ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

If I start madness level and go straight to the towns, they have very few, if any good npcs to drown. If I go at about lvl 8, they have lots usually.

So, how does this work, and based on the code, what would the optimal level be to visit towns to get the best npcs to drown?

I spent a fair bit of time in the code trying to figure this out. I can see how NPC levels are scaled by difficulty, but spawn rate for uniques and randbosses on higher difficulties aren't clear to me.

Thanks for that info. Anyone able to find out about the rates, bosses and uniques?