Question about level decay

[Skip Sandwich]

Hi all, I just picked up this game recently and am having a ton of fun so far!

I had a quick question that I haven't seen answered anywhere so far regarding demon level decay. I know that demon level progression is set to "soft cap" them at about +10 levels from whatever level you recruit them at, but what if you later fuse another demon onto that base demon, does it 'reset' the base level to the level of the fusion? Or does each demon have a default "Base Level" as part of their statistics? I have noticed that I only ever find some demons at a certain level even when that level is OOD (Out-of-depth) for the floor i'm on (looking at you lv 9 Ghouls).

[Ferret]

Oh, hey. Welcome to the forum Skip. I'm glad you're enjoying the game so far.

The only thing that matters for level decay is the natural starting level of that type: what level you found it at, whether or not you fused it, etc. doesn't matter. The natural starting level of a demon is, almost always, the level you find them at, with two exceptions: enemy summoners may have leveled their demons some, and demons sprung from a corpse's relic may also be leveled. (It is also possible, in rare cases, for player ghosts to have demons *lower* than their starting level as a balance check against someone getting lucky finding and recruiting a bunch of OOD monsters and making a way OP ghost... I don't mind throwing 2 ghouls at you in Tower: 1 & 1/2, I don't want someone fighting 3 modified Ghouls and a summoner )