It’s very not slow if you don’t want it to be as soon as I got a bike I ignored all quests headed straight for high level areas I shouldn’t be. Looted chests until I got cutters and stuff to farm higher end ores and had a thopter in like 2 days tops. I’ve been doing deep desert stuff for ages and still have barely done any quests at all. It’s very forgiving about skipping ahead if you want to. And honestly that made me love the game a lot.