Thank you so much!! Really sorry to hear the wood carving wasn't working - did you by chance get any popup messages to copy stencils from the rune journal? We'll look into easing the grading curve, adding better signposting that copying the stencil is needed for grading, and/or changing the grading scheme so that stencils aren't needed.
Ooh, thank you also for the practice round suggestion - adding that to our feature request list! We'll look into the possible bug you reported as well.
Apologies the wood carving mechanic was causing you trouble D: Thank you very much for trying out our game regardless and your very kind words!!
(Sorry, I had a couple of screencaps attached but Itch didn't like em. Should have saved em, that's on me.) Yep, I clicked on the runes in the book to place the stencils on the wood, and then I carved over them with the gouge using my tablet, and I thought I did a very careful job. But it's super high praise that I gave it so many tries--I very, very much would not have tried a mechanic 5 times in a row if I didn't think the game was very good overall.
(Out of curiosity, is the answer Locate + Fish or Locate + Fish + Love? And do they need to be that order on the board?)
Tried it with just the Fish rune and it went perfect! Once I knew that a lot of the answers were just going to be single runes I was able to figure them all out, and I didn't have any trouble with the carving.
I'm really liking where this is headed--I like the characters a lot (the character art is so good). I'll be excited to see the whole thing!