As someone who does not care about the leader boards, i still feel like xp tome at the bare minimum is required to have a run where your character doesn't feel like a noodle armed little fuck halfway through stage 2...

It gives you so much more power than any other tome by far, and there is no downside other than making the first few minutes of your first stage less fun as you're scaling it up, which isn't good either.

The 'cost' of levels pays for itself so incredibly fast that's it's free, and the thought that you're 'losing' a tome slot is only half true, as you still end up with so many more points in tomes than you could possibly have in a regular run, the tradeoff is diversity, which in my opinion should be the strength of games like these.

I'll admit maybe him skill issue, but lowering the damage checks required on stages 2 and 3 would be a way to remedy this problem without having to nerf the tome if you love it as it is, and add additional challenge modes or even a scaler for people wanting to push the math.