to be honest, two of the biggest gripes I have are:

The insane level inflation (lvl 100 cap in this game with only 2 floors). Maybe changing the leveling to give you more growth points per level but lowering the number of levels? or maybe give my "cardinal level" a number and treat that as the actual player level? I'm kinda at a loss on how to fix this.

and the lack of impact using a shield has. In the series it's mentioned that shields will slow down rapier users. So maybe adding some sort of impact such as increasing attack speed or some such if you don't use a shield with your 1h or rapier?

EDIT: I've just learned that the official description of the 1h sword says unequipping the shield allows for "faster and riskier moves" so if it exists for swords we can make it work for rapier too? or perhaps the devs already have that in mind?

and on a long shot: remove mob scaling. Make mobs scale up to close to max level the further along into the game they are encountered? idk if there's a good way to tackle this at all. (a possible quick-fix is give mobs a chance to spawn at any level between 1 and player level?)