The First Weapon:Very nice dungeon layout. My main problem was that I had sound (and music) disabled, so I didn't hear the different sounds on the red crystals. Luckily there is a plaque mentioning the importance of sound, which finally made me turning the sound on. The random encounters were managable with level 35. Only the Sand Mantis still proved to be difficult.
FIRST WEAPON: At the end of this dungeon I was level 37. Fortunately the boss uses lots of Thrash attacks, which inflict Zombie and reduce the HP to 1. But that was fine, because I concentrated on reviving my fallen party members, so the boss would have fared better if it would have defended instead. Still it wasn't an easy fight, especially given the impressive 200,000HP.
Ice Caves Revisited:CRAIG & BRIANNA (Zombie edition): This even with level 38 this is still a HUGE roadblock. First of all I stocked up on Phoenix Dusts, because there seems to be no other way to survive Craig's attackes. Then Amanda got Omniproof and magic boosts to continuously cast the group Light spell. Alicia got the Auto-Reflect, Light Touch and HP+100% to attack by hand, whenever not using Breaker Bombs. That's because Harley's Dispel proved too slow for all the Haste casts. Lenna got drain abilities for all four basic elements, to stay alive and use Phoenix Dust and finally there was Ivy who basically got the function to divert some of Craig's attacks.
This setup worked relatively well, until Craig got down and Brianna started to cast Flare and Desaster. Even with Aura, this killed my party members instantly almost every time. Only the Auto-Reflect proved to be a relatively good shield against them. So I stopped reviving my dead party members and just hoped that all this nasty stuff got reflected to Brianna until she went down, too.
WRIATH: Relatively easy boss once you cast Regen on it and/or slow it. Nice posession mechanics. At first I tried to induce Sleep on the posessed character, then tried to take of the Zombie status. Neither worked...
Hunting Ground Revisited:I came here just to check whether a new optional boss is available, and it was:
ELECTRO GUY: From the description in the hunting club, I expected a fire elemental and equippen accordingly. So I lost a few turns changing equipment. Fortunately the boss wasn't really that strong and could easily be handled by my 40-level party.
Water Cave:Excellent dungeon layout - very confusing! The random enemies are very nice. The most annoying is the Karmeleon with it's hiding ability. Aquarion and the Qrab are fortunately vulnerable to sleep, so one can pick them on one-by-one and with Amanda's Thunderia and Osmosis, one doesn't even have to waken them. I love the Aquarats as encounters, because they are vulnerable to sleep, too. So they are easy food and have the Potion-Jug as a steal.
If you made these random monsters easiers, then perhaps add some low resistance to sleep and slow to them?
WATER ELEMENTAL: I had enough protection against water damage, that this boss did no damage at all during the whole fight. So this was a bit boring...
METALITHE: The first part with two pods was rather nasty and the Trauma attack (on group 2) took my by surprise. But after I equipped a HP+100% to Ivy, who then survived Trauma and could easily heal the party with blessing, the rest was rather easy. After all pods were down, I expected some nastier water spells, but with all my water resistance items still on, this last part was almost trivial. By that time, I was around level 41, btw.
Hunting Ground Revisited:FIELD TRANSIENT: I still hate these Trauma attacks. Three of my party members were constantly trying to keep everyone alive and reasonable healthy, while only Amanda did damage. Nice challenge.
OCTOPWN: Far too easy! With eight arms I expected it to be a lot faster or have more hits.
Sysona:Very interesting town layout
I would prefer several big areas instead of tons of small parts, though. There are some very interesting should there. And a dark dealer, but I wonder how on earth you expect someone to get 3,000,000 gold? Unfortunately a bug prevented me to progress.
Worldmap:Given the bug with Mia (see below), I tried to find and tackle the worldmap monsters, mentioned when we got the boat.
SUZUKA: Very interesting steal, but far too difficult for my current party. I survive only about 4 rounds at the moment. Will come back to it at some later point.
LEVIATHAN: Interesting encounter, but not really that difficult for my level 40 party: The rather weak water attacks and only physical attacks that target one member for less than half their HP can be withstood quite easily. I should note that I already tried it with a level 35 party (before the First Waepon), but got beaten then.