As a preface, I'm viewing this mostly though the lens of a Zelda 1-like. ZC can make pretty much anything, but much of the design we use is inherited from that.
So here's something I think about sometimes. I really like Level 1. I've made a whole lot of them over the years, though few ever got a sequel, or a threequel, or a fourquel. Level 1 is where it's at. And there's a lot of reasons for this, but the one I want to talk about today is the simplicity. Early on in a quest there's few items and many possibilities. This presents many opportunities to create difficulty, which happens to be another thing I'm fond of.
Something I've realized over time is that creating a difficulty curve around a player character who's constantly picking up new items, it's kinda hard. Quite a few quests, my own included, have a tendency towards being harder at the start than at the end. Link's arsenal rapidly outgrows what the game can throw at him. The obvious suspects are the swords and tunics. Exponential gains are utterly cracked and most of us at this point have at least realized that the 1/8th damage divisor on the gold ring is unreasonable, but even the blue ring is a crazy powerup compared to some games. Paired with additional hearts and potions, the gap in survivability between early and late game is pretty massive. Then there's items like the shields that serve to invalidate certain obstacles. Instantly fireball shooters rendered a near nonissue in isolation. The boots negate floor damage. The arrows/wand take the edge off combat by providing a ranged option. The hammer counters shielded enemies.
The boomerang and hookshot invalidate half of the enemies in the game.
Okay, so the video game is a video game and powerful stuff is powerful. The player can increase their survivability over the course of the game by like 40-100 times over. How does one deal with that within the framework ZC provides? The most common thing I see is to pump up the numbers. Make new variants of enemies to offset the values. I'm not personally a fan of this. It works, but it feels like it's invalidating the player's gains artificially to level the playing field. Getting stronger is a natural part of the game so upgrades shouldn't feel like they're just a means of keeping pace. At the least there should be an ebb and flow of increasing values, but generally I think the game feels healthiest when the range in enemy strength between early game and endgame is kept at around the vanilla level. This is why I don't often use the enemy editor to add new enemy levels, preferring to introduce new enemy types instead.
Another solution I see is to build in counters. This enemy type is strong against this item, but weak to this other one. Half of the half of the enemies will just no-sell the boomerang because it's just too powerful. This one fireball? It doesn't care if you have a shield. These spikes are flashing so your boots don't work on them. This also works, but can feel a bit arbitrary. Enemy balance should fit into the logic of the game's setting rather than be governed by the whims of 10 multicolored types of rabbit that are each dealt with with a specific tool. That takes extra effort. It can also be exhausting at times to be constantly expected to use the entire arsenal, though four item buttons eases up on that some.
The third solution that comes to mind is targeting and removing the most egregious elements that contribute to the power creep. So no rings, no potions, no boomerang. This might be the one I align with the most mentally, though I haven't really put it into practice because I'm a horrible creature of habit. It also doesn't really solve the underlying problem I think, just closes the power gap enough that the same old design can become interesting again.
The fourth solution is to become a rich master and pay somebody else to make the quest for you.
Did I have a point with this topic? Heck if I know. I like designing level 1's too much because the stakes and potential are high while the elements to account for are few. I'm not getting anything done. Somebody please solve this cursed problem for me!