Can You Go At Your Own Pace?

[Yxklyx]

So after a tough Necromancer fight I have characters at level 4 and 5 but weapons and skills are back at 2. How long can I send out lower level parties for loot - will the game start forcing me to use the high level characters on risky missions?

[Sillicha]

Aslong you have low level char's you get low level missions.

[TheBoredGal]

As hard as it may be, your gonna have to fire those people, useing level 2/3/4 gear in champion is a death senctance, you can use lvl 2 gear in veteran but you livlyhood of success is lower then a tree surviving in a bush fire. So you are left with 2 options, fire your high leveled people or your gonna have to start prioritizing hairlooms more then loot, with unfortuetly will most likely leed to backruptsy. On top of that I can't spell... so yay.

[Gwynna]

While you can technically go on with low level chars indefinitely it is highly advisable to get your high level chars battle-ready as soon as there are 4 or more of them.

[Static VoiD]

Well, I think you basically want to keep all your heroes at about the same level... As long as you have heroes below lvl 3, you should run green quests with 'em until you unlock the orange boss in the area. Then you send in the higher level guys to kill the boss... You pretty much use your higher level guys exclusively for orange boss kills and the DLC area, until all orange bosses are dead, since heroes refuse to do orange quests (including bosses) at rank 5 and you might be forced into boss encounters with suboptimal setups if you level your favourite heroes too fast...
After only red bosses are left you can do whatever the F you want and level as you please. ;)
I'm pretty sure that orange and green quests will keep poppin up, as long you have heroes left who could potentially run them... And while grinding low level quests you'll recieve enough heirlooms and money to upgrade your core squads.

That's at least what I do.

[Morrtanius]

You can go at your own pace. There is no time limit of any sort in the game.

[Shirome Artiste]

If you are stuck, it is quite possible(If you bothered to upgrade the stagecoach a bit) to cycle adventuring parties through apprentice dungeons, firing them after a run or two and rinse&repeat.

Doing those runs(It helps to get 4+ new recruits/week at least) it allows you to upgrade every building to max. level as well as stock up a couple hundred thousand gold without even touching a single veteran or champion level.

Just get a bunch of fresh meat from the stagecoach, run them ragged until they either ding resolve lv3 or get above 50 stress and then fire them. If they ding level 3 and have AMAZING quirk combos, set them aside for later.

[1Erik1]

Unless you are playing Stygian Mode (Hard Mode with Time Limit for completing the Darkest Dungeon) you can go at your own pace,though you should revisit your strategy maybe if you got lvl 4/5 characters with lvl 2 skills.