Hi, thanks for playing and for the feedback.
Regarding the AD/retracing issue, I had a small bug few days ago when I was attempting to fix another fix with it for another case. It should be resolved by now. Do let me know if AD is still not working on your end.
I know some players might not last the initial grind in chapter one to discover the contents in chapter 2, and I feel it might be the same when I release chapter 3 later. Thus, I will be adding achievements feature that will allow faster player progress across all chapters as they play/unlock various milestones in the game.
At the moment, story pop-ups, combat logs, story, dev logs, settings, etc - all pauses the game. The only mechanic that still drains spirit in the background is combat engagement.
There are some efforts by the reddit community to come out with a map of some sort, but at the moment it is still a draft.