Tons of changes.
complete overhaul of the food and shield systems, and other game mechanics.
mountain caves with items and armor and decorations and a weapon and more
tar pits and fancy wood items
oven, windows, gold piles, and tons of home decor
animal taming, riding, etc
pause button, performance cleanup, save lag warning.
note that armor stands, riding animal, fist weapons, and several other changes were frequent flyers in the suggestions area.

at the same time, its the same as before in the sense that we still stop after plains and have nothing left to do except build bigger homes.

Originally posted by Honks = Stonks:

I know it is hard to say maybe but are there any substantial changes since the game came out ? Anything that was a problem and still is not fixed/changed somehow after a year ?

Substantial changes? Depends on what you classify as a change. They've fixed some bugs, smoothed out multiplayer, improved lag and rubberbanding.

As for content additions - few and far between. Hearth was small and re-used assets (new textures), and made some balance tweaks that weren't well received. Ice Caves was a similarly tiny update that added a very few things. On the whole, content hasn't truly expanded enough to make a marked difference in your gameplay, assuming you really did burn out. You'll probably want to do what I'm doing: wait for Mistlands, and if it has a decent amount of new content (i.e. is actually a "Major update"), play again then. If not, simply shelve the game until 1.0 comes out and then try and get more opinions.

They also tweaked a lot of drops for items. With food changes they added meat types so they had to increase drop rates for boar meat as well as add wolf, deer.

Recently noticed in newly started games that the core drops/spawns in the Black Forest crypts are fewer large rooms with many cores but more cores in individual wall units that were mostly empty before.
It actually feels better going down a long section to end up with at least one, rather than nothing or a big room. Overall I get fewer cores from crypts but still have way more than needed and it seems more rewarding.

It basically didn't change at all, besides some minor food tweaks and a few barebone items.
People waiting for the arrival of the mistlands, yet with every "update"-post from the devs, its a verbal battle between the white knights and the growing number of impatient people.

That is quite disappointment heh... I guess all that crap happening on the world did not help. Well lets hope they will start working hard on it

@OP Check the news tab at top for update info. Quite a lot has changed in how you play the game but some things have not.

If the ore through portal thing bothers you then no it is still the same and probably won't change until they add difficulty options if then.
Personally never found that to be an issue but I know some people do so I mention it.

Blocking was changed totally to include your total health affecting your block power.
Stamina was changed quite a bit as well. I don't have issue managing it personally but I certainly don't have as much oops room as I used to. It's been tweaked and is actually in a good spot right now.

2 new mini bosses. Like the Troll for the Black Forest but other biomes. <no spoilers>

2 New light armor sets. Different perks etc.

New cave areas in mountains with new resources.< these areas are quite good really, larger ones really have some interesting stuff going on>

Food progression was changed. Now you need iron for serpent stew for example. New food upgrades.

Cartography table to share map info. A lot of multiplayer people asked for that and it was added.