Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos

Access to healing: I've made item shops and espers more common in the early parts of the cave, so that shouldn't really be a problem. You have a 2/3 chance of finding an item shop in the first zone, unless one of them was changed into the colosseum.

Access to treasure: The "treasure buff" that I did was partially a tweak to improve item coverage... which means that items that haven't been added to the cave yet will get priority over duplicates. It is by no means guaranteed, but the odds of getting a particular elemental shield or even a Paladin Shield or an Illumina are much greater than they have been in the past.

Another point I'd like to make... I personally think that races should allow the use of a guide. In vanilla speedcave you can easily trade up your items for an elemental shield or a Red Jacket because you might already know the colosseum wagers. That's one of the reasons why I added the colosseum, so that players have access to a means of controlling their equipment pool and can stockpile the stuff they need to get through the cave.

Party levels: Personally I thought that having variation in levels is a good thing, because the exp curve is such that the requirements for early levels are vastly reduced which means it doesn't take much time to get a new recruit up to speed. It helps protect against the "Lv5 Doom" problem, and encourages players to build up characters one at a time. I like it because I don't have to get to know 12 characters all at once; the initial party select screen drives me crazy. Also to note... I do have the option of level averaging new recruits, but I decided against it. In any case, if I do end up creating a third code, I'll probably keep the 12 characters in that one.