Portal explorations suck

[issssk]

I was so looking forward to getting my portal generator...hours of keeping the game running, tabbing back every ten minutes to make my character drink and eat (why can't he do that automatically?), waiting for the agonizingly slow Ti numbers to climb up. All that in order to finally be able to explore again.
And then I finally get a portal...and it sucks. Big time. Some boring desert world with no navigation tools. Running around aimlessly for 20 minutes till finally stumbling over a wreck and a few crates. Still wondering how to get the loot from the few crates back (another thing I'm not a fan of, the constant inventory size problems). But that doesn't matter, since I can't find my way back to the portal that's so well hidden among the rocks and flowers.

So I'm probably gonna give up now. The idea of exploring portals was what kept me going, the game has been too much of a chore lately. I never ever liked mazes in any games, and this is no exception.

Good game up until that point though, but this was a downer.

[Jeronimosss]

Originally posted by archmag:

Originally posted by Jeronimosss:

Eh, I only go for 5-rarity wrecks, and those have 4-5 difficulty most of the time.

Rarity and difficulty are separate stats, they don't affect each other. You can find 5 rarity 1 difficulty easily. Difficulty affects the complexity of the maze and how many safes are in the vault (1 on the 1st difficulty, 5 on the 5th difficulty).

I only run 5/5 portals. They are not that complex when you use left hand rule and drop a lot of fuses, you are basically just running a linear route instead of a maze.

I know that rarity and difficulty are separate stats, obviously. In my experience rarity 5 has higher difficulty. Can you prove the stats are not related? Normally "better" in games means it's harder to get.

[FSHerrante]

You have to go loaded with flares, food and water, and sometimes you can die inside the alien wrecks if you didn't mark the stairs and hallways leading to the exit with flares.

[Jeronimosss]

Originally posted by Artemis:

Making signs is just a waste of inventory space imo and you are going slower since you need to read ♥♥♥♥.

If you need more space you can just throw them away, it's not like magnesium is hard to get. Also reading is not that much of a problem for me... but if it's difficult for you, feel free not to use my way of navigating wrecks :)

[issssk]

Originally posted by FSHerrante:

You have to go loaded with flares, food and water, and sometimes you can die inside the alien wrecks if you didn't mark the stairs and hallways leading to the exit with flares.

You can always give up and return without loot by pressing "M".

[FSHerrante]

Originally posted by issssk:

Originally posted by FSHerrante:

You have to go loaded with flares, food and water, and sometimes you can die inside the alien wrecks if you didn't mark the stairs and hallways leading to the exit with flares.

You can always give up and return without loot by pressing "M".

And lose the crystals used to open the portal, of which there is a finite amount. Not profitable

[issssk]

Originally posted by FSHerrante:

And lose the crystals used to open the portal, of which there is a finite amount. Not profitable

Well yes, but better than dying and not finding out.
Red crystals can easily be crafted though, and the remaining ones can be found in other explorations that are easier. So you can never get in a situation where it's completely impossible to open another portal.

[Ricardo]

Now I wonder, is there something that you actually NEED from the portals? I mean, is there an specific item that, once you have it, you can stop opening portals? I am one step away from ending the game, I just want to know if I am missing something.

[archmag]

Originally posted by Ricardo:

Now I wonder, is there something that you actually NEED from the portals? I mean, is there an specific item that, once you have it, you can stop opening portals? I am one step away from ending the game, I just want to know if I am missing something.

500k trading tokens for one of the endings. You either create an automated system to send a lot of trading rockets into space or you run portals to collect fuses and sell them.

Trading rocket fuses which let you reduce the time that rocket is away.

Energy and production fuses to further improve your production chains.

4 or 5 unique recipes that are just decorations mostly and yellow quarts.

Unique tree, plants seeds. Unique frog eggs.

Some secondary traits for animals which you can also get by petting the animals that you have.

So no, there is nothing that you NEED from portals, because everything of these is unnecessary, but it may be a nice loot if you want to collect it.

[Ricardo]

[Artemis]

Originally posted by Jeronimosss:

Originally posted by Artemis:

Making signs is just a waste of inventory space imo and you are going slower since you need to read ♥♥♥♥.

If you need more space you can just throw them away, it's not like magnesium is hard to get. Also reading is not that much of a problem for me... but if it's difficult for you, feel free not to use my way of navigating wrecks :)

Way to cherry pick what I said Nowhere did I say it was difficult, I was suggesting a more efficient way than the haphazard nonsense you suggested, but sure thing.

[GemSixx]

Originally posted by archmag:

They are basically linear. Use a rule of the left hand (always keep your left hand on the wall, meaning turn left on any intersection, or right if you prefer it, but always the same throughout the whole maze) and you won't have to deal with any intersections. You linearize the maze and always go forward following the left wall. This will let you find the vault room 99% of the times (there are rare cases when this rule may skip parts of the maze, but I only encountered one such case in my 20+ runs of 5/5 portals and vault room wasn't in the skipped part anyway) and lead you straight back to exit.

Thank you so much for this tip. I'm so glad I read this before I started doing portal runs. I could almost get lost doing the non-portal wrecks. The first portal I went through was a 5/5 and if I had not followed the right hand side of the wall, I would have never made it. But, instead, it was rather easy (and fast) thanks to your tip.