So just a list of NPCs so far:
Guide
Merchant
Demolitions Guy
Ammo Guy
Nurse
Dryad
That's a bare minimum of 6 enclosed rooms. And you know there's more NPCs than that. Add in store rooms for the epic #'s of chests you're going to need for all the materials to supply a 4+ person game....you're going to need a _big_ city to enclose all that. By the time you're done it will be like Castlevania 2 in the town at night, zombies running everywhere.
Pbat still doesn't get the usefulness of wooden platforms. A solid surface you can jump through is, on average, easier to use than a grappling hook. Enemies can use it too, but it means you can leave quickly and get back to the surface....which seems to be a BIG issue because the caves in a large world are absurdly fucking deep. Since death penalty is going to be optional, I guess it doesn't really matter. I hope they still develop the game mostly for a death penalty though, it makes other ideas have a point, like teleport pads or something.
The order for ore usage seems to go like this:
Tools (Best Ore)
Weapons
Armor (Worst Ore)
Tools seem to be cheaper than weapons, and armor seems to be more expensive than anything. Faster resource collection = more ore in shorter time....so you end up getting everything faster.
Going deep yields lots of ore, but you get bogged down and killed quickly because of the lack of tools, HP, and your weak weapons. So I think the way to go is to stay on the surface exclusively until you can make an iron pick axe at least, probably an iron sword, or silver if you've found it, and then go into the caves to get the loads of copper and iron you're going to need for armor and decent tools and weapons to carry you into the next part of the game. After killing slimes for a good day or two, you'll have enough goo to make a bazillion torches, mushrooms to make regular health potions and enough wood to build 3 or 4 quick structures.
So, the caves are really tempting to explore soon because they seem like easy pickings compared to the surface...but you get sucked in looking for stuff and end up dying, and it takes twice as long to do anything because of the darkness and verticle drops and pools. It took Pbat like 5 freaking hours before he finally had enough stuff and enough wisdom to explore a cave and walk out with 70 bars worth of ore. I think if he had stayed on the surface longer he wouldn't have wasted so much time.