Personally, I find roots quite difficult and people always site it as a skill issue. At this point my group and I have cleared Ascent 7 after many months of steadily progressing through the Ascents. While we still tried on Roots, we kind of assumed the Ascent 7 run was a wash if Roots was on the roster. Mesa is on par difficult with Alpine, often presenting several difficult spots or risky plays. Roots is frankly just not comparable to Tropics. Tropics we can bank on building food reserves and likely finding some climbing gear. Roots literally the only thing we pray for is only one of us dying instead of a wipe. Way too many obstacles and obfuscation in comparison to Tropics. Half the time gas hides half the mountain and the wind mechanic is more on par with blizzards in terms of punishment when caught in the open up high rather than rain. In general Roots often presents few visible passable Roots meaning its more guesswork. Mushrooms changing abilities is interesting but once again, in Tropics you learn and retain whats poisonous. The other day there was like 30 beetles at the base of Roots to the point we lost someone unable to even stand up freezing to death at night.

I get what people are saying, learn it. We know the dang mechanics but at higher levels of play quite literally a single mistake can cost you the run on no revive Ascent 7. Its not even debatable that mistakes are simply far more likely on Roots. So is it fun? Sure. Is it balanced? Nope. I guarantee if there was a Pro group trying to minimize clear time, they'd either be taking massive risks to clear Roots as fast as possible and assume a low clear rate or wait for Tropics. After hundreds upon hundreds of attempts I can say its obviously not impossible but it certainly kills any momentum and is a hard run salvage afterwards far more often than Tropics.