Hey, thanks again for this! Glad to hear this version is much more stable. The repeated bugs were ones I was unable to find before, but I'll do my best to dive in and tear them out. I have yet to see the empty bandit encounter, the grey square on the map, or the random quest markers. I think these issues may be related to world data being carried over from previous games somehow, similar to how chests seem to be containing better loot. (To answer your question, higher tier loot becomes more common as you progress, so you are correct in that assumption.)
I'll take another look at the cannibal quest. His seems to have quite a few issues.
As for your requests, they're all very reasonable. Some means of acting on items from the ground seems like a good idea, though the default should be to pick it up. I definitely want pathfinding to be smarter for both the player and enemies.
Is damage really that high for enemies throwing items? I can't believe I missed that. NPCs don't have proficiencies the same way the player does, so I must be using some kind of magic number that raises the damage to ludacris amounts. Explosives are supposed to be very powerful, but I do agree that it is overboard considering they pretty much always hit. Maybe knockback and lower damage would be a better alternative.
Yet again, you have my thanks. I don't usually get to test longer games, so your feedback is always appreciated. :)