I am about 4-ish resource tiers in out of 7-ish or so, and I don’t feel like it is especially grindy by the standards of survival crafting games. There is obviously some grinding for resources, but there is also a good amount of exploring and doing quests, during which you can pick up a lot of the things you need. Getting through the iron tier was a little bit long because you don’t have access to a large vehicle inventory yet at that point, but I also took that time to reveal a bunch of the map, clear out bandit camps, etc. so it didn’t become too monotonous. There are a good variety of secondary resources that will keep you visiting different kinds of locations (wrecked ships, old mining operations, etc.) so that even if you just want to farm resources, you won’t just be spending all your time running between ore nodes.
If your friends would be playing together, they could also do things more efficiently by sharing bases so that they don’t each have to build their own infrastructure, and eventually you get access to a mining buggy that is faster to operate with two players (a solo player has to switch between the driver and mining laser seats).
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
The end-game gets extremely grindy very suddenly, like running into a wall. Until you reach that point, it doesn’t feel grindy in the slightest.