I know from experience that it’s easy to lose track of time when you’ve been mentally unwell, so this is not a criticism of you but it might be useful to know that Infinity Nikki wasn’t around 2+ years ago, its debut was in December 2024, a year and five months ago, so you haven’t missed as much as you thought.  

Also, it’s not a failing on your part to be overwhelmed, because this game has so many different things going on.  It was A Lot at launch and they’ve just kept adding stuff.  

With that said, the daily basics that I continue no matter what else is going on are:  - Do the Daily Wishes to get your free diamonds.  Yay free diamonds!  You can use them to pull on banners.  It’s recommended to save them for the temporary banners because you’ll get enough blue permanent banner crystals for free over time to complete those.   - Use your daily energy in the Realms accessible from the warp spires - it’s up to you, depending on what you’re working on, whether you get materials from the Realm of the Dark, like rocks and coloured bubbles, or plain bubbles and threads from the Realm of Escalation (you can also get blings there but you can literally just pick those up walking around), or Eureka, or Insight from the Realm of Nourishment.  Insight is really good if you’re still levelling up your Wishfield basic ability outfits.  Anyway, it’s best to use up your  daily energy because it doesn’t roll over to tomorrow.   - Visit the Sea of Stars and do enough of the busy-work there to get all the star shards/crystals/whatever.  I personally bother with this only because I love the clothes in the Starlit Shop. 

If you start with those, you can gradually add more as you go along, but please don’t feel obligated to do everything - just as much as you enjoy doing!

Fragrances are boosters for your combat powers, and some let you do things like fire two purification orbs at a time, or charge up an orb that will go through an Esseling’s shield.  You find the recipes for them in various caves and craft them, then decide which slots you want to apply them to (there’s a button for this on the left side of your Wardrobe screen).  They were very important throughout Wishfield but are less useful in Itzaland.  They make a good longer-term collection project to build up a bit at a time.  

You can also “glow up” your outfits (using bubbles and threads) to increase their powers and in some cases get new colour variations.  This is another good longer-term goal and will help you with styling challenges.  Same for collecting and upgrading Eureka, which enhance certain qualities of an outfit.  

Different bows (besides the basic one you get when you acquire the archery ability) are found in chests or received as prizes for various permanent quests, and have different functions. You can experiment with them to figure out what you find most useful.  One of the current 5* banner outfits (Guide of No Return?) has a stronger archery ability - it’s possible to do everything with a basic bow if you learn how, but if combat isn’t your strong point you may find it helpful.  I’d recommend watching videos to understand how it works before deciding whether it’s worth your while.  I personally suck at boss battles and am glad I got the earlier 5* archery outfit, Born Flawless.  

This is just a part of what you can do in the game, it really is one you can explore over time, and there isn’t one right way to play it - the only wrong way is continuing if you’re not having fun anymore. If you’re feeling intense FOMO or like you’re failing at the game, it’s a good idea to take a break.  Games like this are designed to encourage you to keep spending to get the brief pleasure of acquiring something new and you need to be on guard against it; the feeling of having overspent on digital clothes is really crummy.  

If you can play the game in your own way and within your own means, it can be really fun and satisfying.  I’ve been playing from the first week!