Come on, loftar or jorb! Release the sprite sheets to us, so we can play about with them, and maybe make a forum for additional sprites that people've made. I think a couple've people ( especially some of the DF guys that might come over ) could do some real nice work on sprites for creatures for you guys.
Also, far distant future suggestion: Place materials such as rare plants or ores deep in the wilderness, but make it so it's impossible to grow them away from where you got them ( at least for the plants, the ores should probably be transportable ). In addition, I think that the murder skill should be changed completely, and instead it should be easier to kill a player the further away you get from civilization ( or, in this case, the RoB ) or the penalties should be less harsh to the killer the further you are away. This is assuming you're thinking of implementing penalties.