This helps amazingly and should win the award for best response/review in the entire game jam !
We should for sure explain some more in game because I bet you are not alone in not reading out of game explanations.
For the game jam we didn;t have time to implement this all (which is also why you got stuck with the backpack placement, that part was just not thought out enough). Selling your weapon or starting with only a shield will "brick" your game since you cannot beat the level so that is a very valid concern too.
Again, thanks so much for this in depth review !