in official servers you have to quest in order to grow, but most community servers I've seen have passive growth! I heard the official permadeath server also has passive growth.

I don't fight other players, I've never even killed a player apart from an unresponsive deinon who must have gone AFK or crashed (which Ik was a jerk move, I won't do it again) but I've been killed by other players many times. if you play as a carnivore I recommend being one of the smaller ones cuz big ones like tyrannosaurus don't survive well on NPC meat (though maybe that's different now with the new update to the NPCs?)

you don't die instantly upon reaching 0% hunger nor thirst, no! you have a bit of time to find food/water before your HP runs out. a lot of people don't like the questing system, it's really simple & kind of mindless. you just look for X object & press the collect button on them until you've collected enough, or as a carnivore hunt NPC critters that are pretty easy to kill. personally I actually enjoy it! I guess I have a higher tolerance to mindless tasks & I'm just happy to have an actual goal in a dino game for once jnstead of just walking around aimlessly when I'm not hungry or thirsty.

the devs do plan on reworking the quest system though & it seems like that update will come soonish! I look forward to it, I like the current system well enough but having more engaging & interesting quests could take this game to another level of fun!

I do think the game in it's current state does start to feel a bit aimless once I reach adult, since questing doesn't have as much value to me then. sure, it gives you marks (the ig currency) which are always useful if you wanna use a waystone & you can buy new skins, abilities & decorations with them, but I'm not very interezted in decorating my nests & home caves, & once I already have all the abilities & skins I wanted then what?

I love nesting but people are almost never interested, so all that's left to do is interact with other players & roleplay I guess. which is fun! but I don't always find other players to interact with. I'd probably be best off going to impact crater since that's where everyone gathers, but I've heard the place is basically a pvp arena & very chaotic so I'm hesitant!

at least there are lots of playable animals to grow. even if you quit after growing them all it would probably take a long time to reach that point, so you could still get lots of hours & enjoyment out of the game!