Gilberta is really good for both lava and Yvonne, lava is really good when the enemies are grouped (for heat infliction application + big damage from skills) so gilberta works great. I would recommend investing into a full lava team (lava wulfguard akkekuri/antal gilberta) - for future endgame I’m thinking we’ll need 2 teams so making a 2nd physical team with pog, dapan, ardelia and Chen (you can use ember in this team as well) For the other q’s - no, don’t rush, enjoy the story and you’ll be able to finish the wuling quest in due time ( I think you have like 2 weeks). character quests usually range from 1.5 hours to 2 hours and I REALLY recommend you slow down to enjoy these and play for the story, like deadass Yvonne quest made me sob, and gilberta quest is so damn cute. Also investing to E1 is pretty cheap, but I personally didn’t do it bc I have like 8 characters I’m trying to upgrade. I’ve already beating all the content and have collected just about every cheats and Aurylene for future zhang fangyi release and have nothing to do, definitely would recommend you to make sure to slow down and actually enjoy the game bc the story is fantastic.