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Okay im glad its being taken as constructive feedback instead of criticism, that was my intent! I'll happily play some more when next patch comes out, and likely have feedback on those changes as well XD

Oh some extra stuff.

1) Most of my hero losses were to wars. Its fine for that to happen but its abit weird that's the case.

2) The rewards from wars arent clear. Im PRETTY sure that when a hero gets hardened from a war event they gain a positive trait? But im not certain. More clarity there would be cool.

3) The auto-calc is kinda borked/cheeseable. Sometimes equipping gear thats a straight up improvement reduces your odds, or more explicitly, you can unequip items and have a better chance of winning (according to the auto-calc). That seems off.

4) The quests in the tavern feel kinda irrelevant? I did some for the craic, but you always get enough renown by doing trials, so the renown isnt really worth it, and the gear doesnt seem that great. Im not sure what their purpose is.

5) On gear, there's alot that could be said here but the main thing is that microing gear is basically just busywork. You have little to no incentives to build up more than 4/5 complete gearsets (sometimes its good to have 2 healers, or you want to run a ranged dps which uses slightly diff gear to a blademaster), as well as having a stock of gear that counters delve conditions (deepcold etc). So you just get legendary/epic gear, and then shuffle it around if you need to swap heroes in/out of your roster. Maybe if heroes got attached to gear, like they get better/worse at using it over time? Or there was a cooldown, so if a hero uses gear in a delve, another hero cant use that gear for X weeks (or something like that). Just to make the management less busywork, and more something to actually consider.

6) Its really unclear why some dungeons are harder than others. I know the game says "this boss is overlevelled for this dungeon" but what does that mean? Sometimes delves are super hard, and I have no real idea why. And there isnt really tools that I can use to try and understand whats causing the difculty spike. There is no beastiary (i think?), so sometimes you get creamed in a fight and are just like "what"?

I've played 2 runs. First with well established charter, second with the most difficult one. Both times promoted every year and then won (came first place in top league+won tourney). It would be cool if the difficulty was higher. Alot of the games mechanics dont seem to matter after you reach a certain level of strength.

Levelling: I dont understand how some heroes get to level 20, and some plataue at level 18. I get that to level up/gain experience you need to be taking on the trials or higher level delves than the heroes level, but all the delves cap out at level 18, and the trials seem to actually always give you XP (possible bug?). But then levels also dont seem to do much? I cant really tell the difference between two 100 rating heroes when one is level 18 and the other level 20.

Progressing Heroes: It's unclear what the semi-filled in stars for potential (and other stuff) mean. I think it means that stat can be achieved with training/honing/levelling up, but its unclear. Honing is incredibly slow. A hero that has 4 stars of potential, but is initially low rating/ability, will not get anywhere near their cap over the course of a run, so it's always better to just recruit better and better heroes, and not train them yourself. That kinda sucks. Also its too easy to find some 70+ rating heroes in the tavern early on and breeze through the early game.

Mid/lategame: Once you get to the midgame, and no longer need to delve to pay for upgrading your buildings, you can basically just auto-calc every trial with ~95% success rate and never lose a hero or have to use worse characters cuz youre always fresh with the level 3 recovery building and a good physician. Until the mythic circle (or whatever the top division is called) you literally can pass everything without even changing gear by using four 90+ rating heroes. If there was more pressure on the player for income i.e: you suffered more losses in the trials and had to poach talent from rivals guilds (which is easily the most expensive thing to do in the game), then you would have to delve more, use different rosters, and actually interact with the systems.

I could definitely offer more criticism, but I am tired and its like nearly 4am. Overall the game is really cool, and with just a little bit more work on the difficulty and some extra care taken to explain some stuff (by an actual person not chatGPT), then game would slap hard. Numbers need tuning (AI sucks at this), and some stuff needs explaining, especially experience and hero growth. Otherwise everything is pretty fine. Great game, looks like it was mostly vibe coded? Its pretty cool something small and enjoyable can be made like that NGL (tho maybe it was vibe coded but the writing is definitely AI XD)