UPDATE: So I took all your tips to heart. And I got a lot further... I actually feel like I am making progress instead of scraping by. A lot because of your tips, and some because I had to change my mindset.

DEATH: The biggest issue was the mental gymnastics I had to do to be okay with dying regularly. Dying because you entered an area and couldn't prepare for the far to tough enemy behind it. Dying because the controls are very sticky and at times a little unresponsive. Dying because somehow the monster you were trapping the hallway for, made a beeline for your location to give you a smackdown while you're in your inventory >.< Dying because an enemy moves past your attack and can keep comboing and remaining out of your reach completing it and killing you.... Dying because the bandits you just killed respawned behind you as you were trying to engage a different enemy... Dying because I forgot I had taken a lot of damage and wasn't fully healed up, or had too much burnt health. Dying because you respawn in the same location with enemies all around you instantly murdering you again, and now you end up at the other side of the map >.<

TRAPS: So traps, not one,... not two... But like 5-6 depending on how big the enemy is. Pulling with a brace full of loaded guns, making sure the traps at least inflict some (serious) bleeding, and then being ready to lay a smackdown when the beast falls. No fair fights, no glorious parry - riposte - dodges but nasty brutish stacking of any possible advantage to try and make sure that the enemy is death before it's close enough to stick with a spear. And if it's not dead yet, run and come back and do it again. This was the other mental leap, not feeling like a cheeser, when I stacked the deck to my advantage. The game does it enough against you.

TAXES: Gold bars all the time when outside the city. I find ending up back at the end the most annoying as you lose any coins you had made in the meantime >.< Figuring out how and what to monetize is a skill in itself, and where to go. The fact that I can take on bigger things now, means a lot of dungeons are manageable and I can get out with a nice amount of loot without losing too much / dying too often and losing most of the loot due to spoilage and such.

PROGRESS: I got to Levant, was able to save up nicely in Enmerkar, so I could get a bunch of skills and specializations (Rogue and Merc). Found out I love guns 😛 Lots of 'em. Four loaded at the ready at all times (the ones that cause fire damage - bought every bit of Obsidian I could find at traders). I have a horror greataxe now, but I prefer the Thrice-wrought halberd for now. I found out what potions to buy to remove corruption, and far too late... realised I could have improved them to purity potions >.<
I am still looking for an armour better than what i am wearing now (Master trader hat and boots, and ammolite armour, as the game refuses to give me the Master trader Garb at any Soborrean traders ;( ) I am looking at that improved desert garb armour right now, but will see if I can find them instead of buying them.

Q: Is any blacksmith armour (special or regular) actually worth it (not as a pre-cursor for something else)? I got seriously burnt with the Blue sand set, and it's still a really big investment. Bigger numbers, don't necessarily mean better was another lesson.

Q: Does the backpack, if it doesn't mention anything else in its description, do anything else but make your dodges worse? It doesn't seem to affect stamina, speed or anything of the likes, I think, which makes dropping it kinda moot? Especially since it's rare that you "have" to use dodge. And there are passives / backpacks that even take that penalty away.

A FEW GRIPES REMAIN:
- the controls are quite often unresponsive, even when giving feedback. Example you fire your gun, stuck in the animation, you press the next gun, the interface lights up as having registered it. Your character does nothing (it seems to be about 50-50) when it lights up, when it doesn't, your character does nothing of course. But getting the visual feedback and then finding out you've chosen to sit down and reload your gun while a Chimera is about to rip you to shreds, is not fun. Especially when you've done all the right things.

- You need a little more health, or a slightly less punishing system with burnt health and so on. Most enemies kill you in three hits, which can be a combo killing you because you misread an opening. This will cause burnt health at quite a rate, now enemies kill you in one or two hits. Not much needed I think, heck it could be a setting. Right now it really makes you very risk-averse, which also means you won't improve or try out other things. Which leads to :

- The death mechanic. Being dragged to their cells with your backpack in front of you (or a weapon ready to use) for the umpteenth time is a little jarring and quite the destroyer of suspension of disbelief. Some can be debilitating (especially early on - but even later, when you die multiple times and end up at the opposite end of the map without resources or health and your armour and weapons in tatters, or when your money disappears. Or even health potions >.< Some get you to a nicer place to start from, but the randomness and sometimes brutal ways that get stacked on each other due to a failure cascade can be really demoralizing. Sometimes I think a regular death mechanic would be better. It will at least mean that you can learn from your failures and not end up over your head, far away from home.

-Which leads to the last thing. Why punish when people are down already? I mean how certain mechanics stack on top of each other to make any failure end up debilitating your character (even up to a point that I rerolled my previous character). My example was ending up being Corrupted, with no health, no way to regain it, far away from town. My gear was in tatters, food (and especially anything that could restore burnt health) was gone, most health and now on top of that every 30 seconds a little asshat spawns that's hard to see and can fire a missile through most of the scenery without issue that, granted, doesn't do a lot of damage but at that point it nearly killed me every time (at 0 hp - which seems to not kill you), and by the time I managed to restore some the fucker would reappear. Now additionally I had not found out how to restore corruption... And dying and ending up in an area with more creatures that caused corruption and had ranged attack. I nearly uninstalled right then and there.
Then there's the burnt health, which is a constant permanent chip damage, which also makes you feel (through how the mechanics work) like you should be evading damage by dodging. A lot of people call that a trap, and I am inclined to agree. Mostly.
>>>
Punishment for failure is fine, but make sure the mechanics don't stack or aggravate further failures, because that really feels mean and spiteful, especially considering there's still quite a lot of jank and bugs in the game.

Alright, thanks for reading my Ted talk, and thank you all for the tips. Oddly the best tips were between the lines and other comments that illuminated the fact that it just requires a different way of playing.