[richtaur]

So the difficulty ramps up like this: it goes from 1 to 100 every 60 seconds, spawning more difficult enemies as it increases. The difficulty increases faster the more damage you've taken. Once it reaches 100, it spawns dragons, resets to 0 and doubles the amount of monsters it will spawn.

You can reset the difficulty manually by working your way up the weapon tree to the RUNEFORGE (purple sword)!

Glad it was still fun despite your frustration :-)