Rewards that affect overworld abilities is a great idea for a workaround! I’m yet to fully decide on how shortcut unlocks work so I’ll definitely keep level up rewards in mind going forward!
I haven’t written about it yet, but there are resources you can collect throughout the overworld to upgrade your base, and maybe a random one of these with every level would satisfy the need for immediate reward.
And now I’m thinking about it more, maybe there could be a reward wheel that you can spin each level-up with varying rewards in 20 slots that slowly get reduced as you level so you’ll always get all rewards by max level- then I can add things like ATK+1 so you sometimes get that immediate amazing reward but I can still keep numbers low!
I’m coming up with this as I’m writing so it’s a bit all over the place, but there’s definitely something here!
Really appreciate the support! :)