Oh, yeah, I guess you don’t have to fight every enemy, that would make other builds more possible. The blood vial has absolutely saved me– having more than 15 max hp means you don’t die if you mess up and the last region betrayers get an attack off on you. I haven’t seen the pike, yet; high movement speed is certainly good but I think you max out at the same four dv per turn that the final enemies get, which means unless you get lucky they can corner you. Admittedly you are pretty likely to get lucky, though, and, like you pointed out, you can just leave.