Everyone knows that once you pass basil, you get a good bit more heat and crowns than the stratum before. sounds fair enough; but theres one problem. For vanaduke levels, you need to prepare more heavialy, with volcanic/vog armor. To get that, you have to level 4 star to level 5, and you only get a couple of pixels of heat before reaching basil. This creates a conundrum;

To level up 4* armor, I need to go to the next teir. ->
To go to the next teir, I need 5* armor. ->
To get 5* armor, I need to level up my 4* armor. -^

So to get the armor required for an area, I have to play the area itself, without the armor required. Thus a conundrum occurs, and I'm running around insane, but fun, vanaduke levels with heavy demo, ash tail, and a heavy plate sheild, with no fire resist. Now, I could go play some random final stratum level, but fighting useless whordes of jelly isn't as fun as running through a maze of fire, dodging the spiked wheels hurling towards you. Stratums should each have more well rounded heat, jumping moreso between just the beginning of each teir than clockwork terminals.

Backup plan; make non-boss stratums of each teir have more unique elements, kind of like the wheels, or the beast bells, or the rocket launchers. The only real objectives on any those levels are to kill everything, then get a key or a statue, on some regular generic square platform, then to do the same thing on the next level. Either more heat on pre boss stratum, so I can play those levels less, or new levels before boss stratums , so I'll willingly play them more.