MrBlarney
(he / him)
I spent the afternoon binging through the third stratum, and I think that with the abilities you find from its exploration and your improved equipment, you should be able to retrieve those stranded members in two trips, two at a time. You could also hold off on that until you need to deploy a reserve party, and collect them as a backup to your backup.
As far as further documentation of my experience goes, the third stratum was definitely a step up in challenge compared to the first two. There wasn't any point where I really felt overpowered, and the enemies are starting to get some nasty abilities. One of my unique items got destroyed by a monster, which really shocked me. Based on the event log, I'm hopeful that there'll be a way for me to buy it back eventually. Until then, there is only moving forward.
Still, I've got some good stuff going on. I've set up Shunga in my main team with the Otherworldly Pot and as much speed equipment as possible, and she's been a force in cleaning up a lot of combat threats. The value of taking out targets without needing to break their defenses can't be understated, especially with the numbers quickly getting quite large. Very worth the PP cost to set up her build. She used to have the Powder Gun as an off-hand weapon for undead (1HP) monsters and other monsters immune to banishment, until it got eaten by a Chimera, but she's still got a solid bow as a secondary until I find a new way to improve her equipment layout.
EDIT: Late addition since it's related to the third stratum, and it's just a cool bit of implicit or meta storytelling. Usually, you'll get a couple of enemy profiles per floor to fill out the events on each floor. But what is different about the last profile you get in the third stratum is that you get the profile for Professor Cavy, who is the final enemy on the Event Log. Why does the (assumed) mastermind of the dungeon look like a hamster? Those stats are way too high for the equipment I'm able to buy! That profile is essentially condensing what would normally be mid-game exposition, and transforming it into a sheet of numbers so that it fits the minimalist design principles of the game, and that's kind of amazing.
As far as further documentation of my experience goes, the third stratum was definitely a step up in challenge compared to the first two. There wasn't any point where I really felt overpowered, and the enemies are starting to get some nasty abilities. One of my unique items got destroyed by a monster, which really shocked me. Based on the event log, I'm hopeful that there'll be a way for me to buy it back eventually. Until then, there is only moving forward.
Still, I've got some good stuff going on. I've set up Shunga in my main team with the Otherworldly Pot and as much speed equipment as possible, and she's been a force in cleaning up a lot of combat threats. The value of taking out targets without needing to break their defenses can't be understated, especially with the numbers quickly getting quite large. Very worth the PP cost to set up her build. She used to have the Powder Gun as an off-hand weapon for undead (1HP) monsters and other monsters immune to banishment, until it got eaten by a Chimera, but she's still got a solid bow as a secondary until I find a new way to improve her equipment layout.
EDIT: Late addition since it's related to the third stratum, and it's just a cool bit of implicit or meta storytelling. Usually, you'll get a couple of enemy profiles per floor to fill out the events on each floor. But what is different about the last profile you get in the third stratum is that you get the profile for Professor Cavy, who is the final enemy on the Event Log. Why does the (assumed) mastermind of the dungeon look like a hamster? Those stats are way too high for the equipment I'm able to buy! That profile is essentially condensing what would normally be mid-game exposition, and transforming it into a sheet of numbers so that it fits the minimalist design principles of the game, and that's kind of amazing.
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