Hello Future Grove Keepers!
In Beyond the Grove, every time you venture out of your grove, you have the opportunity to earn experience that carries over from run to run. For every level up, you will get a skill point and possibly an unlock. You can allocate skill points to fuel various upgrades.
After a defeat or victory, your Grove Keeper gains experience based on various factors: how much essence you earned, how many golems you killed, etc. With that experience, you level up. To start with, leveling up allows you to pick certain elements to start your run with - eventually, there will be more unlocks on the leveling path.
When you level up, you also get a skill point, which can be spent on abilities that power you up so that you can be stronger on your run. Skills vary in cost, and their effects can be upgraded once or an unlimited amount of times. NOTE: The screenshot below doesn't have all of the unlocks!
Your Grove Keeper, although strong, is limited in their ability. However, it does seem possible that if a particular challenge is too hard, another Grove Keeper with different abilities could do better… Until next time!