Thanks for playing! Learning to use the items liberally is definitely a big part of the learning curve, even I tend to hoard them a bit. However, I think it's wrong to hoard them because the rewards shower you with a lot of items and I always end up with more than I can use. Also, the only thing you can spend gold on right now is more items. Eventually I'll do some kind of tutorial that explains how all the items are used and when to use them and hopefully that helps.
I think in the first floor you can survive without using any items and build them up but my design philosophy is that you have to be using them to survive the more difficult fights.
The stopwatch is a cheap item that you can use to pause fights and even rearrange your inventory. Again, not really explained atm so you kinda have to just know about it.
Who are the most rage inducing enemies?
Thanks again, I still have a lot to work on. I hope you check it out again in the future