Well, apart from flying to an interview and getting sick for a few days, I've made good progress on Laby.
To give a quick rundown of events:
1. Maribel wasn't too bad.
2. Grinding for items for the star was annoying as hell.
3. I hit the typical walls for postgame: one at 24f when I had to beat all the sigil guardians, one at 25f when I had to beat Shikieiki, one at Kedamagrammatamallamamama, and I just hit the mother of all walls: 30f.
4. Baal avatar wasn't as bad as I thought, considering my lack of Defense-oriented characters. I realized that, apart from Tenshi, my highest Def character was Utsuho. That was pretty disheartening.
5. The Game Database says Agastobrauma uses Djinn Storm on his first turn; he doesn't.
6. Random Djinn Storm usage is a pox on this game. Scripted use that you can prepare for is fine, but when Kedamagrammatamallamamamaobama djinn storms you twice in a row at the beginning of a fight, you might as well just his Esc and try again.
7. Shikieiki was when I really started pumping affinities with skill points. She has a wide variety of various super damaging multi target elemental attacks.
8. I put off Yuka until I completely outclassed her.
9. I STILL haven't beaten Utsuho.
So now I'm grinding on 27f, since Flandre can one-shot every possible enemy party with Lavaetein. I get about 5,000,000 exp per trip, which nets me between 3 and 4 levels per character. Only non-30f things left are all four 21f bloodstained seal bosses and Utsuho. I can't touch either of them currently. In my old save, beat Utsuho, and I believe I beat all 4 bloodstained seal bosses, but I still couldn't reliably take down 30f encounters. I guess we'll see if I can beat WINNER before TL2 comes out.