Salem

Do things in darkness have higher purity?

I was wondering if things such as mushrooms, clay, lime, animals and anything really are affected by darkness.

Nope. And foragables are also a bit rarer there. The only thing darkness has going for it right now are argopelters, but that's a big plus because they're by far the fastest way to grind silver.

Isn't it safer, though, to build a homestead in darkness because it would drain the stat from raiders who are already getting shot by braziers?

I've hit the edge of the world and the drain was still fairly negligible. Even negligible drain is a ***** when you have crime debuff on, but IIRC they changed it a while ago so you can still refill the loss from darkness even when under this debuff.