I have a lot of progress on the original release of 0.8.2 and I don't know if there's a way to get that to carry over with updates. It's quite possible I'm blind and there's a thread for this, if so can someone link it here? If not do you know if there's a way?

In the Save/Load screen, there is an option on the bottom to Save as a file.  Then when you run the new version of the game you can Load or Quickload a file (you can work through the directory tree to wherever you saved it.)  As far as I can tell, the save I had from 0.8.2.1 was compatible.  This is also what you need to do at the end of a game session if your browser is set to delete cookies and such.