Played some further, still haven't went after the second boss, mostly because I'm trying to build up some gear but the bronze is somewhat tedious to get at times, especially when you get ganked by trolls while mining.
After some more playing around with the combat I'm increasingly disliking some of the looseness and jank, it works most of the time but in certain situations you die stupidly trough no fault of your own. Most common causes are getting hit by a troll while trying to dodge roll around it and getting gangbanged by skeletons in a dungeon. The bastards tend to pile up and you can't really burst or block trough three successive hits (more if there's archers), especially if you're still on flint gear. I get that it's supposed to be challenging to get your first cores but it kinda feels like the challenge is due to shoddy systems and not the actual difficulty of the encounters.
Also as much as I love the way you unlock stuff, I really wish there was some sort of compendium or something that tracks stuff you've encountered or are perhaps still missing in some way. Because it took me a while to figure out what I needed to start farming and even then it was completely accidental as I stumbled upon the thing I needed while trying to survive a troll gank.
Still, despite the annoying things, the overall thing has been rather enjoyable, my little fort is growing nicely and I'm close to finishing the palisade and moat around it. It's kinda funny actually, I tend to work on it every several ingame days as I tend to switch between exploring, grinding resources and building up the base, and so far 2 out 3 times I've spent most of the day building and exhausting myself there was a raid as night fell and I had to scramble around and kite a bunch of grey bastards, picking them off one by one, only to get killed by the last remaining one :V