Is Bosk an especially hard start?

Out of curiosity, is the starting Soul Elements that lead to placing cards in Bosk particularly difficult?

I ask because that's where I am at currently. I've tried to keep wiki checking to an absolute minimum. I have a ~1000 line text file with all the things I've figured out and discovered. However I have become increasingly frustrated with opening up rooms. It seems as if room opening is gated by being able to evolve soul cards because you can rarely get more than about 2 principles from memories (I have a table of all the memories I've discovered, their principles, and a book table that annotated what memory is gained so if I know what I'm going for, I can generate a memory with relative ease, especially if I start right at daybreak).

Anyway, I've gotten things open a little ways down the well and horizontally over to the start of the Gullscry tower. I don't have any idea where this puts me in the game progression, though if I had to guess, early middle game? However I have about 6 Ereb cards and most of these ended up generated from Bosk. I did finally give up and consulted the wiki about Bosk crafting tables and as far as I can tell they're REALLY DEEP. Many of the other soul cards I've managed to upgrade because they were associated with early crafting stations (Holomachistry, a few Birdsong, a few Ithastry...) The Bosk ones however are taking forever to get to.

So... did I just happen to get a hard start? This is the furthest I've ever gotten. I had a few earlier games but I kept forgetting things and thus started the notes file (lifesaver that) so this is the deepest I've ever gotten.

Oh, another random question that is driving me crazy. It's a sound effect. Sometime in the afternoon, sometimes before the 3rd little cloud, sometimes after, never after the 4th cloud (sunset?) there's a sound that I've come to associate with loss -- something negative happened. But there's nothing visibly going on! No book sale, no conversation, no consideration, no room, no weather event (that I can see). Just the 'loss' sound. I don't have to know the answer, but is this significant at ALL? It could just be ambiance but it's deeply irritating that there's not a transcript that keeps track of events that happen with a timestamp or something like that.

Overall though, it's been an interesting adventure game. Way more accessible than Cultist Simulator (I never did figure that one out. My son helped me with one particular 'keeping yourself alive loop' with art, but never went any further than that.) The crafting stations are probably the least straightforward thing because they're multipurpose and I frequently don't get what I thought I was going to get though I can trace it back to some error (tried to evolve soul cards at one point, and a skill and two cards fit in the slots, but it was the wrong Wisdom so it just crafted something instead).

If anyone is curious as to my notes, they're here: https://drive.proton.me/urls/N76F6ZHEZ8#S5j6QMxfLMo8. Not as extensive as the wiki I'm sure, but if concerned about spoilers, one probably shouldn't read this. It's in org-mode format in Emacs because making the text tables is a matter of a couple keystrokes (way faster than Word or anything like that.) Absolute godsend that I discovered that clicking on the text box automatically copies it to the clipboard so that makes some of the quoted text easier to preserve.

Also, went to /r/bookofhours but that seems shut down. No idea what's going on there, but it was irritating.