The destruction of the forest folk is something I didn’t want to do.

Sorry to hear that you stopped playing by the 20th floor, because the next stratum creates an amazing twist to the storyline, and I found myself wandering in shock around the floor for about an hour, stopping to gaze out over the horizon whenever I crossed a bridge.

The 5th Stratum is by far the most difficult up to that point. There are no shortcuts to be hard, and the twisting passageways makes for difficult mapping.

My initial party was made up of a Landsknecht, Defender, Dark hunter, Medic, and Survivalist, and I’m surprised I lasted as far as I did without any elemental attacks, which become almost necessary after that point.

As far as not being able to defeat the FOEs on the 20th floor, The Diaboliques, and the other one…Cruella? Yes. They are extremely easy to bind with a dark hunter and have low defense, as far as the Ogre, elemental attacks probably suffice, but I muscled my way through it with Smite, Cleaver, Any of the binding skills, and Apollon, using the the Defenders, “Defender” skill at level 10 to max out my party defense while buffing speed with survivalist. Ogres are a hard FOE.

As far as I can tell each class has a few key skills besides the main skills, (Healer, Songs, Hexes, Shields that sort of thing) which absolutely need to be leveled to be successful. Defenders, it’s Defender, Def Up, TP up, and level 5 in antifire,anticold,antivolt, but you won;t need those tilluntil the last quests. Medic it’s TP up, Refresh (can stop at level Salve II, and Immunize. Use only the bare minimum of skill points to unlock the skills. 1 point in revive is fine, Landsnecht is versatile, but I have 2-hit , atk up, swords up, cleaver, at level 10, and all-slash almost to level 10, and the Blazer, Freezer, and sHocker skills at 1. Character levels max out at 70, so unless you retire, and relevel, you only have 73 skills points to spend. That rather annoyed me. TP up is important for any class, and I’d say ignore HP up. And at later levels once everything is maxed or near maxed as medic, use the remaining points in Scavenger, items drops get more scarce on the lower levels.

I wanted to expriment with a new party combination, replacing my defender with a bard, and my survivalist with a Alchemist. Survivalists are impotant, I am going to power level one to level 27 and use it to exclusively Chop, Take, and Mine when I max those skills.

I had my party maxed in level, but needed elemental attacks of the final level, so I randomly leveld other classes, made an experimental part in new game to see the difficulty and accidentally saved over my file, so now I’m playing through from the beginning from scratch. Didn’t bother me too much, but I can’t play for hours like I did when I first got it, so it’s slow going.

It’s an arduous places in some spots, but the initial ending ending will leave you wanting more. And what do they give you? More! LoL. I won’t reveal too much, but the game does not end after the credits finish rolling.