Thanks for playing and the feedback.
We are planing to redo the settings screen. We've continued adding a lot more options and the gameplay tab is getting too full, but haven't yet decided how we want to regroup things.
We intentionally don't reset the cooldown on abilities for gameplay reasons. We are still working on the best way to balance them. The fights are short, so having a delay before use that starts with each fight would limit them to bigger/longer fights. Letting them be used at the start means we'd have to reduce their power with the expectation of being used as the opening move every time, or make them be more specialized, like Guardian, so they are not as useful in every fight. For now, the best we came up with was the cooldown limiting your use of them so they feel useful, but also can't be the only thing you use. We may need to switch them from a "cooldown", to something that is "charged up", with a charge that lasts between fights. It could amount to about the same thing, but presented to the player differently, so it is more accepted.
The use for the extra loot is a WIP. It is one of the next big changes once we finish redoing some backend and added a few more small features. The story bits about collecting food for your clans will be brought into gameplay. You will be using the traders to send some of the loot back as food for your clan. The Quest Log will have a progress bar showing how much is needed, and how much you've sent. Items will have a food value, with lower level items providing less food, giving the player some choices over just dumping all the old stuff, or giving some better gear. We are also wanting to add shops, but are still balancing the idea of selling loot vs sending it back, and if we should add collecting gold for shops in addition to the normal loot.