Frozen Horror, the Heroes are not able to recover their BPs/MPs nor spells between both last maps/quests and they cannot visit the Armory as usually either:

HZ-model_v0100_HQ21_RotDM_Total_Difficulty_2023-08-23.jpg

I have also used my HZ-Model to calculate the Difficulty levels of all the existing official Online Quests. Then, here you have another chart with the difficulty of all released HQ21 quests and expansions up to now, ordered in the official chronological order defined by Hasbro:

HZ-model_v0100_HQ21_Quests_Total_Difficulty_Chrono_2023-08-23.jpg

Here a detailed view of The Frozen Horror, The Mage of the Mirror and Rise of the Dread Moon results:

HZ-model_v0100_HQ21_Last_Quests_Total_Difficulty_2023-08-23.jpg

Here you have a comparison of all quests and quest packs, but now also including the classic ones Against the Ogre Horde, Wizards of MorcarZargon and The Dark Company. The monsters stats considered in those three classic packs have been the closer NA system ones to make a good comparison. The order position considered for those packs has been defined according to my best guess in terms of storytelling, in other words, I placed them there trying to not affect to the official order defined by Hasbro for the rest of expansions, but at the same time trying to keep as much as possible the classic storytelling too:

HZ-model_v0100_All_Quests_Total_Difficulty_Chrono_2023-08-23.jpg

And finally, as always I would like to remember that this Difficulty Model is still a preliminary version with lots of limitations, so its results may not be as accurate as we would like to.

The current version of this model only considers the number an type of Monsters and number and type of Traps potentially found by the Heroes in each Quest. This model does not still consider the rest of matters of the game which could affect to the difficulty, like very special events or abilities (like Hero's sneak attack option when disguise), if the heroes can visit the Armory before the quest or not, how many aids the Heroes find (hideouts, potions, artifacts, etc.), Wandering Monsters, how many gold the find, how powerful are the spells of each spellcaster (the model only accounts the number of spells), etc.

The aim of this model was only trying to give a quick idea of how difficult is each quest and quest pack in those terms, but always looking for simplicity (at least on this stage of the project).

Nevertheless, in my humble opinion I think the result obtained by the model for Rise of the Dread Moon expansion are quite interesting from a comparative perspective, if we look to the results obtained for other quest packs, following the same criteria.

I wish you will enjoy this data.

[Virg]

Curious as to why the last quest in MotM dropped almost 10k DP from your first projection to the current one. The only change is 5 BP to Ogres, but I wouldn't think that the point drop changed that much with how of them there are in the double quest.