A few things can be true at the same time :) yes you probably got pawned by RNG, but also 9 *is* too many. We went from 5 totems all the way to 9 fragments.

Again RNG can be a B, but even over a few playthroughs it's clear that mine density is low and they are easy to miss.

I feel like it's a dead horse at this point, but yeah mistland tried to do too much and it ends up being completely unbalanced.