I might be in the minority here, but i actually liked the way how there was an actual sense of progression at the start of the world that was tied to the mine level (probably not so much for people who get their pyres whooped or didn't build them in the first place).
So like level 1 you only get lead and tin, which means no hard metal and basically the best weapon is a tinker's axe, a pretty solid upgrade from a knife which mean you can fight like people and not like the brits.
On level 2 you get copper, which allows you to get bronze, thus bronze swords, plates, ore smelters and so on. Again a very noticeable upgrade.
Then on level 3 you get iron, silver and quicksilver. Which allows for a lot of new things to be made. You can basically progress all the way to steel and get the endgame gear right there, the only issue is that ores you find there sucks ass, so you either mine all day hoping to get enough to actually equip your village with it (hopefully decent ql otherwise you can just keep on using bronze), or you wait for the deeper levels to get some black ore or bloodstone. Silver allows for some basic jewelery (forges, thimbles, etc.), and quicksilver is basically needed since the devs made glass a piece of shit to make, not to mention all the curio you can make from it.
After that i think it's on -4 or -5 (can't remember) that you find your first gold. Basically a great upgrade overall, new symbel, jewelery, helmets and finally a decent belt.
And that's basically all the progression you are getting, what's deeper you might ask? New ores with same metals but better rates and quality (sometimes, not always, it can still be trash ql and you'll keep on using the ore you found two levels ago), some new stones, and i think those mushroom trees (?).
I honestly liked how combat changed during the first 3 levels but that lasts for literally 4-5 weeks, and that's only due to not every village being autistic enough to grind steel to get everyone a b12 ASAP (which is fine, but once everyone gets there that's the meta for the rest of the world, and the biggest upgrade you'll get is a troll belt).
Therefore i propose to extend that progression, for example:
How about the first two levels of the mine staying the same (So you still get hard metal at -2), but iron would only start appearing at -4. But, to postpone the steel, make steel crucibles need some stone or something from like -5 or even -6 or -7. That would mean you would be getting wrought at -4 which brings quite a bit of upgrades (winged helmets, butcher's cleaver, maybe some other stuff if they actually make them not trash compared to bronze counterparts) but you wouldn't be able to directly rush to b12s and steel plates. This is just an example, when those things become available could be adjusted to be faster (or slower) and I'm open to discussing it. This way combat wouldn't achieve it's endgame meta in a month, and the sense of progression would linger just a bit longer, because honestly once i got my steel gear i didn't notice futher upgrades, i sometimes got items with bigger numbers but so did every other village, so it stayed basically the same. Another thing that could help alleviate that is adding more stuff to later mine levels (new metals, new dungeons, maybe new kind of gems that only appear deep in the mines, etc.), but that's a lot more work than just changing steel crucible recipes and ore spawn levels.
TL:DR Early game lead and bronze stages are fun (i like spears) but they last a week, steel is too soon, make it available deeper, buff wrought iron gear to not be garbage, maybe add new stuff to later levels?