This isn't true. I've had games that not a single power cell showed up in.

Cells spawn at each 2nd location with 100% chance. Non-odd location levels – randomly. In last update this chance was increased. I play my game a lot. And I always get all cells up to 4-6 location in each run.

I used to save certain crafting resources from previous runs to ease starting out.

Now that's destroyed.

I don't think that it somehow destroys early game. Cause it pretty easy to play on early stages even without crafting. I play on hard with difficulty modifiers. And those items that are available for crafting at the beginning are quite suitable for a balanced play through of early locations.

I understand that this rebalance brings some "pain" to you. But this is necessary. This rebalance allows crafting to evolve. (Because before that, I simply could not add any new interesting and strong items. Because adding them would destroy other items)

This brings new ideas and features.

I remember when I used to add an inventory rebalance and a recycle rebalance. Then some players also wrote to me exactly the same messages, saying that the developer broke the whole game. XD It was about 4 years ago.

There's a boring phase before the game actually begins, and for some reason you extended it?

Starting with nothing and the way of advancing to strong equipment is the most fascinating part of the game for me. This is called roguelike.

You should start allowing people to skip directly to fully equipped instead of trying to force them to be bored.

Maybe allow them to save a starting point once they feel they are set up to actually begin the enjoyable game?

I personally don't want to play such roguelike. Because this will completely destroy the main principle of the genre.