/jp/ - Otaku Culture

I haven't touched this game more than off and on in ~2 or 3 years (I think E+ 1.27 or 1.36 was the most recent version I played heavily). I was just diddling around NT collecting unique weapons (and gods, once that feature existed) and farming and ranching, basically taking it easy.
Today I decided I should actually try to play the main quest. Turns out my IRL years of inefficiently grinding stats were effective: I obliterated the bosses that hold the Lesimas keys, handily beat the Chaos Fort bosses, and said "heh" when my level 160 magic dart crushed Zeome. Then I beat all the ST key bosses, grabbed the Kumi statue and the mansion etc, and got beat down mightily by Estork in about 4 breath attacks.

So how do I efficiently grind up to where I need to be to kill these ST chaos bosses? I'm thinking:
1. Go back to NT.
2. Build herb farm to eat herbed herbs.
3. Walk back and forth across NT
a. clearing each town's quest board and checking the invested magic vendor for wonder/potential/descent/attribute/growth/flying
b. triggering the Kumi statue for more seeds
c. rushing easy dungeons for little sisters -> more Kumi statues
4. repeat until v. strong

Is there a better way?
Also for skills/spells, should I sandbag a monster or just try to find something relatively benign in the void?