Insane Difficulty: dee_ehn - Viewing Profile - Insane Difficulty

Since I've presently walled on my own project, I've decided to attempt to take BNW and expand upon it, in a manner not entirely dissimilar to Warring Triad.

I'm planning to import several hacks I've done for Meltdown, such as a major relic effect, a blind adjustment, possibly some basic text expansions, and a slew of AI script expansions. I'm open to ideas, but there is a limit to both my capability and what I'm willing to do. Balance is already extremely well tuned for the hack's intent, which is as an entry point for people even if they haven't played vanilla. I'm wanting to shoot a bit above that, creating a 'hard' mode, so to speak, but I'm aiming for that with BNW's overall design philosophy in mind. What this means is that, no, I will not have enemies with 16 million HP or 8000 bytes of script on one boss, but it will be moderately difficult even for somebody experienced with BNW.

What are general opinions on difficulty and balance that people would like to see looked at and possibly addressed?

I'm aware of issues like the Longinus/Gugnir and the whole issue with experience. I'm also planning to rewrite quite a few bosses, with varying degrees of change being planned for them. Since I've spent 6 years on my own hack and gotten virtually nowhere past mechanical and menu edits, I figured this time I might try a group approach. Input is welcome, as long as it isn't just bitching.