After playing the new version i noticed that the game is much better balanced, but to archieve this balance the power of many traits and items has been reduced. This makes reaching a new level or finding a new item less interesting and sometimes boring.
I think your design goal "Go big or go home" is great and should be applied to the traits and the items, too:
- Hit points, accuracy, ... should not scale with the level
- The level should only increase the number of traits
- The power of the traits should be increased to make them interesting
- The items in the magic tree should be powerful to make the magic tree interesting
- Magic items should be powerful, but always guarded by difficult monsters