Part 15: Update #15 Demons don't appear randomly

Update #15

Demons don't appear randomly

Time to debunk one of the many misconceptions people have regarding God Hand: Demons spawning.

tl;dr
The game decides WHEN and WHERE a demon will spawn:
-Every time you start a level or reload a level upon dying (every time there's a loading screen);
-Every time new enemy reinforcement appears (read = when enemies not initially present within a level appear);
-Every time you defeat a demon, the game decides where the next spawn will be;

The game knows, at all time, which enemy will spawn what demon and when.
There is no "50% chance that killing an enemy will spawn a demon" RNG statistics nonsense.

You read that right.

Demon spawning seems random at first - you beat up a bunch of guys and a demon pops up out of nowhere at the worst possible moment. However, I can affirmatively say that you don't have to blame randomness for that. The demons' spawning rate is a variable decided at the start of/during a level, not by some sadistic RNG factor as you're playing the game. Somehow, even the official God Hand JP guidebook has it wrong:



Rough translation:
"Evil spirits (Demons) appear when you defeat a certain enemy or randomly after killing non-boss enemies. There are 4 Demon types each with different high movement speed and attack. You should kill them immediately with the God Hand. After you defeat one, another won't appear again until you kill 7 more things (wrong). Only one will appear at a time, but two can pop up on Lvl3 or higher (true)."

Appearance rate:
Mooks - 1/32
Elites - 1/18

(meaning you'll get a demon every 1/32 defeated mooks and 1/18 defeated Elites, which is wrong)

"Demon Appearance Order:
Stages that Evil Spirits appear on.

Stage 1: Purple Demons (Blade Demons on Die)
Stage 2: Purple Demons/Blade Demons
Stage 3 onward: Purple Demons/Blade Demons/Spike Demons
Stage 5 onward: Lvl3 or higher, all of them randomly"

Watch this video then come back for a more in-depth explanation

I've used stage 1-2 My Right Arm The God Hand for reference. I made a manual save before entering 1-2 and I save-state'd after the loading screen when I'm in control of Gene, then I went and beat up every enemies until a demon decided to pop up. If no demons appear, I restart the level by either dying or loading the same level with the manual save I did earlier, then I make a save-state after the loading screen again.

When a demon finally appears (let's say it comes from the elite guy in the middle) I load the save-state then beat him up again. No matter how many time I load the same save-state and beat up the same dude, a demon will spawn out of him.

Now that I've identified X dude, I go back to the title screen and load the level manually (or I restart the level by dying). Once the level starts, I make a save-state again and I go beat up the same X dude, except this time, either 1) he doesn't spawn a demon upon death 2) no demons spawn at all in the entire level or 3) it's a completely different enemy who spawns a demon.

As demonstrated in the video, this has nothing to do with RNG or pure Diablo II/XCOM/RPG statistics. Every time you start a level or reload it, the game arbitrarily decides the next demon spawning location and shuffles through different per-determined scenarios. Imagine a deck of card with each demon spawn scenarios printed of them. The game shuffles the demon spawning deck order around once more after you kill a demon and more importantly during levels with fixed enemy reinforcement, e.g. the two guys coming down the elevator from stage 1-2, the two guys who opens the giant door in stage 1-3 as well as the 3 guys in the air balloon, every single enemies who jump down the ceiling in stage 1-5 in the display glass case room of death, etc. these

Every time new reinforcement appears, the demon spawning deck gets shuffled again, and with the use of save-states you could totally know which enemy will spawn a demon. This obviously has no practical use when playing on consoles. Either way, saying that demon spawns is random isn't technically true. There's obviously some maths involved during the actual demon deck shuffling, but there's no "1/32" or "33% chance" statistics nonsense.

To sum up, the scenarios work like this:
Let's say there's 2 enemies in a level (enemy A and B), then this means 4 different scenarios can happen:

Scenario 1:
No demon spawn

Scenario 2:
Enemy A spawns Demon X (either Purple, Blade, Spike demon or Trident demon)

Scenario 3:
Enemy B spawns Demon X

Scenario 4:
Enemy A spawns Demon X and Enemy B spawns Demon Y

Let's say there's 2 enemies present in a level (enemy A and B) and a 3rd enemy reinforcement (enemy C) who will show up after fulfilling a random condition like opening a door or whatever, then this means 7+ different scenarios can happen:

Scenario 1:
No demon spawn

Scenario 2:
A spawns X

Scenario 3:
B spawns X

Scenario 4:
C spawns X

Scenario 5:
A spawns X and B spawns Y

Scenario 6:
A spawns X and C spawns Y

Scenario 7:
B spawns X and C spawns Y

And so on and so forth. This gets incredibly confusing the more enemies you have, but generally, only 2 demons tops can appear during a level, which could mean the demon spawn is capped to two, maybe 3.

vvvvvvv There are scripted spawns throughout the entire game, the maps from the official guide book will tell you where they are, like in stage 1-1 with the basic thug in the saloon and the fatty sitting on the villager near the exit, and stage 1-5 with the fatty upstairs on the bed with the two female villagers. Then there are some levels where you'll never have a single demon spawn like stage 2-2.