That's an absolutely fair assessment. My biggest reason for going with large numbers of lower fights was the high likelihood players would end up lost in there for a very long time. A war of attrition where there's only one safe location, only one place to get more rations, and only one location to get more torches. With bad luck or bad decisions, they could be trapped in there for multi-week sessions. I really wanted to playtest it better, but with hundreds of ways it could play out depending on group makeup, player styles, rotation choices, etc... it wasn't possible. I resigned myself to making the baseline creatures a bit lower and then allowing the danger clock/encounters to ratchet up the risk of major threats. One of the things I considered if I do an expanded was altering the danger clock so it not only increased the risk of major monsters, but also drops off the lower ones over time entirely so you get to a point where only the bigger threats are showing up. I'd still need to work out rooms, but with more space, I could have what appears in them change over time too!