Some suggestions to improve gameplay and alleviate some stresses in the early game.
1- Allow manual selection of respawn points. This allows people to abandon a shack that is being camped by bandits, as well as to allow people first spawning in, or respawning, to pick a region they want to be in. It doesn't have to be a lot of respawn points, but generally coastal places every 3 or 4 servers should have a spawn point. A new player's first experience on Life is Feudal should NOT be having to run for literally 2 hours to meet up with their friends because they spawned at the southern coast.
2- Allow Prayer of Homecoming to travel to random spawn points if no home is claimed.
3- Nerf fishing poles by reducing their speed and increasing the stamina drain from swinging them. Damage alone doesn't necessarily need to be decreased, and could even be buffed to compensate for reduced speed bonuses. These things are basically the "meta" of beginning PvP until you get actual weapons. Even then, someone could easily take on a fully armed warrior with these - I know I have. They would not be properly weighted for combat and so it's entirely feasible that they would be unwieldy. Their range, damage and speed is just absurd.