The iron grind is quite possibly the most egregious chore in the game, and it even has the audacity to come back for later biomes/construction. Unfortunately, while the next biome in line (mountains) does have a lot of cool new stuff (even some cold new stuff, hah), it also features the silver grind... Which, while not as bad as iron, still requires a huge amount of mining if you want to actually explore the new weapons instead of just going for 1-2+armor. Some of the armor costs can be taken down by exploring frost caves for the resources to build the rather handy fenris set, but that's highly RNG dependent and can end up being just a differently-flavored grind, rather than a reduction to the total.

...but then after the mountains, you hit the plains biome where everything hits like a truck and is extremely deadly, but the material cycle is so much smoother and you end up "accidentally" progressing by just playing the game. ...except for the armor, which needs iron again because ha ha screw you.


A huge amount of the grind can be trimmed down SIGNIFICANTLY if you already know a thing or two about the equipment and what/how much of something you'll be needing further on. But if you don't know that already and just want to explore and try new things, it becomes prohibitively expensive.

The midgame does sadly fall prey to a lot of padding and grind, and the fact that a lot of this happens in as oppressive an environment as the swamp and its crypts certainly doesn't help motivation much. Plains, as mentioned, loosens things up quite a bit and is actually quite pleasant once you adapt to the difficulty spike and how the critters act. Then there's mistlands, which... Uhhhhh...

Well, it's certainly not the same *kind* of grievance! I choose to believe that it's just going through some growing pains and will get ironed out a bit more in time, and it's not what I'd call the be-all end-all "I quit because of this broken biome" level I see people talking about, but... It certainly has its aggravation.

The bright side is that the main upgrade materials for the mistlands can be freely transported through portals, and there's some really cool stuff to unlock and play around with. It's just a bit of a bumpy start getting to the point where you can actually start, y'know... *Unlocking*.


I'd say keep going a bit until you've beaten Bonemass and started venturing into the mountains, as the change of pace and environment really helps freshen things up a bit. But if you find the silver grind to be wearing on your nerves too much, take a breather and let the game sit for a while.

Additionally, if you want to focus on good effective gear without spending all your time repeating the same fetch quest, here's my recommendation for what equipment to shoot for that provides a decent spread of gameplay while being highly cost-effective:

Wolf cloak (tiny bit of silver, and killing some wolves. Should be first priority for the cold resist)
Fenris leggings (involves exploring the frost caves in the mountains)
Root harnesk (killing abominations in the swamp)
Iron/Drake/Padded helmet (primary resource gathering, so iron/silver)
Frostner (mostly just silver, and it is somewhat expensive to fully upgrade, but this thing can carry you straight through to mistlands gear)

A bow. This is where it gets a little funky, as the silver-tier Draugr Fang is a dang good bow, arguably the best in the game currently, but the iron-tier Huntsman bow has a special unlisted quality that makes it the ultimate sniping weapon and a MASSIVE boon to clearing out features in the plains in an efficient and painless manner. If you have the time/resources, try both out and see what you like. Otherwise don't worry too much about which one you get, as both are really good.

If you can spare the resources, a silver shield is also really solid and highly recommended (and relatively inexpensive). But the iron buckler can actually carry you pretty far if you're good at parrying.