How does the automatic monster level adjustment work in Diablo 3?

Question

Starting with the 2.0.1 patch, monsters now level up with your characters.

When does this level adjustment take effect? If I level up in the middle of fighting a pack of monsters, do they all level up instantly or does it only affect monsters that haven't been spawned yet?

If I recall correctly, when another player joins the game, there's a delay of several seconds before monster health goes up - even the monsters I'm actively fighting. Perhaps the same is true for changing monster level when I level?

Answer 1

After some experimentation, I've noticed the following:

Monsters do indeed level up with you. You can see what level the monsters are currently by looking at the top right of the screen:

The easiest way to tell monsters are gaining in power is by turning your difficulty up to something like Torment and looking at their max health (assuming you have health bars and numbers enabled).

Any monsters you were fighting when you leveled do not appear to level. I've escaped to town, hung out in town for a long while, and popped back to see the monsters I've fled from at the exact same HP/Max HP I left them. However, when I started engaging new monsters that were off the screen, I observed the new creatures had much more health than previous mobs of their type. This behavior is different from when another player joins, where after several seconds all monsters gain a proportionally larger amount of health.

Monster health starts scaling up pretty fast, especially once you reach the 50s (and presumably in the mid-to-upper 60s). Thus, the difficulty gets harder as you are quickly gaining levels faster than you can acquire all-new gear and the bad guys are becoming harder to kill. The massive health/damage bonus of Master and Torment difficulties amplifies this effect.

Monsters are the same level as the game's creator and level up with them. Monsters never de-level. For example, if a 23 Monk joins a game started by a 30 Barbarian, the monsters will be level 30, even if the Barbarian leaves. They will remain level 30 until the Monk hits 31, and then will start gaining levels along with the Monk.

Answer 2

According to this blue post: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/11550164947?page=1#7

the game stays at whatever level it was created

So I guess there is a 'base level' of some sorts that is set as the game is created. Leveling up will make the monsters easier.

When a new player enters the game that's probably a different mechanic / multiplier than the level multiplier, so leveling up won't change the 'base level' directly, if at all.

I haven't really noticed a large difficulty increase when progressing through the acts in a single game, but it also seems odd to me that starting a game at level 1 will still have level 1 monsters when you reach the end of Act IV in that same game.

Edit: this is not true. The game does level up with the characters. The original post said (emphasis mine):

No, the game stays at whatever level it was created, even if the party leader leaves.

Which led me to believe the game always stays at the created level, no matter what. Turns out they were specifically talking about when the party leader leaves, not in general. It also doesn't stay at the level it was created, it levels up with the party leader but never levels down.