>Maybe
>it's the long-term veteran kicking in but I don't remember
>people spamming skills and having such huge prep bags "back in
>the day".

People (at least, the players who were winning) spamming some skills predates me playing CF, so I think it's safe to say it goes back to the very beginning of the game. The people who got me started used to talk about it before I started playing, and some of them go back to the first month of the game.

Prep bags, sure -- sixteen years ago, sanctuary and protection from evil were literally the only two ways in the game to reduce damage. (This is also why the game was rife with evil-acting neutral characters at the time.) It's a little more complicated now. The genie only goes back in the bottle on that issue so much.

I don't think a lot, if any, trivial-to-get-at-36 barriers are left. Haste pills and potions are pretty much out of the game. Chowing down a sack full of healing pills is less trivial than it used to be. Selectively we roll back the prepfulness of the game as it seems to make sense of the time, something that almost always draws more complaints than praise.