Okay, I've spent more than 20 hours pre 2.0 and beat Uber Endof Contentus multiple times. 

I've spent about 5 hours on 2.0, and probably won't play much more.

1. My primary save is stuck at Cannibals/Fetid pools, and nothing I do progresses it past that. 
2. I have 3 other games that have stopped due to either loosing morale to overleveling, and not being able to play mission enough to get food enough to the guild, so I have to decide between either loosing exiles to low moral or starvation. 
3. Hunting does not seem to actually earn enough food to be worth it, in 1.5 it was relatively easy to get enough food to be able to rest multiple days to regain morale, I have not been able to do that at all in 2.0 keeping me eternally at either low morale, or with someone starving, even when I am beating all available missions on nightmare 5-9 without problems. 
4. In the early game, you are so reliant on luck to be able to either get enough exiles, or enough drops/exalts to be able to progress, that the best way to play the game is to play 2 days, and then re-roll if you don't have a guild that can progress.  

I really enjoy the game, but right now, the balance between getting power, and managing downsides just is not fun. It is literally impossible for me to keep morale up, because I have to do multiple missions in a day to maintain the game, and there is no way for me to regain morale at the same tempo. 

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!

Most of the time I had survival at 30%.
Okay, I couldn't keep myself away. So I've spent another couple of hours.
After another 4 runs getting to Fetid/Cannibals, I finally unlocked Maelstrom of Chaos. Currently at proving V.
And I've also had at least to early failed runs because I did not have drops that could give me the damage to manage the first recruiting missions. 

If the early game becomes slightly less punishing, I think you are in a really really good spot. 

I have 2 things right now. 
1. there are a massive difference in boss difficulty, rolling a proving with 2 pyro 3 necro is pretty much impossible, while getting one with 5 slow melee bosses is a cakewalk.
2. I had a character die to Proving IV, that happens, a bit annoying because I had taken no damage on the 4 first steps, and then rolled 4 necromancers on step 5 =P, but at the very least, could you prioritise that we get our gear back in the loot pool when a character dies, because it was my best geared character that died, and all their gear is just gone now, because the loot window was full.