Playing through levels 1-10

Doing this to see how the leveling is.

So, here's what I noticed:

• Enemies are much stronger than they were in the earlygame before 2.1 rebalancing monsters; this is exacerbated by having no gear. Nonetheless, I hit level 2 without completing any content to speak of; I wasn't able to reach the Pigman Barbeque clear chest before dying.
• Totems melt the pigmen even with no gear; with two AP invested and a half-decent relik I am suddenly melting every enemy. Still glass with no armor, but enemies die without issue and can barely threaten me outside of closed quarters.
• I hit combat level 3 halfway through the tunnel in Enzan's Brother; the quest clear rewards a pathetic amount of experience which barely dents my XP bar. I do have a significant advantage in that A. I died twice in Pigman Barbeque and B. I know where the loot chests are.
• The game is still quite aesthetically impressive. However, unlocking and entering Corrupted Passageway shouldn't be equivalent to completing Enzan's Brother, especially considering that doesn't include the rewards for fighting through and beating Passage. 6 Revivers at 15 XP apiece is also equivalent to Enzan's Brother, meaning that before even fighting the boss I'd made around 1.5x the XP from that actual quest just by entering a boss area. This brought me to level 4 upon killing the Egg, and the boss within was pathetically slow and weak. I don't think I got hit in that chamber, and it has none of the major challenge it used to be with all the fetuses spawning.
• This levelup gave me another new relik to use, which gives me even more damage. The Door Horse was, of course, waiting when I exited Corrupted Passageway. More tough than any one enemy, including the boss, save that it couldn't move or attack. I hit level 5 before even reaching the Identifier. No challenge whatsoever.
• Infested Plants' main difficulty was getting swarmed by easily-killable enemies at the end, after I exited the cave. There was no challenge. I also noted that a relik of equivalent level to one I'd randomly dredged from a cave did a third its damage, and that through levels 2, 4, and 6, my reliks were consistently 1.5x the raw DPS of their predecessor, which comes out to over doubling my damage in 4 levels of non-threatening combat. Yeah, there might be more issues than leveling here. As a reminder, at this point, I have pants and a shirt, and a Rare relik, and I am melting the enemies without needing to use a healing potion once. The only times I have died have been when I had zero gear and entered a cave, an experience I did not need to repeat because I don't need gear.
• Emeralds aren't an issue. I found random items in chests, identified and sold them, and tripled the money I put into them, in a single incident in Alekin. This is basically the source of the majority of my money, along with some chests earlygame which had nothing but half a block of emeralds in them. A 5 mana regen hat made me wish I'd kept that Concentration I sold.
• I was surprised to note that I barely cleared the level requirement for Mushroom Man, although I have engaged with precisely 2 pieces of content that you aren't handheld towards, and they're both directly adjacent and in full view of the Emerald Trail. It was not challenging at all, of course. I also noticed that a green objective provided 300 XP, which is triple Enzan's Brother's XP amount.
• The bridge skeletons didn't even require a hit from me, just a Totem. The Brute on the trail required hiding behind a tree and whacking him through it until he died, having dealt no damage. A random Undead Soldier yielded 110 XP, once again making Enzan's Brother cry. Tasim danced happily under the overhang. All in all, Level 7 before hitting Detlas. Clearing the quest and starting Tunnel Trouble brought me a hair shy of Level 8 before the golem; the enemies were zero-effort, as my Totem could kill them and required only kiting. The golem did not hit me once and was also zero-effort. With the quest completed, I'm nearly to Level 9.
• In case you didn't notice, this means I engaged with almost none of the additional and plentiful content in the earlygame except for two tutorial caves, the earlygame questline, and Tunnel Trouble, which is clearly intended to also be part of the default quest loadout. I did not visit Katoa Ranch, do any side quest, activate First Steps, attempt Decrepit Sewers, or in fact explore literally anything that wasn't on the Emerald Trail. This yielded enough experience to continue with the main quest; I was lucky enough to have a weapon with a powder slot for Taking the Tower, and the Tower itself was, once again, pathetically weak, with the boss succumbing to civil war with its shards.

So, in conclusion?
I reached Level 10 having engaged with absolutely zero content not related to the main progression. There was no difficulty whatsoever; I died three times, twice at level 1 and once because I pirouetted into a mass of enemies while trying to teleport to Ragni. (It turned out I needed to go to Van anyway, so that was worthless.)
I didn't engage with any content that wasn't on the Emerald Trail. I didn't explore Nivla Forest or the Ragni Plains. I cleared no caves that weren't directly on the beaten path. I didn't attempt Decrepit Sewers. I didn't explore the coastline. I didn't do any quests that weren't the earlygame questline.
I received no punishment, and in fact ended this run with around 16 emerald blocks (excluding my equipment and ingredient pouch), two emerald pouches, a full set of gear, two spare reliks to upgrade to, 250 health (which, going by the one-potion-equals-one-health-bar rule, is double the amount of health I should have at this time, with 90 of this health coming from Spiketop), four Morph-Emeralds, and zero reason to revisit any content I skipped. I have not been challenged in any way.

Earlygame has a long way to go.

 

reverse skill issue

get bad

 

It's still really unfortunate how the content from 1-10 may as well not exist. I didn't continue to see what it would be like leveling through 10-15, but the difference between needing to gain no additional XP and needing to gain some additional XP is not that much.

 

I think that the low level content should be easy—the earlygame questline is basically a long tutorial anyway. The problem is with the scaling: they increased the low level XP requirements a little bit in 2.1, but not nearly enough. If the staff want players to do all the earlygame content, then XP requirements need to be increased through about level 20 or maybe even 30. Frankly, with all the new content added recently, there should probably be XP requirement increases up until lategame.

 

I have bad news for you

Im pretty sure they weren't buffed....

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The Zombie Archer's new AI is actually an overall damage nerf to the mob, and the only two enemies that have been made stronger are charred zombie and spine shaker

 

Really?

Huh. I could have sworn they were tankier than they used to be.

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Please don't.

XP is fine. It is so very fine up until lategame.