Refreshing to realize that my restraint in placing collectibles in Elephantasy Flipside has been unwarranted; I thought I'd have too many of everything, but I actually have too few. This presents an interesting predicament: I could just leave it as is, and make it so players have to do extra work to unlock/upgrade everything by doubling items, opening chests smartly, etc.
On the other hand, I could ensure that players will ultimately have access to everything no matter what, which feels more fair. But honestly, I'm leaning more toward the former option. I've already designed all the areas (that have collectibles anyway), and I don't feel like I should place many more gems/ores in the world. Maybe enough more of each to make sure that the totals are nice round numbers...