You're right, the bronze age sucks. It's too much of a grind. I think my first run through was the only time I bothered to make bronze armor. The troll armor easily gets you to the iron age. You only need enough to make the forge, the bronze pickax, the bronze ax (so you can get fine wood), the cultivator and whatever you need to upgrade them.
Take out the Elder as soon as you can and move on to the swamps.

Originally posted by Simpson:

i absolutely love chopping down trees and creating chain reactions. i love the the structural integrity and smoke simulation.
however, mining is dull and metal transportation is an incredible chore, even before iron and boats. surtling cores are too rare and/or furnaces and kilns need too many of them.

this game goes from the most relaxing and enjoyable base building game to an absolute chore fest without satisfying mechanics. i just wanted to unlock stone building pieces, but it's not worth it...

and no, installing "teleport everything" is not the solution

sorry to tell you this but it doesnt get better further on in fact the chore part gets worse

So first of all, cores are *not* rare. Just visit a handful of chambers and you're set for a while.

Second, I used to think that mining copper really sucked, but in fact it's really how much copper is necessary that is annoying (the 2C + 1T -> 1B ratio is dumb). Mining copper is actually really cool. I dig all around the deposit, all the way to the floor and try to make it explode. It's fun, you get a ton of stones that I keep for iron age and then it's pretty quick to gather a lot of copper.

As I mine copper, I also fight monsters in the black forest that give me resources, I cut trees that are in the way, I collect shrooms and BB when going back to my base. I like hoarding materials for later in the game.

I find collecting iron more annoying. You can end up in gigantic swamps that have no crypts. You can finally find a crypt just to see that it only has 2 rooms. You need way more iron than copper to build stuff.

Metal gives you vertical progression. Tools, gear, capacity for killing bosses. Wood gives you horizontal progression. Buildings, territory control, fuel. Metal is more important, so it requires more effort to get.

The game is enough of an open world sandbox that it will happily let you shoot yourself in the foot repeatedly. Grind is in the mind, it is a choice you make, there is no time pressure in this game.

You may look upon a copper mine as a grinding chore - or a lure for greydwarves and trolls, a combat arena. You can exhaust yourself trying to make everything, or you can choose to make only a few things that you believe are critical to the path you have chosen. There are very very few things at each level that are actually required for progression. Most will be tossed aside as junk before long.

There are as many ways to play this game as there are players, whether or not playing is 'grindy' depends upon your viewpoint and your choices.

It is a game, have fun. There is no spoon.

OP has a point. The wood chopping parts of Valheim were much more fun. It's more mobile, the trees tumble around, and it directly supports the construction part of the game. Ore mining is just
- find a spot
- swing pickaxe for 10min
- fill a box
- repeat
It's far less engaging and interesting, even if it is the intended progression.

Originally posted by Bobucles:

OP has a point. The wood chopping parts of Valheim were much more fun. It's more mobile, the trees tumble around, and it directly supports the construction part of the game. Ore mining is just
- find a spot
- swing pickaxe for 10min
- fill a box
- repeat
It's far less engaging and interesting, even if it is the intended progression.

For you maybe. Others enjoy it.
If you don't like grind games, maybe they are not for you. And that is OK. Plenty of other games. A lot of games are not meant for everyone.

Originally posted by Quintium:

Originally posted by Bobucles:

OP has a point. The wood chopping parts of Valheim were much more fun. It's more mobile, the trees tumble around, and it directly supports the construction part of the game. Ore mining is just
- find a spot
- swing pickaxe for 10min
- fill a box
- repeat
It's far less engaging and interesting, even if it is the intended progression.

For you maybe. Others enjoy it.
If you don't like grind games, maybe they are not for you. And that is OK. Plenty of other games. A lot of games are not meant for everyone.

then help us understand what do you find enjoyable about mining?

Surting cores are not rare... it only feels that way early on, you will be swimming in them soon enough.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2559869412

You can "chain reaction" ore deposits as well. Dig them out completely and hit them will cause the whole node to explode.

Why transport when you can set up a base by the resource?

If you just want to build in stone use dev commands to give yourself two pieces of iron.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2627653976

You could mod the game or use cheats/devcommands to gain access whatever building materials you need. Depends on what you want out of the game.

If you want to make copper mining exciting have a troll do it for you.

While it is true, that the copper "era" is the most annoying, believe me when i say it will get even more awesome after you get through this and reach iron and silver. Just get through copper as soon as possible. Here are some tips:

- your first run is only you with the boss-pickaxe an no tech whatsoever and almost certainly no weight-buff from the vendor item, cart and ship needs bronze nails, so just go light and retrieve an inventory full of copper. Throw everything else away like stone.

- second run is to get as many tin-ore as you need for the copper you found. its 2copper and 1 tin for 1 bronze.

- you only need 5 cores to start bronze crafting. get 5 cores, build a coal-thingy, make as much coal as you need. destroy the coal-thingy and place a smelter instead. smelt your copper and tin and make bronze. build all the necessary stuff from it that you REALLY need for now, which is a cart and the first ship which has 4 inventory slots on it. Also workbench upgrades and metalcasting bench with upgrades. dont make armor and weapons yet, also no tools.

- make a small base inside or close to the black forest with at least 3 copper veins in close area and place a portal so you can travel easily between them. Thats your "bronze-base". Btw you can destroy your ship at your homebase, it will drop 100% of its materials, go through the portal and rebuild it there, same with the cart.

- then just make enough tech-structures to smelt both copper and tin ore and what you need to create bronze-bars. Then just make the bars there and either run them home with your cart, or sail with the ship, you can transport only 120 bronze bars sadly but thats enough for half of what you need for a long time.

___ it really depends on the location, cart is better if you are close to your homebase, ship is better when the cart would have to go through to many obstacles obvs.____

And thats it. After you have enough either expand your "bronze-base" to be your main base for smithing, all depends on the location, or just keep building up your homebase and make a "copper-run" from time to time. It really depends how the landscape is set up in your world.

If your starting area is reeeeeally close to a black forest and there are 3 veins on the edge of the biome border, you can even do everything on foot.

But if not just remember that its way faster in the long run to combine the both heavy copper-ore and tin-ore at the location and ship or drag those bronze bars home instead of doing multiple runs and trying to do everything at your home location.

Originally posted by Actionhanz:

While it is true, that the copper "era" is the most annoying, believe me when i say it will get even more awesome after you get through this and reach iron and silver. Just get through copper as soon as possible. Here are some tips:

- your first run is only you with the boss-pickaxe an no tech whatsoever and almost certainly no weight-buff from the vendor item, cart and ship needs bronze nails, so just go light and retrieve an inventory full of copper. Throw everything else away like stone.

- second run is to get as many tin-ore as you need for the copper you found. its 2copper and 1 tin for 1 bronze.

- you only need 5 cores to start bronze crafting. get 5 cores, build a coal-thingy, make as much coal as you need. destroy the coal-thingy and place a smelter instead. smelt your copper and tin and make bronze. build all the necessary stuff from it that you REALLY need for now, which is a cart and the first ship which has 4 inventory slots on it. Also workbench upgrades and metalcasting bench with upgrades. dont make armor and weapons yet, also no tools.

- make a small base inside or close to the black forest with at least 3 copper veins in close area and place a portal so you can travel easily between them. Thats your "bronze-base". Btw you can destroy your ship at your homebase, it will drop 100% of its materials, go through the portal and rebuild it there, same with the cart.

- then just make enough tech-structures to smelt both copper and tin ore and what you need to create bronze-bars. Then just make the bars there and either run them home with your cart, or sail with the ship, you can transport only 120 bronze bars sadly but thats enough for half of what you need for a long time.

___ it really depends on the location, cart is better if you are close to your homebase, ship is better when the cart would have to go through to many obstacles obvs.____

And thats it. After you have enough either expand your "bronze-base" to be your main base for smithing, all depends on the location, or just keep building up your homebase and make a "copper-run" from time to time. It really depends how the landscape is set up in your world.

If your starting area is reeeeeally close to a black forest and there are 3 veins on the edge of the biome border, you can even do everything on foot.

But if not just remember that its way faster in the long run to combine the both heavy copper-ore and tin-ore at the location and ship or drag those bronze bars home instead of doing multiple runs and trying to do everything at your home location.

i will try to power through, it's just no fun right now.

Funny ... on one hand you make it sound like you are familiar with the game but on the other you say you don't know what to expect.

The whole idea of the game is progress by finding things... what made you think you could build out of stone right away? Forget the Black Forest you need a lot more done before you even think of getting iron drops.

That said you can use dev commands to turn off build costs and do anything if you just want to build a big castle... in the end though that kind of building is useless to the actual game. You need very little space for the "needed" things.

It is cool you can build stuff but it isn't at all productive to progression.

i enjoy the engineering challenge of obtaining metal.

-scout the area, mark metal on your map
-determine the final destination and any midway camps needed
-determine paths and transport. backpack? cart? boat?
-mine the metal, fight off enemies
-transport loot through the world, fighting off enemies, making use of day/night cycle to optimize.
-bring it back to smelter, fuel kiln with wood, replant trees

this is one of the few games where the loot cycle doesnt end as soon as you see it. you have to plan ahead of time for how youre going to get the loot out of the dangerous area. i find that to be a lot more interesting than, say, strip mining in minecraft for diamonds.

i do agree that the game kind of peaks early with the tree-felling, which is inherently more interesting due to the physics, danger, and chain reactions. when i first played this game, i remember thinking about how much excitement must be lurking in later biomes considering just getting lumber was such an adventure, but they definitely blew their wad on the early game.