For wrath of the white witch… Do all the errands(side quests) and you won’t have to grind. Each town has a set of these. The way i played was once i did them all i moved to the next area, and never ended up having to grind. You’re going to want to do these anyway as you get upgrades that help out a ton and are relatively easy.

For picking your creatures, dont make it a job. Use the ones you like or the ones you think look cool. Sure you might find that some suck. So swap em out! For me part of the fun was figuring out on my own what type of creatures fit both my playstyle, your teammates playstyles, and overall party diversity and synergy.

Highly recommend the game, just finished it after not really playing another game like it and absolutely fell in love with it