Good catch on the Bell Salve, it's sort of a red herring atm since you only have one character. I may keep it as one and change sleep or add more but I'm not sure atm.
Also... there was a bug that prevented you from being able to make helmets which would have smoothed progression out a bit (and make some monster drops less useless).
I just pushed that build now.
Currently play testing more and I think the smaller monsters probably need their HP cut in half and it'll be smoother over all.