It was absolutely amazing to be able to see your experience with the game. Thank you so much for sharing. It also answered some questions I had about how to proceed forward with developing it. The unresolved issues with the game were mostly a combination of bugs in the spaghetti and a looming deadline.
The black currency (pebble), is obtained as a reward for winning fights. However, something is was causing the reward screen to be skipped, which is also where skill cooldowns are reset. So that bug is a double whammy.
There is a restriction radius around each new planting to make sure things don't get too clustered and untraversable, I have the workings of a system to highlight that area when a planting fails, but because I'm still trying to grasp how to calculate a "change of basis matrix", that restriction radius looks like a broken fish instead of a solid block. But that broken fish sized restriction is enough to make sure you can't get trapped.
You were right about encounters being tied to land size, but also animal population and number of days passed. It calculates a challenge level which is used to populate the fights. The expansion you did near the end likely generated a 2 round fight, with 2 enemies in the first fight and 3 in the second, but the fight queue isn't functional yet.
You're definitely right about needing a better method of travel, and watching your VOD inspired a solution. The construction of waypoints by leaving a pile of resources.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I'm probably going to come back to it a few times to help with further development. It was equally exciting to see as well as inspirational for the direction of the game.