If it matters any, I'm playing the Good Old Games version of Crossworlds. Maybe it handles things a bit differently and that's what the crashes are about?
Difficulty-wise, my main point was actually that the mod's description presents the difficulty as being around one level higher than in the base game. Since I prefer to play Armored Princess on Hard, I went with Normal, and while I've ended up enjoying the challenge I still feel it would be better for players to be forewarned that they should probably drop down two difficulty levels compared to the base game, not one.
Skills-wise, I'd tend to agree that buffing/replacing bad Skills is generally a better approach than just passing out the ultimate Skills to other classes. Right now the Paladin basically invalidates the Mage later in the game -admittedly Trent Wars seems to be short enough that this isn't as huge a problem as it could be, but when I noticed my Paladin had Higher Magic I found it quite jarring regardless. Mind, I wouldn't necessarily object to passing out Higher Magic to everyone -it would address some oddities like 'the Mage is the best at grinding Guardian Angel'- but if you went in that kind of direction that would tend to imply a more significant overhaul of class concept/Skills in general. Just passing out Higher Magic to the Paladin with the Mage getting nothing to give them a unique edge is off. (It's not like Archmage is all that great)
As far as the Mind tree goes, in my view its issues are an intersection of
1: Many of its Skills are overpriced. Prayer is lame, but if it was 3 or 4 Mind Runes for the first rank it would be boring-lame, not this-is-not-worth-it-lame.
2: It further suffers from universally essential Skills acting a Rune sinks -no matter who you're playing, you should try to max Trophies as soon as possible, and this is MORE true in Trent Wars than in the base game where money eventually becomes essentially infinite. Which is 15 Mind Runes before you can get on with purchasing other Skills.
3: Lastly is that Mind's Skills that don't suffer directly from either of the above end up suffering it indirectly from the organization of the Skill tree. Voice of the Dragon is a decent enough Skill if you happen to be interested in using animals/dragons, but it's locked behind such a massive amount of Rune sinks it tends to be difficult to justify purchasing it if you're not the Paladin -and even the Paladin will still take forever to get to it since Resurrection is massively more useful AND its requirements are more biased toward Inherently Worthwhile Skills.
Just reorganizing the tree so that eg Prayer is at the END instead of locking off several Skills would go a long way to fix things.
Though on the topic of price points... Trent Wars puts me rather in mind of The Legend when it comes to the overall map design philosophy. Specifically that in The Legend you spend a lot of your time scooping up the easy loot so you can be powerful enough to beat (Well, trivialize in its case, but close enough) easier encounters which unlocks more areas/more improvements to your character and/or army, etc. Which I'm mentioning because I'm a little surprised Trent Wars didn't overhaul Talent Rune costs in the first place; The Legend has MUCH lower costs than later entries in the series because later entries are more focused on making grinding out levels the path to true power, with Talent Runes found in the field primarily mattering for how they add up over time. (With the occasional 'I just need one more Mind Rune- there's one!') Whereas The Legend prices its Skills so that finding individual Runes is actually quite likely to let you purchase a Skill right away, at least until fairly late in the game, and that model seems a bit more in line with Trent Wars' design.
Which I'm mentioning primarily because if you're going to overhaul Skills anyway, then it's a relevant point.
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