Why I`m never buying Terrain sets again

I admit, I`m in love with my Ender-3.  That little machine must have been one of the, if not the, best christmas gifts ever.

I mean seriously, why should I ever shelf out money on terrain ever again, as I can print it for a fraction of the cost?

And it was by backing the Dark Realms patreon, with all his LOTR suited terrain, that I bit the bullet for good.

Yes, even MDF.

Bear with me as such, as I`ll have a look at some comments I often read or hear in conversations.

1. It takes a long time.

Yeap, those large houses take a while to print.  An average three storey house might take, especially if you go for the hyper detailed, with interiors, out there, as much as a week that the machine is running.  But, if you order it online, it takes about the same time to arrive by mail.

2. But what if the print goes wrong a few days in.

It happens, nothing you can do about it.  Just like when a parcel gets lost in the mail...

3. But those filament rolls and the machine aren`t cheap!

Are you kidding me?  I pay, for good quality filament, rolls of 1 kg the sum of 19.95 euro.  And I can, if I want, get about 3 - 4 large buildings out of that with the Ender - 3.  Name me one company where you can buy three LARGE (I`m talking at least 20cm by 20cm footprint here) buildings for 20 euro, and which have a good quality.

4. Is it hard?

Well, if I can do it, anyone can.  At first I used the basic settings the machine comes with, but soon I found more specified profiles for both figures and for terrain (which can be less detailed in layer settings) on YouTube, and copied those.  They work great.
The added benefit is that you can "try out" stuff with small, free prints from sites like Thingiverse.  I printed a ton of scatter terrain before moving to bigger buildings.

5. But don`t the layers show?

Yes they do.  But PLA is rather paint absorbing, and after the primer paint it is already a whole lot less.  And it also adds greatly to drybrushing for the models, with the added texture.

6. What about miniatures?

Okay, here I agree with others, if you want to print a full wargame army to high quality, you might be better off with a resin printer instead for the smoother details then a PLA printer.  I printed some infantry, and they are okay if not the most fantastic, but that is great for the skeleton hordes or the likes, or bigger beasts.  But for characters and such, indeed a resin one might be better...

So yes, for me the Ender-3 was a god gift, the only problem one might really encounter is shelf space, as it is VERY addictive to paint everything you see and like.  So I`m going to slowly start focussing on the buildings suited for Middle-Earth gaming actually.