I made it through Level 4. Some commentary on it:
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The monsters are pretty tough, especially the Red Guards which don't really ever become easy to defeat. However, level 4 is definitely conquerable, and although it's a difficulty spike and possibly a stumbling block, I don't think it's at an excessive level right now.
The easiest way to get past Level 4 is to not open the blue door in Level 3 blocking the speed potion, and instead use the key that would go towards that barrier to open the blue door in level 4. This leaves one blue key in level 4 to retrieve later that's behind a fegundo in 3S1W.
That said, it is possible to kill that fegundo without resorting to using the hand bomb or the speed potion. There's just not a lot of spare health left over and you'll be low on health going into Level 4.
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Anyway, this level almost mandates going on an ATK-based path at the altar due to the high ATK requirements for killing many of the enemies in this level reasonably. (140 for Soulless is nice, 145 and 159 for killing Red Guards, 130, 140 or 157 for killing fegundos).
Running down the eastmost column of 4 rooms is probably the easiest way to get at the blue door and skip past this level to level 5, when that's built. But in order to clean out most of the bonuses from this level, I first went to the east column, then the west, and finally went through the middle column once the Overminder did less than 400 damage to me. (That monster seems really strong.)
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The wooden sword I put in 4S1W is almost definitely not going to get retrieved until advances in later levels make it more practical to get. There just isn't enough ATK in the hold to kill that guard bare-handed in a reasonable fashion.
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I'm not sure whether there should be a boss for level 4. I'm tempted to say no to provide the opportunity for someone to take their chances dealing with levels 4 and 5 at the same time with relatively low statistics, but at the same time a boss could keep people from getting absolutely slaughtered by swordsmen, gel babies, and other nasties on level 5 by ensuring they're at least somewhat powerful.
On the other hand, the two fegundos on this level seem tough enough to be bosses in their own right anyway.
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Finally, here are my statistics that I'm probably going to take into level 4. Level 5 should probably be designed to accept lower statistics than this, but encourage that at least some stuff be taken from level 4.
Click here to view the secret text
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HP: 358
ATK: 172
DEF: 139
Keys: 0/2/0/0
GR: 1049
REP: 3896
Weapon: Short Sword (+30 ATK)
Shield: Bronze Shield (+30 DEF)
Accessory: Hand Bomb
Score = 1325
Looking forward to level 5, although I hope more people volunteer to build it. Doing something like this doesn't take too much time for me and I'm fine with volunteering to help build level 5.
