Yeah I agree with basically everything here. Tbh, I didn't mind doing the tedious strategically correct thing because it felt like I was outsmarting the game, but over a long time I know that can feel quite tiresome. Maybe just instantly winning a fight if enemies cannot damage you at all would be a good idea?
I didn't even realize at first that you could rest more than one time. I needed to find a second rest spot to figure that out.
I wish the game would just give you a certain amount of gold instead of making you roll for it, missing out on gold is probably the most frustrating part.
And tbh I really didn't like items that added things onto my reels. During the lategame, I was losing out on damage by rolling fire from a coal instead of a damage number on my knife, and it felt really bad, specially since burn and poison really don't scale like your normal numbers do. Maybe a good change would, instead of adding a poisonous reel when you get a venom, make a damage number in the reel also apply poison or burn, and then it'd feel very satisfying to hit those.
Something that kinda sucks, too, is that you can't sell or get rid of artifacts, only weapons, and you can't chose not to take them. I wanted to get rid of the coal I had gotten in my winning run somehow, but there was no way to do it.