I've managed to get a character going long-term with a few workarounds to handle the risk of save/load bugs. First, I try to make a save each time my character levels up and make a backup copy of that save (from %AppData%\LocalLow\Ravensong Games\Axu\Save). That way if there's a bug, I only lose a little progress instead of the entire character. But before I save, I also go wander around an empty spot in the wilderness for a while so the save file doesn't get bloated to a huge size with all sorts of unimportant assets. I once had a save file that somehow ended up being 1.7GB when I saved at the Ensis base, too big for the game to even load again. But when I instead wander around the wilderness before saving it usually ends up somewhere in the range of 500KB-10MB, and the smaller files seem to be much less likely to end up bugged.