Early-game timeline proposal

Rough timeline of early game (order subject to change). This is a general expectation, but of course players could do things out of order through grinding, easy mode, luck, or exploits.

Ingnam (optional?)
	What shops should be available?
	Does it need expansion? More things to do, more explore encounters?
	Should they use the same currency as Mareth? Would you really think to take money with you through the portal?
	What exactly do you bring with you through the portal? The game currently has you bringing a tent, should that remain?

Arrival in Mareth, setting up camp
	Need to create basic necessities, campfire, rain shelter, etc.
	Clearing area of branches and rocks and such gives materials to create fire pit. Maybe find a sturdy branch to use as a club, until it breaks.
	Set up simple traps and defences. Ditches, pits, spikes, snares, tripwires, spear traps, piles of dry twigs and leaves that are noisy when stepped on.

Start exploring
	Only forest and lake available, farm and beautiful sword not encounterable yet.
	Lots of new encounters, one-off events, and poor-quality equipment.
	Can meet Amily, Callu, Tamani, Gargoyle. Also Shouldra, but she's way too strong for you to do anything besides lose.
	You can find travelling merchants and traders with random wares, but they're rare.
	Maybe start basic cooking, fishing, and crafting? See crafting notes at bottom.
	Goal is to acquaint yourself with the world and become prepared for long-term survival.
	Might need to get a decent camp set up (something more than a fire and bedroll) before any followers can join you.
	Most importantly, the exploration system itself could use some changes. I don't have a specific plan in mind, this needs lots of discussion and ideas.

Your quest begins
	Meet Marae, learn the backstory, get your first real direction.
	Instead of sending you straight to the factory, Marae should give some smaller and more immediate tasks first. Baby steps.
	Marae can teach you some basic magic to help you out, so you don't have to wait forever to find spells.
	You can find the beautiful sword, but it's not yet beautiful and doesn't appear to be special in any way.
	After a number of generic demon kills the sword can level up and show a hint of its might.
	This is where you should start encountering Jojo, Whitney, Marble, Rathazul, Izma, Telly.
	Travelling merchants become more common, but not extremely common.
	Random mini-dungeons would fit well here.
	Camp defences and follower guards start to become important, the occasional imp, goblin, or starving animal might wander into your camp.
	Camp attacks don't have to be a straight fight, there could be tricks and traps and choices involved that could resolve things without combat.
	Probably discover deep woods here, but it's very dangerous right now. Submitting to Akbal could give a valuable power boost, your first serious temptation towards corruption?
	You might discover the desert and/or mountain around this time, but no Tel'Adre, sand witch dungeon, ants, Salon, or Ceraph.

The factory
	After doing 2-3 little quests/tasks for Marae and gaining some strength and maybe allies, you're ready for your first real dungeon.
	Start properly exploring desert and mountain, but still no Tel'Adre or desert cave. Might also be too early for Ceraph or ants.
	Probably strong enough to venture into the deep woods now, but too weak to fight the Dullahan, probably no Aiko yet.
	I think it should be unrealistic to clear the factory in one go, the expectation should be multiple trips.
	Clearing the factory is the first major turning point of the game, the end of one arc and the beginning of the next.
	Marae is either corrupted or strengthened, which has some noticeable effects on the world.
	Currently, Marae just sort of drops out of the story here, which is dumb. What role(s) should she play at this point?
	You've made yourself known to the demons, you're now a threat and have a target on your back.
	You'll start to encounter more and stronger demons while exploring, random camp attacks get tougher. Camp attacks remain uncommon, so they're not annoying.
	Camp attacks that result in bad ends if you lose would have checks so they only occur when you're healthy and able to at least stand a chance.

After the factory
	With Marae potentially corrupted, there may be a need for a new source of guidance here. How do you discover what to do next?
	Start exploring plains, swamp, high mountain.
	My timeline gets more vague here, and the game opens up a lot more. Most things are technically available, it's just a matter of difficulty.
	No Tel'Adre or bazaar just yet. Maybe find the sand witches now.
	Not sure what your goal should be at this point, maybe just explore and get stronger for a while?
	Maybe you're attacked by a demon assassin, and that somehow leads you to the next stage of your quest?
	Find leads on weaker-but-still-important demon generals to take out, or have them come to you?
	Maybe pure Marae has some task for you, or corrupted Marae needs to be prevented from doing something?
	Lure Maraefag back to finish his pure Marae route?
	???

???
	???
	Zetaz?
	Set up any necessary characters or plotlines for later (outside the scope of this timeline) portions of the expanded main quest.

The lost city of the furries
	Tel'Adre and the bazaar are finally open to you. This marks the end of the early game, to me. You have a variety of shops, services, NPCs, virtually unlimited choices to choose from. The game is a proper sandbox at this point, with the main quest being one of many paths you can follow.
	I'd say this should be around the halfway point of the main quest, with maybe 2-3 more dungeons to go.

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Other thoughts
	Limit how many stat points you can gain from repeatable sources (like vitality tonics or explore encounters) aside from levels. A soft cap on each source, so the effect is tiny (but not zero) after a certain number of points. Additionally, diminishing returns on each source if it's repeated in a short period of time. The goal is for the majority of your stats to come from levels, but grinding stats is still possible if you really want to.
	Giacomo and other merchants will only occasionally have tonics and teas for sale, and only in limited quantities, so they're harder to come by.
	To help ease the lack of shops without Tel'Adre, add some randomised items to Giacomo's inventory, maybe with an option (after encountering him a few times and becoming a regular customer) to request specific things for your next encounter. Add some random unnamed traders/wanderers who are looking for specific things (sometimes general categories like food or weapons, sometimes specific things like succubus milk or crafting materials) and will offer items in trade, or sometimes just gems.

Crafting ideas (very rough draft, might not use any of this)
	In the beginning you can make basic things like a fire pit and simple traps for camp.
	You can find some basic tools early on, like a carving knife, axe, cooking pot. This would let you get started on proper crafting.
	Equipment crafting starts with making minor modifications/upgrades (applying poisons, sharpening, attaching barbed wire, improving the balance/weight of makeshift weapons) to existing weapons and making crude weapons like clubs and spears. You can find some basic tools and supplies in the town ruins or random encounters, better stuff can be purchased in Tel'Adre or the bazaar.
	To start smithing proper metal weapons from scratch you need to have sufficient skill and also a place to work, either built into your cabin or borrowing the smithy in Tel'Adre or the bazaar (maybe a barely-usable smithy can be found in some ruins or a mini-dungeon?).
	Cooking and alchemy would begin with just cooking things over the campfire, which greatly diminishes (but doesn't remove entirely) most transformative effects. You would later learn which parts of plants are the most potent, so you can use/remove those parts and create fully non-transformative foods and stronger or more focussed transformatives. Cooking and alchemy would branch out to different things from there. Actual alchemy and potion brewing could be taught by Rathazul, but you'd need your own tools to do much of anything.
	An old carpentry manual can be found, maybe in some ruins, an old sawmill, an incubus lumberjack's shed, whatever. This would probably happen around the 2-week mark or after meeting Marae, maybe one of Marae's tasks leads you to it. This would allow simple construction like a cabin, fence, and water barrel.
	After reaching Tel'Adre and getting access to the carpenter and good tools, you can start making furniture, upgrading your fence to a wall, and other nice things for your camp.
	Unsure of how materials and ingredients should be acquired.
	Unsure how recipes should work or be acquired, if they're a thing at all.