Happy to trade, but I really don’t have any great urge to share my playtime in the company of others!
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Forsure. That was to everyone, i saw a lot of people discussing the grind and gem tool end game meta
A big problem I see is the big jump in crafting silver and gold tools. I seen a few people jump from iron to gems completely by passing silver and gold tools because gems are way easier and more useful than gold or silver.
Edit:
I made a Trello card yesterday suggesting the use of different alloys to replace gold and silver to Bronze and steel . It would be nicer in my opinion since you could create these items with basic ores to make the alloy.
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Then you haven’t seen my store before my friend 
If I started from scratch now I would be sitting like a god once again in less then a month NP.
Only reason I’m worried about the next reset & losing my current 1400hrs invested, is because I’m afraid of what I’m going to do to this game actually starting out fresh with players that previously had been playing for months others years before I began playing about 7-8 months ago.
Soon it will be undeniable that I am the single most influential & Largest shop owner within the game of boundless & I’m 100% certain those that know the full extent of my shop & what I’ve been able to accomplish in such a short period of time will agree.
Although crafting has gotten a bit tougher & certain Items are harder to make.
I assure you that will not stop players like me from doing whatever the heck they want.
I’m talking the “machines” out there.
Players that don’t stop until they have everything regardless of how long it takes to reach there end goal no matter how gigantic or seemingly impossible or daunting that task may seem.
Those players exist the trick for wonderstruck is going to be finding balance between Casual Players , Experienced Players , Hardcore Players & in my case whatever comes after the hardcore guys. Because what casual & experienced players may find to be to difficult there’s always going to be some experienced & hardcore players saying, nah its fine I like the added difficulty. 
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Try this, leave your skills in place. Leave all your existing items behind. Take a totem, and the shaky light box with 1 camp fire and walk out onto a new world far from any portals you know, totem in. Start playing with just that see how long you find it fun to play. When I got back that is exactly what I did to test the new balance. I gave up once I had a few machines and was working with copper and iron.
I would find that to be extremely fun & wouldn’t be walking around with just a totem for very long at all.
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I did that before portals were in game. Was walking everywhere (there was no progression back then and speed and jump the way it is now were unavailable - always 1 block jump and very average pace; even after reaching level 50).
Had to look for gold that was as rare as some gems now. Needed to craft warp augment allowing to save a location on one of the worlds in the sky (which were only 2). After that I could finally go to a different world (it was Septerfon).
It was all fun and I built a big settlement before I got to Septerfon.
Machines didn’t show recipes, there was no tutorial or tips on screen. So many things had to figure out through trial and error. Some answers I found asking in here and then I discovered boundlesscrafting (oh soo late I got to that one - it had a lot of answers I self-discovered via testing things). These things are fun for me and give an amazing feeling of achievement.
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I played through the loop at that same time too. It was a blast. I played through the entire game and loved it, repeatedly and legit made it to many of the worlds by totem loop only, bookmarks were dirty. Those were some good times.
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We have lost that part of the game since portals have become something everyone can make and everyone expects to have. It would be nice if we could make them less common and more challenging to maintain than they are now.
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The solution to that is make Rough Oort harder to get or the conversion to Oort Shards from Rough Oort be less. It’s 10:1 ratio right now.
And this is coming from someone who has 17.7k worth of Oort Shards yet to be made from Rough Oort. I don’t have any portals right now either that I maintain.
I was referring to the fallout from the community when/if this change happens. Each time portals are slightly harder to maintain we get a lot of posts requesting to make it easier.
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That’s cause everyone’s so spoiled right now with them. Whenever something gets harder by even the smallest degree the community is going to express their concerns, complaints, etc. about it.
One way you might bring it back is that unknown forces prevent you opening portals tier 7 or 8 worlds, forcing the players to craft totems. Thus you still fulfill the design goal of exploration and connected builds but for places that a purpose built for end game content you have to utilize a more rewarding mechanic.
I have also been thinking about the blinksec mechanic and perhaps totems as well as a way to help with isolating the PVP region to make it desirable to establish a base in them to reduce a players ability to fight out of a protected world.
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Portals need to be a mid game feature. Your supposed to be able to bridge to your friends build to play through the rest of the game with them. If you make them harder to acquire and maintain, most players wont ever connect with their friends to them play through the rest of the loop.
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The real questions that need to be asked is how hard is it to maintain different amounts of portals (such as a portal network) after a fresh reset? How long does it take someone to acquire all the necessary Rough Oort to do that? How long does it take to build the 2x3 portals and then to activate them to whatever place you want it to go?
Making balance decisions on something where the game has nothing but established cities and players with millions of coin to buy all the Oort Shards they would possibly need isn’t exactly a good environment to make a decision with. But then again can’t make a balance decision based off 10,000 active players when the game isn’t anywhere close to that big of a player base. Not even half that.
That’s saying a lot about our 5 man team 
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Well, warps would do this just as well. I personally think portals should be a lot harder, and should require multiple people to maintain.
Yeah your right. The current balance has to based on the players and the game you have for the time being. I would expect different in the future.
Here is what my experience was as a player returning to the game with no conduit and no clue that was a thing. I only found them by accident when I went to check out how the neighborhood had changed while I was away. Once I found them, I started working on getting the skills to craft them. Once I had that I used all my remaining wood and stone reserves from the old days to make 8 of them. 8 to 1 sure hurts, but I think is reasonable considering when you should be able to make them. From there I started trying to do meteorites. Got smoked by mobs over and over and over. Gave up and started wait for them to go dormant. Collects 1 to 2 stones every 15 minutes. After a few days I had enough to open and keep it going. I then spent 30 minutes each day farming another 20-30 shard worth and refueling. It felt like a bit of a grind. It was not til a nice Oort told me I should be going to hunt to get them that I got enough to stop worrying. But yesterday as I prepared to open a second connection to Therka from Solum did I realize at the rate i’m collecting I can only afford to bridge to planets nearby.
If we nerfed the shard count it would require players hunt more often to maintain the gateways. Plus I believe the reason there is a slight surplus is that your supposed to sell some that way hunters get enough money to just be able to hunt if they chose.
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This is such a wrong assumption to have. Not everyone is going to sell everything they acquire. I’ve stockpiled 17.7k Oort Shards just because I might use them. It’s probably worth well over a million in coin if I sold it all but I don’t want to.
Same goes for diamond gems that I mine up. As rough gem supplies degree cause of the surplus there was from hunts, the price per rough diamond gem will slowly go up. Doesn’t mean I’ll sell Rough Diamonds. In fact I expect rough gem prices to sky rocket once rough gem supplies hit an all time low, where as when that happens I’ll be sitting on a nice stockpile of over 1200 in everything and over 1500 in diamonds. Not that much compared to others but I can’t exactly do much about it cause of time restraints for playing the game.
You just can’t assume people are going to sell stuff they pick up. When I went on those hunts (don’t anymore since bombs got nerfed damage against blocks plus I find them boring), I never sold any of the stuff other than raw meat (I have like 8 smart stacks of the stuff). Why? Cause I rather stockpile stuff for a rainy day than screw myself later on.
And now it’s time to go to work. lol