Originally posted by bylandt11:

You do need A LOT of iron in this game. In my last game I gathered over 900. But I also have gotten very efficient at it. An average crypt yields around 90, is my guess. So i have to clear about 10 crypts. Go in with portal (on top of crypt), make a run out with 30 or more to the nearest ship base. In about 30 runs or 30 days (one run each day), I have everything I need for the whole game. Transport everything in 2 sailing trips to your main base.

The grind that bothers me most is raising skills. After a certain point getting better gets VERY slow. Running is the only skill I ever get to 100.

I did it a little differently; Set up a base outside the biome and hit all the ones that were close; stored all the iron in the crypt until it was cleared, then ran a bunch of trips to my expedition base nearby to store up enough for a full longship hold.

After using all of that iron I explored the swamp further and found a good spot to put a stilt-outpost in the swamp and used it as a central gathering point for more iron. Since it was about half a day run into the swamp, i made a road leading out of the swamp so I could get a cart in there and do one run.

I dont think I really needed that second run of iron, esp. since I got the formula for obsidian arrows but I like working with logistics. :)

Playing solo, i havent run into the same problems as OP but I tend to be miserly with resources i.e. I only drink poison resist mead when I see an ooze in a crypt or eat food once i'm in the delve or near the delve I'm planning on hitting. I map out and mark all the delves I find and use a system to identify the cleared ones, the ones being worked, and the ones that still have resources for extraction. It's fun. :)

P.S. bonemass was a pushover with a fully upgraded iron mace. Took a while and I had to terraform his summon spot to make sure I had enough running room, but it was worth it.