Okay after a bit of fiddling there is a massive mini game underneath the graphics. In the towns there are houses you can rent, they take time to build to use (as a residence, as lodging for minions, as a production factory for materials, as storage for bank space), and by spending influence that you gain from doing quests and murdering monsters.
The nodes that you start seeing on the map have many different meanings. Some are crafting production nodes, like mines. You can hire worker minions in the towns and send the minions to the nodes to get raw mats for you. Or you can travel there yourself and mine as well. You can also set up trade routes with minion wagons between trade nodes, or buy/build a wagon of your own if you want. You can take over a node and get tax breaks too if you like and many other things I have not yet explored.
They have an energy system that limits gathering and crafting and upgrading your nodes and houses. 1 energy every 3 minutes logged in but it caps out pretty fast. Talking to certain npcs takes energy as well for conversations and you have individual factions you have to play a mini game with to up rep with that person. The higher rep can get you all sorts of perks like more quests or conversation pieces to discounts i guess.
There are drops that you can vendor like sharp teeth, or you can take to certain areas and trade for much more than vendor cost to some npc's. The items tell you what they are worth and you can right click to find out the npc that wants them.
So far it is extremely sandbox, but while the fights are flashy they are really kinda simple overall. Just have lots of pots and spam them and you live pretty easy. It is also a huge grindfest but with the flashy fights it is kinda neat.