LadyWYT

Welcome to the forums!
Paging @williams_482 for advice.
You might try mods like StepUp or Knapster to help streamline some of the gameplay, especially if there are underlying physical issues. 
https://mods.vintagestory.at/stepupcontinued
https://mods.vintagestory.at/knapster
There's also a couple of mods that add controller support to the game, but I'm not sure how well either work.
https://mods.vintagestory.at/controllermovementvs
https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/50127

Only the babies are. The adults currently are not tameable, nor can they be bred without mods.

Welcome to the forums! As others here have noted, clay is one of those things that's difficult to spot, until you learn what the block looks like. It gets easy to spot consistently after that.
Red clay will spawn at higher altitudes in areas that get enough rainfall, and doesn't need to be next to water in order to spawn. Red clay is the most common clay type you'll find. Blue clay spawns around sea level, in areas that have enough rainfall, and also seems to consistently spawn next to water, so looking around bodies of water at low altitudes is a good strategy for finding this clay type. Fire clay only spawns naturally in bauxite biomes(regardless of rainfall) or under black coal/anthracite deposits; it's not likely you'll be finding this one nearby.
Aside from the naturally spawning deposits, you can also acquire clay from panning, from certain cracked vessels, or for sale from some of the traders.

Nothing should break, but best to make a backup before updating, just in case.
I do recommend checking your machinery though, if you have crazy/complex setups. Wooden parts can now get overloaded and catch fire(I think they only smoke instead of burn at the moment) if they are under too much stress.

First off, welcome to the forums!
A new world would be advisable. You don't necessarily have to use the default world size, but the size you have listed is much too small even with the location distance cut in half. For 50% distance I would say you'd probably need at least 10,000 blocks tall by 20,000 blocks wide, though I would probably go with 15k x 30k just to be safe, if having a small world is important.
Keeping in mind those dimensions most likely won't be applicable when more story locations are added in the future.

Welcome to the forums! 
Turning down both Landcover and Landcover Scale should produce a world with large oceans and large islands that are somewhat like a mini-continent, but I'm not sure that it's currently possible to get "real-life" style continents, if that's what you're after.
 
When it comes to using world gen mods though, your mileage will vary. I'd assume that turning down the above settings would still produce vast oceans and large islands/mini-continents.

Mods that affect knapping would be a prime suspect. Also make sure that your mods are updated for 1.22, or known to work correctly if it's an older mod. Otherwise, the easiest way to figure it out will be to disable all mods, ensure vanilla works as it should, and then re-enable and test mods one by one. It'll be quite obvious which one is the problem once the problem reappears.

Does the issue still happen without any mods? If it does, time for a bug report on Github. If the issue doesn't happen in vanilla though, then it's most likely a mod causing the issue. If that's the case, you'll want to make sure that all your mods are appropriately updated for 1.22 or otherwise known to work correctly if an older mod(not likely due to changes 1.22 introduced). From there, it's just a matter of re-enabling mods and testing one by one to see when the issue reoccurs. Tedious, but effective.

The problem is that's a regular water source, I do believe, and not rapids. You need rapids to power the watermill. I'm not sure that rapids can spawn underground either.
In any case, the way to tell the difference between the two is that rapids will be a brighter blue and have a much louder, more energetic sound to them than regular water flow. 

You need oak logs, not pine. Just swap the log types and it should work.

I think it's supposed to be able to be used in place of animal fat when crafting machinery.

Welcome to the forums!
1.22 changed the firepits so that the item temperature no longer resets when a new item starts cooking, but it takes longer to heat up stacks of items as a result. As for calcinating flint, if I'm recalling correctly the temperature needs to be 1000 C for it to calcinate, so you'll want to pop some coal/charcoal in there as fuel to get it hot enough to actually cook.
As for Better Firepits, I'm not sure if that mod is still working correctly on 1.22, but I don't think that's the issue here.

To my knowledge, no. The world file exists on the host computer only. If the drive containing that file died, then you're probably out of luck unless you have the tools and knowledge to recover data from a broken drive(assuming the data is even recoverable). While it is possible to make world backups, the backups are stored on the same drive as your other worlds, so unless you moved those files to a different drive yourself...
I would say either be patient and try to salvage the data from the broken drive first, if you're really attached to that particular world. Otherwise, it's likely easier to just start over fresh. A fresh start means new scenery and the chance to improve your skills from previous worlds.

Being a vegetarian was the mistake, or more precisely: not hunting more. You don't necessarily have to eat the meat that you hunt, as it can be composted, but hunting is the primary source of fat. Killing wolves, foxes, and raccoons is relatively easy and typically yields at least one piece of fat(though foxes and raccoons don't always drop fat), and pigs are a great source of redmeat for meals and fat.
 
Hogs are handy to have, as they produce big litters and mature relatively quickly, but do keep in mind that livestock does require some time and effort to really get going. Hunting will be your primary source of meat, fat, and hides in the early game, even if you manage to pen wild hogs on day one.
 
To my knowledge, no, the drop rate hasn't changed. As I said above, the main issue seems to be that you haven't placed much priority on hunting. Most players will hunt fairly often, especially in the early game, if for no other reason than to acquire hides and fat.
As to the question of whether oil lamps and pelts are worth making...yes, but it also depends on your playstyle preference. Pelts make good winter clothing, which you won't need in warmer climates. Huge pelts can make crude bellows, which you don't necessarily need either if you have access to leather. Pelts can make good decor too, but decor isn't critical to survival. Oil lamps don't provide enough light to stop spawns, but they are cheap to make and will provide enough light to see what's in the area, and dealing with visible threats is much easier than trying to deal with threats obscured by darkness.

I think it was 1.21 that saw some changes to the world gen, and the devs went to some lengths to ensure that chunks would blend smoothly for players upgrading older worlds. That's not to say that something couldn't go wrong, mind you, just that precautions have been taken so the chunks should blend smoothly, assuming the world is vanilla or not otherwise using mods to alter terrain generation. If those kinds of mods are used, then it becomes a lot more dicey.
 
It really depends on the mods. Generally it's best to wait for mods to update before trying to update a modded world, but there's no guarantee they will be updated either. Older mods sometimes work fine on newer game versions, but it depends on what content the mod adds and what content was changed in the update. Depending on what content the mod adds, they can usually be safely removed mid-playthrough, with only ? blocks left over that can be deleted by breaking those blocks(creative usually works best for this). However, not all mods can be removed mid-playthrough, and removing even the "safe" mods typically isn't the best idea as that can create problems. Some mods will also have special instructions for updating them, so it's best to check the mod pages carefully.
Overall, the best advice I can give is to make sure you backup your world before updating, just in case something goes wrong. Make sure to test mods for older game versions on a special test world before adding them to your main world, in order to make sure those mods are working correctly. Also make sure to read each mod page carefully to see if there are any special instructions for how to update the mod and older worlds using that mod.

Welcome to the forums!
To my knowledge, a new world won't be required. Unless the devs say otherwise, worlds created in stable versions should upgrade to new stable versions just fine, though players will want to make backups just in case. The main drawback is that when playing older worlds, players may need to explore new chunks in order to find some of the new goodies.
 
If you want to go ahead and start a new world now, the current rc should be stable enough that it will upgrade to a stable release later. Though I will note that if you're intending to play with mods, you might want to wait until a stable release. Mods are more likely to break and require fresh worlds(though it's not a guarantee), and I think many mod authors are waiting for a stable game version before updating their mods.

Completing the area has no effect, aside from removing a certain airborne hazard.
If the haze effect is governed by Vintage Story's equivalent of command blocks, you might be able to locate where those blocks are in spectator mode(/gm 3) and then switch to creative to mess with them(/gm 2). Creative mode will bypass block protections and let you modify story locations, however, keep in mind that tampering with said locations could have unintended consequences. The blocks that govern certain location events are usually located underneath the important structure pieces, but messing with or deleting those blocks could easily break things.
If the haze effect is baked into the code and not governed by a command block, then you'll need to mod the effect out of the game. I'm guessing this is the more likely case.

I believe the climate bands really only apply to the general annual temperatures for that latitude, and not the rainfall. It's possible to have warmer or colder chunks mixed in--for example, the temperate bands can have pockets of cooler/warmer climates. Elevation also affects climate--the higher you go, the colder it gets. 
Rainfall determines whether a particular region is likely to be lush plains/forest or a desert. In the temperate bands, the areas with high rainfall will have better soil quality, and tend to support more forest, while the areas with less rainfall will be deserts or regions with low soil fertility. In the tropical climate bands, high rainfall tends to result in jungles, while low rainfall produces deserts and savannahs.

The percentile readings can be low, but the main thing to watch is the general reading description: Very Poor, Poor, etc. Typically it's best to dig at Decent or better, but if what you're looking for is rare or the best lead you have is Poor/Very Poor then it doesn't hurt to try digging at one of those readings.
When it comes to bronze, you can also buy tin, bismuth, and zinc from Commodities traders, if you happen to be a few ore short of what you need. Panning bony soil can also yield gold/silver nuggets that can be turned into a black bronze tool or two.

Generally, it's best to wait until a stable release before trying to update old worlds, but even with stable releases it's a good idea to make a world backup anyway in case something goes wrong.
 
This is also an option. You could also try updating an older world to see what happens, but make sure you back up the world first, as there is more likelihood of things going wrong on unstable game versions.
 
Chunks that have already been generated won't contain new blocks like the new berry bushes. You'll need to either head to new areas of the world map to discover the new stuff, regenerate old chunks via command, or start a new world.

According to the wiki, chickens need to eat at least 3 portions of feed before they can mate. My general strategy though is to just feed them once a day while they are filling the nest and then once every 2-3 days while they are incubating the eggs.
 
Bighorn sheep are typically found up in the hills and mountains, typically in regions that a little cool and on the dry side, and not heavily forested. Mouflons(added in 1.22) spawn in the warmer lowlands, but not in dense forest.
Musk ox spawn in the arctic, so you will have some long walks and a lot of work ahead of you if you want to domesticate these. Or I mean...just use the creative menu to spawn a pair in and pretend you purchased them from a trader.

Welcome to the forums!
I think development has been progressing quite well, but I don't expect 1.22 stable to be ready by the first of April. There are still several bugs to swat and some of the content still needs to be polished, like procedural dungeons and berry bushes, if those features are going to be fully added in the stable release.

An in-game week is seven days. An in-game month will vary, and is nine in-game days by default. The processing time for steel will always take about an in-game week, to my knowledge, and does not scale with the month length.

Welcome to the forums!
From the rc1 news post:
Basically, if the world was created in a 1.22-rc version, it's probably fine to keep playing until stable. If a world was created in a 1.22-pre version, it's likely to have issues upgrading and not recommended for continued play. Worlds created in prior stable versions shouldn't be upgraded to 1.22 until the stable version releases, though more adventurous players can still give it a try provided they make a backup of the world first.

I think the answer to most of the questions is...it depends on the server. Some will use mods, some will not. Anego servers don't support mods at the moment, so servers purchased from Anego Studios will always be vanilla. Server etiquette will depend heavily on what kind of players inhabit the server and how well the server ruleset is actually enforced; as a general rule servers that encourage PvP will have a lot more griefing/aggravating behavior due to the nature of PvP gameplay itself.
For servers in general? Not really. Each server will have its own set of rules on how players are expected to behave, and some will be more strict than others.
As I understand it though, larger servers tend to have more problems with the spawn area getting picked clean, and while they may have plans in place to help new players out(like admin teleporting them to a fresh area) you may have better luck with a smaller server.
Probably depends heavily on what kind of players play on the server and the general server rules. If land claims are allowed, other players(outside of admins) shouldn't be able to mess with your stuff as long as it's in a claimed area, to my knowledge.
As to whether players settle close together or further apart...depends. Those looking for a more cooperative game will be inclined to settle closer together, if not share a base, while others may prefer to have their own space. Roleplaying servers may have special rules in place over who can settle where.
This I'm not sure, but most should have the settings listed alongside the rules on Discord or a server advertisement or something.
 
It's another case of it depends on the server in question. Some prefer to handle it as a group activity. Some probably don't care. Some reset the story locations periodically so that everyone can have a chance to do the content.
 
Depends on the server, but unfortunately most seem to rely heavily on Discord for communication and information about the server.
 
You don't have to disable your mods before joining a server, to my knowledge, unless you're trying to join a server hosted by Anego, in which case you may need to disable the mods yourself. Otherwise, I don't think it's necessary, but it's something I would recommend, since having mods enabled clientside can sometimes cause strange issues when playing on modded servers(had it happen a time or two).
As a general rule though, the required mods will be downloaded and enabled automatically when you connect to the server. Generally, the mods installed on the server will be posted somewhere, either in the server advertisement or on Discord.
Not really, but don't forget that if you can't find a server that strikes your fancy, starting your own is always an option. Personally, when it comes to multiplayer games, I prefer to play with people I'm already friends with, or at least familiar enough with to have an idea of their general personality. It cuts down on a lot of issues that tend to be common when dealing with the general public.