Explorers of Alpha: Starters only Post Game Quests?

[MidnightMirage]

I'm not familiar with this website. Idk how to search for an answer to this, so I'll just ask it. Playing on Difficult and currently writing this before going into Surrounded Sea. Not worried about spoilers since everything I'm mentioning is something that everyone looking up this hack already knows lol.

Why are post game dungeons like Blizzard Range and Surrounded Sea starters only? They weren't in Sky, and it seems like an anti quality of life change for a hack that has had great quality of life improvements across the board. The vanilla game already railroads you hard with plenty of dungeons being starters only + an occasional NPC. Takes the fun out of building a team when you go thru all of the post Crystal Cave content to the graduation exam, and then once the game frees you up and you get a taste of that freedom with Sky Peak, you then get starter only'd when it feels really artificial. My first guess was that you might've done this to make these dungeons harder, but you already made every dungeon harder via making enemies stronger and what I call challenge rooms with fixed layouts and strong enemies, which I really love except for the room with the pitfall traps in chokepoints. 

Is my game bugged or is this intentional design for every difficulty? For the record, I'm not judging nor trying to put you down. I'm just offering some honest criticism after my first playthrough of this hack, and after many many playthroughs of vanilla Explorers of Sky. Personally, I'd much prefer every filler story dungeon after Mystifying Forest to be completely insane in terms of difficulty instead of being starters only. I'm not the only player that builds teams in these games, and having more tools + quality of life makes team building a lot more fun. That is, until you're not allowed to use that team when you otherwise could in vanilla, with no justification. Sky Peak letting you bring a fourth team member makes it even more confusing for me, as that one has more story than the ones that follow.

Edited May 31 by MidnightMirage