ok, i was afraid to go to much over these place cause of the monster that are way harder then the mines rats and bees, and cause i only found these place not a long ago, so i didn't have the luck to found these loots, maybe you could put some fencing and tilled land, in my opinion it's the most logical choice
maybe you can start to clean the road borders mainly when we walk horizontally and make special area for secret passage, that way i think it would be cleaner and made us have a better for seen of what can append to us, good or bad
my main problem thou is still the cost of every action, that is at the beginning way to much mainly on HP, maybe you could rebalance this or when we have better tools/competence it goes lower or based of how difficult it is, chopping wood and mining harder than foraging or pick up potatoes