Can someone tell me how I can manage the anti eelement barrier? I've started from scratch and am already in the red zone again. Since there are no reasonable instructions, I'm at a loss and about to lose again.
So, Abyssal power is consumed by various things, such as buildings, samachurl and nycto unit upkeep, and the Anti-element Barrier. The Anti-element barrier is how you keep captured heroines contained, at a cost of twice their resistance.
So, to reduce you're anti-element barrier cost, you need to reduce your heroines resistance. The best way to do this is by corrupting them, as a corrupted heroine won't contribute to the barrier cost. However, corrupting a full resistance heroine at the alter is quite expensive, and early on you don't have the tools to torture heroines into it. So it's helpful to "break in" heroines you'd like to corrupt first - using breeding and light torture to reduce thier resistance as much as possible, without actually breaking them. A broken heroine is much cheaper to corrupt, and doesn't contribute to the barrior cost, but will also have less elemental power once corrupted. But, in an emergency, it's an option. Though, in an emergency, you'll probably want to use a dark wedge on them instead of torture/breeding. A dark wedge will instantly break a heroine. But, again, not the best option if you can help it.
As for increasing the amount of Abyssal Power you have to work with, there are three ways to increase it currently; sacrificing units, farming it, or destroying statues. Statues are the best way to generate abyssal power - destroying one gives you +200 power. This does tend to spike your threat level a bit, but that's usually not an issue. Your farm will generate abyssal power for you based on the amount of excess power in the farm. So planting wedges and trees will increase your abyssal power over time, albeit at a rather slow rate. Be careful about planting too many of these early on though - as each one increases your threat. Finally, sacrificing basic hilichurl and nycto element units can boost your abyssal power. Specifically, 200 basic hilichurls, 2.5 nycto hilichurls, or 10 nycto slimes = 1 abyssal power. When sacrificing less than the required amount of units, the result is random. So sacrificing 1 basic hilichurl has a .5% chance of giving +1 power, while 100 would have a 50% chance.
Finally, if all else fails, you can sacrifice slaves at the alter for a temperary one week boost to abyssal power. But I would only suggest doing so if you are also corrupting someone at the alter. It's not a long-term solution for managing abyssal power, and if you need to do this to stay out of the red, you need to be doing something else to fix the problem. Which is why I suggest combining it with corrupting a heroine.
TLDR; destroy statues on the map for a large lump-sum increase of abyssal power. Make dark wedges or abyssal branches at the alter (start early!) and plant them at the farm for a consistant trickle of power. And build the slime pool + the previous option for a more inconsistant but threat free supply of power.