Love the concept, but as you stated yourself the balancing is horrendous. Armor is a must, if you don't get good shops in good positions with good armor prices you can forget the run, and the correct choice in combat is almost always to just reduce enemy attack power, and honestly I'm not sure what the point of reducing your own stats is. However, the foundation is very solid and I had fun regardless.
Viewing post in Negative Power jam comments
Thank you for playing the game and for giving feedback!
Indeed, the balance is currently very bad, that will be fixed and I also plan on introducing incentives for decreasing the other stats too along with other methods of approaching fights.
The possibility to reduce your own stats was mostly a setup for content that didn't make the cut, for example, I had in mind an item that when held would increase the player's attack by 1 for each negative armor they have, sort of a berserker item I guess.
Glad that you had fun with the game even with the state that it's currently in XD