Calling it a "grind" just means you aren't spending your time wisely, and/or you're not properly utilizing the tools the game provides.

For one thing, it sounds like you're not using (enough) portals. The most difficult part of building portals is surtling cores, but as soon as you can find a swamp (which you've already done, if you're complaining about the "crypt grind"), go look for geysers.

When you find one, use your pick to bring the terrain down to ankle-deep (or knee-deep) water for a few floor-tiles' distance from the fire plume, and watch the surtlings spawn and die while you make a base with a portal nearby... maybe in/on one of those big trees that can't be chopped down? Et voila, never worry about cores or coal again.

You can use a greydwarf spawner in a similar way to get wood and stone, although there's a bit more design and setup involved... especially if you want to use tamed wolves instead of fires to make it practically maintenance-free.

Portals will keep you from having to trek for in-game days to do the things you want to do, which means you get to do those things more often. Found a cool spot to get (insert whatever here) or do a fun thing? Throw together a little base, and make a portal. Pop over whenever you feel like and get more/do the thing without having to spend an hour or two getting there first (after the first time, anyway).

Portals can be "tagged", which allows you to target a specific distant portal with one at your home/base. Something that's not necessarily obvious is that this means you only need a portal or two at "home", and you can re-tag them to go where you want when you want to go there. Make a map marker for your portals, and name it the same thing as the tag so it's easy to "remember" the tag... then when you decide you need to go there, just change the tag on your portal at home, wait a few seconds for it to update, and step through.

1, Mining: Mine more than you need for the current project; Acquiring scrap metal is a bit of a grind, but... that's mining. Like, in every game that has mining. Spend a bit of "grind time" clearing out an entire crypt, tossing the heavy stuff into a box by the door to minimize your travel time... then bring it all home for smelting. Use carts on a boat, and/or a tamed Lox to transport literal tons per trip.

Side note: you can get on a Lox while obscenely overburdened, and neither you nor the Lox will lose stamina while it's charging across the landscape. The same applies if you're standing or sitting on a boat while someone else pilots it; playing with friends is another good way to kill "the grind".

Also, do other things while the metal gets made... if you're standing there watching it cook, you're generating your own grind. Maybe go tap your beehives and start a batch of mead...

2, Mead: Make more beehives and fermenters, so you can make larger batches at a time. A dozen beehives is "a good start"; twenty is a nice round number.
Gather honey every time you're "at home", and gather the other materials as you're wandering around doing other stuff.

You're marking berries, mushrooms, flowers, and spawners on the map while you're wandering around, right? No? Then you're not using the map to its full potential. If you have a bunch of markers for the plant matter you need, you can simply jog around the perimeter of your base for a few minutes and fill your inventory with all the stuff you need except honey... which is being made passively at home in your two dozen hives, right?

Store the mats in chests near your mead factory (you have a couple dozen fermenters, right?) and then make a chest full of mead at a time.

Do other stuff while the mead cooks (and the metal smelts)... like building, or making arrows.

3, Arrows: You don't have chests full of pre-made arrows? You only make arrows when you're going to fight a boss? This complaint is... odd, in my opinion.

Why haven't you simply gathered a few stacks of materials and produced a few thousand arrows in a single go? Spend an in-game day filling up a chest with each type of arrow, instead of only making as many as you want to carry with you at once. If it's grindy, then do it all at once... and move on.

I make arrows maybe once a week, and my wife and I both shoot them constantly. It really helps take the "running out of arrows" scare out of the whole ordeal when we know that we have chests brimming with stacks and stacks of arrows waiting at home if I run out. Again; playing with friends can really gank the grind; for all you know, one of your friends likes sitting in the base crafting stuff. If nothing else, you can take turns so one person isn't doing all the making all the time.

Make more smelters, and don't just stand around while they do their thing; do more than one "maintenance" task at a time.

Come home from an adventure, repair all your gear, fire up the smelters, start the mead brewing, then go make arrows while everything cooks. Top up the smelters, take a nap, wake up, pick up and store the metal and mead, grab a stack or two of your favorite arrows, and head out again.

It's like doing dishes, or making a grocery run. You can either wait until you have to do the chores, and do a big chunk at once... or you can do a little here, a bit there, and never have to stop what you're doing to make the stuff you need to do it with.

Be smart about it, and optimize your opportunities to do the fun stuff instead of "optimizing the fun out of the game".