Clearly there's a large difference of opinion here and it's difficult to cater for all tastes!
I don't regret the last round of changes -- it was definitely necessary to not give the second sword so soon, and Level 1 has some more interesting choices now that you don't get 21 ATK immediately. The blue key on Level 3 was meant to be difficult to reach -- I want it to me difficult enough that most players won't get it on their first pass through the level and will have to come back for it, perhaps after getting the next sword. However, I agree that the hold now needs some easing changes to compensate.
I won't list everything I've fiddled with, but the main points are:
*Blue key at the start of Level 2 replaced by a yellow, and blue door gone. Hence you only need to kill one spider to start Level 2, and there's an extra yellow key if you return to it later when you have less HP loss vs. spiders.
*Removed Neather at entrance to the central wing of Level 2, so now you can get the DEF power-up immediately after killing Grey Jade, and of course reach the goodies in the Neather rooms, which are rather lucrative if you can manage the orb and trapdoor puzzles.
*Added an ATK power-up (+3) to Third Floor: 8S2W to make there actually be some gain for going round the loop.
*Removed some rock golems, and made some treasures guarded by golems more easily accessible. No point in have
quite that much stuff completely impossible to reach now and ludicrously easy later. I want to calibrate matters, if I can, so that the player goes through a stage when they can kill golems but not easily, and then they might need to go back to Levels 2 and 3 for those power-ups.
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50th Skywatcher
But I suppose that might change as you proceed with later levels. Did you know you can get unlimeted access to yellow keys for greckles? Is this how it's supposed to work? But you can only do it all at once, since the guy dissappears once you leave the room.