The patch is really odd for sure..
I find melee to be a weird place right now, I use Red Prince as my tank and I run double mage and ranger with Sebille and I have tried Ben, but I don't like close quarters combat as any real damage from mage is AoE and gets my melee guys killed, so really it doesn't feel like there is a good reason to even use a melee character as they just get slaughtered so fast, sword n board doesnt do enough damage and sadly rarely can tank enough to matter anyways, 2H doesn't seem that strong and it keeps misisng a lot which i see is another complaint here about this patch and hit rates.
Gold generation is also a hot topic, requires far too much strategy to even get enough to gear a single character in a decent ring or two. I don't mind it TOO much since I understand what to do, but for the new players it'll be hell that could get them to rage quit.
Another hot topic is of course armors, enemies have 10 times more than you could ever have at that point and it is completely unfair. I have managed to get Red Prince up to nearly 100 with a lucky find or two of heavy armor, but luck shouldn't be that involved with being able to stand a chance.
The croc fight is also complete bullshit and we all know it, they have too much damage and too much utility, a party doing it at level needs serious strats or serious luck to beat them. They open with fossil strike which chunks the character or the party by near half before your turn, teleport onto you, ram your dps down or worse horrific scream and just chomp them to death before you even get a turn. THIS is something that will seriously make new players blow a fuse and this is all on default normal mode.
To go with the gold problem, books and gear are too expensive while money isn't plentiful enough, you have to choose or steal from the npcs to hope to get both, gold just really needs adjusting.
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Leveling is indeed an awful problem unless you know the ins and outs of the area already like most of us EA players will, even if they change it we'll adapt faster than the new buyers.
Some tips, if you want them, don't mistake these for approval of Larian's design choices though, I just want to put these out there so others can know of them.
The biggest Experience boost you are going to get early game is saving Stingtail from Silence, once you deliver the orange to Griff you can attack Silence back at Stingtail's camp and defeat her, which rewards 1000 experience, and if you talk to Stingtail afterwards (assuming he survived and you didn't piss him off by hitting him during the battle) he will reward you with 600 experience more.
So for doing everything there you get about 840 for returning the oranges, 840 for releasing Amyro, 1,000 for killing Silence and 600 for speaking to Stingtail afterwards, which will get you Lv. 1 to 2 and like 20% into 3.
Now obviously most players won't even realize this is possible and that is why it shouldn't be worth so much I think as if you miss fighting Silence and speaking to Stingtail thats a crap ton of experience you just waste and are going to have a really hard time getting that early on.
Other things you can do to get experience is kill all the Silent Monks, they are worth about 200 each and go down pretty easily and since it seems they have no story ramifications there is no point in not killing them. Same for the two magisters harassing Han, you don't really seem to need to let them live, even if you know who they really are, they award good experience and one has two REALLY good shields that would cost you almost 300g to buy from an NPC.
I think Larian needs to balance out more the consequences of killing, because right now you should kill everything and everyone you can, there is no reason not to. Exception on a few NPCs of course, obviously don't kill the Seekers or Gareth, don't kill Zam..Zal..the undead vendor, don't kill Paladin Cork, but everyone else can die if you've got the gear and skill books you wanted. Hell, killing griff and his gang after selling stuff to him rewards you as you get all the stuff back to sell to another npc. Basically before Act 1 is over you should genocide the island to get maximum reward.
I would hope there is ramifications later down the line after Act 1 if you decide to slaughter the island, but right now it doesn't sound likely. Especially since if you don't know about the killing Silence bit you end up killing Griff's gang anyways since there is no peaceful resolution built into dialogue, again unless you don't mind letting Stingtail die, but if you can save the vendors and get experience why would you let any of them die.
