The crocodiles have learned to fight back

Monsters cast now.

Every model carries its own loadout — physical and magical variants, chosen by
weight rather than in order, so two of the same creature will not always open
the same way. They lead with what they have instead of walking at you until
one of you stops.

The marshes were the test case

The crocodiles south of Sparta were where we tried it, which means the
friendliest levelling ground on the server has spent this week as the most
dangerous one. Sorry about that. Sort of.

They have a lunge that closes distance faster than you would like, and the
older ones in the deep water carry something that hurts considerably more than
their size suggests it should. Several people have found this out at level
fourteen with no potions.

What this changes

Pulling is a decision again. Three crocodiles used to be arithmetic — three
times the damage of one, arriving slowly. Now it is a question of what the
three of them happen to be carrying, and whether you can be somewhere else
when the answer arrives.

Bring a friend. Bring a Priest, if you can find one who is not already busy.

Everywhere else, shortly

The marshes were the trial. The rest of the world's creatures get their
loadouts over the next few patches, region by region, so that the difficulty
of a place changes once and then settles rather than lurching every week.

If something feels outright unfair rather than merely unfriendly — a skill
that ignores line of sight, damage that does not match the animation — open a
ticket. Some of these numbers want tuning and the field will find it before we
do.