Difficulty spike on Nimrod / early game UI & tutorials

[midnight compass]

This is a bit of a braindump as to what I found confusing about the early game progression and introduction. It strictly concerns my experience with the gameplay - I don't believe these have been caused by bugs.

I just finished the Brewer of Hues quest, and this was the first boss that I struggled with. I've died at least 10 times, making me feel like I'm either doing something out of order, I'm missing a tutorial mechanic, or a tutorial didn't trigger for me...
I started following Poppet, but was a little more than confused when at the same time this boss appeared - I thought it's some other mechanic like "time of day/weather bringing difficult enemies" conflicting with the quest scripting. But I persisted, died a few times and figured I might as well try to follow the little rat instead of fighting the boss that I felt like I couldn't defeat on my own.

After finding, then exiting the cave, Nimrod spawned once more. I immediately used the "Cloudquell" potion and... I'm not sure if it did anything?
I managed to eventually down Nimrod, having to die 10 times and dealing a little bit of damage each time.

Then I attempted to continue onwards for the "The Waste Bear" quest. I called my sparrow and followed its trail, until I found a new significant obstacle: there's a new enemy type - what seems to be a bear (gasp) that is a companion for the melee caster enemies.

I again started getting absolutely obliterated by these NPCs that are usually around a gate, and which spawn in trios: caster, melee, bear.
I didn't seem to do any damage to them, compared to how I usually fared against pre-Nimrod enemies.
I do not have that "Cloudquell" potion - I only received one on the previous quest - and I do not know if I'm now supposed to somehow obtain one. It wasn't mentioned in any text that popped up during gameplay.

After dying a few more times to these difficult enemies I alt-tabbed and started searching, respawning at a different stone than usual. I was finally able to follow the sparrow to the next step in the quest - gathering the sap, but it felt highly confusing as to whether I'm supposed to be able to fight these enemies at all.
Very early in the game I was able to fight against enemies that showed up as "30" - I'm not sure if these are their levels? But now I dealt barely any damage, and almost instantly got flooded by these 15-19 enemy groups.

On that note I think I'm playing as what's called a Tethren. It's rank 11.
Up until now I have not found a single complete piece of equipment, or at least I think so - I'm not even sure if that's meant to be possible. I believe I have some fragments, but the game so far did not tell me anything about what their purpose is, nor when/if I will get to make any use of them.

I think the game would benefit from being able to go view all the accrued tutorial popups. At least then I wouldn't feel like I might've bugged out or simply missed out on the UI by progressing too slow/fast in certain sections.

Then I think it'd also be useful to either introduce UI elements such as the enemy levels /w some explanation as to their purpose, or... simply not display them at all. At least not until the game progresses to the point where the player should actually know about them.
As noted above - the difficulty of enemies seems inconsistent to me - so far these levels/numbers did not clearly correspond to how hard the actual fight was.

[wide harness]

I think what you describe is pretty typical.

The game is still in alpha, so hopefully they improve the tutorials a bit.

Somewhere they need to explain how your level (s) and the boss level interact. I suspect you were seeing the boss name in gray, which indicates either your weapon or pact is not high enough level to damage the boss.

The game is very much a grind to level up, so if you only follow the sparrow and don't do other things to level you will soon encounter things beyond your current ability.

[orchid vapor]

in game development it's difficult to really get an understanding of like, the lows and highs of player abilities, and can be very tempting to balance things around players who are experienced and capable like "oh they killed Bromius in under 30 seconds? well I better make that fight take longer"

while doing so punishes everyone else, for example.

we stuggle with alot of bleed-over from warframe as well, like taking "enemy levels vs us" for granted since its not really explained in warframe either

[glossy plinth]

Not really a difficultly spike IMO, the other thread on his attacks covers it mostly but the fight has the potential to be good and well telegraphed, but it just isn't. It's like whoever designed Nimrod's mechanics and tells just rolled a pair of dice to decide when the damage should actually occur.

The hitbox on his fistbump lightning is unnecessarily delayed, the hitbox on his AOE sky teleport is inconsistent and his ads are just irritating. At least stop them from spamming their grenades every 5 seconds, it adds nothing to the fight, it's just there because they've just chucked generic enemies in with Nimrod.

The fight has the potential to be a good fight once they take a look at him properly, at the minute I'm hard pressed to consider the fight "difficult" because it's clearly just unfinished. Once it's well telegraphed, I think it'll be a good introductory boss fight.