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?
You might have lost the lottery. I’ve printed 5 spools of parts with my work’s Ender 3 Pro without having to adjust the bed level after I first set it, and that doesn’t even have auto leveling.
Make sure your bed is clean, and make sure your gantry and frame is square when you assembled it. It might also be your type of filament or Z offset
Ender 3 pro owner here. I definitely need to level more than this person, but not even every print. I’ll go months printing nothing and when I fire it up, I get excellent adhesion right off the bat, no issues. Also never touched the z-offset, only fix it with manual leveling (no auto leveler)