Originally posted by vinyblaster:

The limitation of ores and ingots not being able to make it through portals seems so artificial to me. It just feels like something to make it a bit harder to gather important resources and that's it.

Yeah, I see that what a big point is in Valheim is... travel. Compared with other games similar, the Boats is something none other has. So of course they want you to use them, feel like a Viking to travel the seas to distant lands... and it does feel great.

One thing that is important... make the player do certain early game things that feel like chores... and then later on give the player tools to make it less as a chore as it originally was.

In this, I feel Valheim fails right now.
Just as ec928 said about not being able to plant/farm more then one item at once, or the same it is with VorteX lament about Resin. I understand that early on the player needs to struggle for Resin... but later on there should be ways to either automate or make acquiring Resin easier.

Metal ore/ingots is another thing like that. It feels random that you can't hop through Portals with metal ore/ingots and I understand why.
I feel what they should do is make the Cart not suck so hard when you load it fully up with Silver. I found that friends of mine never use Carts... they rather setup a Portal... grab as much metal ore they can handle, run from the Mountains down to the closes coast... Port back up using the Portal... and do another run.
I spend once a good 30 minutes just doing that, because we had a especially juicy Mountain full of Silver. But having used a Cart would have not been any faster then that, which is a sad thing.

What could fix this issue, would be to simply add more Carts to the game. Add one per metal type, make it use a material you can only get once you beat the required boss... and make it handle better with allot weight in it. There is more then enough different wood/metal combinations that could achieve this easily. And you really only need to change the texture of the Cart.