Originally posted by Mharr:

Although if you are into homesteading for its own sake you'll be well stocked with food, meads and upgraded gear to make those dungeon runs mostly painless. There's a lot of sequence breaking possible too, ores that you 'should' be prospecting with magic can also be found by determined exploration and there are creative mechanisms for catching fish.

Actually, you cannot brew mead until you venture into Black Forest for Blueberries and Dungeons for Yellow Mushrooms. You have to also get copper and tin there so you can make bronze and chop the core wood and fine wood trees, since stone axe won't cut Fine and Core only found in Black Forest.