The Underland Chronicles-verse Strategy Guide

 

How to be OP in the Underland Chronicles

Superhuman Tier:

Beneath the city of New York is a supermassive cave system, a vast subterranean world known to the locals as "The Underland." The Underland is home to many strange denizens, primarily animals vastly larger than they are in the Overland far above and with full sentience and ability to communicate, as well as the descendants of the humans who traveled down below, the pale-skinned "Underlanders." This tier contains almost every fighter or non-human denizen of the Underland. 

While some of the species of the Underland are weaker than others, in large groups they are all treated as threats to individuals of any other species. As such they scale upwards and downwards from the same feats. The two gnawers, giant rats, Shed and Fangor are stated to be able to easily leap "ten feet" (~3 meters) vertical into the air, with the most athletic of gnawers being able to leap "fifteen feet" (~4.5 meters) vertical into the air. These rats are as tall as humans and weight far more, with one of them, Ripred being estimated as weighing 600 pounds (~272 kilograms.) To leap that far would require a force of roughly 8-12 kilojoules, which is low wall level. This is consistent with Gnawers being described as literally ripping people apart. Underlanders with the aid of a force multiplier like a sword can kill a Gnawer in melee combat. Fliers, giant bats, show similar great strength, with four of them being described as lifting a boat out of the water, with Ares, a particularly strong flier, doing the work of two fliers and lifting an entire boat's side by himself. Stingers, giant scorpions, and diggers, giant moles, are likely this powerful just from sheer size with the two seen stingers being ten and twelve feet long (~3-3.65 meters long) with diggers being compared, possibly hyperbolic, to the weight of buses, with claws a yard (~0.9 meters) long, and who shake the ground with their tunneling underneath. Finally King Gorger, a gnawer king, with one swipe of his tail, casually bisected Gox, a spinner (giant spider), though the text doesn't say in which way Gox was bisected nor is it really clear how strong Gorger was relative to others. As such the tier in power is roughly superhuman to low wall level, possibly mid wall level if the Diggers comparison to buses is viewed as non-hyperbolic.

In terms of speed, many of the characters are vaguely superhuman. Normal Gnawers Snare and Goldshard could move fast enough in their fight against each other to be "a blur of claws and teeth." and the Fliers travel much faster than humans with Gregor stating that it would take 20 minutes to jog to Regalia but that on Nike, a flier, he was "there before he knew it." As such the tier is superhuman in both power and speed, up to wall level.

This tier contains most of the denizens of the Underland, most grown to be ready for warfare if need be. First and foremost are the Underlanders themselves, the extremely pale, very light blond-haired, purple-eyed people of the depths. They are perhaps most feared of the denizens of the Underland for their usage of technology. For the most part their technology is akin to those of the Middle Ages, using steel swords and armor in combat as well as dropping boiling oil on their opponents when besieged. However, they also developed some usages of biological warfare, using poison to drive off the Diggers hundreds of years ago, and being able to manipulate the Curse of the Warmbloods, a plague. Underlanders seem to have generally higher endurance and pain resistance than the Overlanders, if only due to their lifetimes of war. When a volcano went off near an expedition, hitting the Underlanders with burning winds and volcanic ash, they were able to persist on further despite the pain. They however have a specific weakness. Almost every species in the Underland, a land of darkness relies on echolocation or enhanced smell or both to move around in the Underland. Humans naturally have neither, and rely on their light-sources to see.  

There are some humans who are of particular note, some of which will be in the next tier. However, this tier has the Princess of the Underlanders and one of the major characters of the series, Luxa. Luxa is the fiery and impulsive warrior princess of the Underlanders, known for her agility and dexterity in combat, with she and her partner flier Aurora pulling off an extremely difficult maneuver as the Colier, a rare and hard-to-perform feat, despite the fact that she was only ten years old at the time. The humans also have the occasional oracle such as Bartholomew of Sandwhich who first led the Underlanders underground and Nerissa, Luxa's delicate cousin. It's kept ambiguous whether they have genuine powers, but they are known to predict things that eventually come to pass, though vaguely. 

The partners to the Underlanders are the Fliers, giant talking bats. This includes Aurora, Luxa's partner who is also especially dexterous, pulling off her part in performing the Colier despite it's difficulty. It also includes Ares, Gregor's partner, known for his great strength, performing the work of two fliers, and surviving the Curse of the Warmbloods for longer than anyone thought possible.

Their primary opposition are the Gnawers, the giant rats. These gnawers are armed with claws and fangs that are extremely dangerous and to fight humans on fliers have learned specifically how to leap extreme distances. They can also commune with the rats on the Overland and in extreme scenarios like an existential threat can call the tiny rats to swarm people. Most of the Gnawer population consists of powerful fighters but a few have special abilities. One in a million gnawers is a "scent seer" such as Twitchtip, one of the most powerful anti-stealth characters for their tier I've ever seen. Twitchtip, as well as any other Scent Seers have an extremely powerful sense of smell. Twitchtip was able to smell a human child across the city, her exact location, who she's with, what she's wearing, her emotional state, and that she's cutting a new tooth. Twichtip can smell color and was also able to smell the dimensions of an island they were getting close on an ocean adventure. This tier also includes Twirltongue. Twirltongue is a psychological manipulator so strong is borders on a superpower. She was able to convince Gregor to trust her despite her being an unknown Gnawer in seconds. She is able to turn people against their closest friends in minutes and was even able to convince Ripred he was well-liked despite Ripred being the perpetual outcast of any group he's in. This tier also probably contains the main villain of the first book, King Gorger. The Gnawers frequently attack their distant cousins the Nibblers, giant mice, even using primitive biological warfare against them. The Nibbles are likely similar in physical capacities to the Gnawers but much less aggressive and warlike, though they eventually allied with the Humans against the Gnawer threat.

In the final book, the Gnawers were able to gain their ally, the ancestral enemy of the Humans, the Diggers. The Diggers are giant star-noised moles, with weight compared to buses and claws said to be like individual blades. The Diggers are more known for their digging ability which the Gnawers used to counter the Humans' walls. 

Outside these species, there are many neutral species in the Underland, mostly the bug-like races that don't much care about the warmbloods species. First and foremost of these is the Crawlers, giant cockroaches. Timid and lacking in combat experience and physical strength, the Crawlers are not the best warriors, though they are fast, with average Crawlers being similar in speed to early Gregor who could match Mareth, a particularly fast Underlander. Crawlers can also fly, have thick carapaces that make for decent natural armor, have a particular resistance to some forms of biological warfare, and their simple-minded focus can allow them to see things that the other races missed. The Crawler Temp one contributed to saving the entire Underland. There is an unnamed species of large moth that are friends of the Crawlers.

The Underland is also host to giant spiders called the Spinners who, as spiders are wont to do, use webs to capture others and have poisonous fangs. The Cutters are five foot tall ants, a hive mind race that hate the warmbloods and the Shiners are a race of giant fireflies known for their extremely lazy, obnoxious, gluttonous personalities. The Slimers are a race of giant slugs. They travel at a mind-blisteringly fast one yard an hour or 0.000254 meters per second. They drove the Shiners out of their home, mostly because the Shiners were too lazy and cowardly to fight at all, with it being widely believed the Slimers didn't even realize there was anyone there before. The depths of the Underland include the Stingers, giant scorpions reaching over three meters long and with poisonous tails. Even more dangerously on some islands there exists swarms of ravenous mites that can turn a full flier into a skeleton before it hits the ground and move so fast that they kept pace with Ares. 

Outside the bugs, the Underland also hosts the Hissers, large frilled lizards which hiss and raise their frills to scare away predators. They grow 20 feet in length and stand 15 feet in height (~6.1 meters and ~4.57 meters respectively) and are strong enough to carry two fliers and a human on their back. There are also twisters which are.... snakes. Just normal sized snakes as well as oversized venus flytraps.

 So what would be some good counters here?

Well, there's one real-world strategy that no one in the Underland uses to any real effect, and it's perhaps the single biggest overall factor in real-world combat, that being range. The non-human races don't have thumbs to use weapons, ranged or otherwise, and humans can only effectively use a ranged weapon as far as they can see which in the Underland isn't often that far. As such ranged warfare isn't used by most of the combatants outside something like a spear or a pike. But if a character had both enhanced attack and sensory range, they could hit anyone in the tier before they could be hit in return.

An ability that seemed like an obvious pick would be animal control. Most of the characters in the verse are animals and so animal control would let them control most of the characters. However, there's a catch which is that they are sentient animals specifically. Most forms of Animal Control aren't depicted as working on humans and whether they'd work on sentient animals is questionable.

Some of the biggest threats of this tier are being swarmed, either by an army, or by a cutter swarm, or a mite cloud. Against a large number of attacks, the best thing to have would be something of an armored body or fast-acting regenerating meaning that a large number of small attacks wouldn't do anything. Combined with the large number of biological attacks, this makes me think that something like a machine character would do especially well, especially as they might be able to avoid things like Twirltongue's manipulation and might not smell very clear to Twitchtip. 

While the tier has some surprisingly potent offenses and numerous forms of movement, its defenses are highly limited, mostly revolving around stealth, light armor, and raw endurance. As such unconventional forms of attack would not just be out-of-context attacks for the verse to try and fight but ones with large areas of effect even if the overall potency isn't that high could debilitate large amounts of enemies at once. 

So who would be a good counter here? One idea for a good counter would be 

Sei Arisaka from Hime no Ribbon-chan

While the characters in Hime no Ribbon-chan don't have explicitly superhuman stats, they do have mild toonforce. Sei was able to fight against both Himeko and Daichi at once, even taking one of Himeko's famous flying kicks. The two of them are strong enough to do things like create dust clouds with their strikes and run fast enough to turn their legs into comical blurs or disappear from sight instantly. As such Sei would likely be around as strong as one of the Underland humans in power and relatively fast.

Sei is a person from the Magical Kingdom and has likely three magical abilities, two he's shown and one more likely by scaling, which can all really aid him here. His main one and the one he's known for is Sei has the power to control all animals, making them do whatever he wants. This power was strong enough even on Pokota, a friendly living stuffed lion, which Sei used to make him attack his rival, showing not only its potency but also that it can even work on sentient and even animal-like things. This means Sei at any time can simply control almost everything in the tier and have control over most of the forces of the Underland. The only ones who would be unaffected by this power are the Underlanders themselves, the few plants he might run across who he should be strong enough to personally beat if need be, and possibly the Cutters since they're controlled by a hive mind.

The other power Sei has shown is that he can teleport. Sei can teleport even between dimensions which he uses to travel between the human world and the Magical Kingdom. He can teleport with others and can even possibly teleport an entire building as when he went back to the Magical Kingdom his house also disappeared (though this might have been the doing of the Magic Kingdom's King.) This would obviously be both an incredibly strong defensive tier forcing anyone to blitz or surprise him to hit him (particularly difficult given his relatively high speed for the tier, probably similar to a Crawler) and would also be a broken form of offense, unlike anything in the verse. Sei could just teleport himself and someone high in to the air and then teleport himself back onto the ground or could non-lethally beat people by teleporting them into the Magical Kingdom, BFR-ing them. Assuming his teleportation did work on his entire house this would be a one-shot on anybody in the verse. Even if he doesn't have that high teleportation and can't offensively use it on the giant species like the Diggers and Stingers, these are all species Sei can control with his Animal Control and should definitely be able to teleport a human or a cutter. 

Sei probably also has another ability. Princess Erika is the princess of the Magical Kingdom who is still practicing in magic and can't do more complex magic like teleporting between dimensions. However even she knows a simple spell that changes the clothes someone is wearing which she used to change her and Himeko's clothes for a party. The Underlanders rely on their weapons and armor to fight the other big threats of the Underland and Sei can simply transmute their clothes into normal clothing, arguably changing a sheathed weapon as well. This means even in a one on one fight against an Underlander, Sei should be able to hold his own, especially given his own stats and teleportation for defense and surprise.

However, there are some weaknesses to using Sei as a counter. Sei doesn't have any particular ability to see in the dark and while he can use animals to "see" for him, he could get caught out early on by an ambush-type strategy. In addition, Sei is slightly narcissistic and rather easy to manipulate, with even Himeko's oblivious classmate Hibino able to manipulate him. He would be massively in danger if he ran across Twirltongue. Granted he should also be able to control Twirltongue, so it's a bit of a toss-up there. A better counter might be

A Buzz Bomber from Sonic the Hedgehog

If the Badniks were released in TUC, they would be an unstoppable force, with even one such as a Buzz Bomber being a large threat. Buzz Bombers are a simple form of Badnik that can destroy blocks of sandstone, calculated at about 2.75 MEGAjoules of energy, on the upper end of my wall level parameters. This is nearly 230 times the power of the best feat performed by "the most athletic" of the gnawers outside maybe King Gorger's feat of bisecting Gox. On the entire other end of the wall level spectrum, a Buzz Bomber would be an unstoppable metal tank that can rip apart pretty much anyone in the verse in one v one combat. Even the armies seen in the Underland Chronicles would struggle to do real damage to a Buzz Bomber.  They can also fly around at speeds in the same range as the tier's speed.

Buzz Bombers are robots, or rather a trapped animal in a robot exoskeleton. This means pretty much any biological form of attack wouldn't do anything. They naturally fly, making it harder though certainly not impossible for most of the tier to fight them and can shoot lasers dozens of meters allowing them to snipe enemies from far outside the range they could be counter-attacked.

Some of the usual weaknesses of the Badniks actually come in handy here. While the Badniks have limited cognition, their intelligence and communication abilities are minimal, which actually gives them a resistance to Twirltongue's manipulation as it wouldn't understand what she's saying. Their small size, about as small as Sonic would make it particularly hard for multiple enemies to fight them at once as there is less room around them, even but especially in the air which gives them three dimensions to escape in. 

The only real way the tier would have to damage the Buzz Bomber would be to knock or drag it into water, as it's not one of the amphibious badniks, or possibly the usage of boiling oil, though the usage of boiling oil on a small flying enemy would be difficult. But for the best counter I would suggest using

Goldie from Goosebumps

Goldie is Slappy's older sister and their favorite child of their sorcerer "father" Ephraim Darkwell who gave her the greatest magic powers. She likely is physically comparable if not superior to her brother Slappy and his twin Snappy, who could tank an explosion that destroyed a garage, meaning Goldie would be broadly more powerful than most people here. Slappy also seems to be relative to other Goosebumps monster in speed like werewolves and Dr. Maniac's jetpack, suggesting also that Goldie would be in the same speed tier as this tier.

Goldie is a dummy, magically brought to life. Dolls are something that are mentioned to exist in the Underland Chronicles and so it's possible that Goldie would be able to remain completely stealth-ed in the Underland, as it's possible something like Gnawer smell, even that of a scent seer wouldn't smell anything different about Goldie. As a dummy, she's obviously immune to all biological abilities. Goldie like all the dummies also have regen such as Slappy coming back from being sawed in half or Mr. Wood coming back from being flattened. This means that any damage that the tier might be able to do would be pretty meaningless. 

Goosebumps dummies have the inherent ability to see in the dark and if she has similar magic to Slappy, may have metafictional perception giving her a sensory advantage over the Underland humans, and possibly the entire verse. Goldie's magic has been shown to effect things at range such as effecting children outside a house while she's inside it, giving her a range advantage against anyone in the tier. Most notable of her magic is her ability to control animals which she used to control an army of rats. At the very least this would let her control one of the Gnawers' form of attack, however the Goosebumps-verse implies these animals are sentient such as in Go Eat Worms! when the worms and butterflies want revenge for their members being killed. As such it's possible Goldie could simply control most of the verse.

Goldie has a large variety of other magical abilities that no one else in the tier would have any experience with or counter to. Things like freezing, transmutation inducing madness, and forcibly twisting peoples bodies into pretzels can ignore conventional durability to take down particularly difficult targets and things like her elemental manipulation with huge cyclone bursts of wind can take down large numbers of enemies at once or using the same spell she used to kill an army of rats at once which could very fittingly kill an army of Gnawers. Against the dangerous plants of the jungle, Goldie has outright plant manipulation to control them, even if they did somehow recognize her as a living entity. 

You might wonder if Twirltongue could perhaps manipulate Goldie. However, Goldie is considered a menace to Slappy and he couldn't get her diary off her no matter what he did. Slappy is considered one of the top tier psychological manipulators of the Goosebumps-verse, renowned for his ability to psychologically break people. If Slappy couldn't manipulation Goldie, I don't think Twirltongue could either. As such I think Goldie would be functionally immune to anything in the tier and for the most part the verse in general, could easily beat anything in the tier, and has numerous tactical options she could do. 

Wall Tier:

This tier contains the biggest threats in the Underland, beings strong enough to fight armies of the prior tier. Some of the characters here are in this tier purely through raw size but there are also specific feats of note here. Gregor in the middle of a rager spin in Book 4 had his blade intercepted by Luxa's metal blade and accidentally snapped it from the sheer force of his movement. In Book 5 he was able to shatter Sandwich's sword on his knee, a sword described as making other swords seem like part of a cheap Halloween costume, of being to other knives what a steak knife is to a butterknife. Solovet was also able to decapitate a Digger with one swing of her blade and the Bane was able to casually tear Twirltongue's head from her shoulders. While this tier is an upgrade in terms of power, it's in the same level of power overall, but it's a higher level of speed. Ripred is consistently described as moving so fast he becomes a blur or disappears from sight entirely. He was able to kill two Gnawers before many people around could react including other gnawers and underlanders and went into a spin so fast it created a dust cloud and instantly killed any gnawer who got close. He is fast enough that dozens of humans on bats can't tag him, and ward off entire armies. Thus, it's fair to say this tier reaches subsonic speed.

This tier contains two Gnawers including, fittingly enough, Ripred himself. Ripred is a mysterious mentor to Gregor for most of the series and is treated as the comparison point of power. While the war between the humans and gnawers is composed of two sides, Ripred almost forms an entire third side to himself with most of the most impressive feats in the entire series. Ripred can fight armies alone, stating he starts to crack at 400 to 1. He can do this because he's a Rager, an extraordinarily rare type of being (Twitchtip mentioning only smelling one once or twice) who is a natural born killer. In combat Ragers are like Celtic Berserkers, their face contorting horribly and making terrifying noises of bloodlust. In combat, Ragers lose sight of all other things, zero-ing in on enemy weak points and reacting automatically without thinking, allowing them to move, dodge, and attack with inhuman precison. It is suggested that being a Rager makes one automatically a master of combat akin to one who has trained many years. Ripred has mastered the Rager state, developing a technique known as the Rager Spin, where he spins in place with his claws and fangs out, shredding anything that gets close. Ripred is also extremely smart with Vikus saying that Ripred has a wisdom "unique to any creature", sneaking up to the Overland to read Overland books, and has a better sense of Underland politics than almost anyone. Outside his normal Gnawer abilities, Ripred also has enough stamina to, after being tortured and starved for days, run for thirty minutes straight, and the Rager state also grants mildly enhanced senses. Also, he once tried to take over a human colony called "The Fount" with an army of lobsters.

The other Gnawer is the overarching antagonist of the Bane Arc in Books 2, 4, and 5, and thus the overarching antagonist of the entire series, The Bane, aka "Rat Hitler." The Bane is a rat of pearl white coat who grew to a monstrous 11 or 12 feet tall (~3.3-3.6 meters) The Bane is an overpowered monster, who overwhelms enemies with his huge raw power and mass, along with being nearly as fast as Gregor. By Book 5, even Ripred isn't sure he can beat the Bane due to the Bane having several hundred pounds on him and given warrior training to boot. The Bane can accidentally kill other Gnawers, even when he was younger. Outside of his raw power, Twirltongue taught him some of her persuasive abilities, which he used to rally the Gnawers to his aid and behind his genocidal actions towards the Nibblers. However the Bane's big weakness is his own psychological instability. 

This tier also has two or three human fighters. First and foremost is, of course, Gregor himself, the main character. Gregor is "The Warrior", a legendary Overlander human child who would come and save the Underland in its times of need. This is because Gregor is himself a Rager. Earlier on in the series he had no control over his Rager ability, but under Ripred's guidance, Gregor eventually attained mastery over it in Book 5, reaching the same level as Ripred and being able to tag Ripred in practice fights that Ripred has to keep telling Gregor to stop holding back in. Gregor also learns the Rager Spin from Ripred, and with the aid of his flier bond Ares, was even able to slay The Bane. Ripred also taught Gregor the ability to echolocation after numerous books of practice and Gregor being locked in a pitch black room for days. Gregor is armed with the sword of Sandwich which mentioned above makes others' swords look like Halloween costume swords as well as Solovet's dagger, a dagger of equal potency to the Sword, and pure black armor that protects him from the blows of many Gnawers. 

This tier would also include Solovet. Solovet is the military leader of Regalia, the main human city. She is, outside maybe Gregor, the human the rats fear most. She is an extremely strong fighter to the point that she was the one who gave Ripred his distinctive face scar, and is one of the fear Ripred respects as an equal, mostly due to her military and mental prowess. Solovet is an expert general known for her extreme ruthlessness and pragmaticism, willing to do anything to protect the humans, and is extremely good manipulator, inspiring personal loyalty from all the relevant people in Regalia and able to politically maneuver out of bad circumstances. This tier might also include Perdita, a soldier in the Underland with randomly good hype, being the one who took Solovet's position after her, and took the center point of an arc formation which included Ripred as well as being the leader in Solovet's army and one of the humans to train Book 5 Gregor and teach him in combat despite his Rager abilities. 

However, this tier does have a few more random threats. While the Bane is the most physically powerful character on the series... on land... the true physical masters of the Underland are underwater. The waterway contains immense sea serpents, serpents whose tails are 20 feet wide (~6.1 meters), whose necks are described as 30 feet long (~9.1 meters), who create immense waves 20 feet high with their swimming and smash through solid stone ceilings with their heads. These creatures Gregor compares to dinosaurs in size and power. The sea also contained tentacled monsters, with these tentacles being somewhat of a threat for Book 2 Rager mode Gregor. 

Finally, while King Gorger was the main threat of Book 1, and the overarching antagonist for Books 2, 4, and 5 was The Bane, the closest thing to a final boss Book 3 has is The Vineyard of Eyes, which would also belong to this tier. When the Curse of the Warmbloods was ravaging and threatening all warm-blooded life forcing a temporary alliance, the hope for a cure resided with the Starshade, guarded by the Vineyard of Eyes. The Vineyard appears to be a field of plants. But some of the plants have eyes, and the whole thing is actually a giant organism. It releases a gas that creates an extreme sense of euphoria and well-being, making one unresponsible to the world around and prone to being torn apart by the Vineyard's vines. 

So what are the weaknesses of the tier? Some of the prior remains true, there's a complete lack of ranged combat in this tier. Animal control might also be useful here but while it would work on the sea creatures and maybe the Bane and Ripred, it wouldn't work on Gregor, Solovet, Perdita, or the Vineyard of Eyes, meaning it's only really helpful against around half the threats of this tier.

A general weakness for the tier is that they are somewhat on the lower range of both wall level and subsonic, with characters nearing the top end being several times faster and more importantly, orders of magnitude stronger than anything in the tier. The thing that primarily made Ripred think he might not be able to beat The Bane was the difference several hundred pounds of weight made. No one but the Vineyard of Eyes has any kind of offensive hax to beat someone much stronger then them. 

Another weakness of the tier, particularly in comparison to the prior is the lack of aerial options. Gregor and Solovet rely on their bonds, their partner bats, Ares and Ajax, to fly around and it was partly the inability to hit them in the air that allowed Gregor and Ares to fight the Bane. Ripred should be able to leap high like most gnawers but characters that can hit from above that range should be able to attack basically without provocation. Even the Vineyard of Eyes' gas dissipates quickly from its body and wouldn't reach very high in the air. 

Fighting a rager is difficult but being similarly upper-end in skill or having some way of hitting a large area of effect can help fight them. Finally, as mentioned before, it's pitch black in the Underland and none of the fighters here rely on normal eyesight alone to perceive enemies, meaning that some level of detect things in the dark would be useful.

So a good character here is someone at the upper end of wall level and subsonic, who can fly, has ranged options, and ideally can somehow sense things in pitch black and with an extreme level of skill.

So who would be a good counter? Well the first counter I would suggest is

Videl from Dragon Ball

Videl is a human trained in the basics of ki control, allowing her to enhance her stats to superhuman levels. She is outright stated to have surpassed her father Hercule Satan, a normal human who could chop 15 tiles in a row, a feat calced at over 650 kilojoules and scales above other normal trained humans who could knock down a wall with just their elbow. This level of power might not be totally uncontested in The Underland Chronicles and is probably closer to the level of the giant sea serpents, however this level of size dwarfs the Bane whose size and power is what made Ripred though he might not be able to beat The Bane. And this is the powerlevel of Mr. Satan, who is weaker than Videl. Likewise in speed, Videl scales above her father who could dodge missiles and move faster than the eye, both being upper end subsonic speeds. As such Videl would be able a physical powerhouse in the tier, faster than a Rager, and as powerful as one of the Sea Serpents, or stronger. 

In terms of abilities, Videl learned the ability to fly from Gohan and in some sources is suggested to have eventually learned the ability to develop to project her energy as projectiles. She also would have gained the ability to sense ki or life force. This means she could sense anyone in the tier and keep out of range while possibly firing attacks at them or worst comes to worst, pick up things and drop them from high up. Her mental capabilities are also probably rivaling the tier as she scales to her father in skill, a world tournament champion against non-superhuman fighters and could fight evenly against Spopovich despite him having greater power then Videl and regenerative properties. 

In terms of weaknesses, someone like Ripred might be able to outlast Videl's stamina, especially if you don't think she can project her energy and needs to come to ground to gather things to drop, though this is relatively unlikely. It's also possible if she doesn't know what the Vineyard of Eyes is, or that it's an enemy, that she might get surprised by its gas. A counter that definitely wouldn't need to worry about either would be

Tsunderplane from Undertale. 

Tsunderplane is considered a relatively powerful monster in the Underground, with even the weakest being able to tank the heat of Hotland, a heat intense enough to quickly evaporate a styrofoam cup and downscales from an oven explosion that destroyed much of a house, suggesting it would be on the upper end of wall level. In terms of speed, it's one of the faster monsters, getting close to the speed of Frisk who can outpace the bark from a dog, putting her at the upper end of subsonic speed. As such she would be pretty notably more powerful and faster than anyone in the verse.

Tsunderplane is a monster, a species that can see souls and attack them with danmaku bullets, with Tsunderplane doing so usually by dropping projectiles from the air. This would allow Tsunderplane to see anyone in the tier from air, even the Vineyard of eyes and drop bombs and fire from above them. Tsunderplane is also especially resistance to the Vineyard of eyes because it's a sentient plane made out of magic. While Tsunderplane's combat skill is far lacking in comparison it doesn't really need it to defeat the characters in this tier. 

However, Tsunderplane is a monster which means it is weak to killing intent, which against something like a Rager or the Bane would be especially dangerous assuming they could corner it in a cave system small enough they can jump up to reach it. This would be extremely difficult given it's a living plane way faster and stronger than them and such cave systems would be an obvious concern for it but still possibly a concern.

For the best counter to the verse I would suggest

Badfly Claw from Cutie Honey.

Badfly Claw is one of the ten elite fighters of Panther Claw, one of the original servants of Sister Jill. As such she should scale significantly above Black Claw's claw able to tear through "any material" on Earth calced at over 200 kilojoules and was somewhat difficult along with the other nine members for Cutie Honey to escape despite Cutie Honey being able to dodge bullets after they're fired and avoid machine gun fire from close range, suggesting Badfly Claw would be on the upper end of wall level and subsonic, giving her a notable stat advantage over the verse.

Badfly claw is an elite fighter who was able to slightly challenge Cutie Honey, a perfect fighting machine that can download information she needs. Her primary strategy involves flying around on her giant wings. She has several different kinds of attacks including creating powerful gusts of wind that could knock a pouncing Ripred or Bane off-track, as well able to produce a paralyzing powder and a rain of, according to her, "1,000" poison needles, relatively large area of effect surprising attacks that would be nigh impossible to avoid even for someone with instinctive reaction. 

Badfly Claw like all Panthers was originally a demonic panther who can still use the catlike senses to detect things in the dark. She also can't even be affected by the gases of the Vineyard of animals as the original servants of Sister Jill were turned into cyborgs who are no longer affected by biological factors. She also would be unlikely to be manipulated by the Bane or Solovet as she is one of the highest up agents of an international crime organization used to manipulative politics game and is a sadistic demon cat from another dimension with inhuman motivations. 

Badfly Claw could simply fly above the battlefield and rain down her own form of gas attack and poison needles in such number no one could dodge while staying too high anyone to reach her. Even if they did, their physical attacks would do slight damage while her normal claw strikes could possibly one-shot anyone here and the Vineyard's gas attack would do nothing.

And that's how to be OP in the Underland Chronicles-verse