About 20% of Steam players have already beaten the game, which is wild considering how huge it is. Previous From games have had shockingly high completion rates and I imagine this is gonna be similar.
The key inventory items between the pots and recipes pretty much function as a quest log. Pretty sure the item description for every key tells you where you can use it. If you find half of a tablet or whatever the item description tells you where the other half is.
No, there’s no quest log that tells you where to find the wandering monk, but there is lots of info that will remind you where you should go/what you should do when it comes to many of the key events in the game. NPCs even mark your map sometimes, or stick an extra one in the last tab of your inventory. Shit, the actual map is incredibly readable; after a point you should be able to tell exactly where you should be heading when you enter a new area. “That red spot’s a mine*, that’s probably the fort with the other half of the tablet, looks like that’s another great rune tower, etc.”
Like…there’s way more guidance in this game than previous From titles. Taking notes is still a good idea and getting a happy end with any of the NPCs is highly unlikely but I really think they did a better job of telling me what the heck I should be doing than any game since Demon’s Souls.
*I don’t think the first mine is marked on the map, which is a big fuckin issue, but maybe all the others are? Leaving it unmarked is an even bigger issue cuz most players would probably access it from the swamp to the south and if you go in there…shit gets wild.