Since you seem to find it difficult to balance the game for casual and hardcore gamers alike, why not offer several difficulty options? Like "easy/medium/hard combat" and "ample/average/little loot". This way, players can choose how challenging they want each aspect of the game to be. And it allows more diversity than just one general difficulty setting: You could do a run with hard combat and ample loot, then one with average combat and little loot to face another kind of challenge. It would add replay value.
This seems to me as a good solution. I like this idea.
If possible, why not give players more options to set the difficulty than only "casual, .. , hardcore"
Maybe even more kind of 'settings' to change the difficulty in some way ?
