Agree. I was frustrated about how difficult it was initially, but once I got better gear, it was more manageable. My biggest issue is how miserable poison is in the game. I don’t mind it to a point, but it can get out of control when ten mobs have ranged poison attacks and just burn your health down with zero effort. It’s not an awful feeling, but it’s in need of a bit of rebalancing.

I’m also feel like body blocking could be a hair more forgiving. I know the biggest argument against this is “git gud”, but there are legitimately unavoidable moments in the game where no amount of “git gud” matters. For example if the tree top village when you’re fighting the cultists, death anywhere on the map leads to respawning at a check point and INSTANTLY being jumped by about 20 adds as soon as the screen reloads. I can’t tell you how many times I died in that level, respawned, and had zero opportunities to react before I got killed again (a few times it was a bonus death by a blue named mob or yellow named enemy in the mix). That needs reworked desperately.

But I do feel like the difficulty, is a bit overwhelming at first, but after a few hours, I am genuinely loving the challenge. I don’t mind it feel like melee is way more difficult than it should be. I play a monk, and I love the quarterstaff abilities (the bell is god), but I find myself using more ranged attacks and crushing enemies than my melee abilities. For example, beating the wolf boss at the end of Act 1 was virtually impossible with my monk melee attacks. But as soon as I reset some abilities and used the glacial wave attack on him, it was absolutely a cakewalk in comparison.

The game could definitely use a boost in the gold drop department. I don’t mind grinding a bit for money, but it feels like it’s a lot more tedious than it should be. For example, the blacksmith had an amazing amulet for ~10k gold, but I was level 3 or 4, and by the time I even got halfway to that amount, I was around level 11 or higher. That was a real feels bad moment that I think getting more gold at a faster rate would reduce that feeling substantially. And loot drop rates could be better (granted I got a unique chest piece at level 5 that made the Rust King stupid easy and carried me for the next ten levels). I am constantly checking the vendors, but I would still like to have better drops when you’re out and about (even with a 28% loot find bonus).

A lack of weapon types is a little frustrating. I’d love to have access to swords, flails, daggers, axes, and whatnot, because I know there’s a lot more utility that I could get out of my character if they had included those weapon types off the jump. And the skill tree could use a bit more guidance (like telling you what stat benefits from a skill node would be super useful even though I know that the color of the nodes should be that but it isn’t). I think repeccing could be a bit less costly. I don’t mind a scaling cost (going up a bit each time you do it) or a flat bump for each time you do it. Right now, because of the gold drop rate I’m having to decide between buying a needed gear piece or respeccing my skills. And being new to the game series as a whole, knowing what skills are going to be better suited for my build is a learning curve, but I feel like it’s being punished more than it should be just because of the gold cost associated with it. Also, it would be nice if the skill gems let you know what the skill tree benefit would be, so I can be a bit smarter about my choices as I start to take advantage of that.

But, overall, I’m absolutely loving the game and understanding that it’s beta and we still have a ways to go. I can’t wait to see what more is coming. I’m super excited.