Can happen just the same with Astarion. He's perfectly fine being in a relationship with you if you never turn him down, but
[SPOILER paragraph because the tag won't work]:

whether he means a damn thing he says is completely dependent on one single camp scene. If you rest enough with a sufficiently progressed relationship, he'll confess that he meant to use you as a shield and accidentally fell in love. If you progress to Act 3 without the confession, you get a cruel speech about how easy it was, and he doesn't know why you're so shocked ("It's what I DO.")

....end spoiler. Someone needs to explain the hieroglyphics of that tag to me.

It's a pitfall of theirs, and as intrusive as it would have been to keep the exhaustion meter they originally had, removing the mechanic entirely is too destructive. It makes hoarding camp supplies laughably easy and results in too much missed content.

Maybe a notification marker of some sort reminding the player would be enough. Maybe it wouldn't, because "Boy am I tired" is just something my party members say sometimes and it was easy enough to ignore without any clear punishment for doing so.

But they really need to reinstate something.

That's also just a bug where they'll say that even when you saw the scenes.

This game is such trash and everyone puts it in a pedestal. Everyone acts like it is a perfect thing beyond criticism.

Elminster doesn’t end up as a companion. He is in the mountain pass before act 2 and you need to have recruited Gale. You probably took the underdark route in which he doesn’t show up.

Elminster is either in the area directly after using the elevator in Grymforge or in front of the entrance to the Shadowlands in the Mountain Pass. He's not a companion though but progresses Gale's personal quest.

Yeah, I figured that out eventually, but then I have to remember to go back to camp and pick up the dozens of mundane shortswords I sent to camp and sell them