It will do I think. Also I'd like them to be distinguishing (some colour code maybe?), because in the end of the game enemies just litter weapons everywhere and trinket finding ends up into cherrypicking.
I am uncertain about your idea of colour-distinguished item drops. It sounds good in theory, but it would hurt several factors: the lootbox gamble (you don't know what you'll get, which I believe is core to items in Dark Souls being fun to pickup), the game will start looking like a rainbow (despite my colourful enemies I do generally prefer a gloomy gothic look), and it would also hurt game balance just a little as you may start avoiding picking up item types based on their colour which would make the game easier providing you more free light. There's a small risk-reward factor in the act of picking up an item instead of leaving it on the floor, you'll also notice when you discard an item it no longer provides light.
I can decrease the late-game weapon drop rate a little if you think you are being swarmed with too many weapon drops. It really is an arbitrary matter, there's no rule to the amount of weapons I'm providing the player. It's currently 3% (0 Luck) to 10% (25 Luck), should I change it to "3% to 8%"? The problem is that after death this determines how quickly you will find an initial replacement for your Bone weapon so it should probably remain high for the game to be less tedious.
Unfortunately, I figured out to equip them only when I opened the inventory to switch weapons... Yep, I'm that simple minded.
I could add a tutorial message which upon picking up an artifact commands you to equip it. I didn't think this would be necessary but I guess it's important.
It looks better at 90, Darklings are more distinguishable from floor and some objects start to looking more solid. 80 is too low, it makes walls too eye unfriendly.
I've ordered an expensive colour correct monitor on amazon (because this crap has been driving me nuts) hopefully I'll determine once and for all the perfect picture values.
The order of bosses was W>S>E>N (but now I think I would go E>S>W>N).
I am very surprised to see your boss order because I thought North boss was the easiest! lol
If you didn't realize, you can pop its projectiles by attacking them (a large swinging weapon helps). But I imagine it could be extra difficult if you have bad luck with enemy spawns, as that boss certainly likes to kite around.
Shield of Blood is imbalanced and makes you virtually invulnerable (I wouldn't nerf or remove it though).
I thought Shield of Blood might be a bit too strong and I came to the same conclusion that it's alright to have some strong items, so you feel good when you find one. There is another way to nerf it though - rarity.
As it stands, all unstackable artifacts are 3 times rarer than stackable artifacts (Diseased heart is a stackable artifact, shields are unstackable) and then there's "Dead frog eggs" which I made even rarer as they block curses which gives you an entire reason to never take Necromancy (for curse resistance which allows you to take advantage of statue blessings with no downside). So I might put Shield of Blood on the same rarity level as Dead frog eggs (as a result you would find a Shield of Blood half as much as you currently do).
Bosses are underpowered (or I got overpowered), only centipede killed me once (and that's because it had many other enemies nearby), after this I farmed a bit more and then did my last run and all bosses were killed in one life.
I didn't spend a ton of time on bosses, I would've liked to add more boss attacks but I became too tired of working on the game. Bosses only have one or two attacks so a lower amount of HP seemed appropriate for that kind of simple gameplay. For normal monsters Cactus has the most HP at 600 and all the bosses have 8x that value at 4800 HP. But I am not opposed to buffing bosses if it would make the fight more fun without becoming tedious (tedium is something I always want to avoid), I do recognize that the normal enemies are probably harder to deal with than the bosses themselves. Should I increase all boss attacks' damage by 25% and increase boss HP by 25%? What do you think?
Domain turned out to be the most essential skill in the late-game, probably if I spent some points in it instead of Charisma and Luck I would beat this game even faster.
Regarding the late-game darkness, basically Pyromancy is instant darkness alleviation and Domain is slow darkness alleviation. (there's also Luck which provides a number of ways such as the Luminous stone, Lightseeds, Jarred bug, Bonus creature (sometimes), Torches and Blazing beetle pincers.)
Pyromancy is intended to be more useful at the beginning because you can easily kill monsters with it (that you might be lacking in poise damage to stunlock) which should help players who are bad at the combat, then becomes less useful late-game because it is limited and you may as well kill enemies with your weapons. Though it's always pretty useful against large packs of monsters that are chasing you (good AoE), or could be saved for a troublesome late-game enemy type. I had ideas to add more fire spells but I cut them in the interest of actually finishing the game.
As you've pointed out, Domain is fairly useless early game then it becomes one of the best stats for late game. Though it is possible to explore the deepest areas without it and even without Pyromancy, by using item-drop light. I notice your Necromancy is at 0, if that was at 25 instead of Domain then your game would be swarming with even more item-drops, it's an intended strategy to not pick up items in order to allow them to provide light for you.
15 deaths in your pic looks pretty good to me. My early attempts at playtesting my game netted me something like 50+ deaths (though I think that's back when I had insta-kill pits). I've played through about 6 times and became bored of it so I opened up public playtesting with 0.99. Here was my most recent run, where I tested to see if I could beat the game without Pyromancy or Domain or a Luminous stone:
It's hilarious to see that our Time is so similar. I guess it's a 4 hour game? I have less deaths because of using summons which draw aggro away from yourself. Oh and thanks for telling others about the game!