Originally posted by blprice61:

Play a no portals run and then you'll have your answers.

Ok, that was a bit short of me. Basically using portals to move everything cheats you out of half the game.

As the vanilla game goes; you have a number of easy workarounds for metals not going through portals. Hint: move the smelters & forges not the ores/bars.

In what way does using portals cheat you out of anything? you obviously have to physically go to the places already to build portals so the only thing you are missing is having to run back and forth from hotspots, the game isn't exactly short on other things to run around and do that are actually enjoyable, like hunting and raiding dungeons, but the most tedious thing seems to be the one you have to pour the most time and effort into. The "moving the smelters and forges" thing hits in the same park, being able to build my own center of operations from the ground up and actually have it be useful is half the fun in open world survival games for me, instead of basically just serving as a storage garage.