I remember back before patch 4 (where they introduced the druids) someone from Larian said that update would be the last one where our old saved games wouldn't be playable after the patch. (Unless you kept the old version of the game.) They were doing that up until that patch because so many things were changing in the game, it would have taken too much work to convert the save files to be usable in the new game. But after that patch it should be stable enough to be able to keep save games after patches. Apparently there must have been enough changes in patch 5 that they couldn't keep to that.
I'm okay with this because it is early access, and I'd rather they focus their energies on completing the game and fixing problems rather than converting saved games. But at the same time I hope they got things to the point where we won't lose saved games after the next big patch.
I can't imagine that they won't include some mechanism to allow characters to be created at higher levels, to facilitate forming parties in multiplayer. It could be a thing where you still create a level 1 character, but as soon as you join a group with a higher level character everyone is brought up to that level. That mechanic is already in the game. It happens whenever you leave a character at camp for a while. Next time they join your party you have to level them till they match you, which could be 1 to 3 levels. The same mechanic could be used for player characters in multiplayer. But they probably have other things that are more pressing to work on right now.
