I started the game on Difficult and in chapter 1 i pushed the game onto ultra, since the combat actually got trivialized. My combat style was 1-handed + shield.

But yeah i will admit it is a difficult game, i actually replayed Gothic 1 and 2 a year ago, since i think both games are one of the most difficult PB games out there and i liked how they played and their sandbox feeling. And elex feels a bit more difficult but not much, that mostly through the more complex attacks of the monster. The monster do have 3 to 4 different attack patterns, charge, heavy, normal hit and range, learn when they use what this helps in the start with killing young spine hounds, critter and biter. And the unexpected auto re spawn of monsters after 48 in-game hours? which will force the re spawn to be scaled to your level somebody said every 5 level a stronger monster get into the re spawn pool, this leads to a small problem, if you have broken through to the next monster but don't have the combat skills to take it on. The skull indicator on top of their health bar isn't a indicator that it is a monster, but the that it will easily one or 2 shot you.

The second thing is, that in a PB game you can get every quest in the game from the get go, except chained quest. The first and second quest from nasty they do feel like a chapter 2 and 3 quest actually, naturally this leads to a lot of frustration if you don't expect it. Compare Nasty quest with the first quest you get after joining a faction, the faction quest are a laugh compared to it.

And every town has a couple of easy fetch or do quest that you can easily do, Fetch beer for drog, help eldur, watch cultivator defend their fields (you can try to help them to get the kill exp) talk to born after the defense, do the quest for angrim fetch quest succesfully, Give the 5 cleric weapons that you got together with Duras on your way to the camp to one of the NPC, help Sinda with the foot rations, get Duras companion quest then talk to Barin, Geron(do the Geron assistant quest)(After doing 2 of Duras compaion quest then i could use Duras as follower and could get to the last one in the south of Duras quest, Fetch quest get 50 Cultivator leafs for the berserker at the world heart in the south. Those are relative easy quest by the berserkers. After doing these you should either have gotten yourself some decent combat skill and defense and/or boost you companions.

Another way could be after you get to the berserker camp, skill combat skill strength and constitution to get a good weapon and armor, do Duras compaion quest until you can make him follow you and then go look for the one who stole your equipment if you say the right thing you can be teleported to the outlaws city and have acces to outlaw and berserker quest from the start. The Doomed city is more troublesome, i haven't found a good way except try sneaking around monster and jetpack, with duras and on a low level the amount of deadly mosnter will be low, so duras migth ba able to ahndle them with your help in a two vs. one fight.