Progression

[Bloodyboo12]

Having a hard time doing harder dungeons. I can run through low lvl dungeons and take practically 0 damage, but the next hardest thing I can find is like lvl 15-20 dungeons, which ruin me and my pet. Should I just keep grinding low lvl ones to get stronger, or is there some fairly unknown system I'm missing out on regarding progression. I eat ok food, and feed my pet as well, but I cant seem to find any better gear in the like past 20 dungeons. I invested in a blacksmith multiple times spending like 15K and they still have garbage after the reset. Do I just keep grinding low lvl dungeons?

[Darx]

gear is by far not everything. you need to train your and your pets skills. if you complete dungeons or quests you should get silver coins which you can use at trainers to raise your potential. that will speed up your progress

[Zombie Teddy Bear]

are you using the totem meta?

are you giving your pets food?

The black market shop thats next to the pet seller in Derpy usually sells good items without investments and you can save scum (autosave entering city) if your ok with doing that

you can make a crap ton of money in derpy going underground and mining the gold bricks (-1 karma each) and turning them into statues. You can make about 3k selling the bricks as is or 10-20k as statues

give your pets a ranged weapon so they can shoot while closing the gap on baddies

you can also but a high PV pet and attach them to the gallows so you can train fighting them as skill levels really do help tacking higher lvl baddies
you can combine this with giving a pet very good PV items and using cursed acidproof pots to make a - weapon that wont do any damage so you can train effectively forever only costing you food and sleep

[Dying pancake]

Dependes on your class, mid game could be very tough. I would suggest you train only one pet to host on you (sysbiosis). There would be more and more formidable foes require stragey which simple pet AI couldnt offer.

And keep grinding lv10 dungeon to get white star (miracle/godly) gears, they do drop, at a rather low rate.

It is recommended to MUST have gears to neglate fear/confusion/sleep/paralysis/poison, etc. etc. and enchant them to your best effort. But even so, certain foes could easily smash you, this is how the game designed, but you will learn.

Low level dungeon could be spoiling, you have to use all sorts of coumables to buff/heal yourself. And if mage, magic map and telepathy to scout ahead, run whenever you feel wrong.

[Akameka]

you can also grab a good +10 in most stats and other interesting things if you fish for mutations by drinking water from wells if you didn't do it yet.
Honestly I am still quite early on and a good chunk of my character stats come from thoses.

That, and lonely soul feat at max lvl will grant you 5% HP, MP & speed for each unused ally slot. Which can be usefull even if you use 1 or 2 allies.

You can also relativelly easily enchant and bless your stuff to +3 for getting more damage on weapon and +6 PV & DV on each gear part. +5 is harder to get ( need a rarer enchant scroll )

You can get a temporary +30% on all stats by drinking blessed potion of Mind & Body, can be usefull for a boss fight

Weakness spell halve PV & DV of ennemies, so that can help too, even for a melee build

then there are buff spells that can become really powerfull if you dedicate to their training. Holy shield can easily give you a good PV bonus even at low level.