I'm interested in building and exploring, but I have come to despise combat more than I did when I was young (I've never particularly enjoyed action combat), so I have used the console almost from the start. Killing off the monsters with the console has made this game into something that I can truly enjoy - essentially a massive sandbox in which I can build anywhere. Initially, I only used the console to kill monsters, so the only materials I collected via console commands came from monster loot. Now I am building a transportation network over a large portion of the world. Collecting massive quantities of wood and stone for bridges, paved roads, and other structures was taking too long, so I finally surrendered to the full-blown creative mode. After the roads and bridges are all built, and I start improving the bare bones bases and outposts, I intend to pull back from this and see if I can build nice bases out of resources hauled along the roads. I am not using portals in this world - I want to see how much bother it is using a road network instead.

Everyone has different levels of tolerance for challenges and grind that the game throws at us. In single player mode, I see no problem with using the console to bypass elements that we don't enjoy or that start to get dull. It beats using a sector editor on a floppy disk, which is what I used to do back in the 1980s.