Desert is currently likely to get cut. It really depends on how difficult I have to make the Final Dungeon and how much content the player has to go through in order to clear it so that he needs enough time that the corruption ending matters and doesn't have to do meaningless actions and waste time.
E.g. the players wants the corruption ending but wants to role-play Aura as she struggles and progresses through the world. It would kind of suck if the player then had to kind of end the day 10 times in the end because the main story needs some more days to play out, but he could easily have cleared the game until then.
Right now however, it looks like the corruption feedback from sufficient progression is good enough that we don't need the Desert Area. Clockwork Forest is schedule. It won't be made by me but by my assistant developer but otherwise it's fully planned.