The game is still really easy once you know what you will be facing but I have to say that with all the adjustment around, the game is really newbie unfriendly now. Here's an example.

Ifan now has 1 thievery instead of 1 sneak

This might seem like a good change but one thing we have to remember that unless you have 1 sneak, you can't grab the prison key without being detected.

Of course older players will know this and have Ifan get Sneak to 1 anyway just to be able to do the Withermoore soul jar and grab the Houndmaster crossbow but newer players won't.

Because of this, if the players get sent to prison even with Ifan, if they don't level Sneak to at least 1 at level 2, they have to restart the game.

There were also tons of balance change that weren't mentioned like how The Pawn (It's obviously too good) now has a required "1 scoundrel" to be picked up. The first-run experience is pretty much dead because the game is so heavy on the min-max now so unless you know exactly what you need to do or what you're about to face (Damn they fixed the Meat golem in a cage free hits D:), you will likely end up being forced to restart the game after a few hours in to have a better build and more gold/skills.

But for a player who already cleared the game a few time like me, the new min-max challenge is a fun one.

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Now the real complain is without a doubt, on the extra cost of skill books, especially when you gain possession of them and the price drop back to the prepatched cost (so you can't even sell them back for some decent gold). Not only is this a major nerf to one of the reason to have thievery in the first place, this also completely kills the mage class variety in spell combination and you're forced to play the plain double wand shooter instead. The nerfed Thievery also becomes even more mandatory because you can't get the gold back from people you kill, only the tons of paintings and so on you offered to them so you are forced to steal 2-3x after a deal to buy a skill book before proceeding.

I don't have the issue with equip costs because everything we have is also ridiculously expensive now like Ancient Sword base gold is 1200 instead. Unique items are finally worth consider selling to make way for future items.

This also makes Barter much stronger and so does crafting because the easiest way to make gold now, is to buy materials, craft a potion or grenade, sell them back and go level up where the store will reset (or wait an hour) and do it again. Stick and Shell gives you 40+ gold a pop which is great.

I also have to be much faster and more tactical with how I kill my enemies so they die before using grenade in order for me to generate more gold from selling their stuffs.

One feature I also have to explore now is the "Attitude" feature. Giving the npc about 120 gold (2 gold per 1 attitude point) can end up giving me a 200-300 gold on discount and extra 100-200 gold on selling profit from buying and selling what I need and don't need, making it finally useful to try and befriend NPCs. Considering how they mention they are trying to make trading more important and impactful, it seems to be working as intended.

So when they decide to fix this, instead of just reducing the price of equips and skillbooks, I would like it more to see

1) More way to bump up the attitude of NPCs beside just showering them with gifts. Very few merchants allow you to get extra attitude. For example, Butter doesn't even like you much after you both flirt with each other successfully.

2) Reduce the skill book cost by about 25%. Sure they might still be somewhat expensive but not to the point they're dirt cheap.

3) Buff Thievery slightly back up so they can at least steal something in the early game instead of being used as a way to just regain gold losses from attitude boost gift shower. This will also allow me to be much more merciful with how I play because atm, I pretty much only shops with merchants I know will die at Fort Joy because I will get my drops back (except gold so I have to be careful with gold) to sell to the other merchants. Every other merchants has to wait until all 4 of my party member can have thievery gear so they can steal all the gold back.