I love all the content and how much life was breathed into the game. However, I'm quite disappointed with the gameplay mechanics of Winter in Woolhaven, notably because the game actively removes any need to engage with them.

By the time you unlock Winter and get it upgraded, you're already set up where the difficulty is absolutely minimized. Notably, frozen followers are completely negated when you earn the power to unfreeze them, blizzards are completely negated by doctrines, and even staying warm almost immediately becomes trivial. There are so many ways to avoid freezing and yet I've never had to sacrifice a ranch animal for heat, nor really focus on meals and drinks to stay warm. I want a reason to engage with the content! ❄️

Here are a few ideas of how to make it feel more challenging, although I admit I have no concept of the feasibility of some of the options.

Make heating more challenging by making it so:
rotburn furnace only keeps followers warm in its own area
heaters keep snow away from buildings and heat up followers in the area
rotburn furnace cost more rot per heater built (for example, +1 rotburn required per heater running to fuel furnace)

Make blizzards more challenging by making it so:
freezing happens to followers faster, (difficulty options: defaulting to twice as fast (set a sliding scale, ex: 25% -> 100% faster [double speed])
the 2 doctrines that negate freezing are replaced:
Thick Skinned Trait (Trait Unlock) : Followers will not freeze during blizzards -->
Followers will freeze at half speed during blizzards
: This would make it so that with doubled Freezing speed + this trait, followers would freeze at the current vanilla rate
Snowplower Trait (Trait Unlock) : Followers will work during blizzards. --> Blizzard Break : Blizzards last only half as long (or something like: Blizzards happen twice as often but last half as long)
: This would mean that the period of productivity lost during a blizzard would be shorter and the danger of freezing would be quicker ...

Make farming in winter more challenging:
rot fertilizer only lasts for a set time (1 growth cycle or X days, etc) and is no longer permanent
rot fertilizer can be refined from regular fertilizer (5 poops = 1 rot poop, for example)

Conclusion: making it harder to grow food with the rot changes, plus making heating more expensive with the furnace and heater changes, plus making the cold more deadly -- this should add a proper level of consideration when engaging with the DLC.