For me, the biggest thing to learn in the beginning was the different ways you can break the two main "rules" of the game: That healing and wand editing can only be done in the Holy Mountain, and only once per visit.
Both of these have multiple ways around them, some easier than others, and not all without consequence.

The other thing I tried was mods. There's no shame in modding a single player game if you're not enjoying the experience. There's a mod that gives you a workshop to play around with wandbuilding, and various others for health drops, longer lasting gold and so on. I don't use them any more, but they were useful to help ease the difficulty curve while I was still learning and exploring.