I feel a bit silly for having to ask this, but... does progress in the LG affect the difficulty of battles in the fest zone?

Admittedly I avoided the LG for a long time, and I still am not necessarily enjoying it since it's overly grind-y for my tastes, but during the Patriotic event I finally bit the bullet and defeated the grove behemoth... and now I'm wondering if I should regret that lol. I did it despite knowing it would increase the difficulty within the LG, because I was hoping I could rank my team faster in the grove's next section. That did seem to help, and I got everything up to rank three before the patriotic event ended.

But now enemies in the fest zone are hitting a lot harder than they ever have before, or at least it seems that way to me, and I'm wondering if I'm going crazy or if there is some correlation there, since I haven't seen anyone else mentioning a difficulty increase.

I'm definitely going to regret advancing in the LG if it did affect the fest zone too, I admit. Battling has never been my favorite and it's making the fest zone and bosses more of a pain than an enjoyment.

LG and fest zone are completely separate areas- they do not affect eachother at all.
The difference you are experiencing is most likely due to the level of your party, as fest zone enemies match the highest level on your current party, and enemies get a buff (especially to HP) at the same levels that sylesti get prof points (30, 60, 65, 70, 75) (not so much at lv30, mostly at the 60+ levels).

Upgrading your equips (either via blacksmithing gear to + levels or swapping from VT to higher rarity grove gear- upgrading to SW would probably be the cheapest option) or swapping to a lower level team would make battles easier (either by upping your output and defence with the equips or just lowering the difficulty overall with the levels.)

Assuming this applies for all Festivals and not solely Fall Fest, after the level cap was raised to 75, and the temple was released in the Lost Grove, this was stated in the 2021 and 2022 Fall Fest overviews:

Level 60+ Bonus - If you are using an entire Party of Level 60+ Pets, Named will have two rolls on Avatar Item drops and offer increased Festival Supply rewards! However, Named and other enemies will provide more challenging battles. Warning: Enemies scale up to Level 75 now and also increase in difficulty depending on how far you have progressed throughout the Lost Grove!

https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=104234
- Threads Referenced
https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=100343

Though in case this only applies to Fall Fest the thread for this Summer Fest says:

Players who battle with Level 60 Pets or higher will face tougher encounters within Esior's Cove. However, this will reward them with a double loot chance on every Named victory for Avatar Items and a bonus loot chance on other enemies!

https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=106655 - Thread Referenced

So, even if the LG doesn't have any effect on the difficulty of the Summer Fest zone, the level of the team you're using does.

-

I'd suggest, if you don't enjoy battling and don't enjoy fighting the tougher enemies, maybe make a level 60 team that you could use for battling in the fest zone so it isn't as hard, but also still gives you the benefits of the double loot chance.
In the Scale Shop, you can buy Philter of Unlearning, which will cause the pet it's used on to no longer gain experience, level locking those pets. Though if you ever want them to gain experience again, in the Scale Shop, there are also Philter of Learning, which can be used on a pet that had a Philter of Unlearning used on them, which will allow them to gain experience again.
Some users also sell these philters under the philter section of the Trade Broker.

-

I hope this info helps to explain a bit!

Thanks for the answers, but it's definitely not related to my team being a higher level this time around. ^^ My team has been level 75 for some time; the only difference between this fest and the last two is my pets increased in rank, not level. That's why I was wondering if defeating the grove behemoth and entering the second area of the grove also changed the difficulty of the fest zone for some reason.

And I do have a level 55 team that I'll probably switch to using, I just wanted to see if there was some weird correlation first, since the previous two fests I had a pretty easy time with my level 75 team. It's good to know in advance that it will definitely come into play for the fall fest, at the very least.

That said, I definitely do need to upgrade their equips I guess aha. That will have to be my focus before the next fest.