We finished quite late so the opportunity for feedback was a little diminished which makes this helpful!
The idea of making the lottery a part of the motivations table is really clever thinking and I'll have to consider that for a release. It might be superfluous but the narrative positioning there was just one more opportunity to stratify the results players might end up with. There's a possibility of being a party of "Volunteers" with no Chosen, and (recognizing that these things are vague) other combinations of complicated feelings on growing up in the shadow of a cult.
If anything the weak spot might be there in general. It bears consideration!
Act 2 is intended to be a choice for players on a gentler, safer, slower climb to the right (however true that ends up being in practice) and a tougher one to the left. My hope was that this would be intuitive as the left path requires an explicit bit of rock climbing. The rest would rely on the Guide.
You're not wrong on the perceived weak spots as these are ones I want to revisit before the 1.0 as well.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback!