Curios work really well, although it's kind of annoying that cow cones are so good but work so fast, I don't enjoy crafting a new one every half hour, that's a pretty minor gripe for what I find to be on the whole an exellent system.
Best part of it is going to sleep, then waking up the next day with a 10k LP surprise waiting for me

I found the food level to be extremely manageable, in fact, after I had all the stuff for fishing and a boat I could not get through the food I was catching, plow + drink doesn't work nearly well enough to bother using it, which is probably a good thing, as it got me to go do more interesting stuff, like hunt for ant hills etc.
lower requirements for WWW are good, empty ants nests are bad, animals potentially killing me is terrifying, dragon flies and lady beetles are fun, I find I can see a few people playing, but not heaps (NE super grid, relatively close to the corner)
Haven't done metal or cave diving yet, they should be fun, also my first harvest isn't grown. Looking forwards to both pieces of content, although from the sounds of things metal and caves are the most changed.
The infrequency of animals can be sort of annoying, but given their lethality it's probably for the best, and it's not like I need the meat or LP from them
oh, a few things that could be slightly better,
1 - Discoveries should be makable by picking stuff up, I traded for 10 wheat only to find I couldn't build a bee hive when I got home
2 - Foraging should come with starting characters, why would you risk them not noticing it?