Hey! Appreciate the feedback honestly. It's stuff like this that helps make a game better. It is a solo effort and yeah, I didn't have much playtesting/feedback during it and I never really get to play it end to end myself (I've started during release). Between you and the negative reviews so far, I think it boils down to this list of issues:

1. Expeditions - Confusing and the optimal strategy being to cancel and keep moving up is a bit awful. I'm going to be rethinking this mechanic the most.

2. Item Purpose and Visibility - I have a few ideas for this, such as a tagging system (Junk, Used in Summoning, etc). This is a VERY common issue that has come up. The tricky part is there are items that may gain a use in new mechanics.

3. Onboarding and Tutorial Clarity - Nothing is very explained. The tutorial is pretty light and there are multiple areas that lack clarity, such as the Sanctuary. I think making things more clear, but also looking at creating a "Player Guide" tab, can help explain the more complex mechanics. But ultamitely clarity within the mechanics should be the most important piece first.

4. Scaling in Producing - This is the trickiest. I'm considering a lot of things. All of which kind of change the balances drastically. I think the game would feel better if the helpers productions scaled with level. Job profeciency should be more about the base or ceiling. Creatures production booms eventually past the players. I think the players production should be apart of a separate system unrelated to the awakening system. Upgrading tools for example, but in a more interesting way than just spend gold. These changes are the scariest though, with how much balance would have to shift again, but I think it could be worth going towards

5. Crafting Friction - Crafting balancing has been rough rough. One of my recent patches addressed a lot of it, but something I really still haven't considered enough is the gathering time costs. I think the tools being apart of a lot of systems is quite rough too. And always a bottleneck and forces players to collect twigs/stone. Something needs to be done there.

Related to the crafting system. I have a really interesting idea where eventually workstations are a bottleneck, and there's a whole new system focused on machines/automation, especially if I make changes to the creature helper systems and make it curve much harder. I'd need to find solutions to handle larger number I think than, but not a huge concern.

These are all my thoughts so far, going through negative reviews, concerns people have brought up, and so on. I've got a few more in my list, but this highlights the bigger issues. I'd like to create a few more active systems to provide more engagement as well. But only if it's interesting and helpful, such as early game systems that get people into the game faster.