Hot take: Players shouldn’t be able to build portals – they should be fixed points from worldgen you discover and activate

I think it's safe to say there's a lot of opinions about portals. From people who wish they were more powerful and would let you transport metals, to the other extreme of people who just play the game without using any portals at all.

Personally I am of the opinion that portals are too convenient because we can build them ourselves without any major restrictions. This means once you get enough materials you can basically always carry a pocket portal with you and plant it to go back home and pick up whatever food you need and sleep for the night in your giant viking mansion.

I think this really undermines the 'wilderness survival' aspect of the game, because you can always just portal home and eat some freshly baked bread. You also never really feel you are "away from home" when you go on any major expeditions. In other words, exploration ends up feeling very safe, because no matter what you just click your heels and go back home whenever you like.

Now, portals serve an important function in reducing backtracking (to an extent), and allows you to set up bases in several different biomes, and I don't think they should be removed (whether or not they should let you transport metals I am less sure of).

The compromise I would propose is that portals get reworked to all be connected together (any portal can take you to another active portal), but with the limitation that we cannot build our own portals. Portals could be some kind of Yggdrasil root network that gets placed during worldgen. After discovering a portal you can activate it and add it to your network (the shrine where we put boss trophies will work as your initial portal).

This would reward exploration as you would continuously be expanding your portal network, and as long as you build your bases near portals you can maintain the network of bases. In terms of how common portals should be, and where they should be located exactly would of course require a lot of balancing. Initially my thinking is they would be located where multiple biomes intersect, and possibly the shrines that are used to spawn bosses would also work as portals (adding some use to the multiples of shrines you can find). It would also retain the feeling of the unknown from early game when you set out on an expedition – you may find a portal early, but you might need to camp out a couple nights in a row before you do and can head back for new supplies.

Buildable portals by the player could be reintroduced with one the last biomes, possibly with the upgrade that these can transport metals as well.

Edit: A good suggestion from the comments is that as the game is potentially getting difficulty settings, this could be an element of an optional difficulty toggle.