Here I am to show my best lv 3 run! 11 Loop completed. Could have gone further but I had to go to bed and I could not save, unfortunately.
I found some strats that, together, were amazing. Don't know what can be stronger than this ( Skimander/Chip cheese aside, of course).
TEAM NAME: WINNIE THE BEAST
There were many strong things about this team and run.
1. SPOOKY FOOD
I've already used in the past Woad and Mabek together to get lots of food since the beginning, thanks to Dark Harvest. The tricky part of this strat is to make sure one or more monsters die during the fights, without losing them. Usually one monster only, so that you don't lose wounds thanks to Haunted, but sometimes you want to make more die because you know you are going to rest later.
2. HUNGRY BEAR (+Lucky Items)
Urso. I found him immediately after Woad and Mabek and the obvious idea came to mind. I didn't think it would have worked this well though.
I gave him everything. Carrots aside (he does not need INT), I gave him all the food I had.
But I was also very lucky. I found the Unraveling Prism and gave it to him to boost his defense. I've always overlooked the Unraveling Prism because it eliminates monster abilities, but Urso's active ability is not that great, for me. And this item helps TONS with poison! I did not have a single healer in the party (Woad aside, who heals themselves at the expense of the party), but Unraveling Prism was enough to compensate!
You can see in the pic that Urso reached insane stats, with 999 Str, more than 4k HP, 800+ Def and almost 200 Spd.
It had: Unraveling Prism + Shattershard AND Living Armor + Harvester.
This monster was... Invincible. He never died. Never. And did tons of dmg. He healed himself, he tanked, he... He was unstoppable.
After a while He and Woad were the true stars of the team. You can imagine why.
3. WYRMLET BEING WYRMLET
Wyrmlet with Spyglass and 2 Hearts of the Ocean kept casting, giving dmg, silencing and giving mana to Urso in front of him. As always, one of the best monsters around. Maybe the best one.
4. PARRA THE THIEF WITH TONS OF HP
Urso already had 2k+ HP when Parra was still a little chick. That's why I used Emboldened Soul on her. And voilà. Evolve her and you have a Parra with tons of HP. I gave every carrot I obtained with Dark Harvest to her and Wyrmlet and I had a very strong tank and dmg dealer.
5. GOOD SYNERGIES (but still not perfect)
Haunted, Max Lucky, Max Magical, Guardian, Tactician and Aquatic together.
I'm sad I did not have the chance to fuse some living root to have Nature, damn it.
6. NUTS = MONEY
After a while, every monster had 15 mana, so I had no use for the nuts that reduce it. Dark Harvest gave me lots of them and I sold them for 100 each, trying then to keep the mana to power up Parra or spend it to find potions to heal wounds. It was great.
PROBLEMS AND WEAK POINTS
In the last loops I started to have some (minor?) problems. Urso and Woad never died, but the others did and the wounds count started raising too much.
Karakai was strong, with his Moonbeam, but too squishy. It's good for this team that some monsters die, but not so frequently. He kept going forward by himself and die against someone. Damn. Ahahahah. Still cool.
Mablack was also kinda squishy. His ability, Dying Breath, is AMAZING though. It scales in time, giving tons of dmg. Especially agains enemies that occupy the entire field. But yeah, very squishy. I love this doggo and it's necessary if you want Max Lucky synergy, but yeah, it's a risk.
Wyrmlet was also squishy and easy to die. Ideally, I think you should find Parra first and Wyrmlet later, to give emboldened soul to Wyrmlet and make him the 3 tank, than giving HP to someone else like Karakai or Parra to tank. (Or even not choosing Karakai for another tank, but then you have to find another Magus Hat to reach Magical, and it's not easy).
OVERALL LOOK
Not obtimal, but AMAZING. I can't imagine how far you can go with this strat on lv1. Don't know about Calamity. The number of wounds REALLY helps for this strat.
SOME BUGS AND RANDOM FEEDBACKS
1. I've mentioned it in other comments, but I think I had some weird stuff happening with the curses. They were repeating themselves.
2. After giving some thoughts, I think the Potion Blessing should not count the Elixir. It should not even limit to 1 potion, for me, if you have the Elixir. The Elixir is a plus to your blessing. It's not convenient to take the Potions Blessing, if it counts the Elixir in some way.
3. The new event with the mannequin is also cool and strong. I changed Urso's Attack to Challenge and he hit the healthiest enemy for 120% dmg, to not waste any attack on weaker monsters that could die in other ways.
4. The event that makes you fuse items with monsters is incredibly crucial to reach further loops. It's so important that, after a while, I kept going for "?" tiles just to find this event. Without it, you can't really improve your team.
QUESTION: Can you fuse two items on the same monsters if you use two different forge sparks? Like, you use the normal one first and then the corrupted one that uses your hp?
5. Dragon Scale is incredible. Nothing else to say.
6. In this run like in other ones, I found myself thinking that Kensei's Weapon (don't remember its name) and even more the Ominous Idol are not on par with the other Legendary Items. The Ominous Idol especially is not that strong. I mean, it is, but not that much. There are rare and even uncommon items more useful. I could be wrong about the Kensei's though, maybe there is someway to use it well, with that +30% to attacks and stuff. I don't think I'm wrong with the Idol, instead.
7. The insane amount of items I had encountered a problem: there is not enough space to really know what do you have, in the UI. This was a real problem when I had to take off some items to switch them, because I literally could not take them again without eating some food. It was kinda annoying. I suggest making it possible to scroll left and right to see what items you have, and/or using a multiplier near identical items (Like "Quickfish X3" or "Dragon Scale x2").
FINAL THOUGHTS
I really had a blast. This game keeps giving. It's so fun trying and finding new strats. I hope one day to have the option of saving mid-runs and/or downloading a full complete version on steam or other platforms to play with more ease.
Great game, as always <3