Are you trying to gather resources from dungeon? Those aren't affected by tools
Viewing post in Bug: tools seemingly nonfunctional
No, this is in Millford and Stonevale. In previous versions I could directly see the impact of tools by going back to the work menu after equipping tools (the number of resources produced would go up when assigning jobs), and now those tools are doing nothing.
EDIT: This is apparently a problem just in non-mansion towns. The farm I build in the mansion has scythes doing something, but the Millford and Stonevale vegetables and grains do not react to having a scythe.