>>1837166
You grind for the sake of grinding at the core of it. As others have said, its a very idle game. For example say you want to craft some cloth.

Go out and find a fiber plant: gather it -> repeat until full cart -> go back to base -> process the fiber -> process the processed fiber -> go out and gather berries -> process the berries into fertilizer -> use the seeds from step 1 + fert to craft plant -> process plant -> take the processed processed fiber and processed plant, combine and process into cloth

And as you up in level, this process takes longer. You can also try to use the in game market to bypass certain steps which is a hit or miss depending on supply. A lot of people have this game playing on a second monitor or they're more focused on chatting with people in game or in discord while playing it. Hence the whole "idler game". Its also pretty time consuming to solo at 30+. You can do it, just takes a lot of grind. A significant portion of the population is focused purely on building and maintaining a settlement.

There's some grind thats more focused. There's a Player vs monster dynamic which is a bit more engaging. You'll basically grinding monsters for the sake of being able to grind stronger monsters. The current player vs monster loop isn't well integrated into the rest of the game. Hopefully they change that. You can also explore which is just mindlessly walking around/sailing exploring the lands. Supposedly they will make this loop more rewarding in the future. You can do hunting/leatherworking which has just as much grind as say crafting cloth. But its a bit more engaging cause you have to kill mobs to get the first part of the leather. So yeah, basically you grind for the sake of grind and to give yourself a "name" in the region/server by spending the most time doing said grind and specializing in something.

>>1837238
Nah 1 right now. I'm waiting to see what the pop does/which regions die in 3 wks before settling fully in.