1. Ore & wood were randomized to deter scripters who were hogging the high-end wood areas to turn in the wood to the library & museum collections (new content you also probably aren't aware of). Plus, ore had gotten WAY too common for the high-end stuff, because you could just recall to it. After all, when originally introduced, they were supposed to randomize (but they had it turned off for 5-6 years)
Note, however, if a site typically produced about 80% colored ore each time you mined it, before the randomization (which occurs randomly after it is mined a few times - small random chance each mining), it will STILL produce about that much colored ore of whatever type the spot changed to (well, you have to use a prospector's tool to get Dull Copper from a site tht changed to normal ore, but you'd get about 70-90% DC from it with the PT, if it used to be a site that gave, say, 70-90% gold, before).
So, go through your books, keep all the high-yield sites (whatever color they may be now), and just mine them for what you can get from them (using prospector tools, and if your brave enough, gargoyle pickaxes as well). You will be getting random or, but a lot of it, and will (especially using the two mining tools that bump ore type) get a lot of the ore of the type you want, just over a slightly longer mining trip. Plus, ingot prices have gone up considerably from this increased difficulty and the banning of some major ingot scripters, so you should get a decent price from selling the ingots you don't want to other people.
If you left before Samurai Empire, you will also want to know about the Fire Beetle. It is a ridable beetle, but instead of a pack, it can be used as a replacement for a forge. You can smelt ore on it into ingots while in the field, allowing you to collect about 50 times the ingots you would have collected without a pack animal before, and about 10-12 times more than what you and a singe pack animal would hold before. You still need to have an anvil to craft or recycle smith items, but there are a couple places (Lakeshire, and behind the Britain Blacksmith Guild, at the minimum) where anvils stand without forges.
2. As for the wood types, the information for wood weapons (and the skill to use the various woods in crafting) is the same for both Bowcraft & Carpentry - I've not had the chance yet to update the carpentry FAQ (spent most of the last month fixing some of the other posts, and completing the mining, bowyer, smith, and tailor FAQs).
Furniture can be made with the various new woods, as long as you have the ability to make the item, and the skill to use the wood types.
3. As for the status of the various FAQs, there was a mishap in the server hosting facility for Stratics back in May (someone grabbed our machine, instead of the one they were supposed to work on, and started a format - we're still converting the recovered data to the new forum software, and the profession forums have only been back a few weeks). In the weeks since the return of the profession forums, we've been attempting to modernize the FAQs (some of which hadn't been updated since Age of Shadows, or earlier), but it's a slow process.
