Maelstrom

Not necessarily. I installed VTP to help find it after spending 2 in game years and only having 2 stacks of the stuff despite running over an area covering tens of thousands of blocks. As I travelled over those areas I found that I hadn't missed any TP. After installing Buzz, I have found the same to be true; bees may be rare and I didn't miss any. Ultimately, it comes down to the seed and RNG. VS is sometimes kind and sometimes cruel.

Only food requirements animals have is to reproduce, or maintain good body weight for slaughter. Otherwise they are immune to starvation. If animals are kept under a roof, be sure to provide lighting as they will despawn.

Use larger hides which also only takes one fat to cure and will use a better crafting recipe.

And if you're OK with BuzzWords - Visible Terra Preta is the same thing except for (as the name implies) Terra Preta.

That seems prudent to me. Especially the bees as they are typically located in forested areas with the resident dangers.

Either it's a bug or your home may not be considered insulated from the cold for any of a small variety of reasons. One of the those reasons could be a chiseled block that has less than 50% of the entire block left.

Have you crafted warmer clothes, such as fur clothing? All it takes is oiled hides.

6 reeds also makes rope.

Given the basis is Tinker's Construct for that other block game, I think the unstated benefit is that mixing and matching material of construction provides a variety of durability and speed options to choose from. Maybe combo 1 for stone tools harvests blocks faster but has lower durability than combo 2 offers. But I could be presuming that's the intent of the OP.

That bauxite and andesite combo is beautiful!

I agree that the two don't look like the same object. I don't see much about gliders and such in the lore (although I haven't looked at all the lore yet, so I could be wrong here). It could be Tyron giving us a glider and just lumping it in with gadgetry and I'm splitting hairs very finely. Isn't speculation fun?

Torch is TWO grass above a stick or one REED above a stick.

Notice the comment that it is lore related gadgetry. A glider would be nice, but it could be the spinny thing collapsed for transport to another location. We'll know for sure in a few months.

Patience. It's on the roadmap and I'm sure the technical aspect of all that is feat to overcome. Especially considering one of the recent terrain modifications has taken four YEARS.

Museum of curiosities and oddities?

No, but I had a great blueberry pie for thanksgiving.

It was chiseled.

I like the idea and love the work you've put into it. I am sure there will be many players (probably those insane masochists that like perma-death wilderness survival settings ) that appreciate a more realistic approach to cartography (here's the but you've been sensing); but this is a mechanic that may (and probably will be) very unfun for a different segment of the player base. It seems like you're in the process of developing a mod and encourage you to keep developing it as I think such a mod would be a GREAT addition to the game.

Lore can also be learned from tapestries and scrolls which can be obtained from ruins in caves and purchased from traders.

I have some limited spelunking experiences and gotta say that current VS caves are the norm for caves IRL. I do agree that having some caves that are outside the norm would be wonderful even if there's no treasure or loot to be exploited; the sight of the cave would be treasure enough.

Like beds, tables, chairs and shelves? Search the handbook.

But gates do not provide thermal protection like doors do. That's only a problem if you start in a colder climate than the temperate default starting climate.

You probably toggled the immersive first person on or off. Check in settings (I know not where off the top of my head).

There's a number of forums on the VS Discord specifically for these kinds of questions/discussions.