Hermit Endgame

[barra]

You don't need deep artifice for a brickwall. With the hardness changes you can easily scratch out enough heavy earth to bulk-smelt into low-quality wrought and steel. Build the smelters in your mine, claim them and keep them fed with ore and coal. It's unlikely anyone will bother with crappy ore like that, but you'll get a couple of bars each load and have enough metal for your wall after a dedicated weekend or two.

[Asgaroth22]

About how much cast iron would get me a brickwall without deep artifice?

This depends entirely on what size you want your wall to be. I have a 60x60 wall with 4 gates, and I needed about 2,5
cupboards, or approx. 160 cast iron. This was made into 45 wrought iron and ~20 steel with deep artifice.

Also apart from all this stuff, if there's any experienced hermit reading this, what else should I know/consider in the long run? Animals, cheese, steelmaking, all seem like a lot of effort and even if I want to get to that point in the game, I feel like I'm getting real close to burning out.

The game's what you make of it, and if you don't want to keep animals, make cheese, or steel you don't have to.
To be honest, i'm a casual hermit playing little more than a hour a day, maybe 2-3 on weekends, and I managed to get up my brickwall a month after settling, i have some animals and planning to make cheese soon, and all this doesn't seem like much effort to me.

[MagicManICT]

Do not even try to create a brickwall without deep artifice. It takes weeks or maybe months for a casual hermit to get those 150K LP, but it is a good investment in the long run.

I can't speak to this world as I've been lazy as hell in my play time, but I never had an issue keeping up in previous worlds as a hermit. It's just a matter of how much time you want to commit to making curios vs feeding your face. (LP>FEP IMO). At least those that didn't mass trade for pearls and curio bot them, anyway.