1. The ability to repair items while sitting down. Sitting shouldn't need too much concentration to make you busy.
2. A relatively easy way for new players to make money. Something between looting rats and mining gold: nothing that would make you rich instantly but something that would give you a moderate income and enable you to train and buy basic equipment. Just to smooth things up a little bit in the beginning.
3. Animals. Birds, small mammals (something like squirrels, rabbits and hedgehogs), insects, cattle, domestic animals. Different ways (not) to interact with them. Some of them could be caught and eaten, some them would just move around to make the place more livelier. Some of them would give you stomach ache / lower your stats for a while if you'd eat them. Some of them would bite your fingers if you'd get too close, then flee from you.
4. Berries, birds' eggs, mushrooms, fruits - things you can easily find and eat. Some of them poisonous (see #3).
5. Children running around, walking around, playing, fighting with sticks, standing close to their parents. Parents carrying their babies. Elderly people - Enkidukais with grey fur, bald Ylians. I wouldn't mind if they were all NPCs at first, even just having them around would be nice.
Great thread by the way.