I'm on my first go at Maddening on Verdant Wind, (NG, Classic) and I'm finding Maddening to be rather punishing right now. My greatest fear for the playthrough is getting softlocked on ch. 13, so I'm trying not to mess around anywhere. I'm also trying to avoid grinding, since I don't wanna wreck the difficulty curve of the game. That said, I feel that already at ch. 4, I've sorta hit a wall stat and skill wise, particularly with having no actual way to deal with the DK. I can deal with it now, but I don't know if I will be if there are any difficulty spikes.
So I suppose the question is: Is Maddening feasibly possible without any auxillary battles, or should I start getting them now rather than having to backtrack later to get past a softlock?