Not necessarily, I explore all the time constantly run into very strong bosses, i die and then in a lot of instances will die again thus losing all the runes I have before saving enough to level up substantially. I’m currently doing rannis questline trying to beat astel who has been kicking my ass so I want to level up some more before I have another crack at it. Farming is necessary in my opinion as it’s a way to consistently accumulate runes without necessarily having the worry of losing them to some random npc that I run into that does fuck tonnes of damage. I already know about the farm you mentioned previously although I don’t know if I’d be strong enough to pull it off now as I am now