I have defeated the witch who supposedly captured Brodo and turned in the quest. However, Caleb still acts as if nothing had happened and Brodo is nowhere to be found. Where is he?

Did you check witch's cabin?

I found two switches I had missed before, so I'm OK. (The strategy guide and the Internet fail to mention them.)

In any case, I found some good skill books for my Paladin; Wounding Strike (will save 2 skill points) and Divine Prayer (will save 3 skill points, but not until level 16). Also, Knowledge of Herbs (saves 1 skill point for Gaulen, who needs it) and Swords (saves 2 skill points for my Arcane Soldier, who doesn't).

By the way, wasps are annoying because they give empty experience (in other words, XP without the money needed to go with them).

My party is level 13 (I think) and has had enough XP to reach 14 for a little while now.

Edit: As a side note, I have a feeling that this is the sort of game I will enjoy more when I know where everything is and what to expect.

In the original Etrian Odyssey, some of the postgame bosses can hit your party for around 3k elemental damage (your HP caps out at 999). In Etrian Odyssey 2, due to the way the damage formula works, if your defense is low you can take 5 digit damage. (Then again, in testing, I managed to get my Medic to do enough damage to cause integer overflow.)

From what I have heard, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga has a ridiculously powerful new game+ only boss who starts the battle by hitting your party for 5 digit damage (again, HP cap is 999). Furthermore, the boss summons other enemies, and if you kill one, the boss uses that attack again. Even worse, if you don't kill any of the summons for long enough, one of them will cast Recarmdra (kills caster to fully heal the rest of the party), fully healing the boss and prompting the use of the attack again. (That last case, if it happens, means it's time to reload.) Therefore, you *need* Endure (survive fatal blow with 1 HP) and the ability that makes you invincible while asleep; furthermore, you need someone in your party to be affected by sleep. (I have not played the game (though I own it), so I haven't fought the boss.)

Then Dragon Wars has an enemy you are not meant to fight. That enemy did 14 damage to the whole party, which was enough to trigger a game over. (If you run into this battle, you did something wrong. Hint: The boss starts 150 feet away and isn't the only enemy in that fight.)

If you want to see ridiculous damage numbers, there's also the Disgaea series. In the post game, stats get really high. In videos of Disgaea D2's ultimate super boss, billions of damage were thrown around like they were normal. Even earlier games in the series get to the point where the game starts using the letter 'K' meaning 1,000 (or the kanji 万 with the reading "man" meaning "10 thousand" in the Japanese version).

Yeah I played Disgaea, it had quite a lot of interesting mechanics. I remember merging enemies and quickly nuking mega-high level one for tons of EXP. Main story was actually quite easy, that's the bonus areas which were quite ... surprising.

But unlike postgame and unwinnable encounters, Agarest 1 puts you to such fight near start of the game. AI is incredibly spiteful in this game overall (Hornet and Hell Dog joining forces in one big combo attack? Pixie who keeps flying away from you, while doing very painful mass nukes? That's just tip of the iceberg.), which is rather good and makes things quite interesting.