I definitely agree on the current Monolith difficulty system. I even made a post about it if you would like to check it out: Further Improvements To The Corruption System
To summarize I suggest adopting a customizable difficulty system similar to the game Hades’ Pact of Punishment heat system. A system that would be unlocked by killing your first Shade of Orobyss.
Also, I think Blessings should be freely customizable after unlocking. Go for a few runs to unlock them all but allow swapping out once you’ve done so. Right now you have to go through a run just to swap to a different one.