Are food gathering villagers supposed to just stand around? I put out food boxes for them but I never see them actually gathering food.
They just need a non-empty food box inside their territory (blue circle), yes. They should have a raw steak icon above their heads when they're working. If they have a valid animation then they will
also look like they're kneeling down while digging something, otherwise they will just stand around. Make sure the NPC is actually assigned to the "Food" job under their Status >> Order >> Job menu and not something else like "Harvest" or "Farm" or "Livestock". Also make sure the NPC has a filled water bar (use Wells or if you're really desperate you can manually feed them water with waterskins), they stop working if their water stat go down too low.
Last make sure it's an actual Food Box (the placeable you interact with by r-clicking food items in your inventory to make the food number go up, that NPCs will automatically take food from if the food box is inside their territory ) and not a chest or container with food in it or a Harvest Box.
Progress is very slow though, so it might take a while to see the number go up. It's usually more efficient to assign NPCs to work on livestock milking cows and fill the food boxes manually yourself with the milk, but that requires additional player input.
You need to put out the harvest box from the wood workshop to allow villagers to take action for:
- Food
- Harvest
- Livestock
- Farming (if you want to harvest fully grown crops)
- Collect trapped fish and deposit fish that are caught in a body of water (if equipped with a fishing rod)
I'm in the middle of trying to catch a mini-boss, I'll fix the actual names.
Updated with the actual name in English.
Also keep in mind you need to also the villager Territory needs to be expanded.
Otherwise, they won't act within the range of the Harvest box for the chosen job you directed them to do.
You don't need Harvest Box for the Food job. You also don't need to equip Harvest job NPCs with fishing rods either, to collect fish from traps.