The forest was my favorite biome as being the "most interesting" ...

The mountains/plains are kind of boring to me... I just "get in, get out" with what I need and move on. I don't bother with the frost caves or tar pits because I don't need what they offer. Because of this, I would gradually lose interest in the game after Bonemass.

I think the Mistlands is now the most interesting biome and it has me excited to play post-Bonemass finally!

As a biome, I like it. However, certain game mechanics make it feel artificially slowed as compared to the rest of the game.

Because of the mountainous terrain you have to "mow" the entire biome ... and can still walk right past a point of interest and not see it. This makes exploration take MUCH more time than, say, even hunting frost caves. The mist is just a little (and I mean A LITTLE) too dense. Walk forward just a touch to reveal a hare and you're close enough to spook it. A slightly larger radius or a less dense "foggy area" that you can partially see through just beyond the clear area for a couple extra meters would help.

Gates upon gates upon gates. You can't really unlock anything helpful until you've almost finished the biome. Building the forge is quite an effort given the amount of "mowing" to find enough cores. But you really don't get anything useful. Refined eitr is required for almost everything including the armor (and the cape).

I'm on my second playthrough now and I'm "mowing" along, farming sap, and still can't build anything because I only have 3 cores. Just feels like I'm not making any progress as compared to the rest of the game (where you can generally start making new gear as soon as you can start extracting resources).

Then there's the sealbreaker fragments ... and I thought hunting for fuling totems was tedious!

Stamina. Again, makes for slow going. Super-mario up a cliff, pause while stamina recovers. Hop-hop-hop-pause. Hop-hop-hop-pause.

Knock-back. Well ... Enough said.

Not hating. I like it. Like it quite a lot actually. I just think I would "love it" with a few tweeks. Right now it feels like an epic Easter egg hunt (while bindfolded).

I've been seeing another popular comment: "it is what it is" which is then usually followed by a discussion on how to "work around" gameplay issues.

Again, I like the biome. What I don't like is feeling like I have to cheat/cheese/mod to continue to enjoy the game ... or like the game is intentionally hand-cuffing my progression to slow gameplay down. Is about 100 hours per playthrough "too fast"?

Oh well, "it is what it is" ...


EDIT: 0.212.9 just hit the Public Test Branch ... loving the sound of some of those tweaks!!!!!!