Simple Buckles appear to be too rare for how important they are

Simple Buckles are extremely important for core progression and especially as a new player you get no warning about how important they are going to be. I must have played between 20-30 hours in this new patch and I’m still missing buckles to unlock the lodge items for higher level materials.

Inexperienced players may progress really far, but then get stuck without the ability to make heavy leather or other important materials to upgrade their gear or get other core upgrades like the Secret Bag, just because Simple Buckles are too rare to find.

Even though I’ve learned about the Buckles spawn locations I could only find 4 Buckles after actively farming for them all day yesterday. The way to farm for them isn’t fun either. I don’t enjoy running through the forest looking at trees to get their bags and I don’t want to spend hours to just look for crates and other containers that may have Simple Buckles in them. I’d rather do actual PvE or PvP, but I won’t ever be able to progress if I continue playing the game in a way that I want to play.

I don’t mind Lodge items being rare finds that only spawn in certain locations. You find them naturally even if you don’t actively farm for them and it feels great to find an epic lodge upgrade. Simple Buckles should just accumulate more naturally without having to go out of your way to farm for them or they should be craftable.

Since I’m still missing 5 Buckles for my Saw upgrade and I couldn’t find a single one after playing for 2 hours today it’s getting really frustrating to the point that I’m thinking of not continuing. Perhaps I’m extra unlucky or I’m doing something wrong, but I found maybe a single Buckle before asking for help on how to find them and even with the knowledge I can barely get more. I can’t imagine I’d be the only one experiencing this issue, so I think it’d be worth looking into either communicating better on how to find them ingame or give better options to catch up on Simple Buckles if you’re behind.