The problem was, you requested it be burned to the ground. Your solution was to recreate it. You technically have two very similar submissions, one of which is invisible to all but you and admins.

The answer to your question is "no, don't recreate, let me un-burn it for you" but eh, you beat me to it. I'll let the other one finish destroying itself in a conflagration of hellfire unless you tell me otherwise. :)

1. Yeah, seems fine. I figured the fancier weapons did fancier damage.
2. ah! Use melee on the dodgy enemies, use ranged on the tough enemies. got it.
3. gotcha. I'm sure in the future you'll have enemies that use some sort of charge-up ability that does extra damage unless you block it. "The demigorgon is preparing it's power attack!"

The liberated pixel cup has a lot of character graphics with various clothes and weapons. I'm sure you could dress one up as a farmer and use the spear stabbing animation with a pitchfork. https://opengameart.org/content/liberated-pixel-cup-0

I don't think your original request was foolish or naive. There was even interest from several people. It took a few months for them to reply, sure, but at the time that was not an unreasonable amount of delay, unfortunately.

There are many, many people who say "we're making a game. It's going to be amazing! Come help us out!" There is nothing wrong with that, but less than 3% of them actually make something playable. Most artists are wary of joining a project when they aren't sure it's got enough momentum. 97% of the time, the artist pours their heart and soul into some work for the project only to have the project organizer say "Eh, I don't have time (no longer want) to do this project anymore. Bye."

To your enormous credit, you are a rare success. Well done! This game looks good and I look forward to trying it out. But the answer to your question "...Where were you 5 years ago?" is, in most cases, "waiting for evidence of project momentum."

Playing the game so far, I am enjoying it. It is well-written enough that my imagination can picture most of the scenes. The ambient music contributes to the mood of the game, as does the interface. Pretty polished. It is intuitive as well. No need for a tutorial on how to navigate the game for the most part. No bugs that I could find yet. The gauntlet mouse cursor seems to have some transparency effect in the dropshadow, but the alpha channel was removed, so the gauntlet's shadow just looks like a whiteish border. I wonder if the cursor graphic would look better with the shadow border removed entirely. Honestly, this cosmetic thing is minor and the only nit-picking I could do. A good experience overall. :)