So, early access to stores is back, but since the player now starts with no gold, Yeek characters still wouldn't be able to buy the Heart of Rel from the gem store dude. Fortunately, the workaround I came up with back when stores were locked before level 10 is probably better than buying something anyway.

Specifically, v3b adds an NPC to give you the Heart (and for you to return it to, which seems thematically more fitting than just having it taken from you as you leave the island).
Also, similar to the problems we had with
1.4.0's store changes, the newly nerfed stores in 1.6.0 apparently won't stock tier-3 gear when you first get to them, which screws up the installation of T3 water-breathing sources. What I'm trying this time out is to widen our parameters slightly: instead of specifically telling the store to stock "hardened leather armor", we tell it to stock something of type armor/light (i.e. leather armor), so the store stocking code should automatically pick the right material level for whatever the store thinks it's allowed to stock. Tests so far aren't perfect (getting duplicates, but so far getting everything), but it should be good enough for now, and ideally will be future-proofed against future store shenanigans.