Honestly, the only thing keeping me playing at this point is knowing how much I liked the first iteration and hoping future updates will balance the early game better. I still haven't completed the first row of pink squares, and I've been playing since around the time this version became available. I'm not even sure what I'm doing wrong since I know other people have made it much further. I'm guessing part of my issue was that I went for high luck with anti-luck, slowing me down, which I didn't know until the hover tooltips were added. And maybe I'm playing too greedy with mana, trying to maximize my bonus before casting? Idk, and it's frustrating at this stage.