You can only "hero save" during quests. Outside of quests, you can do "world saves."
SWC
Sir Edmund:"Should you obey the lord who asks you to put a village of innocents to the torch? Is that chivalrous? Is it noble?" Me:"It's a great way to get promoted, I know that much."
Thanks for such a speedy reply! I wondered about that, so thought I would look at the options when I first logged in, without talking to "Dad". heh But "World Save" still wasn't there.
Guess I'll just have to set aside enough time to complete quests then, tho I sure hate starting over every time I have to leave unexpectedly.
Hopefully the quests won't take hours, and I can find out where I am within one.
Auto Save happens automatically at the game's discretion, not yours. It does not happen at a certain interval, only when you start or complete a quest.
As for when you first start out, you need to give yourself at least an hour for the first time you are playing since you should try to get through childhood, guild training and then completing the guild (you can do it quicker when you are familiar with the game but if you're trying to learn it takes a little bit to get everything going). Once you get through all of those training sessions then you start in the real world and can explore more areas, etc. The first part is one long quest (or maybe a couple of medium quests), but once you graduate then it is much easier to only play for a little while as you can choose when to start a quest and which quests to do.