I assure you fellow survival fan, you not being able to carry materials through portals will absolutely improve the game and not just pad it out significantly!
(Valheim, in case you were wondering)
this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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I agree, but I'm also torn there. The first boat trip back with a full cargo of previous new resources definitely felt more awesome than just stepping through a portal. By the fifth time the novelty has worn off though and I would like to teleport it please. Maybe something like the first 50 ingots need to be produced at the home base for your character to get "magically attuned" to the metal ?
They introduce a tier 2 portal in the Ashlands that let's you teleport metal.
IMO, a little too late (in terms of the game's biome progression), but still useful because sailing to and from the Ashlands in a bloated barge is a real bad time.
Edit: added a parenthesis for clarity
You've been able to change portal behavior in the world settings since 2 years ago.
I worded that poorly, I meant too late in progression of the game's biomes*.
By the time you're in the Ashlands, you've likely moved hundreds or thousands of tin/copper/iron/silver/black metal. It feels like tier 2 portals should have been unlocked around the time you get an artisan table since the game makes you double back for more iron to make the padded set and then once again for mistland weapons - Which just feels tedious since roaming the swamps with plains tier gear makes the enemies laughable.
(I know you can mine the ancient giants armor for scrap iron too but I seem to get like 95% copper 5% iron scrap.)
Ah that makes sense.
The trick for iron in mistlands is to bring a bench and stonecutter and dismantle the bridges you find over water. They have iron rebar inside them.
Oh, that's great. I haven't played Valheim in a while so I wasn't aware of this change.
You just need to have something gated behind either a boss or significant investment of metal that you can upgrade your portals with.
luckily there were mods in the early days and then an official toggle for that feature.
I understand the design philosophy (we want people to sail around and experience the world) but after 100 hours the diversity just ain't there.
And on top of that, not make sailing a skill, the map reveal range hilariously short even in wide open oceans, not having much to do other than sometimes stopping to fish or collect chitin, and really only one threat in the ocean for 95% of the game who stops being a real threat once you're beyond wood/flint arrows (the actual threat being your fellow players shooting the boat's wonky collision)
I fully expect them to go back and rework sailing but right now its not a great time.
Still love it though
Open world surviv...
No thanks
Mods make it easy, mods make it hard.
I personally am the over prepared type but that's why I get mods that extend the end game and put me through my own optimization and automation personal hell that causes everyone around me to question why I've never seen a therapist for my clearly neurodivergent behavior.
Y'know, expert Minecraft mods.
I am so sick of survival crafting games. All of them seem like they're trying to capture some magic that never existed.
All of them? There's several that I can name off the top of my head that are just fun to play: Valheim, the forest, subnautica, ark: se. You can even include some that aren't completely the norm, like terraria, satisfactory, or avorion. Hell, several of those even have really neat stories as part of the gameplay, like subnautica and the forest (and maybe valheim if you like the sort of narrative that's crafted).
ARK (and Palworld, which directly copies most of its mechanics) was actually the first game that came to mind when reading the OP. Higher rarity blueprints require hundreds of times the resources as their basic counterparts just to increase the amount of busywork you need to do in late-game. Why does a shotgun that deals 50% more damage require enough metal to build multiple skyscrapers? Or in Palworld, that plus the drops from a dozen boss battles to make one item?
Hmm, fair. I've never gotten 'past' the initial metal buildings. It's just too much fun taming dinos and flying/swimming around.
I've been getting back into Palworld these last couple days. I love the game, the pals have such personalities and there are so many and I actually want to collect them all.
However some of the world settings don't really seem to be working right for me, so that's kind of annoying.
Satisfactory is definitely not a survival crafting. Its more like factorio but first person.
Like I said, not completely the norm. With its first person emphasis though, it plays a lot more like a survival crafting game that has the food/water cycles turned off.
I love/hate them.
I generally like the sandboxy gameplay and exploration, but what I dislike is that nearly all of them have some BS design flaw that the devs double down on, and a lot of them tend to rely on padded grind as 'progression' which often just feels awful.
Have I got a survival crafting rpg game for you!
Semi-joking there; dysmantle is a breath of fresh air imo. It’s not as survival-focused as some games; you don’t have to eat, for example, and the crafting that you do is… actually worth it, and usually dead simple to unlock because if you’ve been progressively destroying literally everything like the game wants you to do, you have plenty of stuff shortly after unlocking the thing. And yes I do have a save file in which I am attempting to clear every breakable item in the game, which is almost everything. Because why not.
The game is mostly just explore, break shit, kill zombies, build a base if you want (there are some quests but you can destroy everything after if you don’t want it. It serves no real purpose beyond a creativity outlet), and eventually escape the island. After you learn all the story through finding random scraps of information because that’s right, all people except you are zombies! You don’t talk to anyone! And that really enhances the game imo.
That one has a magic I’ve been looking to get again with another game but no, it’s too unique! The horrors! The studio is working on another game called dysplaced which is going to be drum roll an open world survival crafter!! I’m actually excited to try it because of dysmantle, though! :)
If you didn't experience a magical feeling the first time you saw some of the stuff you see in Minecraft, I dunno what to say. Maybe you're young and that level of 3D procedural generation has always been there, but once upon a time it was unusual. We called it "multiplayer lego" except you can fight zombies.
I have been playing a load of Abiotic Factor, It sits on the sweet spot between story and fun for me, Constant new mechanics, always the feeling that I am sneaking in a better way to do the thing. Game kinda Feels like Valheim got cuddley with HalfLife.
I've played that before, but have they removed/made players able to reduce frequency of appearance or outright stop the annoying moaning monster from the lab zone yet? I'm a solo player and it was a creepy encounter the first 5 times and then just an annoying interruption, and it was so constant and inescapable that it made me stop playing.
You unlock a way to recontain it not long after it's introduced. You may need to build the x-ray lamp to get it to show up in your recipes.
Fair warning though, there's a very similar monster in the late game that's infinitely more annoying, though at least it only appears in cold areas.
That's basically Grounded.
At least grounded has qol features for inventory management.
Most survival games don't even ship with quick stack or crafting from chests.
This alone is one thing that makes Grounded stand out so much. Why do they make me suffer? Shuffling my equipment in and out of chests is not fun. I want to organize it, and then fill it up.