Offerings to the nature.

[Procne]

Hearthling builds a stone altar. Then hearthling crafts an "offering". Then the offering is sacrificed on the altar. The result is that certain quality nodes around the altar are boosted. Or another quality node is produced at the altar. The effect is temporary and its strength, as well as duration (either time limit or the diminishing quality like soil/clay in the Legacy), depend on the quality of the offering. It would either add a flat amount of quality to the area (thus increasing quality of stuff when there's no quality node) or add some multiplier to nearby quality nodes. There would be different kinds of offerings affecting different node types.

One offering for soil / clay / water
One offering for fish and clams
One offering for mushrooms and berries
One offering for flowers and herbs (clover, WWW, nettle, taproot etc)
One offering for wild animals

Destroying an altar would leave a summonable scent (crime against the spirits of nature) and summon an aggressive dryad.

Examples of offerings:
Clay doll decorated with rough gemstones
Lamb
druid helm
Meat hedhehog
decorative boat

edit: Effect of the sacrifices would further be affected by psyche or charisma stat

[Sevenless]

Neat concept, but it completely destabilizes the industry/trade (well if roads ever get built?) balance of the entire game. The current balance works fairly well, that's kinda risky imo.

[Procne]

Neat concept, but it completely destabilizes the industry/trade (well if roads ever get built?) balance of the entire game. The current balance works fairly well, that's kinda risky imo.

How would it destabilize industry/trade?

[Sevenless]

Neat concept, but it completely destabilizes the industry/trade (well if roads ever get built?) balance of the entire game. The current balance works fairly well, that's kinda risky imo.

How would it destabilize industry/trade?

The entire system of node rarity is the underlying basis for industry and trade. If you let people create quality nodes, it changes the entire system.

[Procne]

Neat concept, but it completely destabilizes the industry/trade (well if roads ever get built?) balance of the entire game. The current balance works fairly well, that's kinda risky imo.

How would it destabilize industry/trade?

The entire system of node rarity is the underlying basis for industry and trade. If you let people create quality nodes, it changes the entire system.

That's why instead of creating a temporary node it might instead add a multiplier to existing nodes. This way people with best nodes would still have better best nodes.