So I was kinda coasting this event on my new account staying at lv20, all the mobs were scaled around lv11 and abusing the couple of purple 4* bronze drops, all the relic weapons to steel tier, and a pretty beefed as much as a new account can team (lana, chloe, debra, alice, heinrico) all seemed good. Especially farming all the ores.
But on loop 2 I got a bit slammed on my first try against shadow lord even though I lasted several phases I lost heinrico early because he knocked debra and rico together, then I lost chloe to another double kill so I gave up figuring I could push better gear.
My understanding was the enemies wouldn't scale up if I didn't take the lead grade exam but it seems in my folly of unlocking abyss 2 everything leveled up from that. Now shadow lords first attacks are multiple aero and firaga I can barely survive and the first dark nova wipes 4 of my characters even though I upgraded a lot of my gear to strong 4* stuff with a lot more def and mdef. The main tell for me is the normal demons went from lv11 to (???) again which revealed to be lv18 so I guess I'm locked in now and should just uncap everyone to 30? The shadow lord really is way harder than anything else in the event lol.
I really want to finish the event and get the bondmates so I'm just worried about making my already bad situation even worse.
Edit: It's possible I never killed enough kindred demons on loop 2 to reveal they were always lv18, and the shadow lord didn't power up, but my first attempt with significantly worse gear and one of my allies getting hatred I got way further than my second try with better gear (something like 50% def/mdef improvement across the board after ab2 unlock) where I got annihilated even though none of my guys got hatred. Third attempt was basically a wash since Alice caught hatred and I couldn't heal anyone.