QUOTE(Tracerneo @ Aug 13 2019, 19:15)

How does the difficulty scale as one levels up?
I was able to relatively easily fight random encounters on IWBTH difficulty until recently, but now I often die in first few rounds. Is it an issue with my fighting style, or does it just get so much more difficult on higher levels?
QUOTE(Fudo Masamune @ Aug 13 2019, 19:27)

it's not linear.
1-100 doesn't feel like anything ( lol tutorial levels )
100-200 things start getting harder ( makes you wonder )
200-300 is the hardest hurdle ( go start build some defense )
300-400 things start getting stable ( building some offense is welcome too you know )
400+ stuff get easier again. ( welcome to the real grind, non-late round IW/GF monsters are too easy it's boring though )
To add to what Fudo said, basically things keep getting harder until you finally start facing the strongest monsters (somewhere between Lvl250-300 IIRC), at which point it stops getting harder. But then the monsters are starting to get tankier and tankier (at least their growth in that aspect is superior to the player's damage output's), which doesn't add to the difficulty, but tends to make you slower and slower as you level up, even though your survivability is getting (slowly) back to the better. So starting Lvl350-400 or so you're starting to look for ways to also increase your damage output.
And then between Lvl400-500, things are getting slower or faster depending on how well you're geared and how well you play: this is where having high-end forged equipment becomes crucial. This is basically the point where one is trying to optimize the pace at which he annihilates monsters to get more credits and equipment, and faster.