Thanks so much for typing this all out amigo. I'll check out the bugs you mentioned.
The auto-save I deliberately made it work the way it did because it made sense to me then but I can see that it is a little repetitive. The stuff with items definitely need to be fixed though.
Regarding difficulty, I wanted it to be brutal but I've been hearing from other people that it's a little too much. I'll tone it down.
You're 100% with your observation on the cherry/pimp AI, I copy pasted 80% of the code :^)
Thanks again friend!