Hey Celerity, amateur mod author here. I loved LOX, thought it had its flaws; Deepest Dark fixed the major one of that: difficulty. The game becomes too much of a chore after early game, and Deepest Dark is probably the only mod I've seen that tries to do it in an enjoyable way (unlike say, for example, disabling learning and fixing KoH at level 1).

The mod still has its issues tho, the biggest one I'd say is the early game, its so hardcore that many enthusiasts would be turned off by the prospect of ploughing through that stage; also, I didn't agree with some places you didn't make changes, like how Disciple and Prophet gear was still mandatory for every character and took away choices; or how certain enchantments were super powerful but super cheap (5-10 damage scaling to 20-40; for 0.4 base level increase). I also disagreed with some of the spell changes; you made AOE available way too early, coupled with the fact that lategame spells were massively buffed, especially Comet Shower; a mage stocked with Mana Pots (200 mana) can maintain a DPS of 600 (assuming 2 pots consumed every 3 rounds), before resistances taken into account (burst of 1800), inflicting a reasonable amount of CC in the process. Also, it caused conflict; would you cast the T2 AOE spell that harms 5 enemies moderately, or the T3 damage spell that massively harms 1 enemy and moderately harms 3 more? Most of the time, it'd be the latter, given the importance of focus fire, unless you're using 3+ mages; and this kinda put those T2 spells in a niche spot: they're good for trash fights, but in any serious ones you're better off with T3, whether its single-target boss, or multiple (~3) strong foes.

The other changes I made are mostly immersion changes. I reworked most equipment, now every equipment type serves an unique role and doesn't go obsolete (Battle Hammer vs Flail for example: Battlehammers have high damage and stun; but Flails can both stun and wound, but less than both Battleaxes and Battlehammers). I reworked enchantments; now Armors hold protection, weight, evasion and resistance enchantments primarily, while Trinkets hold everything else, like Stat boosts and +XP. +XP were massively nerfed to 2% base, and now you can max have 4 +XP gear per person, so XP bloat is partially eliminated. I added artifact-tier weapons; in place of slayer weapons; they still have the slayer property, but have other powerful bonuses on top of that. Such gear are really rare and really expensive (+3 base level). Tomb of Kings give +5Lvl Weapons (the Indaris Mausoleum can give you a 12+ star weapon); but not armor or other things; making those mausoleums truly rewarding to find and open. Classes were massively rebalanced, particularly the Divine Summoner, which might be a bit too op now, requires playtesting to find out. Item Qualities renamed, because its really weird to read about Diamond Sheet Leather Armor. Wood now use actual wood from T1-8, scaling with Janka hardness, then magical metal, because magical metal can be used as wood, leather or metal cuz magic. Jewelry also use actual gems later on, instead of metals. Prices altered, because it makes no sense that a cloak is more expensive than a longsword, as well as actual rings and necklaces. All in a balanced way, of course, as much as I can.

Fixed difficulty levels too, now people can actually play on other difficulties if they don't want to try Hardcore Ironman; however, your mod mentions you made changes that might break other difficulties, so you intentionally broke them, so this needs clarification to go through. Made a lot of little QOL changes here, like making inns really cheap (32g full rest Hardcore); so to do a food loop now all you need to do is rest twice and collect cereal and get +36G profit. The reason for that is equipment: Since equipment generation is random, and certain equipment really make early game easy (+PP gear for PP trick, saving money on blessings); and some people would want to gear up fully on +XP gear despite nerfs; 2 Nights rest restocks vendor equipment, 7 Nights refreshes inventory, so you can do food loops to rest for free, and even make gold in the process (relevant early, if you want to make early game even easier). Lore immersive too, because this is the equivalent of finding work in town while you mingle and gather information in the new land you've just arrived at. Since inn resting is really cheap now, no reason to make the game arbitrarily difficult with the food mechanic; its still relevant in the desert, but food is a big annoyance in the game even with berry bush free food; wasting a lot of time, so nerfing food costs goes a long way making the game more accessible. Min-maxers don't buy food anyways, so its just to help newbies. Another lore immersive change is preventing massive inflation while levelling: at level 30 inn resting would cost significantly more than at 1, why? These just punish players for using in-game mechanics (buying food, inn resting, curing curses, buying lockpicks); inflation isn't completely gone; just mostly non-existent for the less important stuff; but buying lots of lockpicks is still going to cause their price to rise a lot.

Didn't change enemies, enemy skills, enemy locations, missions at all. You did a really good job on those, and changing those are really time consuming and require extensive playtesting, time I don't have. This is mostly a hobby. Now, I could have completely messed up balance, made the game too easy and whatnot, so all I need now is an audience for feedback. So anyways, this is a formal request asking permission to post my mod (tentative name: Deepest Dark: Rebalanced), which is built upon your mod, giving credits where due.