That's looking better so far. You see, if you whine loud enough and long enough you'll eventually get what you want! (or get punched in the nose) 
The finished version (for next version, anyhow) is now on the release notes.
A couple of questions. Did the amount of enemies spawned in a given area go up this patch? I've noticed rooms with 4 or 5 espers in them that used to contain just one or two. I may be noticing it more now since I'm less likely to take the time to kill them while raiding stash rooms, but it sure seems like there's a lot of them about.
Not to my knowledge, no. I wouldn't swear that something unintended didn't happen, but I certainly haven't set out to change that and I can't think of anything I did that would have.
And second, the guaranteed settlement lumbermancer, was that specifically for the first continent only? I've finally made it to my second continent and my settlement was not graced with one. And as a follow up to that, have rescue NPC missions somehow gotten harder to find? After hours of searching abandoned town regions, I have found several stealth assassination missions, which I have done, and a ton of lava escapes, which I have skipped, but zero NPC rescues. So I can't get a lumbermancer, so I can't improve my settlement, so my progress is sort of stagnating.
Yes, first continent only. In terms of NPC missions becoming more rare as secret missions, that was not our intent. However, secret missions in general are more rare, so the effect is kind of the same given that NPC missions show up with random frequency in the first place.
Some more thought will need to be given to the issue of the early NPC build-up phase on later continents beyond the first, honestly. Making it too easy makes it pointless busywork. But making it get increasingly obscure as more mission types are added is also not helpful. Actually, that's what happened: we did reduce the frequency of NPC missions at the same time we added some of the other mission types. Every mission type added dilutes all the others, you see. Which is a problem for the NPC ones in particular.
Will think on this, but I think something like the neutral Ilari cavern idea might not be a bad idea again (but this time with a mission that, if you fail it once, is gone forever). That way there's a guaranteed source of NPCs in your world, but you still can't just farm them.
