Seems like the fact people are either complaining or saying nothing about the food system sounds like it's actually balanced. There's no "Oh I just stick with my Lox Pie Blood Pudding Fish Wraps forever and ever" meta anymore.. well those foods are still top tier, but it's harder to obtain with the Oven, and the changes in general make other food items great too.

My only gripe with combat right now is the Stamina Drain on each individual weapon. As you can see, better weapons take more Stamina to use, but why? and Why does that number not decrease as you gain more skill in that weapon?

When people whine about how the Stamina sucks, they are mainly talking about how they can't swing their Black Metal Sword a dozen times without getting tired. Now, this has always been in the game, but still, why? Why is it so utterly punishing to use higher quality weapons this way? There are some inconsistencies too, like the Flint Spear and Bronze Spear both costing 6 Stamina, making the Bronze Spear or (Or Copper Knife) insanely busted when you fully upgrade it. I'm a fan of the weaker weapons because of this reason alone: I can swing the weapon more. Does this make all the weapons balanced? Maybe, but it's so utterly forced because it does not scale with our skill level.