guitarxe: the game was keeping I think like 5 or more "slots" which were different folders, and would recreate new ones with different name while you played, so I couldn't even easily exempt it from deletion.
Huh. I'm a mod over at the official forums, and this sounds weird to me. It shouldn't be happening. If you try it again and it happens again, pop over
here and let us take a look at what exactly may be happening. Things may be a bit slow over the holidays, but the dev is pretty hands on and fast with technical problems the rest of the time.
As for what has changed, that's a pretty large and extensive list. Even if I shorten it to "What has changed since the summer", we have a bunch of new encounters, the ending of the story, new creatures, new crafting, new items, new mechanics, UI changes, a bajillion of rebalances, etc etc etc.