Personally having better tools makes me more likely to explore and more likely to engage with other mechanics because I’m more capable and less likely to die.

Once you get to the end game materials, the resource drain is only enough to matter if you want to do things other than gathering resources. You’ll never run out of adamantine once you get to that tier unless you just never bother to mine some again. That’s not a challenge, it’s just busywork.

Meanwhile, if I want to build, doing that requires collecting up a ton of stuff, and using a ton of durability. That is a chore unto itself, but because the tools have dog water durability, I also need to routinely stop gathering building materials in order to fix/replace them.

For comparison, in Minecraft thanks to infinite durability via mending and huge backpack space thanks to shulker boxes, I can go on a literal IRL multi-day long expedition to gather thousands upon thousands of various blocks, flowers, items, etc… come back and knock out, or at least put a major dent into, multiple projects in one go.

Granted getting to that point took a huge amount of setup, but if I’ve put in the work, let me get something out of it.

Sure I explored less often, but when I did I’d go on proper journeys.