OK so re: the Challenger challenge: it turns out that you specifically coded a death scene in which the Goddess of Time says "I can't believe you tried a 4-star dungeon when you were only level 1"... touché.
I thought I was being really clever to save-scum until I got a key door and a level 60 giant metal slime, but then, despite putting a bunch of points into Intelligence, my Light Spear spell did 2 damage...
There are a few methods, but this is the most common. Most players that go for this tend to keep Lani at low levels and then go into the key door in the 4 star dungeon. If you haven't, you can collect the Eyes of the Unknown from the succubus dungeon to help with exp management. Once you get challenger to level 7 or 8, the high level light spells should be enough to kill the metal slimes. Just remember that the average party level is what matters, so you can still get it with Liam level 30 and lani at level 1.
The guide you have was probably written before the affection stat was added. I changed some progression relatively recently.
For magic, it's intentionally limited until the academy is added (so it's not possible to get the max title in the magician title sequence right now) . The only way to get magic points is by reading the books in the library. If you haven't, you also get them the first time you read the monster books all the way through (you get intelligence on subsequent readings).
I am trying to get as much training done as possible before heading to the dungeon, and I was hoping that I could kill the chicken to get the extra stats, but even without Lani in my party she gets bonus stats from its death - surely this must be a bug?
PS while I have your attention, can I suggest an improvement? The Soul Box needs to be populated with the items you chose the last time you died, and you need to add the ability to remove items.
PPS also the ability to buy a few potions at a time, the slider is set way too high: the least amount of minor potions I can buy is 88 and no one needs to buy 39k of them which is the max
PPPS the ability to check stats in camp would be nice too
Actually (not to toot my own horn, but I'll at least polish it a little), the premium version has all of those fixes (lani needs to be wearing the Eyes to avoid xp from the chicken event, but there are alternatives that allow quick stat gains). It's only avaliable through patreon right now, but you can see some previews in the most recent devlog.
I'm still not entirely sure how I'm going to approach putting premium versions on Itch, though (with the way things are going with payment processors). I'm thinking I may put up a second listing that is not indexed and link to it from here... we'll see.
