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Thanks for playing and the detailed feedback.

Yes, for now we want it easy so more people can see more of what we have in place.

We are working on redoing the tutorial. We like the idea of having an interactive tutorial, but enough people have said that the current Trainer Terry fight is too much at once, and not clear, especially on the affinities. The affinities affect both offense and defense. In the next update we aim to add a Training Hall to the Town, which will be similar to the Tavern, but with the combat tutorial pieces broken out into clickable buttons so you can read what you want, and reread any if you need to. We will reword things and try to be more clear. It will likely get more wordy, but we are hoping that breaking it up into pieces that people have to choose to click on will make it easier to understand and less overwhelming. We are also considering adding more topics than just combat.

Thanks for the feedback on the new interactions. We are going for a more classic RPG feel, so there are going to be a lot of random NPCs with short world building, or completely unimportant, dialog. It is there for those who want more in the world. We are continuing to refine things and do want the NPCs to be interesting, but they are also, mostly, optional for those who don't like the extra talky bits. We do have the one that adds a minor side quest, and in the future more will have consequences, such as offering quests or items, but these will all be optional and typical of the kind of RPG we are inspired by.

I'm not sure I follow your points on the combat and enemies disappearing. Most classic RPGs don't talk about what they do with the corpses/unconscious enemies after a fight. They just disappear and the party moves on, unless you are collecting body parts in the loot, or you manually loot the corpse after combat as in some ARPGs, and even then the rest of the remains are ignored. Is your issue that the enemies are humans instead of the typical "monster" enemies? Even when there are human enemies the remains usually just disappear and no one talks about what happens to them. I think part of the idea behind it is that showing corpses and specifically talking about what happens to them may cross some lines for ratings. Many RPGs even switched from talking about killing and death to using terms like "unconscious" and "knocked out". You start in areas populated by Slimes, but as you move on you get to areas with human villages, and many with mixing of various races. The humans living in the area are just as in danger from the invaders as the Slimes, and they do talk about defending themselves from these invaders. As we flesh out the story we will likely include more introspection on the amount of death that is happening. We plan to include messages from others about what is going on elsewhere and at those points there will be more about the greater scope of what is happening. The story is already progressing to show the changing mindsets as the youthful innocence of the team wears off and they accept the grim reality of the situation they are in. 

For the core gameplay, we are planning an overhaul of combat to give the player more to do. The original jam concept was meant to be fast and simple; something you could play on mobile on the way to work. With the growing scope the combat feels too simple, and yes, we can see how it can get boring and repetitive. 

With the recent update to item stacks we did change how the belts are filled. We no longer auto fill the belts, but let the players decide what they want. Before, with only 5 slots, you always wanted them full. Now, when you can have large stacks you may only want certain items and don't want the belt cluttered with more. When you use all the items in a stack during combat it will be replaced by the first item from your bag that is not already in your belt. Outside of combat the belt needs to be manually set.

Our original UI was based on click to select and click on new slot to swap. We've since added click and drag support, but retained the original method as well. This is something we need to revisit as it doesn't fit the classic RPG UI, and I can see how it would be confusing. We did this largely for accessibility reasons as it works for joypads and keyboard. We may make it an option that can be enabled when using a joypad or just keyboard.

For item sorting, that is a Godot thing. Sorting arrays in Godot is not "Stable", so rerunning it does not guarantee the same results. Equal values may shift positions on each run. The multi-parameter sorting is more consistent due to the additional values that are compared. We will take a look at the sorting and see if there is a good way to make the single parameter sorts more stable. I have an idea that should work for this.

Sorting by Equipment Slot will be more useful later. Abilities will be affected by certain types of items. For example, some of Tanko's abilities will use armor.

I can see how the combat end collect loot, followed by the chest collect loot, with both opening the inventory might be inconvenient. We will look into adjusting that to only open once there. We did also add an option to turn off auto-opening the inventory after collecting loot. The default for now is to keep it on, so we will want to fix the double open.

Cooldowns will be going away in the combat overhaul. We will keep in mind how best to show the state when we redo it and see if there is a good way to display it without hovering.

I will look into why the cookies might be moved instead of used. I've not seen that before. Can you clarify what you mean by "menu" in "Using a cookie in the menu puts it into the character's inventory instead (but you can use it in the inventory)"? Was it in the shared Party Bag (top section)? The Slime's personal Bag (bottom right)?

Thanks again for the feedback!