[Suggestions] Auto - Save and Save and quit, frustrating to lose progress

[Raiseo]

A little backstory first, an introduction if you will.
Me and my friend managed to get to floor 9 on Easy and got screwed by the save system.
The disconnect was sudden and at that point I could only save and quit having lost half our heroes (his heroes). Saving and quitting means, of course, the heroes will not return to the player and they stay recruitable even if you rehost and reinvite the player, so let's try auto - save.

Now, you know there is an auto - save feature when someone disconnects, so we tried that one but it doesn't seem to work, my friends lament the same problem, everyone loads to 100%, it says waiting for other players, but the game never starts, so to not lose our progress, I told him to close the game so another auto - save would be generated and then I quit and saved, just to load the new auto - save, but nada, it kept going to 100% and not going forward.

So at this point, we tried to load the previous savegame but of course it reverted back to the elevator (thanks to the autosave) with only two heroes.
This is incredibly frustrating, it seems you can't finish a game in multiplayer because something like this happens.

Now, I know making backups is no easy task with this game and kinda defeats purpose of the roguelike, we want to avoid save scumming, yes?
The main problem with someone disconnecting is that the heroes that were yours, recruited and leveled up, become recruitable again, which can, again, screw a run over if you don't have food to throw away, which I hardly believe is the case on Easy.
So there could be two solutions to this.

Solution 1 : Fix the auto - save
I have no idea why it doesn't work, maybe it does for some people, I'm not sure I can give more info on this. Also you have to restart the floor which might or might not be a pain, but it's manageable.

Solution 2 and the best imho: When a player disconnects, give to the host his heroes, his resources and drop his backpack on the floor (or in the inventory). This is the more elegant solution, with no progress lost, the host can safely save and quit and invite that player again, also giving him his heroes and resources back. No harm done.

Extra Solution : Delete the save file only when everyone is in-game and it's running, or after the first door open, not immediately after you load the game (which if I'm not mistaken, that's how it works).

I might post this on the official forum if I don't get a response here, which I hope I will :(
I've lost too many good runs with friends and I am very frustrated and annoyed, so I would very much like to discuss this.
Or is there a solution I am missing?