Honestly, I should have made keywords noticeable instead of relying on the player to figure it out. I definitely didn't expect people to ignore the tutorials. I should also have slowed down the pacing of the game a lot (though it couldn't really be helped with the weird limitations of the jam and how my game worked).
Definitely wish I had started earlier instead of basically halfway into the jam. Jam happened at a really bad time since there was another contest I joined at the same time and some IRL stuff delayed me by a week. My artist wasn't available for the last bit of the jam, so there was some stuff that I had to drop that would have made certain things more obvious.
I do wish I had implemented the alternative way of doing crafting that I was considering and figured out a way to deal with the issues resulting from not using plugins (ie, skill/item screen returns to field after every item use. Couldn't figure out a way to get around that without using a plugin.) Also wish I had just given up on changing the battleback when I knew that it was absurdly difficult without plugins even in previous versions of the engine.
I definitely put a bit too much focus on the secret elements of the game that most people didn't encounter because they skipped those elements instead of venturing out and trying things.