Early Game Gear Dependency

I felt like I should probably make a feedback thread, too, despite my assumption that it won't be read.
Let me preface that I really like the way (I assume )the game is going right now, even though it's very rough around the edges as of yet.
I sincerely hope that, in the 1.0 release, there's be parts of the endgame that play similarly to the campaign.

Synopsis: The early game on the first character is a bit too sluggish atm, and too gear dependent. The experience seems to rise or fall with a few too few rng rolls.
It is possible to struggle needlessly, then run into a wall, with no way to meaningfully alleviate this once it's happened.

Early Gearing
Anecdotal Evidence:
1. It took me a good 15 levels to get a single item with lightning resist that I could both afford and use with the attributes the character had.
2. My first character got almost oneshot by the hags in the first zone, and indeed died to them. My second char could equip an item or two from the chest in clearfell, + spend the outrageous sum of over 300 gold pieces on clothing. Now sporting over a 100 Energy shield, I got hit twice by one of the hags without even noticing (their models hadn't loaded yet, so I couldn't know I was being cast at), and survived the experience just fine with hp to spare.

Suggestion:
Increase the one-time gold gains in the very early game to allow players a bit more leeway.
As the team has stated that they want players to be able to buy upgrades from the store, increasing the gold reward of the first quest reward a bit would ease this without affecting the overall balance.
Likewise, the quest to acquire Renly's hammer, which is only available to the first character, could grant an extra few hundred gold pieces to support the character that is likely struggling the most, at the time a new player would be struggling the most.

Crossbows
Crossbows feel about similar to bows in power level, if significantly more clunky. However, Bows have Quivers, which not only allows more power, it offers an extra roll on that power. Having two items to tweak, and for which to potentially find upgrades for, makes gearning more smooth.

Anecdotal Evidence:
In the first 45 levels of playing mercenary, I found 2 meaningful upgrades for my crossbow, and inbetween gambled for 1 (first try, I wouldn't have dared a second).
While every new model felt like a significant upgrade, the hour or so after getting these new crossbows were the only time the game felt right.
Otherwise, it was always a struggle, with a lot of kiting and backpedaling and relying on a few skeletons with 4 second grace period to keep targets busy enough I could cycle through my munitions a second or third time to take them out. Then I reached Napuatzi and I just can't progress. I could spend my remaining currency on 10 crossbows in the hopes one of them is good, but I don't like those odds.

Suggestion:
Honestly, I don't have any, short of giving Crossbows Bolt Quivers (which I doubt will happen). I really like the gameplay of the crossbow, but right now it feels like I'm willingly weakening myself when a bow could get the same powerlevel, more consistently, without jumping through hoops.

Weapon Swapping
I am aware that the idea is to have different skills in the same bar bound to different weapons, and it probably works in melee, but for Crossbows, which switch ammo, it feels odd, because I'm mentally focussed on using those keys to swap, not attack. It would be nice to have the alternative option to switch skill bars when switching to the melee weapon, or at least allow two identical weapon to use the mouse buttons for equivalent attacks (like firing a basic bolt/arrow). It was rather odd that I can have a melee weapon out, then switch bolts, and when trying to fire that bolt the character first has to get the crossbow out (and sometimes reload it). How did I switch ammo with the weapon slung over the character's back?