Originally posted by Faceplant8:

You don't really have to worry too much about protecting a portal that you leave in the wild. I don't think anything happens there if you're not there. I've had half a fuling village waiting for me at a portal while I took a nap and collected myself on the other side. They pounded me just as I portaled back through, but they didn't touch the portal in the mean time.

The only time I've had a portal "go dark" is when I went through just as a berzerker was taking a swing at me. I think he took out the portal just as I went through.

I have had things get destroyed by spawned mobs that I neglected to eliminate before portaling away. I've had the workstation destroyed, the portal destroyed, and the ship destroyed.

Once I started making sure that any mobs that had been spawned while i was there had been destroyed before leaving I never had that problem again and so routinely do that now.

My wife and I once had a terrible time with 2 abominations that had spawned near our swamp landing zone. They would not follow either of us away from the landing area until they had destroyed the workstation, portal, and ship and as soon as we did manage to lead them away, circle back, and rebuild to try and leave they would circle back and start the cycle all over again. After all most 2 hours of that we decided to just bite the bullet and kill the abominations. Once we did that it was pretty smooth sailing. We just headed back to the crypt that we had cleared out and took the scrap iron out of the chest that we had built by the crypt.