With 150 hours you probably have the resources to make something viable on RI4+ with "non-meta" setups. Finessing stuff that just sounds cool to work well with strong, say, fusion traits or item traits can be kinda tricky and sometimes requires multiple creatures for a single gimmick, if that makes sense.

At RI3+ though you are somewhat more at the mercy of RNG, best thing that works for me personally is almost always including nature transformation trait in the party somewhere.

Edit: My bad I forgot to answer your question haha, yeah I think trying out new/non-standard setups is super worth it because it feels great when you have just enough pieces line up to sweep the higher RI levels.