Dinner goes on a stick

Cooking used to be something the fire did while you left things lying near it. Now it's something you do: cut the meat out, put it on a stick, hold it over the flames. The fire changed this week too, and so did where the wood comes from.

The skewer

Meat cooks only on a skewer now. Stab a stick through the meat and it stays at whatever angle you stabbed it. Slide pieces along to make room, or off the end to take one. About three fit on a normal stick. Hold it over the fire, or stand it in the hearth ring and walk off.

Any stick works, but a raw stick is firewood. Leave it in too long and it catches and drops your dinner, cooked as far as it got. The burned stick comes out hardened, and a hardened stick never catches.
Anything with a point holds meat: the dagger and the sword as well as a stick.
A fish can cook right on the hook. Hold the rod over the flame.
Every animal now drops the same raw meat. Raw still carries a 25% chance of making you ill.

A fire you keep alive

A campfire needs tinder now. Stones and a teepee of sticks won't catch without dry grass underneath. Once lit it burns for about six minutes, and you top it up with sticks, split logs, logs or grass fiber. When it runs out it drops to embers, and one stick brings it back.

Wood from the trees

Dead trees stand around the map. Hit one and it comes down limb by limb, leaving sticks and a stub that regrows.
They fall for real now, the way you cut them, and lean on walls and rocks instead of passing through.
Put a log down and hit it with a rock or an axe to split it. Near an end splits it the long way; across the middle gives two shorter halves.

The craft table

The craft table is a workstation you place where you like. Open its book, lay the parts in the glowing outlines, and take the tool: dagger, axe, pickaxe and sword so far. It costs about five trees' worth of split wood, and you get one. Place a second and the first comes apart into every piece that went into it.

There's also a first sword you can find and pick up rather than build. It takes three swings to kill a chicken and does nothing at all to rock or wood.

Smaller fixes

Tools sit correctly in your left hand.
Legendary fish were close to impossible to catch. Every pond now always holds something rare or better.
The backpack keeps what you put in it: the dagger saves, order is kept, and cooked meat stays cooked.
Trees, and items restored from your backpack, now exist for everyone in the world rather than one player.