LadyWYT

This mod might accomplish what you're looking for, but I would recommend testing it before you fiddle with a cherished world, and making a backup anyway if it does turn out to be suitable(you never know when something will go wrong): https://mods.vintagestory.at/fieldwright

Gotcha. Yeah no, you don't need granite to actually progress. Hard rocks like granite are needed for certain things, like the quern and stone coffins, but other hard rock types will also work for those items.
As for copper, yes, once you have copper bits you can stick them in a crucible for smelting and casting. When mining though, you'll get ore chunks, which will need to be smashed into smaller ore bits with a hammer before they can be smelted.
Not sure. If they've played before, and were using mods, they could be getting confused with a modded item--it's a pretty common mistake to make. It's also possible that they're trying to apply Minecraft logic to Vintage Story, since a core part of Minecraft's progression is getting a stone pick to obtain metal tools. 

Welcome to the forums!
Are you trying to work the steel at 800C? I've not exactly tested it, but iron and steel both require fairly high temperatures in order to actually work, and simple forge heating isn't enough to get much done on iron typically, and may not be hot enough to work steel. I'd recommend using a set of bellows to heat the steel to a higher temperature and see if that doesn't solve the problem.
 
Not sure, but this is/was a known issue for some mods--that is, they were flagged as incompatible for the game version, without actually being incompatible. That being said, mods are often the cause of strange issues. I'm not sure that's the case here, but these mods aren't the most recent version available, nor is the game, for that matter. I'd recommend updating everything to 1.22.2, since that should fix other issues that may be underlying, if not this one as well.
If you've tried heating the steel to a higher temperature before working, as well as updating your game and mods, and are still running into the issue, then I would recommend doing as @Vexxvididu says: disable your mods and test a fresh world to make sure vanilla works correctly. Once you can verify that vanilla is working, you can re-enable mods one by one and test(again, on a fresh world) as you do so to see when the problem reappears. 

https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Plaque
I think these are possible, since there's a story location that utilizes them...at least, if I recall correctly. But it may be the thing that requires a little help from creative mode to actually make, since not all building blocks can be obtained in survival.
 
If you're chiseling letters, the sign will need to be bigger. If you're relying on writeable signs/plaques, you'll be a bit more limited on the decoration(maybe a chiseled border?). I would note though, that if we're talking medieval style signs, you don't necessarily need any writing on the sign. Literacy was more limited back then, and it wasn't unusual to have some sort of picture sign advertising what goods and services an establishment offered.

Welcome to the forums! I recall Tyron mentioning in an interview some time ago that getting heavily into the modding scene is a good idea for those who are serious about wanting to join the team someday. It's not a hard requirement to be a dev, nor is it a guarantee that it'll get you a job on the Vintage Story team, but creating and maintaining mods is a great way to showcase one's talent as well as shows that they're at least somewhat passionate about the community and game they're looking to develop for.
That being said, one doesn't need to be a dev to have an impact on the game. Bug hunting on the pre-releases and submissions of detailed bug reports on the Github can help the devs figure out what they need to fix. Modded content occasionally finds its way into the main game, typically with a few tweaks to ensure it fits the devs' vision, but there are also plenty of mods that don't fit the vision of the game at all but are still beloved by the community. The devs also pay attention to player feedback, both on the forums and Discord, so being involved in the community can offer opportunities to add constructive criticism/praise as well as help other players out with various stuff.
It's probably also worth cautioning that enjoying something as a hobby is quite different than working on it all day for a living. Not that the devs don't enjoy their work--they clearly do!--but working on a thing as a full-time job can dull interest due to overexposure. It's why wait staff often don't eat at the restaurants they work for; the food isn't bad but does lose its appeal if one is looking at it all day, every day.

Aside from individual preference, it depends on hardware. Stronger hardware will be able to handle more than weaker hardware. In my experience, it takes a LOT of chiselwork to start to lag a system, but it's also not an issue that I've run into since I have decent hardware. 
I think as a general rule, if your hardware can run around 50 mods in singleplayer and handle story locations(these often have a lot of chiseling) without any lag, you're probably fine. If you go crazy with the chisel and start to notice your PC struggling, then you might consider scaling back on some of it.

Hmmmm...I don't see anything immediately wrong with it. Are you using the Real Smoke mod? If you are, you'll want to build proper ventilation for things like this, since if the smoke has nowhere to go it can choke out a fire. Otherwise I'm not sure. The glacier shouldn't be an issue, and neither should the clay, but I guess you could replace the clay with dirt and see if that changes anything.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/thriftysmithing
Given the comments on the mod page, it's a known issue with that mod. I will also note that that mod is also for version 1.19.8, and hasn't been updated for 1.22. Older mods do sometimes work on newer game versions, however, 1.22 introduced a lot of changes to the code as a whole, not just smithing, which broke a lot of mods.
I would try disabling the mod and test a fresh vanilla world to see if the issue still persists. If vanilla works, then you can try playing on your old world without the mod to see if things work as they should--make a backup before you do this! If vanilla works but the old world is still having the issue without the mod installed, you may need to start a new world, as I'm not sure there's a way to fix the issue otherwise.
If vanilla isn't working correctly, you may need to reinstall the game in order to get it working properly again. Make sure you backup your cherished worlds in a separate folder when doing this, just to be safe.

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.