Played the new version for a bit yesterday and overall I do like a lot of the new features, but I did see a few issues with it as well.
1. The slave market as well as the option to hire slaves from the guilds seems like it's fairly irrelevant with how many slaves are available for free by just clearing out the bandit fort. In my game I was easily able to convince 15 slaves to join me within the first few weeks for free from the bandit fort.
2. The new mechanic for upgrading both the main character and the slaves makes the process trivially easy. The old method required a bunch of resources as well as money. The new method only requires money and a throwaway slave with 1 high stat. So again, grab a slave from the bandit fort with excellent in something, immediately sacrifice her at the slave market to upgrade someone to excellent in that stat. So I was easily able to upgrade all of my people to excellent in everything except growth. For growth I didn't see a way to go higher than great.
3. Minor issue with the Centipeded seeming unreasonably strong for the area it's in. It's usually in the back row, there are frequently 2 of them, the other stuff they spawn with are relatively tough, and it can 1 shot most people. I didn't find any notable weakness for it either unlike most other units. Most units have at least 1 damage type that deals massive damage to it. Maybe I missed one but physical, earth, wind, fire, mind all did little to no damage to it. By contrast I was able to 1 shot the ogres at the end with mind attacks. I don't have anyone that does water/ice damage yet.
The strategy that seemed to work the best for me was to pick a main character and a first slave of a race that can get overgrowth (like fairy or elf). Start off clearing the goblin cave a few times to level up a bit, then switch to the bandit cave to level up a bit more and start getting some free slaves and slave upgrades, then when you get overgrowth start clearing the bandit fort to get rich. Overgrowth will 1 shot anything in the bandit fort except the boss, the golem, and the ballistas. Mind attack will 1 shot the golem. Fire attacks 1 shot the ballistas, and the boss doesn't do enough damage for it to matter if it takes a few rounds to kill him.
The dungeon that has the centipede didn't seem worth it to me since you can get most of the same resources from the grove without the hassle of the centipede, even though it does mean a lot of wasted trips where it has meat instead of something useful.