It's been a while, I took some time to play the game again starting fresh.
You've improved the game a lot since I last played it, a lot of the rough edges are gone and it's a lot more polished now with ui/controls/overall experience. The core of the game still feels very fun.
I did not play it through to the end this time yet, just to day 63 right now. I haven't used the auction on this run yet due to the cost of entry (though I've unlocked it), but I have paid the $1000 to unlock the garden to explore that game mechanic.
From what I've experienced so far (in my subjective opinion) the game appears to still have the same balance/pacing issues I pointed out a few months ago. I have felt like I'm impoverished for the majority of the run... I'm just scraping by trying to save up enough to do research, and buying more drill parts feels like potentially a waste of money depending on how good the next ones will be.
Future researches still aren't visible, so it's hard to difficult to make a plan for how to spend that money or know if low value researches (like drill speed & tank speed by 5%) end up being worth it thanks to the next ones available, or if it'll take a longer time for that to pay off. (see my previous feedback)
The greenhouse was a bit disappointing, I'm not sure what I expected prior to unlocking but after I did and played around with it to see how it worked and the value I could get out of it right away, I regretted buying it as "early" as I did (somewhere after day 55, I forget when). Maybe it gets better as your drill reaches deeper or you unlock more plants, but it really didn't seem worth investing time into right now with how demanding it is on resources and attention needed, and how strict it is with the harvest timing for the bonuses. I felt encouraged to unlock it when I did because of how many seed resources I had accumulated, and the fact that many of the initially-unlocked craftable items were garden-related, as if the game was telling me that mechanic was a big aspect to the early game. I think I would just get rid of the $1000 entry cost entirely, I don't understand why it has that and everything else is based on days passed.
I thought about it for a while, and I think the reason why I feel like the pacing is so slow, when I could just go on a bunch of runs all in a row since it's not like there's a cost to drilling other than your day counter ticking up, is that "time passes" whenever you drill. Whenever a day passes, contracts tick down and new ones come in, the recycling gets refreshed, the garden grows... I have new resources to sort through from the previous drill run, that I can immediately make use of to smelt down, craft, fulfill contracts, sell things, and make small incremental upgrades to my drill or see how far I am off on research.
So I think the imbalance I'm feeling is that the game is encouraging me to spend more time on each "day" (after each drill run), with having so much available to do, and that I feel that the money I make from each individual drill run (in the early game) is too low, making my progress glacial. I don't know how many other people approached the game in the same way that I did, but if you wanted to improve this for my specific experience with it, a way to go about it rebalancing might be... as an example, if the drill speed was slowed down by 50%, so each individual run took twice as long, but the value of items was doubled. That would make it so per "day"/individual run, a player gets twice as much income potential, but on a per "unit of real time spent" basis (time spent drilling), the rate of income is unchanged. There are other things you could tweak, but that's an example of an approach you could use to rebalance.
Another idea could be to add a time of day system, like morning midday and evening, and have each drill run you do move time forward 1 step instead of jumping to the next day. That way, you're encouraged to only do "between-drill-run chores" once every 3rd run, before the day progresses forward. (So I'd end up getting triple the resources per game day that passes, by going on 3 runs, without needing to tweak the sell prices)
One other note, I see references in the achievements and statistics to a reincarnation feature (and the achievement is labeled "Fresh Start"). I have obviously not found a drillioncoin or gotten to this feature yet but seeing that exists, while experiencing the slow pacing that I am, was almost enough to put me off the game entirely when I saw it. Rebirth features can be implemented well, but it is difficult to have faith in that when the base game has this sort of balancing.
Here are some of my current statistics at day 63:
Maximum depth: 1478 M
Rocks broken: 139
Item collected: 1171
ore collected: 773
gem collected: 6
relic collected: 9
bonus collected: 50
item forged: 62
item crafted: 77
item selled: 244
money from market: $2251
money from contract: $1685
gems cutted: 2
gems broken: 1
item donated: 11
research completed: 3
item recycled: 124
seed planted: 5
and here is my current save file, if you want it:
https://pastebin.com/AH8BxKMX
Overall a very solid game still and you're one of my favorite developers on itch, and in spite of the pacing issues I do find myself coming back to the game to push a little further, I just wish it was faster because I feel like I've made no progress by day 63. (only 3 researches, only just unlocked garden, barely feel like I've pushed deeper underground, barely any gems cut, haven't touched auction, and my drill isn't really much different or more interesting than it was when I started on day 1)
edit:
another balance and progression thought. even though I haven't done the auction yet since I started playing again, I'm assuming that it's still a lucrative thing to do. But right now I feel deterred from trying, because of the low value items I've have access to (amethyst, clay & iron treasures) and the cost of entry being $400. In the help section, I can see pictures of auctions that go for less than $400, and because it says items value goes down the more you auction them, It feels like I just shouldn't do it yet. (also I think you should check to see if the help section is accurate for that, I think it also said the price of entry is $200 when it's really $400).
I think you should get rid of the cost of entry, and change it to a % based commission fee that the auction takes from every successful auction. Or even a flat fee plus a percentage, just only charge it if the auction is successful and take it out of the winning bid. That would get rid of the barrier to entry, and make me a lot more interested in doing the auction when I unlock it instead of much much later, and having upgrades that reduce the commission fee is a lot more appealing than stuff that reduces a door cost.