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 It might be a good idea to communicate this better the first time your character dies or collapses from exhaustion.

Having some dialogue relating to how the encounter point system works is a good idea. I'll add that to my todo list.

The fact that the character resets is discussed on your second playthrough, but it is not yet explained why everything is happening. This is intentional as I don't want to give all the mysterious details right away.

Remove the % chance for an encounter.

Doing this would change a lot of things. It would mean Distance/Encounter is not applicable as a stat. Many EP related achievements would also not make sense. It is an interesting idea, and I think it can work! But I don't think it's something I want for this game. Instead, I will be making the base distance/encounter considerably larger.

Have the player choose the next area by clicking it instead of walking around.

Instead of showing multiplier bonusses on areas, show how much of each resource you get for defeating an area, and the monster you have to fight.

Instead of experience and levels, simply show how much stat points an area will give.

Making these changes would oversimplify the game. It would add more clarity, but part of the game is getting a feel for how good things are, and making uninformed decisions. Over time, these uninformed decisions turn into informed decisions. Implementing these changes removes a lot of the skill expression of the game. I don't want the game to become one of those shovelware game where you start with 10 points and the only options are "multiply by 2" or "add 7". If the choice becomes too obvious then it feels like the game is playing itself. And this might be what people want. Your ideas could be the most optimal for reaching the widest audience possible! But I, and many others, don't like playing that type of game, so I couldn't bring myself to implement it.

When entering the boss area, it is a bit confusing that you can get random encounters as well.

What do you think I should do to make it more clear? The boss doesn't show up as the enemy if you were to start a fight in a zone where there is a boss. Additionally, I was under the impression that many players wouldn't even see the boss, or recognize it as such until they were already in the level 100 area.

Some small feedback on the dialog in the first area: the main character does the same thing in every dialog.

The dialogue between the main character and ??? where the main character is exasperated with ???'s antics is only 10 lines or so long. It's meant to be a bit of story building and a bit of comedic relief. The ways in which ??? responds to the main characters questions is varied, even if they do all boil down to willful ignorance. More elaborate details are available later on in the game. Given the brevity of the content that you get early on, I think I'll stick to what I have (for now at least).

One more thing: maybe rename the "Peons Defeated" run statistic to "Monsters Defeated". Calling them Peons doesn't make much sense here.

It is a weird word. I use it because it was a word used in the wiki for a game I played when I was young (The Battle Cats). But I like the word because it distinguishes itself from bosses, whereas a word like "monsters" does not. Many of the definitions that you find for the word online are archaic, see Dictionary.com's explanation:

Today, peon is used more generally to refer to poor people or those who perform menial labor—work that is often considered lowly and degrading. The word peon often implies that such a person receives poor treatment or is being exploited.

I know I disagreed with a lot of what you said, but I truly appreciate the feedback! There are a few issues that I think exacerbated the problems you had with the early game, and I'm working on fixing those.

Thanks for playing!