This is all very constructive; I really appreciate it. I'll address some concerns that are related to my immediate plans.
Most plot lines not involving the town (or Threadbare) are connected to Lani. I'm planning to expand that in the next update, but they aren't intended to be truly connected until much later.
I have some skills intended to introduce some additional strategy. There's a defensive skill tree that focuses on nullification and reflection, and a thunder skill tree for aoe and stun. They're technically in the code, but they have no animations and haven't been tested, but you can see them if you take a look three player skills *.tsv file. They're intended to be introduced at the academy. That said, I agree that combat is wonky. This is largely because of stat training... my solution was to make a stat's influence scaled with level, so a level 1 was soft-capped in combat regardless of stat value, but until the time at home is limited, there will always be a way to just bulldoze enemies.
I'm going to greatly increase equipment availability in the next one. Like... greatly. It's something I've been putting off because I wanted it to coincide with some other improvements.
I'll be writing a devlog about the next update soon. It's intended to address a lot of the things you've mentioned and upgrade the overall polish of the game.
Thanks again for a wonderful critique!