Alright, we have now hit a part of the adventure with a time abstraction.
You can only visit so many places to do whatever you want to do there. Walking one place to get to another doesn't count against you, if you walk through the village to get to the fire pit only counts as visiting the fire pit (but you can't do anything in the village). Splitting up reduces the amount of places that each group can visit but the total is larger than what everyone can visit together.
You guys figure out what you're doing (you can do it in character, no time constraints on talking, this is an abstraction). When it's sorted out I will make separate threads for the split.
I think this is too much of a blind choice for us to be able to decide properly. The more we split, the less places each subgroup can visit, but all the subgroups will be able to visit more places... So how many splits would we need so that the party as a whole manages to cover everything?
There seem to be 7 places to visit (landing, destroyed home with lunatic, basic homes, pit, barn, smokehouse, dark wood), we have 4 players. If we each go our way, could each of us cover a couple places (ok, 3 players cover 2, one covers the last one)?
In alternative we can give up in one place (the dark wood probably has monsters so may not be a very good idea to risk going solo there), so could we split the party in two groups and have each visit 3 places?
What if we stick together, how many places can we check? What about a 3 PC group and another going solo?
EDIT: Also my view in the priority of places to visit.
1-Fire Pit. It's where most of the local leadership is gathered.
2-Basic homes. The other elders should be here, plus directly rally the locals.
3-Destroyed house with the lunatic. Maybe we'll get some information.
4-Landing. Probably more information.
5-Dark Wood. If the villagers say to not go there it means there's something nice to find, but probably also monsters guarding it so seems like the high risk/high reward option. Going all together would be best, but would need to sacrifice somewhere else (see below). Would recommend at least 3 PCs to check it out.
6/7-Smokehouse/Barn. May get some provisions, but doubt we'll find anything particularly important.
EDIT EDIT: Although something else to take in account is that we may want to do the information gathering before going to talk with the elders. So the basic homes and fire Pit should be definitely visited, but in last place.