Little late I know, but I gave it a go, took some notes.
Lower Dungeons
I like the new starting weapon selection
Ranged still feels way stronger than melee, but I'll try going for melee.
I can't help but notice that my sword looks different on my back than it does in my hand.
Found a two handed axe already, guess I'll try two-handing.
Thought: Two-handed weapons should get a bigger bonus to damage from your strength than one-handed weapons.
Axe isn't great. The slow attack speed means it's just worse than the sword, which might hit enemies and keep them from hitting you back.
But killing the cult apprentices in one hit and the big mauler dudes in two is pretty satisfying.
I miss being able to hit while standing still with the axe by holding shift.
It LOOKS like it should work fine, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible to hit anything by clicking into the air, and he usually refuses to attack if I click an enemy.
Forgotten Passageway
Managed to take out the chaos warrior quite handily with a club, a shield, and 4 healing potions.
Lower Dungeons 2
It's nice to be able to switch quickly to my melee weapon for when there's a single invisible fucker.
But the burning floating skull fireball hell remains a job for the bow, and if there's more than one melee enemy, I'm gonna take a lot of damage fighting them in melee, so kiting it is.
It's kinda annoying how the skulls can hide behind walls and pop you. I really wish enemies would get an outline when behind a wall or something. You already have an outline for when you hover the mouse over them that ignores walls. Please, man, I just wanna see the things my dude should have in plain view.
From a melee perspective, the width of the doors becomes a huge issue. Like, back in Diablo 1, you had one-character wide doors, so you could use them as choke points to avoid getting surrounded. It was an absolutely vital tactic. Here in the tower though, there's always plenty of room for enemies to flank you and you don't have any AoE attacks or crowd control to deal with them. I'm not saying every door should be a choke point, but they're sorely missed.
Bloodlust affects all damage output? Considering the theme, shouldn't it only affect melee? I'm not complaining, mind.
I found Vedomot. Since she's a horrible demon, I of course try to kill her through the bars, but she ignores the arrows.
If you want her to not be killable, you should put a force field around her in a summoning circle or something, or have her talk from behind a wall where the player can't see her.
The way the ranged enemies just hang back and don't chase you is another problem for melee.
Like if you could lure them closer, that'd be one thing, but when a bunch of them spawn and can pepper you with attacks from every direction as you come at them, it seems impossible.
Anyway, by losing a few HP permanently with the cauldron spell and using my bow , I managed to reach the stairs up.
But I'm gonna go see how Vedomot betrays me first.
Aaand I'm dead. Kiting enemies that are faster than you doesn't work so well. It's nice that she's got a speed advantage on you though, means ranged can't get so complacent.
Might try another run later with a wand since I didn't get to see much of the new stuff and I'm told they're the new hotness.
You already know this, but melee, and especially two-handed melee, really seems to need a buff. The damage output is about the same once you account for melee having to walk up to the enemy first, and even if it were much better, it'd be hard to outweigh the ~20x damage you take from fights from being in melee and needing to level an additional stat. They need knockback, or a low-level stunning weapon art, or much better hit rate, or guaranteed interrupts, or hitting multiple enemies, or something to make them viable. I also think making two-handed weapons so slow compared to one-handed is overkill - you're already giving up on a defensive bonus from a shield or a stat bonus from an effigy, so it's fine if they're just plain better than every other option when it comes to actually killing things.
I think making ranged weapons slower and harder hitting would be a good idea. Not only does it seem silly that you can nock an arrow, draw your bow, aim and loose in the same amount of time that it takes you to whack someone with your sword, it'd be a good balancing factor against kiting all the time. Mayybe lower base bow damage, but let it scale with strength, to differentiate them from crossbows in a way that isn't attack speed?
Maybe you can make it so ranged enemies don't attack you through other enemies? Right now the impenetrable volleys of fireballs are a little frequent.
