there’s no way you noticed a 6% increase to your base item discovery. you just got lucky

Yeah, you would have to invest at least 30 points and even then.

I was about to comment and say that if they did, we would see a buff icon for that. But then I thought about it and remembered that in DS2 when you get wet from rolling into water pots, you would get an increase in resistance to fire damage while your character is visibly still wet, without showing any buff icon. Anyone who's interested in testing this out should probably start there. When it rains, look at your stats for fire resistance, maybe also lightning resistance. Though if there is an effect, it's also possible for it to be not reflected on the stat screen, so you'd probably need to take damage to be sure, if nothing is visible.

Came back here to add that rain (and being wet in general) DOES impact your stats, as I had suspected, though there is no buff icon. Normally I have 24.416 fire dmg negation and 24.986 lightning dmg negation, but when it was raining those changed to 31.975 and 17.484 respectively. If the same thing is true of enemies, then that means lightning has a slight advantage during rain, and fire has a slight disadvantage.

No, only silver feet. Gold increases runes.

Silver tear mask helps

Even if there is, you'd still want to make use of pickled feet. I keep a shortbow upgraded and on hand for hunting & utility, and just kill every bird I see since I need their feathers to make fletched arrows anyway. Without actively trying to farm them, or having much Arcane, I have way more of the four-toed feet than I can actually use.

As a tip, bows are treated as being pretty much completely silent. Birds will not fly away if you kill other birds immediately adjacent to them by shooting them with a bow.

Chicken paws. I love it! xD ����

Silver Tear Mask does a bit better with its arcane boost.