I'm sorry that you're having difficulty. :/ Still, I'm glad to know that something has finally been done about how easy the collection system is. I really disliked the way that it was so easy to find items. There was no adventure or sense of genuine discovery because everything was always in the exact same spot.
If what you're searching for is supposed to be very rare, then I'd say that the gameplay is just about right. Rare items should take a long time to find and require multiple visits to different places. Once you find them, it's meant to feel like an accomplishment. However, if the items are supposed to be more common, then there could be a problem with the tuning, perhaps? In that case, you may consider making a
bug report.
I'm in complete agreement about the dog piles, though. It's odd that those spots have been chosen to drop upgrade parts. It would have been interesting to find more uncommon seeds there or something (barring that that doesn't already happen).
