Did Seekers of the Storm significantly increase the difficulty of the game?  Last week I completed Eclipse 8 with all survivors.  I played exclusively on SotV because I wanted to see how all survivors did with the same map/item set.  Across the 16 characters, my Eclipse 8 win rate was 44%.  I completed the SotS survivors last, and they went Seeker (8-0), Chef (8-3), and False Son (8-6).  This put all three survivors in the top 5 (Huntress was also 8-0 and Artificer was 8-4).

Since completing Eclipse 8 with the SotS survivors, I have started playing "Hardcore" Eclipse 8.  Basically Dio's, Pluripent (sp?) Larva, Growth Nectar, Spare Drone Parts, and Transcendence are all banned.  I am 2 - 19 as of this post.  Furthermore, I would guess well over 50% of my deaths pre-SotS happened on Commencement, with almost all of those being Mithrix.  Of these 19 losses, I have died on Commencement just 2 times!  This seems to suggest an enormous change in difficulty.  Cue the video.  Today I encountered a Scavenger on Stage 4.  This is my 321st run on Eclipse difficulty, and I have never seen a Scavenger a single time (I play with no looping, going straight to Mithrix) prior to the 2nd loop when the start to appear almost every stage around 7 or 8.  

Has anyone else noticed a significant difficulty increase with SotS?  My theory at the moment is the Halcyon Shrine on stage 1 can add about 2 minutes of times to that level.  I'm all about fully looting stages, but I have noticed a significant difference in the enemy spawns by stage 3-5 when the average time is 12 minutex per stage vs 8-10 minutes per stage.  

Seekers of the Storm Difficulty?