So, metal. I can't find any of the stuff. I've been wandering around prospecting, including both near and ages away from my base. I'd hoped to look on lower levels but I can't see how - I've built and fired a mine pyre in my cave but it looks like maybe I need metal to build the actual minehole because I can't seem to work out how to get any further with it. Lots of people must be managing to find the stuff because there are several bases with proper palisades in my broad area (which I think need metals IIRC), but right now it feels like metal is gating all the things I need to have a good shot at obtaining metal, which feels like a catch-22. I can't just up an move a long distance because I'll end up treading on the toes of players who DO have metal and that might be bad for my health. Any advice?
My other problem is combat. I've been trying to build strength and unarmed on the ability scores to make it do-able, but I still even can't raid ant nests without gaming it by kiting the ants ages away then running back too fast. I'm on 25 UA and 24 strength, and I can't seem to kill ants faster than they can respawn (generally punching them a bit, running into water to get openings down, rinse and repeat). Similar story with bats, despite putting the points into unarmed etc they seem to rip my openings miles faster than I can open theirs, meaning I spend tons of time closing openings, ducking in and out of caves, and struggle to get enough damage in. Is the most likely problem just that I need to grind fighting ants the slow way a lot more to improve my available cards' values (I'm still not far beyond just having the starting player deck), or am I doing something else wrong?