Originally posted by bylandt11:

You do need A LOT of iron in this game. In my last game I gathered over 900. But I also have gotten very efficient at it. An average crypt yields around 90, is my guess. So i have to clear about 10 crypts. Go in with portal (on top of crypt), make a run out with 30 or more to the nearest ship base. In about 30 runs or 30 days (one run each day), I have everything I need for the whole game. Transport everything in 2 sailing trips to your main base.

The grind that bothers me most is raising skills. After a certain point getting better gets VERY slow. Running is the only skill I ever get to 100.

I did it a little differently; Set up a base outside the biome and hit all the ones that were close; stored all the iron in the crypt until it was cleared, then ran a bunch of trips to my expedition base nearby to store up enough for a full longship hold.

After using all of that iron I explored the swamp further and found a good spot to put a stilt-outpost in the swamp and used it as a central gathering point for more iron. Since it was about half a day run into the swamp, i made a road leading out of the swamp so I could get a cart in there and do one run.

I dont think I really needed that second run of iron, esp. since I got the formula for obsidian arrows but I like working with logistics. :)

Playing solo, i havent run into the same problems as OP but I tend to be miserly with resources i.e. I only drink poison resist mead when I see an ooze in a crypt or eat food once i'm in the delve or near the delve I'm planning on hitting. I map out and mark all the delves I find and use a system to identify the cleared ones, the ones being worked, and the ones that still have resources for extraction. It's fun. :)

P.S. bonemass was a pushover with a fully upgraded iron mace. Took a while and I had to terraform his summon spot to make sure I had enough running room, but it was worth it.

Originally posted by Dragonkick:

Love the game but had to stop last year for a few reasons

1. Spending way too much time in the swamp crypts mining for iron. Got ridiculous how much iron I needed

No tweaks on game side, but you can do tweaks on user side. If you build extreamly big bases, just spawn the resources, treat it like minecraft.

Dont craft bronze and iron gear (except the tools, and weapon of choice), you dont need it, heck with new armors from mountains you hardly need padded armor from plains that also was iron intensive. Dont dig the crypts clean either, its all in the chests and RNG, you can get up to like 90 iron from one crypt if you let more dice roll.

2. Having to wait ages to re-brew all my potions when i wanted to re fight a boss

Thats has been fixed... by your knowleage that its a problem, so you'd already be brewing more potions, possibly on two barrels even. It really should not be a problem ever. Unless you die constantly. Its not dark souls, you can retreat and recover here.

3. Having to regather and recraft all my arrows when I needed to fight a boss again.

Same like with brewing but also you can drop the bow altogether, its kind of a noob trap anyways tbh. Only good at high levels, and if you die a lot, you dont have levels.

This game is still a slog lmao

back into the vault for another year.

Learn how to parry and dodge and you won't need arrows to fight bosses. Parrying and dodging damage also means you won't need as much ore as I assume you are using a fair chunk on armor and you will need fewer potions

Arrows are for deer and drakes, learn the other mechanics, save yourself the grind.

Why do people play the survival crafty game and get mad when you have to get supplies to survive and craft? It literally boggles the mind sometimes.

All your issues are self-inflicted wounds, you should have learned your way out of these by now, with maybe exception given to the absolute titanic amount of Iron you need. The best advice I have here is pick your battles. Find out what Iron equipment you absolutely need. Hint: You don't NEED to max out your Iron armor, unless you are not very good at combat (Lag or skill issue)

Build more Fermenting vats, always have something brewing, materials willing. A minimum of 3 is recommended, so you can produce over a stack of a desired potion.

Don't use a bow if you're unwilling to invest in the ammunition cost, that's the balance against the weapon type to offset it's myriad advantages. If you're committed, learn how to farm arrow materials better. Obsidian, Wood, Feathers. Keep them. All of them.

You do need A LOT of iron in this game. In my last game I gathered over 900. But I also have gotten very efficient at it. An average crypt yields around 90, is my guess. So i have to clear about 10 crypts. Go in with portal (on top of crypt), make a run out with 30 or more to the nearest ship base. In about 30 runs or 30 days (one run each day), I have everything I need for the whole game. Transport everything in 2 sailing trips to your main base.

The grind that bothers me most is raising skills. After a certain point getting better gets VERY slow. Running is the only skill I ever get to 100.

There's been no changes in those things. You could use a mod to increase drop rates and ease the gathering and crafting pains.

There's an alternative source of iron, but it won't make a difference until you've completed all the original five biomes.

There are also some other new sources of metals here and there, but they likewise won't contribute much at all to linear progression.

2 and 3 should not be issues. For 2, you should have 10 of every useful potion in stock and if you fall below that, make another round. 10 is enough to last out a brew cycle*. You just get ahead of it rather than trying to produce stuff on a whim and needing it instantly. Arrows are similar. You have to make them, but you should always have 2 stacks available and when it gets low you make some more. If you are playing as an archer or doing boss fights with only your bow, this might be troublesome.

1 iron is still needed in vast quantities esp if you use it as a construction material. Note that with the wood chest piece (its very, very powerful), you can skip that one item and its upgrade path. Careful choice of weapons (black metal mostly) gives you at least functional weapons that require no iron at all. Between those you only need it for the rest of your armor and construction stuff -- which you can pick up in the late game nodes if you delay construction projects for a bit.

what has changed to improve this? Some things that will help... one of the new ranged damage options will surely help you, and the easy iron will too. That just leaves potion making, which again, can be solved by keeping a supply on hand rather than on-demand.

- there is a new bow type, the crossbow, that does a lot of damage per shot. A LOT. this means it uses far less arrows per kill. There are also harder hitting arrows and a new bow, which mean normal bow damage per shot is increased a lot too, which will help killing lower tier bosses with bowcheese.
- there are 2 new elemental based ranged weapons that use NO AMMO AT ALL.
- there are new sources of iron that are very easy to deal with. Its just nodes on the ground that you can mine.
unfortunately this is all found after doing the mistlands, which is the newest, hardest area and requires having done the plains boss if you want to be able to see anything in the zone. Going in without that is not recommended, but you could. If you can't do that area yet, you are locked out of these things.

you may still find it frustrating. To me, anyone complaining about making arrows is probably not going to enjoy this game regardless of the rest of it, because the never-ending stream of food-making, ammo-making, potion making, and gathering firewood etc all keep you busy and after a while become chores. There are ways to minimize these things but they still need to be done.

*I say that but if you keep dying and losing your potion buffs, you may need a bigger stash on hand. Also, the mistlands are much easier if you carry fire resist and healing with you. Stamina won't go amiss either, its not required but it will help at the cost of another thing to make and another thing to tote.

Calling it a "grind" just means you aren't spending your time wisely, and/or you're not properly utilizing the tools the game provides.

For one thing, it sounds like you're not using (enough) portals. The most difficult part of building portals is surtling cores, but as soon as you can find a swamp (which you've already done, if you're complaining about the "crypt grind"), go look for geysers.

When you find one, use your pick to bring the terrain down to ankle-deep (or knee-deep) water for a few floor-tiles' distance from the fire plume, and watch the surtlings spawn and die while you make a base with a portal nearby... maybe in/on one of those big trees that can't be chopped down? Et voila, never worry about cores or coal again.

You can use a greydwarf spawner in a similar way to get wood and stone, although there's a bit more design and setup involved... especially if you want to use tamed wolves instead of fires to make it practically maintenance-free.

Portals will keep you from having to trek for in-game days to do the things you want to do, which means you get to do those things more often. Found a cool spot to get (insert whatever here) or do a fun thing? Throw together a little base, and make a portal. Pop over whenever you feel like and get more/do the thing without having to spend an hour or two getting there first (after the first time, anyway).

Portals can be "tagged", which allows you to target a specific distant portal with one at your home/base. Something that's not necessarily obvious is that this means you only need a portal or two at "home", and you can re-tag them to go where you want when you want to go there. Make a map marker for your portals, and name it the same thing as the tag so it's easy to "remember" the tag... then when you decide you need to go there, just change the tag on your portal at home, wait a few seconds for it to update, and step through.

1, Mining: Mine more than you need for the current project; Acquiring scrap metal is a bit of a grind, but... that's mining. Like, in every game that has mining. Spend a bit of "grind time" clearing out an entire crypt, tossing the heavy stuff into a box by the door to minimize your travel time... then bring it all home for smelting. Use carts on a boat, and/or a tamed Lox to transport literal tons per trip.

Side note: you can get on a Lox while obscenely overburdened, and neither you nor the Lox will lose stamina while it's charging across the landscape. The same applies if you're standing or sitting on a boat while someone else pilots it; playing with friends is another good way to kill "the grind".

Also, do other things while the metal gets made... if you're standing there watching it cook, you're generating your own grind. Maybe go tap your beehives and start a batch of mead...

2, Mead: Make more beehives and fermenters, so you can make larger batches at a time. A dozen beehives is "a good start"; twenty is a nice round number.
Gather honey every time you're "at home", and gather the other materials as you're wandering around doing other stuff.

You're marking berries, mushrooms, flowers, and spawners on the map while you're wandering around, right? No? Then you're not using the map to its full potential. If you have a bunch of markers for the plant matter you need, you can simply jog around the perimeter of your base for a few minutes and fill your inventory with all the stuff you need except honey... which is being made passively at home in your two dozen hives, right?

Store the mats in chests near your mead factory (you have a couple dozen fermenters, right?) and then make a chest full of mead at a time.

Do other stuff while the mead cooks (and the metal smelts)... like building, or making arrows.

3, Arrows: You don't have chests full of pre-made arrows? You only make arrows when you're going to fight a boss? This complaint is... odd, in my opinion.

Why haven't you simply gathered a few stacks of materials and produced a few thousand arrows in a single go? Spend an in-game day filling up a chest with each type of arrow, instead of only making as many as you want to carry with you at once. If it's grindy, then do it all at once... and move on.

I make arrows maybe once a week, and my wife and I both shoot them constantly. It really helps take the "running out of arrows" scare out of the whole ordeal when we know that we have chests brimming with stacks and stacks of arrows waiting at home if I run out. Again; playing with friends can really gank the grind; for all you know, one of your friends likes sitting in the base crafting stuff. If nothing else, you can take turns so one person isn't doing all the making all the time.

Make more smelters, and don't just stand around while they do their thing; do more than one "maintenance" task at a time.

Come home from an adventure, repair all your gear, fire up the smelters, start the mead brewing, then go make arrows while everything cooks. Top up the smelters, take a nap, wake up, pick up and store the metal and mead, grab a stack or two of your favorite arrows, and head out again.

It's like doing dishes, or making a grocery run. You can either wait until you have to do the chores, and do a big chunk at once... or you can do a little here, a bit there, and never have to stop what you're doing to make the stuff you need to do it with.

Be smart about it, and optimize your opportunities to do the fun stuff instead of "optimizing the fun out of the game".