I assume by followers you mean mercenaries? When you fight in a Multistage Dungeon, and your Hero dies, but some of the mercenaries remain alive in the (maybe last ?) battle, you might win the battle, but you won't receive the quest item. Therefore, you have to start back from the first stage.
It's been like that since.. forever?
By exploiting the game what exactly do you mean? Please, share your opinion.
Maybe he wants to say that when the hero dies in a victorious battle (mercs finish off the enemy) the loot is really really small- e.g, in a normal zone that I usually earn about 60K gold (counting the items sold to vendor), if my hero dies I get only 2-3K gold and no items.
I am not sure what he refers to by the "kamekaze exploit", but I suppose the new rule about locking lower tier dungeons if you survive the battle with the boss tipped him off (otherwise, you can yield monstrous gainings by suiciding your hero in a surewin battles- mercs kill the boss, you get some nice legendary/epic items, the storyline doesn't count your attempt successful- you have a nice goldmine for the first several levels in the higher tier, etc). With the "died hero, small loot" rule this is impossible. And the question posed is- is this rule justified in normal zones?
1) What I am referring to is that, even in a normal battle, if the hero die but the battle is won, you get the gold and XP but there is no loot: no potions, no weapons, no armors, no bones, no pelts to harvest.
It has changed that way recently, at least in my experience.
It is
not referred specifically to multiple stage dungeons
2) Kamikaze exploit:
attacking the last stage of a multistage dungeon while wearing no armor so that the hero will die and the dungeon stay open as uncompleted.
You were the one to define the attack to die tactic open a kamikase attack, Sheremetev:
Yes, the bonsai-hadoken-kamekadze attack saces a margin of the repair taxes. But when the hero dies the mercs go totally ape and completely forget about scavaging the enemies. Gold is several times less too.
And the question posed is- is this rule justified in normal zones?
And you are asking the right question.
3)
By exploiting the game what exactly do you mean? Please, share your opinion.
Exploiting: "gaming" the rules to get maximum gains even when it is against the spirit of the game.
The spirit is that, when capable you will go and fight in a higher tier zone, the rules allow you to farm a lower tier zone even when you are fully capable of winning the battles in the easiest dungeons of the next tier.
Note that the kind of loot you get in the higher tiers of a level compared to what you find in the lowest tiers of the next push you toward this kins of behavior too. Only the tanners has an incentive to fight immediately in the higher tiers dungeon it they contains animals.
