Pardon me if some of this is incorrect:  I wrote this some months ago.

I was seeking any merchants who would sell
   Tools - Farming
      Shovel
 but found none.

Gardr Keck, blacksmith in Gugrontid, carries one but doesn't sell any nor respond to queries regarding shovels.
The Klannarr sisters have them.  A statement from Aleena implies that you can get one from Nyshyn if you proceed through the Thieves' questline — such would be useful if money was scarce for some persons, but that's no cause to have shovels unavailable from other folks…

I don't remember if shovels were necessary for harvesting rooty veggies.
Otherwise, shovels could be used for simple character and roleplay — especially if we could call up the animation anywhere.

Personally, I would not even bother.  There is nothing to do in that version of the game except acquaint yourself with the world and some of the players who haunt it:  get an impression of how they play and behave.  Excepting that you don't know if they will be around for the UE4 version, or when that will happen.

I don't think people should be releasing bugfixes for the old version at all, to be honest.
Someone also needs to revise the website to make obvious the fact that the CrystalSpace version of the server is now merely a demo, albeit poorly suited for that purpose:  Don't train skills, proceed solo through NPC quests, or craft too much…
Hmm.  It is a solo game with some multiplayer social aspects?  I've had pleasant chats with some people, and exploring undeveloped areas of the map to make our own campsites was fun.  But there is no economy nor any big monsters, outside of special events, which require grouping to fight.

A tangential thought of mine:  if vehicles were added in the UE version, then players could pull carts around to carry their barrels.
Strength would only be needed to load and unload from carts and elevators (i.e. the rooftop).

It would be fun to code in an ability that allowed you to assist other players with heavy loads:  activate the ability, then one of you grabs the heavy item and places it in a special inventory slot; maybe this would look something like the window for trades.  While the two or more are carrying, if any player moves outside some radius from every other player in the carry-group, and if the mass of the item then exceeds the total strength of the group, it is then dropped at a point equidistant from each player.

Pardon the digression.

 

Monsters are really weak,

I can't remember if I only talked about this in-game, but most of the big everyday creatures should be very difficult to defeat.  Maxxed stats only means that you are the strongest that your character's physiology allows; even the strongest and most athletic Homo sapiens alive, supreme master of both karate and xingyi, would probably have a rough time if they attempted to take down a bull African elephant during musth while armed only with a platinum steel longsword.  Maulberlords seem much more fierce.
Just because Chuck Norris can do it, doesn't mean that Igesal should be able to do it.

Disregarding, of course, the difference between systemic health modelling, with ultra-detailed combat mechanics, and pools of health-points that most games use if they don't have the aforementioned ultra-detailed combat mechanics.
Something like that fencing game for the Nintendo Wii.

Leads to my suggestion:  each class of weapons enables certain combat moves and techniques.  More than there are already, and more of them should be specialized to different weapons.  They should also have different stance requirements.
Beasties should be more or less vulnerable to different moves.  Similarly, certain combinations of weapons can shift the balance of chance–to–hit between two combatants — parrying and such.

Examples:  thrusting forward with a reckless lunge, which either pushes the target backwards or leaves you more vulnerable to a strike; half-sword stance, which increases your ability to parry but decreases the damage done and changes it to blunt mode.

Dilihin's comment is the most telling one, I think.

The word Philosophy once meant ‘friend to wisdom’.
Nowadays, philosophers are regarded with disdain by some.  Begs the question:  whom was it who first lost sight of Sophia, the philosophers or everyone else?  Whom first disconnected wisdom from its intimate connection to everything, the esoteric and the exoteric, whether so–called pragmaticism or art and music which give us purpose to be sapient creatures.

We don't need more plumbers than philosophers.  We need more plumbers who are also philosophers, if anything.

The Drawing skill.
As it operates now, there is no way to practice it, so there are a few trainers who offer repetitive quests for you to improve it.  I say ‘repetitive’ because their dialogue doesn't change to simulate a new lesson each time you speak with them.

It is possible that this particular skill in the UE4 version was discussed but that I never saw it.

Anyway, so those quests are a placeholder, of course, for the fact that the act of drawing really doesn't function like any of the other ‘jobs’ skills.
To that end, I would like to submit this for discussion and consideration:

• Allow users to draw or import images. Vector graphics with information embedded for shading, hatching, and other such effects in regions — we probably want to have different materials and tools used when painting or sketching: like charcoal, oils, brushes, daubers…
• Those images are then used as plots to render something much like with crafting.
  The chief factor in the fidelity of the resultant drawing, compared to your original, would be your skill in Drawing; of course, you could add complexities like “beginner's luck”, subpar tools, your mental stamina, distractions in your environment versus the Will stat…
• Each time your plot is rendered on a new substrate — paper, canvas, wood, metal, whatever, — you gain ‘practice points’.

Personally, I prefer a different paradigm to implementing skills that distinguishes among familiarity with particular recipies, generic proficiency, and a few other things.