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This is outstanding! The ogre, owl bear, and kobold illustrations are immediate all time favourites for me. And the invisible stalker is masterfully executed. 

I have one suggestion for the next iteration: re-order a few of the monsters that are burdened with leading adjectives so they are grouped together rather than scattered throughout the collection. ie "dragon, black", immediately followed by "dragon, blue", "dragon, green", "dragon, red", and "dragon, white", all under "D" rather than having "black dragon" on pg. 12 and then "white dragon" on pg. 142.  The references should be under "dragon" rather than under each colour. (Same goes for the various bears, giants, etc etc).

Hex exit:  It's mostly just to mimic how Dark Fort restricted movement with finite and specific door placements. In terms of narrative flavour, in keeping with the general Dark Fort/Mörk Borg vibe of impending and inexorable doom, it imposes the feeling of being lost in the woods (especially a malevolent and magical forest)--thinking that you're making progress and then stumbling across your own tracks from the day before.  Definitely ignore that mechanic and explore in your desired direction(s) if that suits you better; since there's no destination there's no mechanical effect to moving in any direction.

Terrain types: totally just for flavour (aside from the keep/barrow).  Would be cool to have it affect the monster abilities (i.e. bandits are stronger in the woods; wildmen are stronger in the swamp), but I'm not sure how to include that given the space constraints of the one-sheet rules format.  I'm already bumping up against the edges just by using a D6 rather than D4 for encounters! I guess I could add the ballpoint-pen margin notes like in Dark Fort.

Wow!  Thanks for the great YouTube playthrough and review!  Your questions and suggestions are super-helpful for v0.06 (I'll probably upload it in the next few days).  Your observation about the +1 attack level-up and the longsword +1 attack stacking to auto-hit 3-point monsters really caught my attention- I totally missed that.

Amusingly, in my own playtests I have literally never had a character survive long enough to return to the forest from the barrow/keep Dark Fort detours, so the question of how to deal with the level points never came up.

Hi-  thanks for the questions.

Starting location:  start in any hex. I usually toss a die onto the map and start where it lands.  Narratively, in keeping with the general theme of powerlessness in a malevolent world that was set out in Dark Fort, I figure the deep woods rambler is dropped into the remote wilderness by a trickster being, rather than entering from a border with "civilization".  But if you want to start at the edge, go for it!

Barrows/keeps:  if you land on one of those, switch games from Dark Forest to Dark Fort (the original that inspired me to make Dark Forest).  It's a fun solo micro-RPG dungeon diver.  https://morkborg.exlibrisrpg.com/entries/dark-fort   It's part of the Mörk Borg Feretory zine: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/328612/moerk-borg-cult-feretory  (or probably elsewhere online.)

 Alternative free dungeon divers along the same theme as Dark Fort, which would make a great tool for the barrows and keeps:

Basilisk!: https://1d105.itch.io/basilisk

D66ngeon: https://visc.itch.io/d66ngeon