Real great painting! And awesome idea for a gift :)
I haven't gone through the prev crits specifically, so forgive me if there's any overlap (Which might be a good sign if there is)
I think the lighting from the bulbs needs to show stronger on the characters, for example the main figure's shoulder armour plates. The individual lighting that you have going on sculpting out the figures is all really great, it just doesn't seem the overhead lighting is casting its lights too well. Adding in some more texture-ridges into the various materials would help with this lighting situation.
If we could see the main guy's hands holding the sword I think it'd be a little clearer
Real nice job with the table and candle rendering!
Cake definitely needs texture work, looks far too smooth
Cake-guys's face needs more value-contrast. I couldn't tell until I opened the image full-size that he had his tongue sticking out! That's a crucial part of his gesture so make that stand out clearly. Needs darkness and occlusion shadow in the closed eye too.
Some value separation between him and the Elf woman behind him would help a little I think. Her hand would have some of the light from the lamps showing on it, but would get progressively darker as it goes down the fore-arm (currently the whole thing is 1 value, impossible!). Nice work on her flower-head-dress, clothing, staff, etc :)
Naked dwarf guys look a little out of place because value-wise they correspond exactly to the torso of the panda (I thought they were his hands holding huge beer mugs initially). Maybe shift them (or the panda) over to the right of the image a little so that there isn't the vertical match-up between the dwarfs and the Panda's scarf.
Funny tiny forks haha
Values on background castle and mid-ground wall are too close, perhaps lighten the sky with a soft gradient and have the castle blend in with atmospheric perspective
Finally I think the sword's upper part has some broken perspective. The base of the blade (rectangular part) seems to have a different perspective than the top part of the blade (fork-diamond structure), and I'm not sure the fork structure's own perspective is internally consistent , i'll try and point that out:
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attachment=97296]
There are various angles you could choose to do and this red-grid is just an example and not a suggestion but hopefully it gets the point across
Anyway 'hope that was helpful, either way its a great piece, thanks for sharing!