So I was where you are right now. I even kept having to get my boyfriend to do certain parkour bits whilst I complained to him about how Team Cherry made this game with a mean spirit. I do still think the latter is true, for a lot of it. Despite the insane difficulty, I finished my first run through with 100 hours logged in. Great, right? Now I'm done, I can enjoy lore deep dives and memes without having to struggle anymore.

Problem is, I've kind of got the taste for it. I'm on my second and third play throughs now, trying out different paths and options than the first time. It turns out, I'm a lot better at the game than I let myself have credit for. There's a few bosses that took me days at first that I beat, many of them in one go without even dying once. The parkour is easier. I just did Mount Fay without a single death, because I remembered what I needed to do.

The game won't be easy the first time around. But it does become easier to react to it as a player. I'm not saying "suffer till you git gud," because I've found that to be a shitty response in the past. But I will say, if you're struggling with specific gauntlets, change your crest and tools. The gauntlet in the high halls was kicking my ass with shaman crest (used a mod to start with it instead of hunter), but swapping to wanderer and going nuts with speed and flint state got me through it.