Comments - j3ll3

"testing mechanics" = not playing the play style you're gonna play once you actually get levels.

GL with your mod. You're definitely gonna need it.

The thing about vanilla is that the start is so quick and easy that it doesn't really matter - in your mod the progression is slowed so much down (and the difficulty increased) that it matters a lot. You can have 95% of your mod as hard as you want, but if you refuse to provide any tools to the caster early game I really recommend lowering the difficulty in the zones up to darkwood and you can keep the rest of the game untouched.
Alternatively give way more xp so level ~10 is fairly quickly reached.

I never said I wanted something easy - in fact I've played most of the hard d2 mods out there and had tons of fun with them. What Im saying is that if I pick a caster then it means that I really wanna play a caster - not a (terribly weak) melee-with-no-skills-to-support-the-style for the fist 5? 10? hours

Are you supposed to get <40 xp per kill from level 3? Getting from 4 to 5 is literally a 40 minute grind. Nedless to say starting/playing a "caster" (lol jk, no mana for spells. Have fun looking like an idiot with your scepter) in the current state is a ****** experience