Guild Wars 2

I obviously missed the memo on these guys. I have encountered them all over the place, tried to talk to them and just get ..well..talk. I see map-chat asking where they are all the time os they must have some kind of use out there in the world.

OK, I have been harvesting these kitten things for a while and as of about a week ago they are disappearing! I still have an instance to mine in my home but after they have been mined they disappear from my inventory and the stuff I had already in the bank is gone.
Was there a patch not I missed about this? Do we get some kind of credit for the time and gems spent on the mining spot in my home?

Not finding the new areas enjoyable as a solo player at all. I like GW2, been playing since the start but as PvE solo for the most part. Rarely dungeon as the parties all seem to DEMAND L 80 experienced dungeon players and getting punted from teams isn’t why I log in to play.
The game itself remains enjoyable as there are enough events to keep it interesting, even if some are repeats. I Have found that the rewards from world bosses have been kitten d though. I haven’t seen anything about rare in those for months and they used to come after all the hard work a toon would put into those.

I have been playing very infrequently and I managed to miss some sort of change that enabled assigning stats to equipment, or so the prompt says.

I have no idea as to what this means and can’t seem to be able to differentiate as to what part of my stuff I can do this to.

any advice would be appreciated.