Hello and thanks for the bug report & feedbacks :D I'll try to fix the bugs for the next version.
The game still has no objective and many mechanics are missing, so I understand and am totally comfortable with the lack of incentive in its current stake. It will evolve :D
There are many "subtle" informations given to the player about the difficulty of an enemy:
- first - the base name: a cursed branch or root is weaker (both in HP & strength) than a cursed bush or a Treant. In the same vein, a King, Grand priestess or Vizir is way stronger than a scout or a gatherer.
- second - the "first" adjective: you have noticed I guess the adjective each mob has an adjective attached to his name (ie: "frail owl"). This defines additionnal stat bonuses on the mob (ie: "frail" gives the mobs a slight disavantage from its "normal" variation) - fear the legendary, ancient and ancestral ;-)
- third - the "second" adjective: yes, you can't see it if you fight normaly by just attacking, but there is a second adjective the mob that gives him different stat modifiers. This adjective, as well as the mob HP and power can be viewed if you successfully analyze the mob during the fight :D But you might fail to analyze it and get hit instead (but you can train the wisdom or luck stats - via gods only for the time being - to increase your analyze chance ;-) ).
- Base rule - the more HP and impressive name a mob has, the harder it is (and it hits).
Difficulty also increases the longer you advance in an adventure without returning home (resets when returning home) + a base difficulty is added each day that passes. (permanent difficulty upgrade).
There are a lot of "subtle"/small things like that in the game for the player to discover. I call them "silent" feedbacks - things that appear to be of little to no reason or use, but that actually do weight in the balance of the game and can help the player to slowly understand the little secrets about the game mechanics.
The fight is a "simple" dice roll / "coin flip" with chances of hitting splitted between the player and the enemy. If the player chance to hit is 58%, then the chance that the monster hits is necessarily 42%. Hit chances starts at 50% and a modifier is applied to take into account the player stats (weapon, level, strength, luck, current thirst etc..), the mob stats and type, as well as the difficulty factors ( global day progress, adventure length...).
This means that when you choose "fight", the only two possible issues are you hit or you get hit.
The modifier's equation is a far too complex for its own good, and really bad in term of design & balancing/fine tuning :D ( = it's bad)
I might scrap it and redo this section of math entirely (it's not may specialty), witout changing the core of the base fight mechanic ( I want to keep it very simple).
Critical hit is rolled after the hit is validated. It uses its own "flip a coin" chance with stat modifiers.
I don't mind sharing the full game script, I'll just drop it around version 0.8.x or 1.0.0 - when I'll have cleaned up the mess there is all around (I keep declaring and feeding my variables in many passages and multiple time - bad design, terrible idea for debugging, tweaking & balancing :D Some systems from the first iteration are still in there, but have since been replaced by scripts in specific passages but were never removed/cleaned up etc...)
If there is an aspect in particular you would like to know more about, I can give you the source tutorial/script I copied / was inspired by :D