See Dungeon Runner... Oh, forget it, it's a boring joke anyways.

When randomly generating a dungeon, one thing you have to think about is the challenge of it. Is the average player going to be able to breeze through it? Will only the most experienced and quick-witted be able to pass? Are there going to be some challenges harder than others? Some challenges that allow the player to take a figurative breather? How quickly do they get more challenging, if at all?

Dungeon runner takes a very simplistic look at this, and like the shapes of the rooms that eventually get stitched together, the monster encounters are basically cookie-cutter fights, although even a cookie cutter can surprise you sometimes.

Basically, monsters are divided up into groups. Typically there is exactly one group per room, and they spread themselves out fairly randomly. That only matters on the first shot, though because the AI is extremely basic. If you kill a monster in one shot without it seeing you, you don't draw agro. If you don't kill it in one shot, regardless of whether the rest of the monsters in that group are able to see you, or the proximity you are to other, different groups, you draw aggro from exactly every monster in that group and no others. (in case you don't know, drawing aggro means to make a monster aggrivated, and chase you to attack). That's a fine system, but there are some 'scout' monsters who random-walk way outside of the room they are grouped in, allowing you to accidentally double-up a fight even when you're already losing.

There are several simple 'shapes' I've seen these cookie cutters come in. Medium, Swarm, and Boss.

Medium groups contain a half-dozen average melee units and one or three ranged units. Once in a while they'll contain a ranged unit who can heal your opponents or poison you or the like. Mostly it'll just be one knockdown per melee opponent, and then fight until they're all dead. No real variation, minimal strategy. It's not even much different based on what type of enemy you're fighting. All the melee enemies can knock you over exactly once. I suppose it's a charging bonus or something.

Swarm groups are larger than medium groups and in addition to a small handful of melee guys and a larger handful of ranged guys, they contain about ten or fifteen fodder guys whose only purpose is to absorb your fire and get in your way by getting as close to you as possible and doing the smallest amount of damage possible for you to want to kill them all. There's still not a lot of strategy here, you use an area attack once they get in close, then kill each of the fodder guys in one hit. It doesn't hurt that everyone gets area attacks of every element, so you can do it no matter who you're fighting. I'm sure there's other strategies, but this one works and it's simple.

Now we get to the boss fights, which is where the strategy actually comes in. Boss fights typically contain a good number of melee units, a few ranged units, and a boss enemy selected from among the available enemies that you're fighting. That does include the fodder units, but that just means they do less damage, they still have a huge number of hit points. Now, you actually have to prioritize your targets, because if you just attack the boss, then the other units will kill you. However, ignoring the boss will lead to the opposite scenario, forcing you to respawn and once again meet up with the now lackey-free boss and wipe the floor with him. I've found the best strategy is to take out about half the flunkies, then the boss, and clean up the flunkies last. It's simple, but the fact that the bosses have names, drop more loot than normal, and guard treasure chests puts just enough variation in the kill ten enemies, wait thirty seconds for health to recharge. Kill then enemies...

Of course, the names are 'randomly generated', too. Or, randomly picked from a list for that particular group. I'll never forget the first "Particuarly Rude Broodling" or "Pyrus the Smoldering" I fought. At least, until January when the game clears away.