Unbalanced portal fuel cost and coal requirements

Suggestions
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EDITED - (Disregard my first post. The more experienced players here have opened my eyes to the foolery that I once took part in. I completely agree that portals should be a rare commodity and should be kept up and maintained by groups of people.)

At the moment, if you wanted to run a portal for a month it would take around 720ish Oort shards. Since you can get 250 shards from 18 Oort stones (mass produce) You would need 54 stones total in order to power a portal for just one month. Thats NOT including the fuel needed to power the other end of the portal. That makes 108 Oort stones total needed simply to power 1 complete portal for one month. I’ve only been playing for about a month but it seems that is way to high. Most people would like their own portals in their base, however, having to collect that many Oort stones is so discouraging that I gave up the pursuit of gathering them. I hope Im not the only one who feels this way. I want to be able to set up some portals and not worry about them running out of fuel so quickly. Is there any way to better balance this? And please dont say collecting Oort stones is easy. I agree that its easy, however, it is not quick. Even on a good planet with many mobs it still requires time to collect that many stones so I no longer have to worry about refueling my portal.

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I didnt even mention the high demand for coal. Everything requires coal to make spark but there simply isnt big enough deposits to gather enough without spending hours searching for it.

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I believe you only need 1 side of a portal fueled to keep it running. Can’t be sure since I don’t have any though.

54 stones for one month seems super cheap to me - 2 per day?

Portals are supposed to be hard work since they give you access to huge profits, if you want a few portals it’s best done as a group.

6 Likes
4

I have a question.

Can’t you set the two sides of the portal up, and then only put in an Oort Shard when you need to go through, keeping the rest in your inventory? I haven’t created my first portals yet, so I am curious, because that seems like the most efficient way to go about it. Just putting 720-ish Oort Shards into the thing and letting it run for a month is inefficient.

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I would like to see ports on the same planet cost 1 shard for two hours. Other than that it seems to be manageable for me.
If your port leads to an interesting place and you put up a donation plinth people will donate shards and or stones.
At some point you will be able to charge for the use of your portal’s though I like the fact that people can use my portals for free.
As far as coal goes my new portal at thurka market leads to coal and fossil heaven.

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You can use warp portal conduits for jumps whenever you need - they are single use jump and super cheap to make (or free to make if you just use the portals in Sanctum to jump) the jump coast is based on how many hops you make.

In the future you will be able to charge a fee for people to travel through your permanent portals so location will be important.

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It costs 50 shards each time you open a portal.

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I was actually leaning the other way on this. To me they seem far too cheap. I think I remember reading somewhere that opening a portal was supposed to be a community or guild undertaking, not something everyone has personally. I could be wrong though.

At the moment it’s easy enough to farm a couple of Stones each day. That’s one or two enemies.

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It is cheap if it is only one side that needs to be powered however most people would like multiple portals and everybody wants portals in their own base which makes teaming up a little more difficult. I dont know…I just know that I have no desire to be constantly refueling portals, I’d rather do it once a month, plus I am only free to play monday-wednesday which drastically affects what I can do. I know theres many players like me that can only play once in a while and its things like having to refuel portals that makes the game less enjoyable cuz Im not able to fully utilize every aspect. I wish they would add a buy it option cuz I would be willing to pay real money if it meant my portals would not need fuel.

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Portal fuel and beacon fuel I hope they will consider adding to any cash shop.

I understand the pain but portals are meant to be extremely heavy undertakings since they give instant access to other worlds. Before we had them it was much more expensive trying to find location markers or building warp totem upgrades and warping to another planet, them warping back again.

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11

It’s really cheap to maintain one portal. You are not going to use it if you’ll be not active after all, are you?

If you want to make a portal hub to 12 planets then well, it needs to be a challenge. There are a few people who own a portal hub to all 12 planets.

If you want to establish connection to higher number of planets, make a portal hub with other people. Anyway after 157 you have a way to travel using portals. Before we were all using coing to travel. THAT was a pain.

4 Likes
12

Well well, I don’t think an easy easy like the proposed, fits boundless. It’s supposed to be somewhat challenging.

First thing firsts, portals are supposed to be achievable by solo players, but they aren’t meant to be easy to make just like that. They’re supposed to take in effort to work. For the huge benefits they offer, quick transportation, unlimited goes while it’s open, bringing in people to your place, etc.

Portals only need to be powered on one side. And really, should require actual thought into making them. If you’re gonna go for the convenience of making a portal base to base, and the only one that benefits is you, then take that time and coin you save in warps, etc into getting the oort shards.

I guess you haven’t tried and gone for mass producing, we have opened portals since day 1, and have had no trouble keeping them open since, just doing runs in hostile planets, gives you around 5 or more oort stones, donations are just a plus at this point.

If it’s so expensive to go to your base with a portal, you can use a warp, that’s why they exist.

And yes, portals can be done solo, obviously it would be easier for a group to manage. Perfect example is @Jeffrotheswell I believe he should have at least 10 portals, and he can manage to keep them open, it’s not gonna be as easy as if 10 people helped him, but it can be done.

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I have 10 portals running in my chain so far and am able to keep them running with two hours of hunting per week plus donations. Thanks @Jiivita your donations so far power all of my portals for a week which gives me more time to build. You rock!

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Jiivita is the man, the myth, the legend, He supplies Pixel Gate builds with his cheap prices.

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Yeah I suppose, you all are right, portals are a pretty cool feature. It only makes sense to have them a little more difficult to build and maintain.

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Welp. That’s ridiculous. Thank you for the response though. :slight_smile:

1 Like