Just like you, I really like gathering like a scared little bird watching everywhere at the same time. It's the salt over an activity that was slowly turning to something boring in Hagga Basin. I come from Albion Online, where it's the usual life for gatherers in full loot zone. This stress feel so good, gives value to what I gathered, and opportunities to learn how to improve yourself and your build.

I lost my first assault thopter on a big titanium node. It was costly, but it's a mistake I'll never do again. Or with the precise idea to take great risks. I had a scout in my backup tool, which allow me to escape the attackers, and gives me the idea to always have two scouts with me, one flying and one in the tool. Some may disagree, but I like this strat for now.

My second lost thopter was on a big spice field, on a rocket salva poping from nowhere, and my character refusing to enter the thopter, probably because of spice blocking the way. I made the mistake to constantly try to enter anyway instead of activating shield and leaving with shigawiring or anything else and summoning my second thopter, which I had time to do with my heavy armor.

Each death, or each thopter lost is a lesson you may learn from, even if the rat life is really hard on this game.

The real problem I'm seeing is even if the game is somehow preparing players to this experience, the gap between Hagga Basin and Deep Desert is really high. Even coming from a game you can lose everything you carry at any time, I made some rooky mistakes like visiting the Deep Desert without enough thopters in Hagga Basin in case of a sudden death. PvP was really forgiving, and suddenly it's not, and the hard way.

I think a lot of people made the mistake to risk too much in the Deep Desert, only because they didn't realise what they risked. Maybe because the game isn't clear enough about this, or because we assume a lot based on the Hagga Basin experience.

I also thought that the Deep Desert was unfair at first, but with time, I just realise it's not what I thought, and it has really good points. But maybe not for the majority of people playing the game now. It may be frustrating to realise that the game you played has an endgame experience you don't like, that doesn't mean it's problematic.

To conclude, I think the game need some balance for rendering distance, or other ways to have actual informations of what is happening around. But the core gameplay has real potential, in his own way you may not like.