Hey, thanks for the feedback.
Outside the very first room you start in, there's both a knife and a gun on a body you can loot and use, so make sure you pick those up. Also, I did lower encounter rates slightly in the latest hotfix, so there's that for now. Using Stealth effectively lowers the amount of steps you take to one third of normal, so it should significantly reduce encounter rates (If it's working properly.)
The AI usage is to stay. Apologies if that is an issue.
As for difficulties, I do plan on adding an Easy and a Hard difficulty in the future.