Thanks so much for the feedback mate, I'm going to do a test run on stream today if you want to pop by. I felt like I was still getting too much food overall outside of the first couple zones. I found a decent hunter was giving 4-6 food, especially if they had some Survival bonus themselves. Not enough to cover a full guild but enough that I wasn't running out if I occasionally hunted some rhoas as a guild. Were you investing in Survival stat or hunting upgrades?
There is a luck element to the early game to be sure, though there are quite a few hardcoded things that happen (secretly shh). Such as a recruit boat every x days, and two missions that happen in early zones for recruits. I agree exalts are a bit tight, though I do quite enjoy the scarcity - I think more early mission opportunity and area options would be the best solution.
Regarding being stuck at Cannibals/Fetid those are the final campaign zones currently - but you should well have met the conditions to unlock maelstrom of chaos if you've done some runs in those zones over a few days. It's possible I tuned the conditions to be a bit too tight.
For morale something I am going to do is put a cap on the morale overleveling to match the current highest level content.
Thanks again for the insightful feedback!