I have an Ender 3 S1 that I use every couple of months at this point because it’s just such a pain to use. I have to adjust the bed tramming and z offset and run auto bed leveling for every single print and often times that’s still not good enough.
It will often take 30+ minutes just to get the first layer going down successfully.
Is this a me problem or did I lose the creality lottery?
I’m not sure about the S1, but I have the ender 3v2, and had issues with the first layer when I first got it as well! However, I eventually installed jyers firmware and a touch probe on it, and since then, my prints have been flawless ever since, and I haven’t manually leveled my bed in years! I basically used the jyers firmware and touch probe to build a 100 point mesh of my print bed, and then included g code before each print to do a 3 point tilt check to align this mesh to the bed, which basically realigns the virtual mesh to the bed even if it might have shifted! And since it’s only 3 points, it’s super fast and can be ran while the nozzle is heating up before every print!